SEATTLE — Disabled veteran and single parent Duana Ricks-Johnson has moved her family five times in the past four years to keep ahead of rising rents, all while fighting at the Washington Legislature for a rent-control law that hasn’t come.
Now, with rent-stabilization legislation tantalizingly close to becoming law, last-minute amendments in the state Senate have thrown the fate of House Bill 1217 into question as the end of the session looms. The bill passed the Senate with amendments from two lawmakers that raised the rent-increase limit from 7 percent to 10 percent plus inflation and exempted single-family homes.
It now goes to the House. If representatives reject the Senate changes, the bill will head to a conference committee with less than two weeks left in the legislative session.
The bill would be one of the first rent-stabilization laws in the nation if passed, adding Washington to states like Oregon and California that have turned to such policies in an attempt to curb rampant homelessness. Supporters say the recent changes gut the proposed law — especially by cutting out rent caps for single-family homes — in a state where 40 percent of the population rents.
“This strategy helps to make sure that people don’t get priced out by excessive rent increases,” said Sen. Emily Alvarado, D-Seattle, who authored the bill.
Opponents of HB 1217 warn that developers will leave the state if it becomes law and argue that similar policies in Oregon and California haven’t slowed the homeless crisis despite adding to those states’ financial burdens.
“I was worried about the impact it would have on supply — and increasing supply is how we lower (housing) costs,” said Sen. Sharon Shewmake, a Democrat who proposed the amendment to increase the rent-increase limit from 7 percent to 10 percent.
The version of the bill that passed the Senate limits rent and fee increases within first 12 months of tenancy and requires landlords to give a 90-day notice of increases — longer than the current 60 days. The bill would sunset on July 1, 2045. It leaves in place the original 5 percent rent-increase limit for manufactured homes.
Michele Thomas, the policy director at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, said she’s convinced that lawmakers can compromise.
“Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are continuing to hear from literally thousands, thousands of people across the state who want them to fix the bill and pass a protective version with no more than a 7 percent increase for residential renters, 5 percent for manufactured homeowners and also one that doesn’t randomly exempt all people who live in a single-family home,” Thomas told The Associated Press.
Oregon passed a rent-control bill in 2019, and lawmakers updated the measure to cap rent increases at either 7 percent plus the annual 12-month average change in the consumer price index for the U.S. West, or 10 percent, whichever is lower.
