The crisis around the corner
IN LATE NOVEMBER, RIAN DE LAAT REACHED THE END OF HER ROPE. OVER THE PAST YEAR, HER MOM HAD RECEIVED A CANCER DIAGNOSIS, HER DAD HAD UNDERGONE MAJOR SURGERY, AND de Laat, 44, had been laid off from her job at a biotech startup. But her chief concern was the fact that she was now responsible for the mortgage not only on her own home—a quaint one-story bungalow just south of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood—but also on an investment property, an unassuming two-bedroom condo eight miles north in Shoreline. Her tenant, Ollie Aldama, had lost his job at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March, began struggling to make his utility payments and ultimately stopped paying his monthly rent of $1,800. By Thanksgiving, he owed de Laat more than $20,000.
State and national eviction moratoriums prevented de Laat from kicking Aldama out amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet her own financial situation wasn’t flush enough to float him indefinitely. After months of anxiety, she decided to use a loophole in the law: she could force him out by moving into her rental condo herself.
But when it came time to deliver the final notice of eviction on Nov. 30, de Laat, who has previously faced housing insecurity, broke down. De Laat had become friends with Aldama, who had been the bar manager at a local goth club where she was a regular. She knew if she evicted him, he and his partner, who is laid up with bad hips, would have nowhere to go. “He teared up, and I teared up,” de Laat recalls. “I couldn’t do
