Legislature making progress on bills addressing homelessness

Washington state lawmakers are making progress on legislation to “address the crisis” of homelessness, Democratic legislative leaders said Tuesday.

Several bills are expected to move forward in the House and Senate that will “continue to move us in the direction where we are taking care of people who are experiencing homelessness,” state Rep. Monica Stonier said at a press conference.

“This is a problem that’s going to continue to take our time and attention. The scope of this problem is certainly outpacing our solutions that we have been able to bring forward,” said Stonier, the Vancouver Democrat who is House Majority Floor Leader.

Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed spending more than $300 million to add 2,100 shelter beds and take other steps to reduce homelessness. On a per-capita basis, Washington ranks fifth in the nation in unsheltered homeless individuals, with about 10,000 people on any given night living outside or in places unfit for human habitation, according to the state.

House and Senate Democrats, who have majorities in both chambers, plan to release their versions of the supplemental operating budget — which makes changes to the adopted two-year budget — after getting an update next month on new estimates for revenue and expenditures.

Several bills are winding their way through House and Senate committees.

“There will be new policies that build on what we’ve done,” said state Sen. Marko Liias, the Lynnwood Democrat who is Senate Majority Floor Leader.

State Rep. Nicole Macri (D-Seattle) is sponsoring bills to:

• Require landlords to cite a reason to move a tenant out of a home. Under current state law, a “residential landlord may evict a tenant for any reason — or no reason — by issuing month-to-month tenants a 20-day no-cause termination notice or by refusing to renew a lease with a tenant,” Macri said.
• Allow duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes in single-family neighborhoods statewide. Macri said, “Modest housing options have been increasingly out of reach to middle-class families whom the private housing market has long ignored in favor of ever greater profits from expensive luxury developments.”

State Sen. Patty Kuderer (D-Belleveue) is sponsoring bills to:

• Make changes to a law that took effect last year to give tenants more time to pay rent before facing the threat of losing their home. Tenants rights advocates have accused some property managers and landlords of exploiting loopholes to blunt protections to tenants.
• Requires a landlord to negotiate in good faith with homeowners’ associations and eligible organizations when selling or leasing a mobile home park or the land on which it sits.

Senate Democrats are taking a similar approach to the House Democrats in trying to combat homelessness and the cost of housing, said state Sen. Christina Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island.

“It’s a broad base, looking at what’s coming through all of the different policy committees, from housing to behavioral health. Even improving our re-entry policy so that people don’t bounce out of corrections and into homelessness is another important policy tool. It doesn’t break the bank, but it helps address the question,” said Rolfes, who is chairwoman of the Senate Ways & Means Committee.

Stonier noted that Inslee signed a bill into law last year that allows counties and cities to use a portion of the state sales tax to leverage local investments in affordable housing. HB 1406 was sponsored by state Rep. June Robinson, D-Everett.

Liias said legislators are looking for more proposals similar to the new law, in which the state can work with local governments.

“This is not a problem that state government can solve alone,” he said. “When you drive around our communities, you know that there are people still suffering, people still struggling. So we’ve got to take the solutions we’ve used and grow the scope of them to solve the problem for everybody and bring everybody in from the cold.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 2:10 PM.