As Steven Sandoval scanned his renewal lease for his Vancouver town house, he was surprised to find a nondisclosure clause tucked into the document’s thousands of words.
If he signed, he’d have to agree to not share any details of the lease agreement — including the rent amount, security deposit or fees — to anyone outside his immediate family. Failing to comply would “result in the immediate retraction of the offer,” according to the lease.
It was a confusing and concerning addition, but he signed anyway, not wanting to move.
Nondisclosure clauses like this don’t seem to be common in Washington, but it’s hard to tell because the people who sign them aren’t supposed to talk about them.
Tenant advocates worry that, without regulation, the clause could become widespread and be used to silence renters about excessive rent increases and hidden fees in the midst of an affordable housing crisis and tight rental market. They could also be used to discriminate against certain renters, they said.
“It’s meant to have a chilling effect,” said Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. “It seems like a pretty pointed attempt to silence people.”
Rob Trickler, president of the Washington Landlord Association, said he’s never heard of a nondisclosure clause in a lease agreement.
He suspects the clauses may be used when tenants want to cause trouble for a landlord by posting “all kinds of reviews and social media stuff that is at best one-sided and often just flat untrue,” he said in an email.
Ability to dodge the law
A woman in Lakewood, who spoke with The Columbian on the condition of anonymity, began complaining with her neighbors last year about how some people were paying significantly more for the same apartments.
Just months later, her renewal lease came with a $607 increase (a third of her rent at the time) and a nondisclosure clause.
“My first thought was they didn’t want people doing comparisons. … Unfortunately, my second thought was due to my last name,” she said.
Although many of her neighbors also received nondisclosure clauses, the woman worried her landlord could be trying to price her out due to her Hispanic last name, she said.
Thomas believes, whatever the intentions of these nondisclosure agreements, they can be used to dodge fair housing laws.
“If you don’t talk to your neighbor, you’re not going to know that your white neighbor got less of an increase than you did,” Thomas said.
Like Sandoval, the woman signed the lease with the nondisclosure clause because she didn’t want to move. Moving expenses can cost thousands of dollars, and it’s difficult to find housing in Pierce County, she said.
The woman in Lakewood was afraid to share the name of her property management company publicly out of fear it would take legal action against her for violating the nondisclosure clause. She wishes she could talk about it publicly, she said.
“Is this an injustice? For sure. But it’s hard to speak out against that injustice when you need a place to live and you don’t want to be on the street,” she said.
Market distortion
Sandoval, however, said he is not afraid to call attention to the issue publicly because he has the means to move. The clause limits transparency, he argues, and prevents tenants from comparing leases and negotiating with landlords.
“If a renter like me is not permitted to talk about the offer that I’m given, then that would impede the market of people like me looking to shop around for different apartments,” he said.
Sandoval has had a nondisclosure clause in his lease since 2019, when Ginn Property Management operated the rental property where he lives. Three years ago, TMG Property Management Services NW, which operates in Washington and Oregon, purchased a group of accounts from Ginn Property Management, including Sandoval’s town house. The clause remained.
“Looks like some of those accounts we purchased had this clause and others didn’t,” Erin Walter, TMG Northwest’s director of operations, said in an email. She did not respond to inquiries about the purpose of the clause.
The Columbian reached out to Ginn Group about the reason for the clause’s initial inclusion, but no one from the property management team works there anymore after that division dissolved, said Jody Maxwell, the company’s director of human capital.
Sandoval suspects the clause was most likely a simple matter of copying and pasting clauses between leases. Still, he has his doubts.
“But what if it’s not? What if they’re giving me a special price because of my identity or some metric?” he said.
Buying silence
The way Sandoval’s nondisclosure clause is written implies the tenant is receiving some kind of discount in exchange for silence. The clause says all “normal” deposits, fees or rent amounts will apply and any rent concessions or gifts will have to be paid back to the owner or agent of the property if the renter shares information.
Sandoval has received no such discount, he said. But perhaps renters of other properties Ginn Group managed have.
The offer wouldn’t be unheard of. In 2022, Boston Magazine wrote about a group of Boston tenants who received significant rent increases. Some tenants were offered reduced rent, but they had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to access the discount, the magazine reported.
The tenants worried the landlord was trying to price out certain renters who had complained about the property management company. After public outcry, the clauses were eliminated.
Carl Snodgrass, an attorney for Northwest Justice Project who often represents low-income tenants in housing issues, said this use of the nondisclosure clause could sidestep “source of income discrimination” laws, which say landlords cannot deny housing based on the type of income someone would use to pay rent.
Housing authorities calculate whether a landlord paid through a voucher is charging reasonable rent by comparing it with other rentals in the market. He said a landlord could falsely price a unit so high that housing authorities would not consider paying for a Section 8 tenant to live there, but then offer significant discounts to desirable tenants.
That practice is technically legal in Washington, he said. And there’s no law against nondisclosure clauses in leases.
The nondisclosure agreements may be difficult to enforce, however. Snodgrass said a civil court would likely consider the reasonability of the clause before deciding to award damages.
“It seems to create a massive penalty that is not a reasonable estimate of damages that landlord would ‘suffer’ from a tenant telling someone about their rent amount,” Snodgrass said in an email.
But that doesn’t mean tenants wouldn’t be terrified to see such a clause in their leases, he said. They may be afraid that reviewing the lease with a lawyer after signing would violate the agreement.
“It’s hard to even tell somebody to seek legal advice about it because I’m asking them to jeopardize their housing,” Snodgrass said.
Even so, tenants have a right to know whether their contract is legal, he said.
Lawmakers in the dark
Both Snodgrass and Thomas think tenants would benefit from state legislators weighing in on the clauses.
“I want them to know that this is saying that their constituents cannot tell them what they’re facing — that their constituents cannot, without fear of losing their home, share what their landlord is doing to them,” Thomas said.
Thomas is especially concerned that the clause could prevent tenants from leaving reviews warning prospective renters a landlord’s low rents come with hidden fees that unexpectedly raise housing costs. The Columbian wrote about Washington’s failure to regulate predatory fees in February.
Thomas worries the nondisclosure clauses will prevent tenants from communicating with each other and politicians about issues.
“When you know that other people are facing the same things you are, you know that you can work together to solve it and to stand up against it,” she said.
Sandoval believes the Legislature should amend the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, the main law regulating the relationship between landlords and tenants, to prohibit the nondisclosure clauses.
“When there’s a market for (something) like housing, that’s a fundamental, human need, and you’re not allowed to talk about it, that feels wrong,” Sandoval said.
