SEATTLE’S EXPLODING HOUSING market has resurrected the dread term “rent control,” and legislators are ducking for cover.

The new rent control battle is being waged by a coalition of Seattle tenants named Local Housing Needs Local Laws, which has taken on the unenviable task of lobbying local legislators to fight the state’s rent control ban. The ban was enacted in 1981, when the state Legislature passed a law constraining municipalities from imposing any form of rent control. LHNLL believes that the approach favored by some government leaders, including Mayor Paul Schell, to simply encourage landlords to limit their rent increases, is worthless. Housing activists say that the only way to keep the rental market reasonably affordable is to enact enforceable regulation of rent.

This is not the argument, however, that the group is using on conservative legislators. The activists hope to persuade them that the coalition, like conservatives, believes in “local control.” They argue that since conservatives have consistently promoted laws giving local jurisdictions the right to ignore state growth-management policies and trump state education standards, so should they return control of rental policies to local jurisdictions. LHNLL also takes pains to point out that the group is not asking for rent-control laws, only a lifting of the ban preventing cities from enacting them. “I don’t anticipate it being a winning issue this year,” says Tenants Union spokesperson Arlen Olson by way of explaining the group’s strategy. “But we have to get the discussion going.”

Conservative legislators’ reaction to this gambit has been unenthusiastic; even worse, liberal Seattle legislators are refusing to give the group serious consideration. No matter how you package it, promotion of rent control is political suicide in Olympia.

“If we use the term ‘rent control,’ it’s going to be over immediately,” State Sen. Jeanne Kohl told a gathering of 13 housing activists in mid-December. Kohl will support the bill only if another lawmaker introduces it.

Added State Sen. Adam Kline, “I’m not in the Legislature to pose as the guy who fights the good fight just to fight the good fight.” Kline feels that tilting at a rent control windmill might prove so politically costly that relatively winnable battles—like one over increasing funds for low-income housing, say—will be lost. To which tenants tend to reply that they’d rather not lose their homes and become eligible for low-income housing to begin with.

Although Kline and Kohl tell their constituents that local control is an important objective, neither wants to repeat those words in Olympia. But Kline, whose 37th district includes some of Seattle’s poorest neighborhoods, has agreed to meet the coalition partway by considering a move to exclude only Seattle from the ban. (Such a move has little chance of success, however, since the state’s landlord lobby is strongest in Seattle.)

IRONICALLY, RENT CONTROL prospects might be better in the House, where Democrats and Republicans are split 49-49, rather than in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Seattle Democrat Velma Veloria and Bellevue Republican Steve Van Luven, co-chairs of the House committee on Economic Development, Housing, and Trade, are mulling over a bipartisan move to end the 17-year-old ban by studying the feasibility of a hearing on the proposal. (When pressed, however, Veloria admits that the hearing probably will never actually take place.)

Undaunted, the coalition says it will continue to push for the proposal even if Olympia ignores it this session. Members are distributing fliers and planning a public forum for the end of January, to be attended by Seattle City Council member Nick Licata. The 30-member, one-month-old group is determined, it says, to see its ambition realized—that is, if its members don’t get priced out of the region first.