Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Washington

I do not think you can do anything now. At the time you were served with the eviction papers, there was a notice of a date and time to appear in court to contest the eviction. Had you shown up then and presented your defense, that may have helped. Once the matter was concluded, your time for an appeal started, and all these years later, that time to appeal is long expired as well. You would have had 30 days to file an appeal from the time the judgment was entered.

Going back over your facts you stated, it is not illegal for a landlord to ask you to sign onto the lease without first asking you to apply for the unit. The fact that you did not have income when you moved in is also irrelevant. Had the landlord asked you to fill out an application, the landlord would have seen your lack of income, and probably not allowed you to move in, much less sign onto the lease.

I would bet that at the time you were asked to sign the lease, if the landlord said to you, "You know, just because you have no income does not excuse you if you can't pay the rent, so do you still want to live here?" You probably would have responded that you were looking for a job and that you'd find a way to pay the rent. Again, the landlord in this case was not smart and rented to someone without income. The fact that you managed to pay rent for close to a year is a testament to your resourcefulness, but ultimately, the landlord had to pay an attorney or someone to go through the eviction process and had to go without rent for that time period, so just as you think you got a raw deal, so too did your landlord, since it was not fair for them to have to go without rent, right?

Unfortunately for tenants who have to rent again, the toughest thing is to have an eviction on your credit because it tells future landlords that you are not responsible in this area. I've seen landlords look past late credit card payments, utilities, etc. But no reasonably responsible landlord will look past an eviction. It's as if you are telling them in advance that you will at some point not pay the rent.

Your best bet is to apply to rent in a place that does not run a credit check and stay there until this goes off your credit report in another 5 and a half years. Sorry, this is harsh, but I'm not going to sugar coat this for you, since that will only get you further into trouble. Best of luck to you.