Multiple residents at the Olympia Inn Hotel on Capitol Way in Olympia said management was trying to kick them out of their rooms on Saturday afternoon, despite the state eviction moratorium in place until Aug. 1.
A hotel spokesperson said the business is struggling financially, and the residents were choosing not to pay rent despite some of them receiving state benefits.
Gov. Jay Inslee first proclaimed a moratorium on evictions in mid-March to protect tenants affected by his stay-at-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19, then extended and expanded the moratorium in mid-April and again June 2.
The most recent extension spells out that the moratorium applies to hotels, motels and other non-traditional dwelling situations when tenants have established at least a 14-day length of stay.
Brenda Cisneros, 58, has been living at the hotel for seven months with her 37-year-old son who suffers from seizures.
"They called me about an hour ago and told me I had three hours to be out," Cisneros told The Olympian as she stood in the hotel parking lot.
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Bryann Sonny Sasso, 64, has been living at the hotel for eight months. He works as a fish butcher in a Tumwater warehouse, but stopped paying rent in April when his job was reduced to 15 hours per week.
Sasso said he received a phone call Saturday morning from a woman named Lisa who threatened to have him removed by law enforcement if he wasn't out by Saturday afternoon.
"I was asleep at eight [A.M.] and l got a phone call telling me I had to be out in two hours," Sasso said. "She told me, I will remove your stuff from the room."
About 3 p.m. Saturday, Sasso was frantically packing his belongings. Other residents were packing items into cars and dumpsters. Work crews were power washing the parking lot.
At the hotel office, The Olympian spoke with Lisa Arnold, who works for DVR Investments, an LLC registered to Rabesh Rabadia and Valabh Mungra. The hotel property is registered to Mungra, Mahesh V, and Nirmala M, according to Thurston County land records. According to Washington state business records, there are 14 LLCs connected to Rabadia, including multiple hotels and motels, mostly in King County.
Arnold denied that people were being evicted. She said she was called in by the ownership to negotiate with eight tenants who haven't been paying.
"Every single day they've been asked [to pay]," Arnold said. "If you are getting the same assistance or whatever you were getting before (COVID-19), and you just stopped paying because somebody told you that you didn't have to pay because of COVID, then you need to either pay or leave."
Arnold said she believes the governor's eviction moratorium does not apply to people who receive government benefits that have continued through the pandemic and have the means to pay their rent.
Arnold also said that the lack of income is bankrupting the business.
"What's happening is that the hotels themselves are not able to operate if people keep not paying," Arnold said.
At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, The Olympian spoke with Sasso, who said that ownership told him he now has until Monday to be out of his room.
Sasso said he's never seen Arnold before this morning and he does not receive government aid. He said he filed for unemployment when his hours were cut but hasn't received anything, and only has $300 in the bank. He is expecting to be rehired full time when the factory re-opens in August and had planned to start making payments again then.
"What kind of people are they that want to put people on the street," Cisneros said. "It's just wrong what they're doing."
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