🏠 Do landlords have to pay you to move?

Do You Know Your Rights as a Renter?

With the close of Mayor Wilson’s renter survey, now seems like a good time to brush up on the city’s existing renter protections. The city has a handbook for renters with information in multiple languages. Did you know: Seattle renters can’t be evicted in the winter (Dec. 1-March 1), and educators and families with students can’t be evicted during the school year (typically September through June)? [Seattle Times]

• Landlords Need a Legal Reason To End a Lease: This also applies to declining to renew a lease. However, as affordable housing nonprofits address budget holes by selling buildings to private investors, access to affordable housing options shrinks, and renters are being pushed out. [Seattle Times]
• Landlords Must Pay Low-Income Renters To Move for a Remodel: Low-income renters are eligible for $5,354 in relocation assistance. Low-income is defined as making 50% or less of the area median income. That was $55,000 for a single-person household in 2025. But when the Rainier Beach apartment building, Crestwood Place, was sold to private investors, the new owners tried to pay residents to leave for far less than they were legally owed. [Seattle Times]
• Seattle Social Housing Developer Charts Path Forward: Earlier this month, City Council approved the disbursement of funding, $115 million to be exact, for the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD) to start delivering affordable housing using a new mixed-income model. SSHD’s goal is to purchase its first property in the next six months. [The Urbanist]

Budget Bills Propose Tapping Rainy Day Fund and Child Care Cuts 🌧️

Democrats in the state House and Senate released their proposed operating budgets on Sunday night. The proposals included tapping the state’s rainy day savings account and slashing hundreds of millions of dollars for a child care program for low-income families to balance the state’s budget into next year. They also include $310 million in cuts to public education. Even with these cuts, the budget wouldn’t come out of the red until 2028. [Washington State Standard]

Western WA Sanctuary Status Shrinks As Access to Gender Clinics Dwindles 🏳️‍⚧️

As elected officials have restricted access to medical care for trans youth across the country, families have been relocating to Western Washington for their kids’ treatments (my reporting from 2023). Our region used to have two hospital-based pediatric gender clinics: one at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and the other at Seattle Children’s. But in late January, Mary Bridge announced it was closing its clinic, and Seattle Children’s has alternately paused and restarted trans youth care. Still, some providers are finding creative ways to meet their patients’ needs. [KUOW]

Librarians Speak Out Against Security Practices at the Library 🚨

Our recent intro video for the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library received several comments about the houseless people who frequent the downtown library. Library staff says that a new enforcement crackdown led by the Seattle Public Library’s newly hired security chief, Andrea Walton, is turning librarians into part-time cops. This comes after six years of revising the SPL code of conduct to make it more equitable and less punitive. [The Urbanist]

Seattle Soups and Where To Find Them 🍲

The Stranger’s dad jokes about SOUPer Bowl champs aside, their recent list of the staff’s favorite soups in the city contains some bangers. It has classics like Pho Than Bros for, of course, their pho, but also the complimentary cream puff. It has new kids on the block like Ooink’s spicy miso ramen and Situ Tacos’ soup of the day. It even has Biang Biang Noodles’ curry tofu dry mix, which Micah Yip bravely argues qualifies as a soup. Whatever your choice soup might be, happy souping! [The Stranger]