Housing policy leaders discuss ways to get people into homes at 2023 YDWA Convention

Hey Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers! This is Caya sign­ing in with anoth­er recap of a pan­el I was for­tu­nate enough to attend at the annu­al YDWA (Young Democ­rats of Wash­ing­ton Con­ven­tion, held at North Spokane High School this past weekend.

This ses­sion, mod­er­at­ed by NPI’s Kamil Zai­di, the host of our upcom­ing Can­di­date Sound­ings pod­cast, focused on the unique chal­lenges East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton face in tack­ling the region’s extreme­ly tough hous­ing crisis.

It fea­tured:

• Ben Stuckart, a for­mer Spokane City Coun­cil President;
• Julie Gar­cia, a board mem­ber for Jew­els Help­ing Hands, a local provider of ser­vices to the Lilac City’s unhoused population;
• Ter­ri Ander­son, Spokane Office and Statewide Pol­i­cy Direc­tor at the Ten­ants Union of Wash­ing­ton State;
• … and State Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (D‑48th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Belle­vue, Med­i­na, the Points com­mu­ni­ties), who rep­re­sents NPI’s home­town in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate along with Man­ka Dhin­gra and is one of NPI’s fore­most leg­isla­tive champions.

With Spokane’s bur­geon­ing “big city” sta­tus has been com­ing with big city chal­lenges. Over the past few years, the Lilac City’s home­less pop­u­la­tion has explod­ed. The most recent point-in-time count esti­mat­ed 2,390 unhoused peo­ple in Spokane — a whop­ping 143% increase from 2016.

The hous­ing mar­ket has failed to catch up.

The city’s hous­ing trou­bles go back decades. For exam­ple, when the city con­struct­ed River­front Park, the crown jew­el of Spokane’s down­town area, in 1978, many peo­ple were dis­placed. Though beloved by tourists and locals alike, the city culled a swath of low-income hous­ing to do so — a sac­ri­fice the city has tak­en decades to recov­er from. Rents began creep­ing up in 2017, before the pres­sures of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic launched them into the realm of out­right unaf­ford­abil­i­ty for many of Spokane’s long-term ten­ant population.

Today, the city is strug­gling to resolve the dual dilem­mas of a lack of hous­ing sup­ply and a lack of pro­tec­tions for ten­ants against exor­bi­tant rent increases.

To meet the cur­rent demand, the city would need to cre­ate an esti­mat­ed 25,000 addi­tion­al hous­ing units, and an addi­tion­al 7,000 sub­si­dized units — a task the city isn’t mov­ing with any speed towards com­plet­ing any­time soon.

The pan­elists, how­ev­er, made sure the con­ver­sa­tion was solu­tions-focused rather than sim­ply dwelling on the city’s hous­ing predicament.

Kamil opened the con­ver­sa­tion by ask­ing the pan­elists to talk about hous­ing-relat­ed leg­is­la­tion mov­ing at each lev­el of gov­ern­ment: city, coun­ty, and state.

Stuckart cit­ed HB 1628, a bill spon­sored by Frank Chopp (D‑43rd Dis­trict: Seat­tle) as an exam­ple of a bill that could address some of the afore­men­tioned issues. 1628 did not move out of the Wash­ing­ton State House dur­ing the recent­ly con­clud­ed ses­sion. How­ev­er, the bill could be revived in 2024.

It pro­pos­es to bol­ster fund­ing for low-income hous­ing, backed by the real estate excise tax (often abbre­vi­at­ed to REET) of 4% for real estate sales over $5 mil­lion. The rev­enue would be ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing more housing.

Ander­son point­ed out that ten­ants lack pro­tec­tions statewide, espe­cial­ly in rur­al areas that lack strong local gov­ern­ments with pro­gres­sive leadership.

“Hous­ing stock alone isn’t going to solve the prob­lem for vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties […] who need hous­ing,” she said. She point­ed to some actions by the state, includ­ing HB 1110, a zon­ing reform bill man­dat­ing duplex and four­plex con­struc­tion in cer­tain local­i­ties based on pop­u­la­tion, as address­ing the prob­lem of the “miss­ing mid­dle,” but doing lit­tle to help the vast swaths of low-income fam­i­lies for whom fair mar­ket hous­ing isn’t affordable.

She also not­ed Wash­ing­ton’s his­toric lack of ade­quate “just cause” evic­tion laws, laws pre­vent­ing land­lords from ter­mi­nat­ing a rental agree­ment with­out clear­ly spec­i­fied rea­son. The Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture did pass a vot­er-sup­port­ed just cause evic­tion bill spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nicole Macri (D‑43rd Dis­trict: Seat­tle) in 2021 that requires land­lords to give a rea­son when evict­ing ten­ants — but of course that law did not put an end to unjust evic­tions by itself.

Sen­a­tor Kud­er­er con­curred, adding that Wash­ing­ton’s Res­i­den­tial Land­lord-Ten­ant Act was con­sid­ered to be “the worst in the coun­try” when it was first draft­ed six­ty years ago. Since then, she has helped lead the charge to make changes, such as allow­ing for judi­cial dis­cre­tion if a ten­ant is behind on their rent due to exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances, and the cre­ation of a statewide right to an attor­ney in an evic­tion pro­ceed­ing. These have had tan­gi­ble, pos­i­tive impacts on tenants.

But we still have a ways to go.

She spoke to the lack of rent sta­bi­liza­tion as yet anoth­er chal­lenge fac­ing low-income ten­ants. Rent sta­bi­liza­tion, which estab­lish­es lim­i­ta­tions on rent increas­es, can be a con­test­ed mea­sure even among Democ­rats. How­ev­er, Kud­er­er says there are plen­ty of ways to imple­ment rent stabilization.

“What we keep hear­ing is this is a sup­ply issue,” she said. “And I agree. We do. Once we have a hous­ing inven­to­ry increase, we’ll see a drop in rent. Okay. But we won’t be build­ing those tomor­row. It’s going to take decades… Dur­ing that time, it seems there should be some rent stabilization.”

Not­ing that con­ver­sa­tions around hous­ing can be fraught, Zai­di then asked the pan­elists to dis­pel some hous­ing-relat­ed myths they encounter.

Stuckart took issue with the vague nature of the term “hous­ing cri­sis,” say­ing it did­n’t ade­quate­ly com­mu­ni­cate the scale of the prob­lem. There is a cri­sis in home­own­er­ship, he said, with home prices ris­ing by 60% over the past three years. Rents, too, increased by 60%. As for low-income, sub­si­dized hous­ing, a prospec­tive ten­ant can expect to be wait­list­ed for three years.

“The solu­tions are very dif­fer­ent,” he stressed.

“You can solve the miss­ing mid­dle, but it does­n’t solve the rest!”

Ander­son sought to dis­pel the myth of the “Mom and Pop Land­lord,” who right wing forces por­tray as the sup­posed vic­tim of increased ten­ant protections.

“The term is flawed,” she said.

“And has a racist basis, because I don’t think they’ll be look­ing like our mom and pop.” 80% of Spokane’s Black pop­u­la­tion are renters — mean­ing they are and will be the ones suf­fer­ing the onslaught of run­away rent increases.

“We should­n’t be dis­tin­guish­ing [between] a small-scale land­lord or a cor­po­rate one,” she said. “Renters still deserve pro­tec­tions. Mom and pops are not the dom­i­nat­ing group in the indus­try today.”

“Anoth­er myth is that home­less folks don’t have jobs,” she con­tin­ued. “They do!”

Gar­cia con­curred, and took aim at NIM­BY­ism, an acronym for “Not In My Back­yard,” to refer to those who are against hous­ing development.

“In our com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. “There is a lack of polit­i­cal will keep­ing folks out­side and unsheltered.”

She stressed that advo­ca­cy groups need to be gath­er­ing data about the chron­i­cal­ly home­less about their bar­ri­ers to hous­ing, and how laws that do and don’t pass affect the community.

Kud­er­er brought up the uni­for­mi­ty clause in the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion, which requires that tax­es be uni­form across dif­fer­ent class­es of prop­er­ty. In oth­er words, any prop­er­ty, whether it is a res­i­dence or an office, is taxed the same way. This is a bar­ri­er to cre­at­ing a tru­ly equi­table tax code based on abil­i­ty to pay.

Stuckart point­ed out that Spokane’s vacan­cy rate was sit­ting at 1.5%, and most of the avail­able land was tak­en up by vacant park­ing lots, of which Spokane has 78.

“Oth­er cities have highest/best use tax. This takes away the incen­tive to build park­ing lots, or let them sit. The uni­for­mi­ty clause will not allow cities to use this tax!” he said.

The pan­elists then touched on the ques­tion of tem­po­rary shel­ters for the unhoused dur­ing the audi­ence Q&A, espe­cial­ly with regards to peo­ple of col­or and the LGBTQ+ pop­u­la­tion, for whom shel­ters can be dangerous.

Garcia’s answer as sober­ing: at this time, there real­ly was­n’t any­where some­one could go to feel safe.

“Most shel­ters are being shut down or con­sol­i­dat­ed,” she said. She point­ed to the recent­ly opened Trent Resource and Assis­tance Cen­ter in Spokane as an example.

The shel­ter, which opened in Sep­tem­ber of 2022, is a refur­bished ware­house in an indus­tri­al dis­trict. Though it holds three hun­dred and fifty beds, eight months after its open­ing, it still lacks basic neces­si­ties such as bath­rooms or show­ers, and is, to bor­row Ander­son­’s phras­ing, “on the verge of imploding.”

Kud­er­er agreed.

“Con­gre­gate shel­ter mod­el­ing does­n’t work,” she said, adding that de-inten­si­fy­ing shel­ter envi­ron­ments actu­al­ly leads to bet­ter hous­ing outcomes.

Despite the dis­com­fort­ing real­i­ty of bar­ri­ers to attain­able and afford­able hous­ing, the pan­elists were res­olute in express­ing a hope­ful vision for the future.

“Home­less­ness is a solv­able prob­lem,” Kud­er­er said.

“We just have to have the polit­i­cal will to do it.”

If the sen­ti­ment of the pan­el could be expressed in one sen­tence, it might well be hous­ing is a human right and we have an oblig­a­tion to get our unhoused neigh­bors in Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Ida­ho and beyond into homes.