The last in a series of Tenant Rights Bootcamps will be held at the Good Shepherd Center:
- Date: Wednesday, April 5
- Time: 7:00-9:00pm
- Place: Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, Room 202
- Cost: Free
These bootcamps are a partnership between Be:Seattle and the Catholic Community Services Legal Action Center, and co-sponsored by the Wallingford Community Council.
What is a tenant rights bootcamp, you ask? From their website:
Trying to get repairs? Worried about losing your deposit? Confused about new Seattle tenant laws? Worried about eviction?
Tenant Rights Bootcamps are a neighborhood-by-neighborhood series empowering renters to learn their rights, find solutions to various issues, and make change in their community. This series provides an opportunity for renters to learn from people who know landlord/tenant law, civic engagement, and community organizing.
Tenants will walk away from Bootcamps with a better understanding of their rights, current Seattle landlord/tenant laws, and resources to help in trying times. They will have the opportunity to feel more educated and empowered. In addition, they’ll know exactly how to get engaged around issues that affect them as renters.
Link to the Facebook event
If anyone attended this event and has information to share, I’d be grateful to hear from you. Things are going from questionable to challenging at our (rented) house.
Maybe the most useful summary would be “check with DCI.” One would perhaps never guess this, but Seattle renter/landlord enforcement is housed in the Department of Construction and Inspections.
http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/codesrules/commonquestions/rentalhousingproblems/default.htm
You can get a lot of information about the rules in Seattle off that link – including the paragraph at the bottom titled “Read the Code”. The links there are not all to Seattle Municipal Code (which can be rather technical), there are also plain English pages with a lot of information.
And you can talk to them. A lawyer did most of the presentation, and of course she’s ready to take on cases in defense of renters whose rights are being trampled on, but she advised people to get DCI on it first – apparently that’s less threatening to landlords than having a lawyer sic’d on them.