No Q&A content found.
This election reporting is provided free to all readers as a public service by your locally owned Cascadia Daily News. Thanks for supporting truly local news by donating to CDN or subscribing here.
On Friday, organizers with Community First Whatcom walked into Bellingham City Hall to deliver a stack of ballot petitions for a measure to outlaw algorithmic price-fixing in the rental market.
The initiative is based on examples from Seattle and Portland, Oregon, and would prohibit the use of software that analyzes rental market data (including private and sensitive information) to recommend prices, lease renewal terms or occupancy levels.
Volunteers and staff with the political group spent the past two months gathering almost 6,000 signatures.
Senior organizer Selena Knoblauch said that many people who signed the petition were already aware of the issue. While it’s difficult to know whether price-fixing is actually happening in a given rental market, Knoblauch said the measure served as more of an “affirmative defense.”
Algorithmic price fixing cost U.S. renters about $3.8 billion in 2023, according to a 2024 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. (The report has since been removed from the White House website.)
In 2025, the Washington state Attorney General sued RealPage, a pricing software provider, and several King County landlords for antitrust violations. A 2026 state Senate bill prohibiting algorithmic price fixing was sponsored by Sens. Liz Lovelett of Anacortes and Sharon Shewmake of Bellingham, but the bill did not make it out of committee.
Community First Whatcom chair Cleveland Harris II said that once one property management company uses price-fixing software, it can have a ripple effect on the market and give other landlords cover to raise their own rates, even if they don’t use the same software.
In 2025, Community First Whatcom successfully led two ballot measure campaigns around housing, helping pass an initiative limiting rental fees in Ferndale and a tenants’ rights initiative in Bellingham. In 2023, the group helped pass two initiatives in Bellingham, one offering tenant protections and another raising the city’s minimum wage above that of the state.
Harris said the organization was “playing whack-a-mole” with tenant rights and trying to keep rental pricing and protections on people’s minds and on the ballot every year.
“Since our first campaign, we’ve heard stories from Nooksack and Lynden, of people asking for this kind of thing there,” said Seth Mangold, a longtime Community First Whatcom organizer.
This round of signature gathering was no different, as organizers heard from a lot of voters who wanted to sign but didn’t live in Bellingham. Those are often the people who have already been priced out of the city and now commute to work from elsewhere in the county, Mangold pointed out.
If certified by the Whatcom County Elections Division, the measure will appear on Bellingham voters’ November ballot. The measure needs at least 3,500 verified signatures of registered voters who live within city limits to be certified.
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 107.
Email newstips@cascadiadaily.com or Call/Text 360-922-3092
Digital replicas of our print editions are published every Friday.
Sign up for Cascadia Daily News newsletters to get the latest updates directly to your inbox.
Leave a Reply