Recent Blog Posts
Michele Thomas, Director of Policy & Advocacy
See You This Tuesday?
The sixth week of the session begins on President’s Day. The next day on Tuesday, hundreds of advocates from across the state will converge on Olympia for Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day to educate their lawmakers on what they can do this session to help prevent homelessness and ensure more people have the opportunity to live in safe, healthy, and affordable housing. Advocates are coming at the perfect time. Friday the 20th marks the first cutoff of the long session. All bills must be voted out of their policy committee of origin, or they will not be able to continue down the path to becoming law.
One Down, Five More To GoAll of the Housing Alliance key policy bills still need to be moved out of the committee where they started except for the Fair Tenant Screening Act - HB 1257 (Walkinshaw), which was passed out of the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday. This bill will allow tenants to just pay once every 30 days for a tenant screening report when searching for a rental home. Please click here to send Rep. Brady Walkinshaw (43rd LD-Seattle) a quick note of thanks for his leadership and hard work on the bill. Please also help make sure that several of the remaining bills get out of their committees by emailing these two committee chairs and asking them to move the bills out: Even If You Can’t Make It to the Capitol, You Can Still Help!If you can’t join us for Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day on Tuesday, you can still make sure lawmakers hear our messages loud and clear. Keep a look out for a message in your inbox, Facebook feed, and Twitter feed for an Advocacy Day action alert. You may not be able to physically be with us in the capitol. But you can still participate. While we’re meeting with legislators face-to-face, you can support us by flooding legislators’ inboxes and voicemails. Stay tuned. |
Another Busy Wednesday
Wednesday was the big day last week with the Senate hearing key tenant protection bills. Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles’ bill SB 5377 gives cities the option to require 90-days notice of a rent increase over 10%. During the Wednesday Financial Institutions & Insurance Committee hearing, many people testified in favor including Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata and a Seattle tenant who has had over four rent increases in the past five months that more than doubled her rent.
The committee also heard the Truth in Eviction Reporting Act SB 5376 on that same day. Although testimony was cut short on the bill, two tenants were able to testify to share their stories of unfair eviction records and the many doors closed to them because of this “scarlet letter.” The committee also heard another bill SB 5259, sponsored by Senator Andy Billig (3rd LD-Spokane). This bill will require landlords to give tenants a voter registration form, which will help ensure that highly mobile households stay registered to vote. If you haven’t yet taken action to ask your lawmakers to support key tenant protections this session, please do so today! Click here to send your lawmakers an email.
You can watch Wednesday's big hearing here from TVW:
Get Active! Seriously Active!
The House Alliance is challenging you and your fellow advocates to commit to taking action at least one time each week for the rest of the session. Your lawmakers need to repeatedly hear from you. And it is never too much to contact them each week! As long as you are polite and clear, weekly emails and/or calls will ensure that your lawmaker knows that affordable housing and homelessness is a top priority for voters in their district.
You have a variety of ways to weigh in this week. This includes attending Advocacy Day this Tuesday and acting on this action alert. And you can help grow our movement by forwarding this blog post to friends, colleagues, and family. Tell them why you care and how easy it is to take action. Encourage them to join you!
Thank you for your advocacy so far and stay tuned. We have ten more weeks of the regular session and we all need to stay active and strong in order to ensure affordable housing and homelessness issues keep moving forward.
Add new comment