Category Archives: Landlord Tenant Law

Landlord's Motives

Do the Landlord’s Motives Matter Legally?

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I recently saw headlines about the Jam Master Jay murder case saying a conviction was overturned because prosecutors couldn’t prove a motive. That stood out to me, because in most criminal cases, motive isn’t something the law actually requires. To convict someone of murder, prosecutors have to prove intent — not why the person did it. Despite what TV courtroom dramas love to show, motive is optional.

Prosecutors still like to offer a motive because it helps a jury make sense of the story. If jurors think the accused had a reason, they’re more likely to believe they did it. If there’s no clear reason, the case can feel confusing. But legally, motive isn’t a required element.

The Jam Master Jay case was different. The defendant was charged under a federal law that makes murder a more serious crime if it’s connected to drug trafficking. To prove that connection, prosecutors tried to show a drug‑related motive. The court said they didn’t prove it — and without that link, they couldn’t show the murder was tied to drug trafficking at all

In a much less dramatic way than a criminal case, a landlord’s motive can matter—or not—depending on the situation. Here are a few examples under Washington law.

Ending a tenancy without cause

Residential landlords in Washington can no longer end a month‑to‑month tenancy “just because.” They need a legally recognized reason. They may be able to end a tenancy at the end of a fixed‑term lease, but only in certain situations and with 60 days’ notice.

Commercial landlords, on the other hand, can end a tenancy regardless of motive.

Ending a tenancy based on the intent to sell or move in

A residential landlord can end a month‑to‑month tenancy—or choose not to renew a lease—if they genuinely intend to sell the property or move in as their primary residence. But they can’t cut a lease short, even if they suddenly need the home.

The keyword here is genuine. A tenant could challenge the landlord’s stated intent if there’s evidence it’s a sham, though it’s usually hard to do that ahead of time.

Once the tenant moves out, the landlord generally has 90 days to actually sell or move in. That 90‑day window isn’t a strict deadline—it’s a presumption. If a landlord moves in for exactly 90 days and then immediately moves out, a court might see that as proof the original intent wasn’t real. There’s no magic number of days that guarantees safety; what matters is whether the landlord truly meant what they claimed.

At the same time, there are plenty of legitimate reasons a landlord might miss the 90‑day mark—major repairs, renovations, medical emergencies, and so on. If the landlord can show a real reason for the delay, they’re not automatically liable for wrongful eviction.

Retaliatory motive

One motive that always matters is retaliation. A landlord can’t punish a tenant for exercising their rights—like asking for repairs or contacting a government agency.

If a landlord raises rent or tries to end the tenancy within 90 days of the tenant asserting a legal right, the law presumes the landlord is retaliating. It’s not a hard rule, but it does shift the burden. And even outside that 90‑day window, suspicious timing can still cause problems.

This is just a quick overview of how landlord motive plays into Washington landlord‑tenant law. It’s not legal advice. If you need guidance for your specific situation, feel free to contact our office.

The Rent is Too Damned…Fixed?

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Landlord use of AI to set rent rates has spawned a wave of new laws and litigation. Critics urge that use of AI products by companies like Yardi Systems, Inc. and RealPage, Inc. are nothing short of high-tech collusion to fix prices.

The American Economic Liberties Project (“AELP”), launched in 2020, is a non-profit and non-partisan organization devoted to “translate the intellectual victories of the anti-monopoly movement into momentum towards concrete, wide-ranging policy changes that begin to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power.”

According to court documents filed by RealPage, AELP “began to peddle the groundless claim, based in large measure on demonstrably false factual assertions, that rising rents across the country were caused not by insufficient housing supply, but instead by software tools offered by services like RealPage.”

In July 2024 San Francisco banned algorithmic rental price setting. Other cities in California, Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey,  Pennsylvania, and around the county followed and passed similar legislation banning or limited the use of algorithmic rental price setting.

The AI rental companies have fought back, sometimes successfully.

RealPage sued the City of Berkeley claiming that its ban on “coordinated pricing algorithm” software, a law targeting apps like those sold by Yardi and RealPage, is an unconstitutional ban on free speech. RealPage in its complaint filed in the US District Court in California  argues that rent increase are a function of supply and demand, and denies that its software app facilitates price-fixing.

In response, the City of Berkeley paused implementation of the pricing algorithm ban until March 1, 2006.  A settlement may be forthcoming. According to a Joint Status Report signed by both parties and filed with the court November 26, 2025, the parties “are making substantial progress toward a final resolution in the form of amendments to the Ordinance, which they expect will be finalized in the coming weeks.” The parties are to file another status report by January 15, 2026.

RealPage’s competitor Yardi successfully argued in California state court that its software does not share nonpublic information between different landlords, and there is no agreement, neither explicitly nor implicitly, between competitors to set prices through use of its software.

On October 20, 2025, the court dismissed the case against Yardi after it disclosed its source code and the plaintiffs could not refute Yardi’s expert who opined that the software does not illegally share information between competitors nor require any agreement to set prices.

Just a month later, on November 24, Yardi filed a motion for summary judgment in an anti-trust case brough against it federal district court in Seattle. In its summary judgment motion Yardi quotes the California court’s order, “The undisputed evidence is that no one is agreeing or cooperating with the sharing of commercially sensitive rental prices in order to get price recommendations. The owners/managers are not giving anything to their competitors through Yardi, and they are not getting a price recommendation that is based on pricing data provided to Yardi by their competitors.”

Yardi’s summary judgment motion in Seattle is still pending at the time of this writing.

In August 2024 the federal government and ten state governments filed and anti-trust suit against RealPage and several large landlord companies. A proposed settlement was reached and filed with the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina November 24, 2025.

Under the settlement RealPage agrees to restrictions on the functionality of its software. The court will appoint a formal monitor to ensure compliance with the terms of the settlement. RealPage agrees to cooperate with and bear the cost of the court-appointed monitor.

At a time when both affordability and the use of artificial intelligence technology are at the forefront continued legislation and litigation concerning the use of artificial intelligence algorithms in setting rent prices can be expected.

Texas Federal Judge Hold CDC Moratorium Unconstitutional

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A federal judge in Texas has held the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium unconstitutional.[1]

In September 2020 the CDC issued a nation-wide residential eviction moratorium in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC eviction moratorium stopped evictions for non-payment. In Texas several landlords filed suit challenging the legal authority of the federal government to impose an eviction moratorium upon states.

The judge ruled that while states have the power to regulate residential evictions, the CDC moratorium exceeded federal authority to regulate interstate commerce. States have broad power to enact laws for the general public good—called ‘police power’—but the police power of the federal government is limited under the US Constitution.

The federal government has no general police power. The federal government must find authority either under an area reserved to it under the Constitution, such as the power to regulate interstate commerce.

The Court noted that the “federal government cannot say it has ever before invoked its power over interstate commerce to impose a residential eviction moratorium” and that the federal government had not done so during the Spanish Flu pandemic or the Great Depression. “The federal government has not claimed such a power at any point during our Nation’s history until last year.”

The government claimed broad constitutional authority. The federal government argued it had authority to issue suspend evictions even in the absence of a pandemic for any reason, including an agency’s views on “fairness.”

Note that the impact of this ruling is limited as it is the holding of a local federal district court judge, and even within its jurisdictional boundaries, the Court did not issue an injunction. Any landlord should consult with an attorney before acting, particularly as there are potential criminal penalties for violating the CDC moratorium.

An appeal is highly anticipated.

[1] Terkel et al. v. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, No. 6:20 -cv- 00564 (E.D. Texas February 25, 2021).

Evicted by Matthew Desmond, a Review

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A woman moves slowly, looking overcome as she answers the door for the sheriff deputy and moving-crew. A sob breaks through her face as she open the refrigerator and sees the movers have cleaned out everything, even the ice trays. At another eviction, the mother named in the court order had died two months prior. The children had gone on living in the rental by themselves with ratty mattresses and roaches scaling the walls. The landlord changed the locks. No one in the crew knew where the children would go, and they did not ask. A week earlier a man being evicted told the sheriff deputy to give him a minute. Then he shut the door and shot himself in the head.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Evicted Matthew Desmond paints a compelling portrait of the agonizing human toll eviction exacts. Desmond seasons anecdotes gleaned from living with landlords and tenants in Milwaukee’s low-income neighborhoods with enough data to show he has done his homework, but not too much to risk boring the reader.

Desmond’s non-judgmental approach lends much to his credibility. No zealot labeling good guys and bad guys, he instead writes that landlords are not “so different from the rest of us.” If given the same business “opportunity would any of us price an apartment at half of what it could fetch or simply forgive and forget losing thousands of dollars when the rent checks don’t arrive?” he rhetorically asks. At the same time, he writes candidly about some tenants being their own worst enemies with substance abuse and other issues.

The truth is far more nuanced than blaming some tenants for their own plight. Desmond argues that housing affordability and the resulting high eviction rate has gotten worse over several decades because of a complex web of public policies and socio-economic trends.

He shows how low-income people are at great risk of falling into a vicious cycle. If half or more of your income goes to housing, it is easy to fall behind—often for reasons that are not blameworthy at all. Once your behind if you find yourself under threat of eviction and take off from work to look for new housing, you lose income and are at greater risk of being fired. Displaced children fall behind in school and suffer emotional trauma, putting them in jeopardy of falling into a generational poverty trap. And so it goes.

So, do we reach for a Bolshevik abolishment of private rental housing? Hardly. Desmond recognizes that economic incentives to provide housing are a vital part of any solution. “If we are going to house most low-income families in the private rental market, then that market must remain profitable,” Desmond writes. Quoting a source from some 125 years ago, Desmond postulates “The business of housing the poor, if it to amount to anything, must be a business…As a charity, pastime, or fad, it will miserably fail, always and everywhere.”

He urges solutions such as no-cost legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction, and universal housing vouchers to all who financially qualify, rather then putting most low-income applicants on a waiting list for housing vouchers as is done now. We do not put people on a waiting list for food stamps, nor do we vilify grocery stores for not handing out free food to the hungry.

Rather than display a partisan’s intransigence, Desmond acknowledges that the policies he advocates—like all policies—may have both pros and cons, and welcomes an honest debate. “Would a universal housing program be a disincentive to work? It is a fair and important question.”

Yet not addressing the housing crises, he urges, is far worse than possible side effects of universal housing vouchers and other possible solutions.

A compelling read, Evicted is the product of years of embedded research. The Gates Foundation has granted Matthew Desmond funds to continue research into the causes of high housing costs, even if lower-income areas. Could a sequel be in the works?

New CDC Eviction Moratorium

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The Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued an eviction moratorium covering essentially all residential properties. To qualify for protection the tenant must provide the landlord with a declaration under penalty of perjury that the tenant

  1. has used best efforts to obtain all available government assistance for rent or housing;
  2. expect to earn for 2020 no more than $99,000 for individuals or $198,000 for joint tax filers;
  3. is unable to pay the full rent due to substantial loss of income, loss of work hours, wages, lay-off, or extraordinary out-of-pocket medical expenses;
  4. is making best efforts to pay as close to full payment as circumstances permit;
  5. eviction would likely make the tenant homeless or forced the tenant to move in close quarters in a shared-living arrangement;

The CDC argues in its moratorium that preventing evictions will help slow the spread of COVID-19. It cites this argument as giving the CDC authority to issue the eviction moratorium.

The CDC moratorium does not apply to evictions based on a tenant

  1. engaging in criminal activity;
  2. threatening health or safety;
  3. damaging or posing an immediate and significant threat to property;
  4. violating building or health codes or similar laws;
  5. violating contractual obligations other than non-payment of rent or other charges

The CDC moratorium is set to expire December 31, 2020.