Advocate! A chance to weigh in.
NOTE: This post is coming out on Thursday in the hope of offering an extra day to act before a deadline next Tuesday. I do not plan to post tomorrow, Friday, February 9.
Homelessness and SB 5961:
Here’s another chance to usefully register your opinion from the comfort of your own desk.
All the local efforts to help our homeless fellow citizens are sorely needed and entirely laudable, but the “supply” of people rendered homeless, the other end of the equation, must also be addressed. Otherwise the number of people made homeless will continue to exceed the number who find housing. A key piece of the supply equation is the precipitous rise in rents as wealth chases ever greater profit.
There is a bill before the Washington State Legislature, Senate Bill (SB) 5961 that represents one good step toward stemming the flow. Here’s the summary:
Improving housing stability for tenants subject to the residential landlord-tenant act and the manufactured/mobile home landlord-tenant act by limiting rent and fee increases, requiring notice of rent and fee increases, limiting fees and deposits, establishing a landlord resource center and associated services, authorizing tenant lease termination, creating parity between lease types, and providing for attorney general enforcement.
SB 5961 made it out of the Housing Committee. If I understand correctly (and I think I do) SB 5961 was “read…into the record on the floor in house of origin [the State Senate]” ahead of the January 31st deadline. Now, to keep SB 5961 alive it must be voted on and passed by the Senate before 5PM next Tuesday, February 13th. It will still need to pass the House and be signed by the Governor to become law—but one hurdle at a time. This year is an even-numbered year “short session” of 60 days (compared to 105 day “regular session” of odd-numbered years) so the race to go from bill to law is much compressed. Once the end of this session comes around on March 7, (absent the calling of a “special session”) all bills go back to square one, that is, all bills would need to be re-introduced (with attendant new numbering) to be considered in 2025 by a newly elected legislature.
Here’s Where We Come In
Click here to see the main page for SB 5961. On that page there is a green colored link “Original Bill” that will take you to the actual 32 page text. On the right near the top of the main page is a horizontally elongate green button that says, “Send a comment on this bill to your legislators”. Click that link, fill in the form, click on the name of your senator, indicate your support, make a comment (no need to write a thesis) and click Send Comment. It’s that simple.
For those of us living in District 3 (very roughly corresponding with the City of Spokane, click here for a map) our Senator, Andy Billig, is also the State Senate Majority Leader. It is not hard to imagine that he holds some sway over which bills get a vote.
I thought that this from FUSE Washington (the folks who publish the Progressive Voters’ Guide) was clear:
People who rent their home or own a manufactured home cannot wait 15-20 years for new housing supply to lower rent costs. We need stabilization now while we build much-needed new housing.
Republicans will, of course, be adamantly opposed to this legislation. They will argue that it would interfere with the sacred “free market.” They will conjure a plethora of deleterious unintended consequences due to meddling with it. Currently, the imagined “free market” has failed at the task of providing housing.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry