Your weekly legislative session update from Olympia!

Legislative Session Update, Week 8

Greetings from the Housing Alliance,

Everyone, get ready to take a deep breath: we’ve got less than two weeks left in the 2020 legislative session! As our policy director Michele Thomas noted so very succinctly, there’s a ton to get done, and not much time to do it in!

A big budget week:

Last week the House and Senate both released their proposed Operating Budgets and the House released its proposed Capital Budget (the Senate released its Capital Budget earlier.)

We were thrilled to see that both chambers prioritized solutions to homelessness, using a significant portion of the extraordinary windfall (the $300 million of unexpected one-time extra revenue identified in the recent fiscal forecast) for affordable housing and homelessness responses! The House Operating and Capital budgets together invest $235 million new dollars into permanent supportive housing, Housing and Essential Needs rental assistance, a new pilot to address the housing needs of seniors and people with disabilities, homelessness prevention and more! The Senate Operating and Capital Budgets together invest $130 million with the bulk of their investment going into shelter.

We have an incredible opportunity right now, to use this extraordinary windfall to make extraordinary investments in solutions to homelessness! Will you take a minute right now to ask your legislators to make sure the final budgets reflect the House proposals? This is an extremely rare, perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to secure deep investments in supplemental budget year.

Take Action Now!

Highlights of the House budgets

The Capital Budget includes:
$106 million for the Housing Trust Fund: $60 million for permanent supportive housing, $15 million for low-barrier shelters, $15 million for a rapid response fund to preserve currently affordable housing, $10 million to preserve and repair existing HTF homes, $5 million for a new competitive grant program for cottage communities, and $1 million to preserve manufactured housing communities.

The House Operating Budget includes:
$75 million to operate and maintain permanent supportive housing, an additional $70 million for the Housing and Essential Needs program, a $75 million increase for the Consolidated Homelessness Grant program (all spread over five years.) It also includes $500,000 for foreclosure prevention counselors (we’re asking for that to be increased to $1.8 million), $5 million for a pilot program to provide rental assistance for low-income elderly or disabled adults receiving federal assistance who have immediate housing needs, and funding to eliminate the ABD shelter penalty.

Both Capital Budgets funded our Housing Trust Fund ask for a new rapid response fund to save affordable homes at risk of being sold and losing their affordability. And both Operating Budgets invested in foreclosure prevention and in closing the DSHS shelter penalty which was reducing cash benefits in critical anti-poverty programs. Overall though, the House budget comes in higher and invests in a wide variety of programs that are proven solutions to preventing and ending homelessness.

A shout out to testifiers!

With such exciting budget news, many Housing Alliance members joined us in Olympia for budget testimony. On Monday, the House and Senate held their Operating Budget hearings at the same time, which sent testifiers running back and forth across campus when they were called to speak! And the House held its Capital Budget Hearing bright and early on Tuesday morning, getting advocates on the road long before the sun came up.

Our Policy Director Michele Thomas and Executive Director Rachael Myers testified, and Michele and John coordinated stellar panels of additional speakers for all the budget hearings and the many bill hearings last week as well. We were grateful to be joined by Dan Wise, Christine Crossley, and Gabriel Ash (Catholic Community Services of Western Washington), Amy Reynolds (Share) and Laura Ellsworth (Council for the Homeless) from Vancouver, LaDessa Croucher (Dispute Resolution Center/Volunteers of America of Western Washington), Jeff DeLuca (Washington Community Action Partnership), Cynthia Stewart (League of Women Voters of WA), Mindy Woods, (Resident Action Project Steering Committee and Housing Alliance Board Member), Andrew Calkins (King County Housing Authority), Kelli Larsen (Plymouth Housing Group), Edmund Witter (King County Bar Association), Dinah Braccio (Tenants Union), Sarah Nagy (Columbia Legal Services), Lisa Wolters (Seattle Housing Authority), Korbie Jorgensen Haley (Office of Rural and Farmworker Housing), Samantha Tompson (West Seattle Helpline), and Lisa Sawyer (Resident Action Project). Thank you to everyone who has come down over and over again this session to testify. It makes a huge impact!

Coming up this week:

We’re facing a series of quick bill “cutoffs” (aka deadlines). Friday, February 28 was a big cutoff to vote bills out of policy committees in the opposite chamber from where they began. In other words, House bills needed to pass out of Senate committees, and vice versa. Today, March 2 is the next big deadline, when bills with a fiscal impact need to be voted out of the opposite chamber's fiscal committee. If they pass that hurdle, bills will then move to the House or Senate Rules committee where they sit until “pulled” and added to a floor calendar to be considered for a vote of the full House or Senate. After that, all House bills need to be voted off the Senate floor, and all Senate bills need to be voted from the House floor by this Friday, March 6! The only bills not subject to these deadlines are those that are “necessary to implement the budget”, but not many bills fit this narrow category, and most are subject to the deadlines.

Whew! Can you just see all the bills moving along on little conveyer belts until they reach their goal? Our job is to keep that machinery moving, and make sure they don’t get stuck in some nook or cranny in the process.

Updates on key bills:

HB 2634/ Walen: Fixes the property tax exemption for affordable rental housing for very low-income households. Passed Senate Committee on Housing Stability & Affordability last week. Scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Committee on Ways & Means today.

HB 2384/ Doglio: Creates a real estate excise tax exemption for selling property to a nonprofit or public housing authority who acquires it for affordable housing. Heard in Senate Ways and Means Committee last week and currently scheduled for a vote today.

HB 1694/ Morgan: Requires landlords to accept three month installment payments for move in costs. Passed Senate Committee on Financial Institutions, Economic Development & Trade last week. Currently in Senate Rules Committee.

HB 1590/ Doglio: Allowing the local sales and use tax for affordable housing to be imposed without requiring a ballot initiative. Heard and passed out of Senate Local Government Committee last week. Currently in Senate Rules Committee.

HB 2343/ Fitzgibbon: Makes improvements to last year’s HB 1923 that created incentives for reducing the cost of building homes. Passed Senate Committee on Housing Stability & Affordability Friday and currently in Senate Rules Committee.

HB 2797/ Robinson: Improvements to last year’s HB 1406 so that local jurisdictions can take full advantage of the state sales tax credit for affordable housing. Passed Senate Committee on Housing Stability and Affordability Friday and scheduled for hearing in Senate Ways and Means committee today.

HB 2535/ Kirby: Providing for a grace period before late fees may be imposed for past due rent. Passed the Senate Financial Institutions, Economic Development & Trade committee. Currently in Senate Rules Committee.

SB 6378: Improving last year’s eviction reform bill. Passed out of the House Civil Rights and Judiciary committee. Currently in House Rules Committee. Committee Chair Rep. Kilduff (28^th District) and Vice Chair, Rep. Thai (41^st District) deserve thanks for standing up for tenants by getting this bill heard and passed. Take a minute to send a quick note of appreciation: My-Linh.Thai@leg.wa.gov, Christine.Kilduff@leg.wa.gov.

The finish line is in sight!

We’re almost to the end of what could be another monumental session for affordable housing and solutions to homelessness. Thank you for all you’ve done to help get us this far, and please keep up your advocacy! The last opportunities for advocacy are going to be critical so please stay tuned and on standby for quick action.

Join us on March 13 from 12:30 to 1:30 for an overview of the session, scheduled to end the previous evening. Register here!