Three proposals related to impact fees have been introduced with the goal of promoting housing affordability. Some of these bills, sponsored by Sen. Hans Zeiger (R–Puyallup), are likely to generate concern from cities. We would appreciate specific examples of how they would cause problems for your city or, alternatively, how they could help.

SB 6364: The first proposal is voluntary. It allows cities to offer a sliding-scale impact fee based on the square footage per bedroom of a housing unit and authorizes a proportionally lower impact fee for single-family homes with a lower square-footage-per-bedroom ratio.

SB 6387: This bill reduces the time for a local government to collect and pool impact fees before expenditure or rebate to fee-payers from ten years to six. We know that some communities need to be able to save up enough fee revenues to complete certain projects, which could make this bill problematic. Please share specific examples so that we can tell your story.

SB 6388: Declares that cities may not charge a higher per-unit fee for multifamily residential construction than for single-family residential construction. Please let us know if this is problematic and why.

Dates to remember

SB 6364, SB 6387, and SB 6388 are all scheduled for public hearing in the Senate Housing Stability & Affordability Committee at 1:30 pm on Monday, January 27.