Auburn tenants protest abusive resident manager

About 20 tenants and advocates hand-delivered a demand letter to a negligent and abusive resident manager Friday morning.

Landlords regularly get away with immoral practices in Washington because plenty of immoral practices also happen to be totally legal. Sometimes, though, landlords, property managers and resident managers try to get with illegal behavior too.

We met dozens of tenants in an Auburn trailer park who told us they were subjected to verbal and physical abuse — yes, really — on top of getting inconsistent water bills, garbage dumped in their yards and shoddy maintenance practices. Tenants told us that when they pointed to disparities in their billings to the resident manager he would respond with aggressive language, and even behavior. One tenant told us the resident manager punched him in the face. Another said the resident manager threatened to kill him.

On Friday tenants delivered a letter to the resident manager demanding a sit-down meeting with tenants collectively to go over the disparity in utilities billing and to put an end to the hostile behavior. Tenants gave the property owner and resident manager until Dec. 10 to respond.