There are a bunch of protections in state law against discriminating against people who are wanting to rent an apartment based on sex, religion, or race. They make sense, and in fact, they ought to be expanded to include sexual orientation. We think those decisions are best made at the state level. Why? Because Seattle has demonstrated a complete lack of sense when it comes to making decisions about imposing more rules on how renting works in Seattle. Based entirely on a few anecdotes about units being rented only to Amazon employees, the Seattle City Council essentially added to the list of protected groups to include people who show up to rent a unit first. We’ve advocated for taking the power back to the state level by preempting these arbitrary and unhelpful rules. There is a better way to do all this, and Minneapolis City Councilmember Elizabeth Glidden shows how.

One of the protected classes in parts of Washington are people with what are called Section 8 vouchers, a subsidy program that allows households who need help with rent can spend their voucher toward market rate rents. In Seattle, for example, a landlord can’t deny a potential tenant based on the fact that she wants to use a voucher.

Minneapolis doesn’t have this requirement but Councilmember Glidden wants to create one. The first thing she did was actually talk to landlords! Imagine that. She engaged with the rental housing community and asked them what they thought of the idea. Then she did another really crazy thing, she listened to what they said! Landlords said they didn’t want to be forced to take tenants with vouchers. Their concern is that often payment for the vouchers is uneven and unpredictable leading to gaps in payment from the agencies giving the vouchers. Also, they believe its riskier in many cases to rent to tenants with vouchers. That isn’t because people with vouchers are necessarily bad, but in many cases vouchers are given to tenants who don’t qualify for public housing because they have a bad rental history. The agency denies them a lease, then sends them off with a vouchers.

The concern anyone has who is renting anything is risk: what happens if what I am renting, a car, a boat, a house, a book, anything, comes back to me damaged. Obviously this is what deposits are for. But landlords believe that Section 8 tenants do more damage and end up not paying for it even when taking into account the deposits. It’s too risky and voucher tenants can’t pay higher deposits — they don’t have very much money, which is why they have a voucher in the first place.

So Glidden has proposed this thing called an incentive to encourage landlords to follow the new rule she is proposing. What’s the incentive? A City fund that would help defray the costs of any excessive damage or other issues that might come from renting to tenants with vouchers. Lots of City staff and service providers believe that Section 8 tenants do really do all that much damage, and Councilmember Glidden is willing to bet on that with real money. If it turns out they do a lot of damage, then the City will help off set that. It’s called collaboration! And even though landlords will likely still oppose this, it’s an actual compromise that could make sense, reassuring landlords, helping tenants who need a place to live, and testing out the assumptions of both landlords and Glidden. Either way, tenants with fewer dollars are the winners.

By stark contrast, the Seattle City Council never talks with landlords in Seattle and they don’t listen. And we’ve asked them to consider a revolving fund rather than a deposit cap. There wasn’t even a response. There is no interest in compromise or collaboration. The Seattle City Council makes rules that simply make things more complicated and risky. The first in time rule doesn’t help anyone who is needy, it just rewards the first person who shows up and it denies the landlord the ability to chose among equally qualified people. What if a landlord wanted to rent to a teacher who showed up third rather than the brogrammer that showed up first? Not going to happen. That’s now illegal.

And as for the deposit cap, rents will simply go up to capture higher deposits and smaller landlords simply won’t rent anymore, putting their single family home on the market or running more rigorous screening to help offset the potential damage. That means people with bad credit, which is probably true of most people with less money, won’t get the unit. This is totally the opposite of the stated intent of the rules.

I spoke with the housing director in Minneapolis and she said that their City Council is looking to Seattle for leadership on these issues. I said, don’t. Look the other way. We don’t know what we’re doing! But she and the Councilmember are the real leaders, doing the basic work of good government, engaging the people closest to the issue, listening to what they say, and responding so that real people benefit.