Community Service Spotlight
by Selena Knoblauch
Community First Whatcom, formerly People First Bellingham, is a 501(c)4 nonprofit based out of Whatcom County. We run ballot initiative campaigns to pass community-led legislation focused on economic justice. Since the group was founded in 2020, we have gathered over 50,000 signatures from Whatcom County residents, and registered hundreds of new voters.
While politicians may represent us, it is on each of us to fight for real change and action. Deciding how to respond to our community’s most pressing issues is all of our responsibility. Our work puts these decisions in the hands of the people, by placing them straight on the ballot.
What Have We Done So Far?
Initially founded by a group of passionate volunteers, Community First Whatcom has passed seven pieces of legislation, including laws in both Bellingham and Ferndale. Our first major success came in 2021, when we were still known as People First Bellingham. That year, we passed Initiative 21-02, which bans Bellingham Police Department and the city government from using facial recognition technologies, or storing any facial recognition data. This law is still on the books in Bellingham today, making our city a leader in protecting our residents’ right to privacy. This is especially salient in 2026, when privacy rights are being intentionally eroded, and facial recognition data nationwide is used to harass and target immigrant communities.
In 2023, we ran two ambitious pieces of legislation, both of which have had major positive impacts on the community. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, we tackled Bellingham’s rising affordability and income inequality issues by passing Initiative 23-01, permanently raising our city minimum wage to two dollars above the state minimum, to compensate for the fact that Bellingham is one of the least affordable cities of its size in the country.
That means the next time the state increases the minimum wage, ours will also rise to stay two dollars above the state, which helps make the city’s high cost of living more tenable for lower income workers. That same year, we also passed Initiative 23-02, economic eviction relocation assistance for tenants facing displacement, which is also still on the books.
Basically, 23-02 protects tenants from excessive rent increases that could lead to displacement or homelessness by mandating that landlords who increase their rent by more than 8 percent in a rolling 12-month period must inform their tenant that they are entitled to relocation assistance from the landlord in the form of a lump sum payment to three months’ rent, intended to help the tenant afford the costs of moving. 23-02 also instituted a number of community-oriented protections, such as mandating that landlords inform their tenants of a rent increase at least 120 days before it goes into effect.
While Initiative 23-02 helped stabilize Bellingham’s rental market, there were still issues we wanted to address. In 2024, we helped spearhead a coalition of tenants, landlords, and community groups to encourage the city council to pass protections against excessive and unnecessary fees that some landlords charged on top of rent. This culminated in the passage of Bellingham’s “junk fees” ordinance in 2025, which sets necessary limits to some of the more egregious and excessive fees charged by landlords. This helped make Bellingham’s rental market more transparent by ensuring that the “sticker” rental price of a unit more closely reflects what it will actually cost, rather than having additional costs hidden in the fine print.
Fundamentally, the cost of landlords doing business should be included in the rent, not tucked away in a series of additional charges.
The success of Bellingham’s “junk fees” ordinance inspired us to broaden our scope and expand these protections to more of the county. To this end, we ran our first initiative in Ferndale, Initiative 25-01, a modified version of Bellingham’s junk fee ordinance specifically tailored to Ferndale’s rental market. Initiative 25-01 passed with flying colors, with almost 70 percent of votes being cast in favor of in the 2025 election.
Simultaneously, we ran another Initiative in Bellingham in 2025, Tenants’ Right to Organize, intended to help tenants enforce the protections they won over the last five years. This initiative protects tenants’ rights to file code violation complaints with the city, talk to other tenants in the building about safety issues, or put up flyers to schedule tenant meetings without retaliation. This initiative also passed with 70 percent of the vote, and has already led to fines being levied against a landlord who violated these protections.
What’s Next?
Community First Whatcom is currently gathering signatures on our next piece of legislation, Initiative 26-01, banning algorithmic price fixing in Bellingham. Algorithmic price fixing occurs when large landlords use algorithms (computer programs) that recommend rent prices for their units. These algorithms are sold by large tech companies all across the nation.
Pricing algorithms are problematic for a number of reasons. First, they intake proprietary data from all the landlords they serve, including things such as occupancy rates, number of units owned, current prices, cost overhead, etc. If several landlords in an area use the same algorithm, it gets an extremely clear picture of a rental market, far more detailed than any single landlord would ever have.
The algorithm can use this data to calculate to a very accurate degree by how much a landlord can raise their rent and still fill the unit, which contributes to driving up prices. More insidiously, when these algorithms are used by too many landlords in an area, they can tell them to raise their prices together. Even if individual landlords don’t know it, they become part of a block of landlords moving their prices up simultaneously, which pushes the whole rental market up. In their most extreme form, pricing algorithms can take functional control over an area’s market price. These programs are designed to artificially increase rent prices, inevitably driving up prices as much as they can.
Coordination between multiple vendors is fundamentally terrible for markets. There is a reason price fixing has been outlawed in the United States for almost 100 years.
The whole basis of our system is that individual sellers have to set their prices with the knowledge that someone might undercut them, which is what keeps prices sane. If two landlords talked to each other and agreed to raise their prices together, that would already be illegal. If a third party offered to be the go-between for the landlords and do the coordination for them, that would already be illegal. If this were done via email, it would already be illegal. It should be illegal for an automated technology to do the same thing. Bellingham has the opportunity to be at the forefront of banning a practice that is becoming a problem across the whole nation.
How Can You Help?
Sign: We have until June 26th to gather enough signatures to get Initiative 26-01 on the ballot. If you are a registered voter in Bellingham city limits, your signature can help make the difference. Come find us at the farmer’s market every Saturday, or one of the many grocery stores we frequently canvass in front of on weekdays. We’re easy to find. Just look for the people with the big blue clipboards.
Volunteer: Come out and join us at one of our many community canvasses. Canvassing is a great way to meet new people in the community, and to help bring real change to the ballot. We provide tons of training and support. You can sign up at communityfirstwhatcom.org if you’re interested!
Donate: Donations help us keep our work sustainable year-to-year. We started as an all-volunteer organization, but now maintain a small staff to help coordinate our efforts. Your generous donations help keep those folks employed, and also help us afford basic campaign materials like flyers, signature sheets, etc. To donate, go to communityfirstwhatcom.org and click the donate button in the top right corner.
Stay in Touch: We always keep our ear to the ground for issues in the community. If you have an idea for a problem that could be addressed through a local initiative, let us know! We also maintain an email list to keep those interested up to date on our work. Email selena@communityfirstwhatcom.org with your ideas, or to sign up for the email list!
_________________________________________
Selena Knoblauch is a senior organizer with Community First Whatcom. She previously worked as an internal organizer for SEIU 1199nw representing workers at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham. Selena got her start in organizing as a rank and file member of Western Academic Workers United at Western Washington University.
