Housing advocates and residents across Washington rallied to demand solutions for rising rent and housing price tags. This week, legislators in Olympia showed they were listening by passing several bills that would bring more options for affordable homes.
Among the bills passed were the legalization of single-stair apartment buildings (House Bill 1337), ameliorating local design review programs (HB 1293), reduced environmental review of homebuilding proposals (Senate Bill 5412), and streamlining permit processes for new development (SB 5290).
Some of the most notable that moved forward were:
More middle housing
On Tuesday, House Bill 1110 passed through the House and Senate. The bill will amp up middle-housing options like duplexes, fourplexes, or sixplexes by making it legal for local communities to build them on all residential urban lots.
Rep. Jessica Bateman, D-Olympia, sponsored the middle housing bill. During a January public hearing, she said the bill would significantly help the housing shortage and fill the gaps between expensive properties and low-income homes.
“Washington is experiencing a housing shortage, which is culminating in a housing crisis … this supply imbalance is creating increasingly expensive homes, and increasingly expensive rents that’s impacting our constituents in every corner of the state,” Bateman said during the public hearing.
Opponents of the bill said that zoning decisions should be made locally. But advocates of the bill said it would help Washington meet its goals of an additional 1 million homes by 2044.
Tax increase for more affordable homes
On Friday, House Bill 1628, dubbed the Affordable House Act, was approved by the House Finance Committee. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, proposes a new real estate excise tax tier — 4 percent to a property’s sale price if it’s $5 million or more. Timberland and agricultural land are excluded.
The real estate excise tax proposal has created quite a divide among real estate agents, residents, housing advocates, and legislators. The real estate agent group Washington Realtors called out the bill in an advertisement for its irony in a March video advertisement. The group said there shouldn’t be a proposal of increased taxes amid a “housing and affordability crisis.”
But others said the taxes would help various groups of people most impacted by the revenue from taxes. Rep. Sharon Wylie, D-Vancouver, is a co-sponsor of the bill and said in a previous interview with The Columbian that she supports it due to its many elements beyond the opportunity for more affordable housing.
The proposed real estate excise tax’s revenue would be streamed into housing funds and service providers and help mend the affordable housing gap for people with developmental disabilities.
Now the bill awaits Senate and then House approval.
