Drafter
Clerk 08/05/2024
Title
AN ORDINANCE relating to tenant protections authorizing immediate family to reside in a rental unit; and adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 12.
Body
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY
SECTION 1. Findings:
A. The King County council finds that establishing this ordinance, a right for tenants to reside with family ordinance, is necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare of King County residents.
B. The 2022 Tenant Protections Access Plan, developed in response to Ordinance 19311, recommended implementing a right to reside with family members for tenants in unincorporated King County.
C. The 2016 King County Comprehensive Plan urges county support for legislation that protects the rights of tenants and landlords, such as uniform protections for tenants and landlords and fair rental contracts.
D. The regional affordable housing task force's 2018 five-year action plan includes supporting tenant protections to increase housing stability, reduce risk of homelessness, and protect low-income communities from displacement and homelessness.
E. Tenants in unincorporated King County do not currently have a right to reside with their families, putting them at risk of eviction if they house family members who are not on their leases.
F. The 2017 report, Losing Home: The Human Cost of Eviction in Seattle, by the Housing Justice Project and the Seattle Women's Commission, found that evictions can have lifelong negative consequences, including pushing a tenant into homelessness, negatively impacting a tenant's physical and mental health, poor educational outcomes, and similar harmful impacts.
G. The 2020 report, Caregiving in the U.S., by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, found that nearly twenty percent of adults in the United States provide care for an adult family member with a health need or disability, with forty percent of caregivers living in the same household as the care recipient...
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