Tacoma Revises Its Landlord Fairness Code, Effective 2026

Tacoma's rent-increase notice requirement moved from 2 separate notices under the original Landlord Fairness Code Initiative to one notice given 180 days before the increase takes effect.

[Cite: Tacoma Ordinance No. 29086, amending Tacoma Municipal Code, Rental Housing Code]

That consolidation simplifies what had been a more complicated 2-step notification process; a landlord now has a single compliance date to track per rent increase, rather than coordinating 2 separate notice events with their own individual timing requirements.

Late fees are now capped at 1.5% of unpaid monthly rent, replacing the prior flat $75-per-month ceiling.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That shift changes the actual dollar cap depending on a unit's rent level; a $1,500-per-month unit now caps out at $22.50 under the percentage rule, well below the old $75 flat cap, while a higher-rent unit could see a cap above $75 under the same percentage formula, so a landlord needs to recalculate the applicable cap for each unit rather than defaulting to the old flat number.

A rent increase of 5% or more triggers relocation-assistance eligibility, with the amount increasing by tier: 2 months' rent for a 5-7.5% increase, 2 and a half months' rent for an increase over 7.5%, and 3 months' rent for an increase over 10%.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That tiered structure ties the size of the assistance to the size of the disruption; a landlord imposing a modest increase just above the 5% threshold owes less than one imposing a double-digit increase, which gives a landlord a direct financial incentive to keep increases smaller when relocation assistance becomes a live consideration.

Once a tenant requests relocation assistance under this provision, a landlord has to pay it within 30 days of receiving that request.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That's a firm, short deadline; a landlord anticipating a rent increase that crosses the 5% threshold should have a process ready to calculate and disburse the applicable relocation-assistance tier promptly, rather than treating the request as something to handle at leisure.

A tenant who requests and receives relocation assistance but ultimately doesn't move has to repay that assistance within 10 days of their lease ending.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That repayment obligation closes an obvious gap; without it, a tenant could collect relocation assistance intended to help with an actual move, then simply remain in the unit with no obligation to return funds that were never actually used for relocation.

The original Landlord Fairness Code Initiative's cold-weather eviction ban, running November 15 through March 15, didn't carve out an exemption for small-scale landlords; Ordinance 29086 now exempts owners of 4 or fewer rental units in the city.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That's a meaningful shift for Tacoma's smaller landlords specifically; a landlord who owns just a handful of units in the city, and previously had to observe the same winter eviction restrictions as a large multi-unit operator, now falls outside that particular moratorium under this new threshold.

Beyond the small-landlord carve-out, low-income housing providers and public housing providers are exempt from certain provisions of Tacoma's landlord-tenant code under this amendment.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That exemption recognizes those providers operate under a different financial and regulatory model than a typical market-rate landlord; a nonprofit or public housing operator should confirm which specific provisions this exemption actually covers for their situation, since it's a distinct carve-out from the small-landlord exemption rather than the same thing applied to a different group.

Separate from the statutory exemptions, a Tacoma court may grant undue-hardship relief, weighing factors including unpaid rent amounts, owner expenses, financial resources, unit count, and personal hardship circumstances.

[Cite: Ordinance No. 29086]

That judicial relief valve exists for a landlord whose specific situation doesn't fit neatly into the 4-or-fewer-unit exemption or the housing-provider exemption, but who can still show genuine hardship under the factors a court is directed to weigh; it's a case-by-case path, not an automatic exemption, so a landlord pursuing it should expect to actually present evidence on each relevant factor.

Tacoma's council cited data showing the original Landlord Fairness Code Initiative had created mounting tenant debt following eviction and placed an outsized burden on small property owners, and pursued these amendments specifically to address those documented effects.

[Cite: Tacoma City Council public statement accompanying Ordinance No. 29086]

A property manager should understand this ordinance as a deliberate recalibration rather than a reversal of the underlying tenant-protection goals; the council kept the core notice, fee-cap, and relocation-assistance framework in place while specifically adjusting the pieces that data showed were creating unintended strain, mainly for smaller landlords and for tenants accumulating post-eviction debt.

Some secondary compliance summaries describe the cold-weather eviction moratorium as applying only to tenants at or below 125% of area median income; Tacoma's own posted summary materials for this ordinance don't state that income threshold.

[Cite: City of Tacoma, Office of Equity and Human Rights, Rental Housing Code and Landlord Fairness Code Initiative update materials]

A landlord relying on an income-based qualifier for the moratorium should confirm that detail directly against the city's current published guidance or the ordinance's own text before applying it, since the primary city materials reviewed for this article don't themselves specify that threshold.

The practical starting point is replacing any dual-notice rent-increase workflow with the single 180-day notice process, and recalculating late-fee caps per unit using the 1.5%-of-rent formula rather than the old flat $75 figure.

Building a relocation-assistance calculation tool, tied to the specific rent-increase percentage tier, and a tracked 30-day payment deadline once a request comes in, keeps a Tacoma portfolio compliant with the ordinance's tightest timing requirements.