Through the Static

By Gray Trammel

Earlier this spring, Nordic Partners Investments bought up Seattle’s historic John Winthrop Apartments and have been terrorizing tenants through non-mandatory seismic retrofitting with pending forced relocation, construction, and alleged harassment. On the evening of July 10, about 32 Nordic tenants, neighbors, and supporters rallied at First Hill Park to demand Nordic halt evictions and displacement, provide three months of back rent during the construction period, improve communication from property management, and no rental increases.

The uncertainty surrounding the planned relocation weighed heavily on many of the tenants who spoke. One resident said they have lived in the John Winthrop building for 32 years, while Kristine White described the emotional toll of potentially losing the place she has called home.

“There is this overbearing anxiety and uncertainty of losing my home. I love living here,” White said. “I do like going to my dance classes here. I do love the communities I’ve found in first Hill and Capitol Hill.”

The rally focused heavily on the role private investment firms play in rising housing costs. Colin Seikel of the Puget Sound Tenants Union accused Nordic of prioritizing profits over residents.

“These guys are on another level, Nordic. They want to raise the rent and sell it in a few years. They don’t care about a damn thing except the profits they’re going to make,” Colin Seikel of the Puget Sound Tenants Union said.

TtS previously reported how Nordic has a pattern of purchasing apartments, diving into constructions, and forcing tenants out, which most recently occurred in Snoqualmie in April. The real estate investment firm told TtS that it purchased the Winthrop property to seismically retrofit it because the group values safety of residents, but even Seattle City Council President Joy Hollingsworth agreed with tenants in that these modifications can be accomplished without evicting and displacing an entire building.

“The biggest thing I’ll be pushing is no evictions, no displacement,” Hollingsworth said. “The first thing I want to do is see if I can put some of those issues that you all are having in that junk fee legislation to add those as amendments so there’s no loopholes.”

She added that Nordic owns several apartment buildings in the neighborhood, including Belmont Flats, and said the City is focused on addressing this as a long-term issue to prevent it from happening to other Seattle renters.

After the speeches concluded, Seikel picked up an acoustic guitar and sang a song about the pain of being forced from one’s home before the evening shifted into a more informal gathering. A DJ played music while tenants, organizers and supporters stayed in the park talking with one another, sharing pizza and continuing conversations about the campaign to keep residents in their homes.

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