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Talking Points

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Use these talking points, combined with your personal experience or what you see in your community, to help make the case for our priorities.

Updates as of February 1st, 2022:

Highlighted budget priorities are the most crucial to bring up in legislative meetings because they are either not included in the Governor's budget, are included at a smaller amount, or are higher cost priorities.

Two bills listed below: HB 2017 and HB 2023, will not move forward this year. It's okay to let lawmakers know that these are important issues that you hope they will address in the future, but you should spend most of your time on the budget and bills that are still moving.

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Budget Priorities:

• This is the time to go big to address the affordable housing and homelessness crisis!
• A recent poll found that 92% of WA voters – from all across the state – say homelessness and lack of affordable housing are critical issues that the Washington State government should address.
• We have the resources. The state budget outlook is strong, and we have federal funds available. We should use those resources to get more people into housing now.

Invest $500 million in affordable homes

• The Governor proposed $434 million - $100 million for the Housing Trust Fund and $334 million to quickly purchase existing buildings for housing and shelter (through a rapid acquisition fund). That’s a great start, and the legislature should go even higher and invest $500 million.
• The Housing Trust Fund is critical in solving our community’s affordable housing struggles. It builds safe, healthy, affordable homes for seniors, veterans, youth, people with disabilities and mental illness, families, and other struggling households.
• Housing is the solution to homelessness. Investments in rapid acquisition and in the Housing Trust Fund will address the immediate need to move people experiencing homelessness into safe shelter during the pandemic and address our longstanding housing crisis.
• The Corporation for Supportive Housing estimates that Washington has a need for 18,135 new units of permanent supportive housing. State investments are critical to moving the needle on tackling this shortage.
• Every Housing Trust Fund dollar leverages another $5 in additional funding to create homes for families, seniors, veterans, farmworkers, people leaving homelessness, people with disabilities, and more.
• Since the start of the pandemic, the state has lost shelter capacity because of social distancing requirements and volunteers being unable to safely help. These investments will help counter that and move people currently living in parks, under bridges, and in vehicles into safe indoor spaces.
• The pandemic has provided both the need and the opportunity to re-envision how we respond to unsheltered homelessness. Shelter providers are seeing people’s lives transformed when they move from crowded congregate shelters into hotels and motels where they have their own door, their own bathroom, and feel safe and secure. These investments would expand safe shelter through the pandemic and for the long term.

Increase the Aged, Blind and Disabled (ABD) cash grant for people with disabilities from $197 to $417 per month

• The ABD grant has not increased since it was created in 2011 even though housing costs and the cost of basic necessities have dramatically increased.
• Everyone should have the ability to meet their foundational needs, such as having enough food, a safe and stable home, electricity, running water, and access to personal hygiene items. But too many in Washington are struggling to meet their basic needs because they are unable to work due to a debilitating disability. ABD provides them with support while they are trying to apply for federal disability benefits.
• It is impossible to meet your basic needs on $197 a month, which is why so many people receiving ABD stay in homelessness. In 2020, approximately 43% of ABD recipients were experiencing homelessness.
• ABD is a critical component to supporting people with behavioral health disabilities. In 2020 approximately 58% had a mental health disability. Increasing the ABD cash grant can help to reduce homelessness among our disabled population.
• Increasing the ABD grant standard will help divert people from experiencing homelessness and will improve housing stability (ability to pay rent, have a roommate, contribute to cost of utilities, etc.)

Workforce capacity and sustainability for nonprofit homelessness service providers and permanent supportive housing providers

If you are a homelessness or permanent supportive housing provider, talk about how the pandemic has impacted you and your colleagues.

• Our state’s ability to prevent and end homelessness rests on the shoulders of nonprofit workers across the state who assist people in crisis.
• The pandemic has strained homelessness nonprofits. Frontline workers face hazardous conditions and experience significant trauma while earning low wages. Many are just one paycheck away from homelessness themselves.
• The state should invest $78 million to address staffing shortages by providing hazard pay, retention and recruitment bonuses, secondary trauma resources, and other supports for the frontline workers who are so critical to ending homelessness.

$1.3 million to address a shortfall for tenants’ Right to Counsel plus an additional $2 million for pre-eviction legal aid

• Under Washington’s Right to Counsel program, low-income tenants are provided a free lawyer in eviction court.
• This was funded in last year’s budget, an additional $1.3 million is needed to address a shortfall. This was included in the Governor’s budget proposal.
• Right to Counsel is available to tenants once they get to eviction court, but pre-eviction civil legal aid is the first line of defense against eviction. It prevents cases from entering the court process and empowers tenants to utilize their rights.
• Informed tenants can enter dispute resolution with a clear understanding of their rights and responsibilities. This results in better outcomes for tenants by improving housing stability.
• The legislature should include $2 million in the operating budget for pre-eviction civil legal aid.

State funding and expenditure authority for the State Health Care Authority to continue the Foundational Community Supports (FCS) and the broader Medicaid Transformation Project for another 5 years.

• Permanent Supportive Housing is the solution to long-term homelessness and ties housing with services to address people’s physical and behavioral health disabilities.
• FCS allows the use of federal Medicaid dollars to pay for the services needed to support people exiting unsheltered homelessness and the services needed to support people living in Permanent Supportive Housing.
• The final budget should provide the Health Care Authority the direction and authority they need to pursue a full five-year renewal of the Medicaid Transformation Waiver and especially the Foundational Community Supports.

$4.5 million for foreclosure prevention

• With the end of state and federal foreclosure moratoria and forbearance programs, Washington homeowners impacted by the pandemic need immediate help to stay in their homes.
• This funding will support the state’s highly effective Foreclosure Fairness Act safety net including housing counselors, foreclosure prevention hotline staff, legal aid attorneys, and the mediation program.
• Homeowners need these advocates on their side to help them retain their homes and set them up for long-term success.
• This was included in the Governor’s budget proposal.

 

Provide tenants more time to respond to rent increases (HB 1904/Peterson, Morgan) This bill was amended when it passed out of committee. Amendments are incorporated below.

• There are currently no limits on how much landlords can raise rents in Washington and tenants are experiencing exorbitant rent increases in communities all across the state.
• When a tenant can’t afford a major rent hike, they often have to move with as little as 60 days’ notice. This amounts to an economic eviction, and some landlords raise rents as a way around eviction protections.
• With high rents and limited vacancies, renters need more time to respond to significant rent increases.
• HB 1904 requires landlords to provide six months’ notice for rent increases over 7.5%. This gives tenants time to decide what’s best for them, and if necessary, time to find a new place to live and save money for a deposit and other moving costs.
• It also gives tenants more flexibility to end their lease and move before the increase takes effect, and caps late fees at $75.

Prohibit landlords from forcing tenants to only pay their rent through electronic means (SB 5749/Trudeau). This bill wasn't one of our lead priorities but it's an important tenant bill that is making progress, so we encourage advocates to talk about it in lawmaker meetings.

• Currently landlords can require tenants to pay their rent only through electronic means. When landlords force tenants to pay electronically, it oftentimes comes with fees that are unregulated and can be significant - especially for lower-income tenants.
• Paying electronically is also a hardship for unbanked, elderly, immigrant, and other tenants who don't have reliable access to the internet. Why make it harder to pay the rent?

Provide a Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) exemption as an incentive to sell property to affordable housing developers (SB 5642/Mullet, HB 1643/Hackney)

• This will incentivize sales to affordable housing providers and give them a leg up when competing for increasingly scarce land for multifamily housing.
• Nonprofits and housing authorities frequently lose out to the private sector when competing for purchasing land.
• This policy will make it easier to put capital investments in housing to use quickly, to create more affordable homes.
• This exemption was passed in 2020 (HB 2634/Walen) but vetoed by the Governor with many other bills due to the unknown impact of the pandemic on the state budget at that time.

Housing Justice Act: prevent landlords from denying housing solely based on a tenant or family member's previous arrest or incarceration (HB 2017/Davis, Simmons)

• Housing is a basic human need and helps people pursue careers, get an education, build a family, or work through recovery, but currently, landlords can deny housing based on a prior conviction or arrest.
• People with past convictions are working, going to school, taking care of family, and contributing to our communities just like any of our neighbors.
• A stable home is the foundation of everything else we need to live a safe and happy life.
• When all people are able to find a stable home, it makes our community a better place for all of us to live.
• Discrimination based on past convictions is one of many policies that continues to make it more difficult for Black and brown Washingtonians to find good homes in our preferred neighborhoods.

Enforcement of tenant protections (HB 2023/Hackney, Macri)

• Landlord-tenant laws in Washington are considered “self-help” which means it is up to individual tenants to enforce their rights, on their own.
• Landlords have a streamlined process to evict tenants that violate the terms of the lease agreement or the law, but tenants cannot take their landlord to court to uphold basic and critical responsibilities, like making repairs.
• HB 2023 gives tenants a process to enforce their rights. It adds enforcement mechanisms to the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act through the Attorney General’s enforcement of the Consumer Protection Act.
• And it creates an expedited court process for tenants to enforce their rights.
• Other states have such mechanisms, and the results are better housing conditions and improved stability.