AWC and member cities have been working hard to find a way to support HB 1923, which asks cities to take a series of actions geared toward increasing supply of housing through land use and regulatory changes. AWC has had a long-standing priority around affordable housing and supports a variety of approaches to achieve those goals, including the role of local land use policy. That said, we think that cities are already doing a lot locally to find ways to address these issues. A critical component of this proposal that helped make this a somewhat balanced bill for cities was that planning grants were provided to cities to help support their work to update their housing policies.
On Thursday night, the House Appropriations Committee removed the funding for the planning grants from the bill; and declined a proposal from AWC to allow cities to recover the costs of planning through surcharges on building permit fees. We think that, fundamentally, if the state believes it is critical for cities to update our housing codes by choosing actions off a menu of options that the state presents us, then at a minimum they need to help pay for that work. If they cannot prioritize that funding, we think that shows that this bill is not a priority for passage.
Please contact your delegation and ask them to support your city by opposing HB 1923. Relay to your legislators that if it is not a priority to help us do the work to comply with this bill, it would be better for the Legislature to focus on other proposals that more directly help cities meet our needs on housing issues, such as HB 1406/SB 5646.
Please contact Carl Schroeder if you have any questions.