By Anna Patrick / The Seattle Times
A first-time bill designed to hold Washington cities accountable in building more affordable housing and emergency shelter made swift progress this session before dying in the Senate. But some lawmakers and proponents are hopeful it has the momentum it needs to make it to the finish line in next year’s session.
House Bill 2474 was introduced in late January by Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, who is chair of the House Housing Committee. At the time, Peterson said he was inspired to write it after witnessing cities across Washington, including Kenmore, cancel affordable housing projects and rescind or decline permits for emergency shelter.
In January, the city of Kenmore voted down a 100-unit affordable housing project with Plymouth Housing after city and Plymouth staff spent more than 20 months working on the project. Since the reversal, several elected leaders have publicly criticized Kenmore’s actions, including Gov. Jay Inslee, who described it as “NIMBYism,” which means “not in my backyard,” in a news briefing this month.
“And that kind of approach by local communities will not allow us to really get on top of the homelessness problem,” Inslee said. “We need some more spine from local leaders.”
Peterson’s mindset is similar.
He told The Seattle Times in January, “We’re trying to figure out in this crisis of homelessness and affordable housing, what do we have to do as a state to make sure that everybody is playing by the same rules?”
HB 2474 evolved over the 60-day session to include a fiscal penalty that would give the state treasurer’s office authority to withhold various state funding sources, including the motor vehicle fuel tax revenue, the liquor profit tax revenue and more, if the state Department of Commerce determined a city was out of compliance with state law or with the city’s own comprehensive plan.
“Certainly there were penalties, but it was really an attempt to work with cities to get to ‘Yes,’” Peterson said this week.
Before the fiscal penalties would be applied, the bill’s most recent language required a mediation process between cities and affordable housing or shelter developers and operators in dispute, which would be executed by the Department of Commerce.
Sen. Liz Lovelett, D-Anacortes, received the bill in the Senate’s Local Government, Land Use & Tribal Affairs Committee, which she chairs, after it passed out of the House on Feb. 12. She said the bill could use more refinement and some more substantive conversations with cities over how this would work, particularly around the prospective penalties.
“I think the cities would like some input,” Lovelett said.
The city of Kenmore was often cited in discussions about this bill; some even referred to it as the “Kenmore bill,” according to reporting by The Urbanist.
Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig was unable to respond to The Seattle Times’ request for comment in time for publication.
Michele Thomas, the director of policy and advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, said she’s hopeful this bill will return next year as it addresses a critical problem.
“Surviving outside is perilous. It’s dangerous. It can be deadly,” Thomas said. “And every community in the state needs to do more.”
More than 28,000 people were counted experiencing homelessness in Washington during the 2023 Point-in-Time count. Experts say that is likely an undercount.
Additionally, the state’s housing-needs projections, released last year, estimated that Washington needs to build more than 500,000 homes for people earning between 0% and 50% of area median income in the next 20 years, including more than 100,000 permanent-supportive housing units.
Since HB 2474 didn’t make it out of committee in the Senate, it must start all over again with a new reintroduction next year.
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