Washington Low Income Housing Alliance
Winning A Statewide Ban On Predatory Rent Increases
Winning a statewide ban on predatory rent increases, stabilizing housing for seniors, veterans, single parents, and a million other renter households in Washington.
Challenges
Unpredictable, excessive rent increases destabilize renter households and contribute to homelessness, especially threatening seniors, people with disabilities, and families with children. Huge corporate landlords, developers, property investment companies and their trade associations spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying to protect their profits. But, working with the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance to support the voices of those most impacted by predatory rent gouging, we helped galvanize public support to pass a new law providing stability for nearly 1 million renter households.
How We Did It
Over this 3-year campaign, Team PowerHouse shined a spotlight on how huge rent hikes were impacting real people, with op-eds in papers statewide, leveraging the unlikely voices of small landlords in support of rent increase restrictions, garnering editorial support and even coverage in the New York Times of this unique protection for renters. Lawmakers received our digital ads and e-messages from tens of thousands of constituents as our team helped produce multiple press conferences and rallies on the capitol steps in Olympia.
"We were up against developers and real estate investment interests spending big money to preserve the status quo. The folks at Powerhouse played a crucial role in countering their false narrative through reporter education, and helping us leverage action and stories from thousands of impacted renters into lawmaker support for sensible protection from excessive rent hikes.”
Rachael Myers
Executive Director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance
