One of the major cutoffs in the legislative calendar happened on February 14. By that cutoff date, all bills that are not intricately tied to the budget were required to have passed out of the chamber where they originated. If they didn’t pass that cutoff, the bill is declared dead for the year. It’s been a surprisingly busy year across many issue areas, and the housing, homelessness and human services arena is no exception. No less than eight significant pieces of legislation have either survived the cutoff or remain alive due to their budgetary implications.

HB 1570 from Rep. Nicole Macri (D-Seattle), is a priority bill for AWC as we encourage the Legislature to give local communities tools to address conditions on our streets. The bill eliminates the sunset date on the preeminent shared funding source for these purposes, and makes permanent the document recording fee used to provide housing and supports to the homeless. Even more importantly, the bill would allow counties the ability to raise the fee by a maximum of an additional fifty dollars in support of homeless housing needs. This would almost double available resources to any region that chose to use this tool – and the majority of these investments ultimately occur in cities. The bill passed out of the House by a narrow 51-47 margin. Supporters of this proposal are circulating a community support letter. AWC has signed the letter and cities that care about this proposal are encouraged to sign as well.

On February 9, the House passed HB 1047, a major milestone for the long-running effort to start a producer-funded medication take-back program throughout the state – with at least one collection site in every city. The program has the potential to reduce the availability and abuse of unused prescription opioids as patients will have a new option to safely dispose of excess or unneeded medications, if this legislation is enacted. Watch this video to learn how it's currently working in several counties.

HB 2667 fixes a quirk in the law that is forcing people with disabilities and mental illnesses who are already receiving housing support to fall into homelessness when their disabilities become permanent. The last thing cities struggling to care for their communities need is to force individuals we’ve gotten back on their feet into homelessness for no good reason. To put someone in housing only to watch them became homeless again because they went from temporary to permanent disability is a tragedy we can prevent with this bill. This bill passed with a huge bipartisan majority on February 8. Supporters of this proposal are circulating a community support letter. AWC has signed the letter and cities that care about this proposal are encouraged to sign as well.

HB 2892 and SB 5970 create a grant program to help cities utilize mental health professionals in partnership with their police so that people in crisis can get the help they really need – rather than using the criminal justice system as the de facto behavioral health system. We hope this pilot can enhance the work that many cities are already doing, and ensure that new communities make it a priority. Our big challenge moving forward is to convince the Legislature to invest in this program in a meaningful way.

SB 6347 authorizes a property tax incentive program for cities to attract multifamily development. This tool is currently available only to mid- and large-sized cities and this proposal would extend it to all cities. We hear consistently about the difficulties many communities face in attracting multifamily development when the profit margins can be much tighter outside of the urban core. This bill passed the Senate.

Finally, two significant bills to create new local option revenues to address housing affordability are still alive because of their budget implications, despite not moving ahead of the cutoff. HB 1797 contains a variety of approaches that are targeted at different classes of communities, including facilitating councilmanic access to an optional sales tax in King County, a new program to reinvest sales tax on the construction of multifamily developments to create more affordability outside of King County, and more flexibility with existing real estate excise revenues.

SHB 2437 would create an innovative new partnership between local governments and the state, where both would pledge a portion of their sales tax to raise revenues to invest in the construction and maintenance of affordable housing facilities. The bill also provides the flexibility to pursue other directions like rental assistance if that is more appropriate. These funds could be bonded against to make a major investment in affordable housing now, to treat this problem with the urgency it deserves. The real challenge with this proposal is the state budget impact, it could cost as much as $20-$40 million per year if every community took advantage. So, if this is appealing to you, it is urgent that talk to your legislators about prioritizing this necessity.

These are just the highlights, we weren’t kidding that this has been a busy session on these issues. Please let us know if you are supporters of these ideas and commit to encouraging your legislators to act on these proposals to get them across the finish line by the end of session.