Housing

An eviction in Auburn, a city south of Seattle, turned deadly the other week. Six deputies with the King County Sheriff’s SWAT team approached an apartment home to “serve a high-risk civil eviction order” and were shot at, according to video. It appears that deputies returned fire in self-defense, killing the shooter inside the home. The circumstances surrounding this dangerous eviction are unknown for now, but the event brings to mind another eviction-turned-violent that occurred in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle last spring. In this case, a tenant named “Eucytus” fired at deputies while barricaded in the apartment and then died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Seattle detective David Easterly was critically injured by a gunshot wound during the incident. Read More ›

A couple living in Kent, a city south of Seattle, was issued an eviction notice in May 2023 and then granted a continuance in court – a delay in eviction proceedings – five times over the last eleven months. Then last month, a King County Superior Court judge dismissed the case. The landlord has lost more than $23,000 in unpaid rent, a cost that continues to grow by $2,100 every month. Why was the case dismissed eleven months after the eviction notice was served? According to the judge, the notice was “confusing.” To understand the source of confusion, we have to go back to spring 2020, when the federal government passed the CARES Act. Alongside other measures to provide economic Read More ›