Dear friends and neighbors,
One of the topics I hear most about is housing costs and availability. I am proud to support policies to cut red tape to help build homes more quickly. But it takes time to build a home, so as we address our housing shortage, we must simultaneously find ways to lower costs and ensure people can stay in their current home.
This is a serious challenge for communities statewide. We’ve made monumental progress toward lowering construction costs and expanding supply in recent years. This session alone, we’ve taken action to:
- Modernize parking rules to lower construction costs. (SB 5184)
- Ensure local governments comply with the state’s affordable housing laws.
(SB 5148) - Cut red tape on residential development regulation. (SB 5613)
- Expand opportunities for transit-oriented development. (HB 1491)
- Lower barriers to construction of affordable condominiums (HB 1403)
- Streamline processes to convert commercial offices to residential housing.
(HB 1757) - Add more housing court commissioners to speed up processing of filings and address the eviction bottle neck. (HB 1621)
- Include a record-setting $600 million investment in the 2025 capital budget to directly build more affordable housing.
We also took action on a bill to help make rent more affordable and predictable. House Bill 1217 strikes a balance that ensures landlords can maintain their investments and tenants are protected from sudden, costly rent increases. The bill is carefully crafted to cap rent increases of up to 10% plus inflation following the first 12 months of a tenancy for residential renters and up to 5% for manufactured homes.
There are just as many solutions as there are causes of the housing crisis. We have taken many important — often bipartisan — steps to address an issue that affects every community.
Thanks for your work this week, Ruth!
It was a pleasure to meet and work with Ruth, a junior at Edmonds-Woodway High School in Edmonds, who served as a Senate page this week.
Ruth has been a swimmer for more than 10 years and recently started playing tennis. Over the course of the program, Ruth helped draft a bill about preventing opioid addiction by putting more restrictions on prescriptions. Her favorite part of the program was getting to run errands and explore the Capitol campus. In the future, Ruth is interested in learning more about biology, chemistry, psychology, and criminal justice to either become a researcher or go into law.
The Senate Page Program offers students aged 14-16 a fun, week-long learning experience in the Legislature. Students participate in hands-on engagement by delivering papers for Senate staff, hearing from guest speakers, and meeting with their senators. They also get the opportunity to draft bills, which they present in a mock committee hearing.
Thanks for joining us, Ruth!
Stay in touch
Your feedback and input are such an important part of the democratic process. Please do not hesitate to reach out to my office at Marko.Liias@leg.wa.gov, and we will be more than happy to get in touch with you! You can also stay up to date by following my official legislative social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Talk soon!
Marko