Local and state rental housing legislation works against owner-occupied rental housing and small landlords who want to rent out an affordable room or a basement apartment in the house they live in. Exemptions would help.
While this type of owner-occupied rental housing – whether a room, or an apartment in the house – has traditionally been the most affordable rental housing, it’s fast disappearing. That’s very unfortunate because this is housing that’s already built and often paid for or nearly paid for. That kind of cost basis is what allows small landlords to offer stable affordable rents, yet most of it currently sits vacant because navigating the complex web of rental housing legalities is just too much for many people.
Interestingly, owner-occupied shared rental housing is a bit invisible because registration of owner-occupied shared rental housing is not required. So, while we can count an accessory dwelling unit (apartment) in an owner-occupied house, we can’t count the rooms for rent. Either way, we no doubt feel their absence and will continue to until we stop punishing small owner-occupant landlords with anti-landlord legislation.
As a divorced senior empty nester in a three-story house that I own in Seattle, I rent out rooms. The trend is called “boommates“, homeowning boomers who get roommates. While I’m very careful to follow the rules and laws, it’s getting crazier and crazier to navigate. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to convince any people in my circle to jump in and rent a room to someone in their home. They read the news and understand the shifting sands of rental housing laws. They know it’s stacked against them.
That’s particularly sad because many of these homeowners could use the money and perhaps the company as well, but between local and state anti-landlord rental housing laws we’re shooting ourselves in the feet. We’re literally chasing this stable, affordable, and diverse rental housing stock right out of the market.
Sadly, it also chases renters away from becoming homeowners. Buyers who could use the rent to ease the burden of today’s enormous mortgage expenses, can hardly afford the risk of having a non-paying or behaviorally challenging renter whose tenancy can’t be ended or take a chance that a single slip up of the hard-to-navigate rental housing rules and laws could render them broke.
So, where do we go from here?
A simple and effective solution to this problem is at hand. We should exempt this type of owner-occupied rental housing from rental housing laws completely and create a welcoming incentive-based system to onboard these affordable housing providers.
We’ll also need to eliminate the possibility that we’ll have uncompensated eviction moratoriums in the future. Whether by legislative or executive decree, the government cannot be enabled to simply heap unconstitutional statist concepts like this onto Americans, especially ones with rental units in the houses they own and live in.
In my owner-occupied shared house in Seattle, I faced two awful situations that were exacerbated by the eviction moratorium.
One was a housemate who failed to disclose he had cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, a substance use disorder that comes from smoking weed. That meant weeks and weeks of 24/7 scromiting (screaming and vomiting) that echoed through the house and made it impossible for others to live and sleep in peace. The other was a housemate who had a mental breakdown and pulled a gun and knife on me. Without the eviction moratorium, I could have ended their tenancies with 20 days’ notice.
We can’t put small owner-occupant landlords – with tenants in the very same house they themselves live in with their families – in a position where they can’t simply and legally end month to month tenancies, quickly evict tenants for non-payment and behavior problems, exit squatters, and more.
We can bring back an abundance of owner-occupied rental housing at the exact moment that we reject anti-landlord legislation that fails to protect and encourage small owner-occupant landlords.
To support owner-occupant small landlords, follow CORE, The Center for Owner-Occupied Real Estate, on Facebook or consider contributing to The Bipartisan Wing, a Washington State PAC with a focus on rebuilding the political center. Their current initiative is to support exemptions for owner-occupant small landlords as they seek practical legislative solutions to the challenges that owner-occupant small landlords face.