The Heart of Housing: RHAWA’s Impact on Tenants, Housing Providers, and Communities

The Rental Housing Association of Washington (RHAWA) provides a lot more than forms, addendums, leases, and screening services: We are teaching rental housing providers how to follow complex changes to laws that have been on the books for decades. Even when RHAWA is opposed to these laws and the consequences they bring to our industry, we still provide a good faith effort to educate on how to implement these changes into your workflow. I believe our educating, mentoring, networking, political representation, and community engagement provide tremendous value to our members and our community. 

The value RHAWA and our members bring to our community grows exponentially as it becomes clear that housing is currently one of the biggest, most important, and most complex issues this nation currently faces.

Contextualizing and communicating the impact our association has had in our community and for our members isn’t an easy task. I often think about the many small mom and pop rental housing providers that continue being an active part of this industry because we exist. I wonder about how many tenants have lower than average rent while living in good homes because of this association’s ability to keep housing providers in the rental housing industry. We have helped so many. We represent, encourage, and educate the people that provide homes for renters.

Our entire community is part of the rental housing & real estate ecosystem. Everyone needs a place to call home. Everyone has questions about housing policy and homelessness which has caused a cacophony of questions and ideas that blur political, economic, and social lines. 

Stakeholders like rental industry advocates, tenant advocates, and social service providers are trying to communicate to one another about the needs of the people they represent, and these communications are funneled through a media apparatus that thrives of off “clicks”, (the ultimate measure of success for media in the digital age), and then this information is funneled to politicians, who I believe are exhausted with the subject matter, and if we assume have the public’s best interest in mind, are looking for innovation and leadership to solve problems. 

I believe that many have mistaken regulation for innovation. 

There has been a massive amount of regulation in the real estate and rental housing industry at all levels of government. I believe that anyone reading this article understands this presupposition, so the real question becomes, what can we do to mitigate the loss of revenue from regulatory interventions?

Well, I believe there is an answer: We need to understand that when we prioritize the well-being of those outside our immediate business circle, such as renters, communities, and the broader public, it ultimately helps our industry and our businesses thrive both now and in the future. What does this mean? It means assessing and quantifying how our rental properties influence important social issues like homelessness and housing affordability. Think of it as using data to hedge against regulatory burdens. 

People like Larry Fink, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Black Rock, have spearheaded the measurement and scoring of “Environmental-Social-Governance '' or “ESG”, as a way of making investment decisions in industries that are at extreme risk of government regulations. I’m not saying I agree 100% on the systems of measuring ESG, or if it really presents value to investors. Notably, people like Elon Musk are against the ESG and impact investing philosophy. There are always two or more sides to every debate, and these are two titans, so obviously there is a lot of back and forth on the merits. However, I think this industry can agree, that if we do not talk about the social impacts our housing has upon the community, while other advocacy groups ARE measuring the impact the lack of housing and homelessness is having upon the community, we will lose in the court of public opinion, in the court of law, and be at risk of the pen being significantly mightier than the sword. 

RHAWA members house many people from vulnerable populations and place them in permanent housing. We work with programs that house people who have experienced homelessness. We work with federally funded programs like Section-8 and HUD-VASH. Our members provide the housing our workforce lives in. Our Association provides training on Fair Housing, working with rental housing subsidies, and gives innovative insight into best practices and new technologies to streamline operations and administration for your rental businesses. (E.G., Going paperless means reducing your business’s carbon footprint!). We do so much to help and it’s time to talk about the impact this has on the community. 

RHAWA leadership and staff are already working hard to design strategies and implement solutions for the 2025 legislative session and the many local ordinances that will come up over this next year. We have bold ideas, commonsense policy, and we are developing relationships and providing education with many legislators on both sides of the aisle. Some of our legislative priorities include short term rental assistance payments for tenants behind on their rent and making rental units safer for tenants and rental housing providers. These commonsense policies will have a massively positive impact for everyone in our community. More information to come on these efforts in the coming months.