The legislative session is finally over. We have some wins to celebrate together and more work to do next year!
We had more than 1,500 people take action with the Coalition this legislative session by sending a letter to their elected officials, and we brought more than 40 people with us to Olympia for Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day to speak directly with lawmakers and advocate for housing justice!
During the legislative session, we work closely with our statewide partners at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, Statewide Poverty Action Network, the Balance Our Tax Code Coalition, and more.
Wins
- Rent stabilization. This bill limits rent increases to 7 percent plus inflation (up to 10 percent) for residential tenants and 5 percent for manufactured homeowners. These protections include tenants in single- and multi-family homes but exclude people living in buildings 12 years old or newer. Unless the legislature extends it, protections for residential tenants will expire after 15 years. Although the rent cap is higher than advocates fought for and many renters in new buildings aren’t protected, this is a good first step. We should celebrate this victory! This bill makes Washington one of only three states with statewide rent restrictions.
- The legislature raised historic amounts of new revenue. The legislature passed (and the governor signed) multiple revenue bills that will bring in about $9.4 billion over the next four years. These revenue bills were mostly progressive (they tax wealthy people and businesses more). Even though this is significantly more money than the legislature has ever raised before, it wasn’t enough to avoid $6 billion in budget cuts. There were also more progressive tax proposals that didn’t pass this year, including a tax on financial assets of the state’s wealthiest people and a tax on payroll expenses of wealthy businesses.
- Document Recording Fee backfill to sustain emergency shelter. Document Recording Fees fund emergency shelter and other important housing programs across the state. Because the real estate market has been slow since the pandemic, the state needed to fill a gap of more than $200 million to sustain services funded by document recording fees. HB 1858 raises about $30 million annually by closing a loophole that allowed banks to avoid paying document recording fees, and the legislature backfilled the rest in the budget. Note: Document recording fees are divided between the state and counties. We don’t yet know if the backfilled amount for King County’s portion of document recording fees will be sufficient to sustain services.
- Historic investments in the Housing Trust Fund. The legislature invested over $600 million in the Housing Trust Fund, which funds new affordable housing. This is significantly more than they’ve ever allocated before, but it’s not yet clear how much it will increase construction of new affordable homes because the price of construction has increased dramatically in recent years.
Priorities we didn’t win (yet!)
Note that next year, bills will start in the committee where they “died” this year. We expect many of these bills to come back next year and we will invite you to fight for them with us!
- End discrimination against shelter and housing for people experiencing homelessness. HB 1195 would have required local governments to allow emergency shelter wherever they allow hotels and to allow transitional and permanent supportive housing wherever they allow apartments.
- Protect people experiencing homelessness from unreasonable laws. HB 1380 would have required local laws to be objectively reasonable if they restrict sitting, laying down, sleeping, or keeping warm in public places.
- Fix King County’s arbitrary 1 percent property tax lid. King County relies on property taxes to fund human services, but the state has an arbitrary 1 percent growth limit on property taxes, so funding can’t keep up with the rate of inflation, population growth, or increased community needs. Giving local governments the ability to “lift the lid” on this property tax would create more revenue to help fund social services.
- Expanding voting rights to people in prison. Currently, people lose their right to vote while they are incarcerated for a felony. HB 1196 would have expanded voting rights for people while they are in prison, unless they are incarcerated for a crime punishable by death.
- Expand access to TANF. Currently, people can only access Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits for 5 years. HB 1463 would have removed that arbitrary time limit.
- Expand access to HEN by removing the requirement to provide a social security number. SB 5232 passed, but the Governor vetoed the section that would have allowed people to access HEN if they can’t provide a social security number or aren’t eligible to apply for one.