This week the Legislative session begins in Olympia and with it, an opportunity for our new Governor and Legislators to continue to make progress on homelessness and housing. Every county in Washington is facing a housing affordability crisis, and without focused state support, the number of people experiencing homelessness will increase.
Over the last several sessions, our elected leaders made tremendous progress to ensure that we have policies and funding that support keeping people in their homes and building new affordable homes across the state.
This session, however, the task is more difficult. Our state is facing a massive budget deficit—one that will require cuts if we cannot find new sources of revenue. This will be the most challenging budget year since the Great Recession due to federal pandemic aid ending and consumer spending slowing down.
It is critical that advocates for commonsense housing solutions show up in Olympia to ensure that funding for housing and homelessness services remain a priority.
The Housing Trust Fund, which builds deeply affordable housing across the state, has been at strong funding levels and needs to remain there. To shore up homelessness funding, we must add money to what is collected through the document recording fee (a small fee on real estate transactions that funds shelters, street outreach, and other vital programs). High interest rates are resulting in fewer people buying homes, which has created a shortfall in how much money is collected by this fee. Unless Legislators add funding, communities across the state will see serious cuts to homelessness services.
As we defend these critical programs, we must also organize around proactive solutions. Last year, our Legislature came close to enacting a commonsense rent stabilization bill that would cap annual rent increases over 7%. This bill provides much needed predictability and fairness which allows people to stay in their homes and mitigate the effects of skyrocketing rents.
We must show up to support our state’s impressive gains to prevent and end youth homelessness.
Youth homelessness decreased by 40% over the last eight years, in no small part due to key support from the Legislature for the state’s Office of Homeless Youth. When something is working, we should double down on the investment. We need to keep funding innovative equity-driven policies and programs that help young people achieve stability and safety.
We have our work cut out for us this year, but we hope that you will follow our partners in organizing around this work. The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, The Mockingbird Society, and others can help you stay engaged this session.
Budgets are reflections of priorities.
We know that solving our housing and homelessness crisis is the top issue for the people of Washington state. Our Legislators need to recognize that and make sure that our budget reflects our values as a state.