Washington Low Income Housing Alliance - https://www.wliha.org/ - Michele Thomas, Director of Policy and Advocacy, michelet@wliha.org
- Presentation materials are at
- Lots of familiar faces here
- If you’ve been paying attention since April 28th – lots of good news to share
- A very bleak budget year, but had historic investment if housing and homelessness
- As you probably know, Pierce County and Tacoma are critical parts of the state. You have a lot of influential law makers - very driven and motivated law makers in positions of power in the State House and Senate. For instance, Senator Jeannie Darneille chairs the Human Services Subcommittee. The Chair control what gets through committees, so those positions are key to passing legislation.
- Appreciate everyone who came to the advocacy day – we were 650 people strong. And also appreciate all the outreach you all did.
- We are an organization that works on statewide policy – mostly pushing for investments in affordable housing and work to end homelessness in Washington State.
- There are 1000’s of folks in our network across the state working to end homelessness
- We want you to be as effective as possible in moving and motivating your lawmakers
- Much of our work has opponents – often with well-funded lobbyists. We need to create a movement to combat that funding.
- We want to know what we can do better to help you connect in with your lawmakers
- A shout out to Cynthia and Maureen – two very powerful and engaged advocates (lots of clapping, cheering and some reserved waves of acknowledgement. –ed).
- Cynthia – I’ve been involved with the League of Women Voters on many big campaigns, Michele was very successful and deserves the credit for what happened in Olympia this year
- Bills have a long pathway to get approved. Almost all of our bills have made it through the whole process and were signed by the Governor.
- Wins
- Eviction Reform- Senate Bill 5600 (https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5600&Year=2019&initiative= ) by Kuderer and HB 1453 (https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1453&Initiative=false&Year=2019 ) –by Macri – The biggest overhaul of the landlord tenant act since it was first enacted in 1971 – it hadn’t really been updated since then. Under our current law, tenants get only 3 days once they become behind, to pay. That was extended to 14 days – this gives them much more time to have another pay period or get funding from friends or family or non-profits. This is important because so much homeless is driven eviction. This is also because so many more people of color are more impacted by evictions than white folks. From a racial equity agenda, this work is vital. Also, people of color are more likely to be tenants as opposed to home owners. Laurie Jenkins, the head of the civil rights and judiciary committee – she was a fierce advocate for it in the committee. Jenkins stood up time and again to refute misinformation from the opposition. Melanie Morgan was also incredible this session – she is one of the bravest lawmakers I’ve ever met. I’ve see a lot of sessions, so I’ve met a lot of lawmakers. Her story of currently being evicted and experiencing homeless was powerful and took real bravery. She countered many of the arguments critical of people experiencing homelessness with her own story (I just sent her an e-mail asking if she’ll attend a Coalition meeting and talk a bit about the work she is doing in the House. Let’s hope she says yes. –ed)
- We did a webinar on Wednesday – that is available now – I recommend (you can watch it at https://vimeo.com/338104729 -ed)
- Tenants have 14 days to correct any rental arrears (I rather like the word “arrears” – it sort of connotes what it denotes, sounding like something bad, which it absolutely is. It is derived from the latin ad retro, meaning “to be behind”. –ed)
- Tenants can’t be evicted for monetary costs other than rent. They can be taken to small claims court to collect those debts still, but not evicted over them. However, behavioral allegations can still be cause for evictions. This protection is only for non-rent monetary charges.
- Tenants are often brought to court for 1 months or less of rent, and end up with lawyer and court fees – but now only $75 can be charged in an eviction lawsuit. (this is such a beneficial law. There is lots of reporting on the compounding nature of fines on people living in poverty - https://theappeal.org/fines-and-fees-explained-bf4e05d188bf/ - is a great place to start. It is nice to see some legislation addressing these sorts of practices. –ed.)
- Judges have some discretion (embarrassingly, I took me like 6 guesses to spell this word right –ed.), and can take other information into consideration to prevent an eviction.
- Language access was approved – the eviction form will be translated in the top 10 languages in Washington. The Attorney General’s website will also have resources in those languages.
- Al – can a judge mandate a payment plan? Michele – absolutely. The mitigation fund created last year will help with this too - if there are damages that exceed normal wear and tear. That mitigation fund will front the cost of the payment plan or the judgement. So the Commerce Department will pay the landlord, and the tenant will have to repay Commerce.
- Marsha – what monetary cost were you talking about? Often late fees can be $50 per day. Michele – the landlord can charge late fees, but can’t evict for nonpayment of those. But they can take to small claims court to get the money back.
- Tacoma Tenants Organizing committee did great work. A lot of your work created an environment where the laws needed to pass – the legislators understood the connection between evictions and homelessness
- House bill 1406/Robinson – a new source of funding for homes – homes must be affordable – for people with under 60% Average Median Income (AMI). This can also be used for operations and maintenance.
- Counties and cities can each use it – max is .0146% of state sales – it is locally collected tax that has been going to the state but can now be redirected to the jurisdictions. Jurisdictions can bond against it.
- Jurisdictions like Pierce County have some decisions to make. Pierce County and Tacoma need to decide which group will enact the law, or if they both do who will have control over those dollars. We want Cities and Counties to work together to spend the money (we all want Cities and Counties to work together, and they say they want to work together, and yet… -ed).
- On June 6th there is a webinar around how to get local jurisdictions to take action. – http://bit.ly/30IA4h9
- Need to decide on how to use the funding – for folks 30% AMI or 60% AMI or permanent supportive housing – lots of choices to make. And lots of chances to get active.
- This is a $500M investment in housing across the state over 20 years.
- Impediments & cost
- Budget investments
- $175M for Housing Trust Fund – biggest investment in affordable homes in state legislative history. The housing trust fund is how the state invests in affordable housing. Affordable Housing developers cobble together different funding sources, but this investments is the lynchpin for this work.
- $1M in risk mitigation fund
- $35M for Permanent Supportive Housing
- $57M for affordable housing for special needs populations – veterans, people with Developmental Disabilities and farmworkers
- $5M for home ownership
- First increase - $14.5M increase – in Housing and Essential Needs (HEN program). Catholic Community Services and Share and Care house were big players in getting this passed (Catholic Community Services provides HEN in Kitsap and King Counties –ed.). We wanted much more, but this was a huge win in a tough budget year. This should help an additional 1,000 people across the state.
- $7M for operation and maintenance for Permanent Supportive Housing
- $44M into homelessness programs
- Looking at the 2020 legislative session –
- Current budgets cover 2 years. The next legislative session is a short one – ½ the time. It will have fewer changes – but can still have new investments, although probably won’t. This will be a policy discussion year. There could be new policies.
- If there are new needs not represented in our work let us know.
- Work carry over from last year
- HB 1656 /Macri – a law to have just a legitimate business reason to make someone move. This exists in Seattle and in Oregon. This is vital for racial equity and to prevent retaliation. Often requests for repairs can cause a landlord to evict. Landlords also will threaten immigrants with deportation. Another big thanks to Laurie Jinkins, a key player in this work.
- HB 1694/Morgan – to require move-in fee payment plans. Modeled after the City of Seattle – which requires a 3 month payment plan to allow someone to spread move-in costs over 3 months. Missing a payment is evictionable – but still a good plan idea.. Encourage Representative Morgan to keep working on this.
- HB 1590/Doglio – local sales and use tax to pass with a simple majority of lawmakers.
- Housing alliance listening tours – like last year, we will do this again. But it will be different because of the shorter session. We will be in contact so we can again come and hear from you
- We talked a lot about a bill to outlaw a landlord’s ability to use a prior criminal record as a barrier to housing. The idea is you shouldn’t be able to deny housing solely because of a prior criminal record. The City of Seattle passed that, and it is being challenged in court. The bill was delayed to see how those lawsuits play out.
- Sing up for the housing alliance action alerts - https://wliha.salsalabs.org/wlihaemailsignup/
- You get alerts about federal policy and notification about how to get involved in the housing alliance
- Also get alerts about webinars.
- And special money saving opportunities only available to platinum level members (OK, I might be making this one up –ed.)
- Some of you work for nonprofits that are hesitant to allow you to meet with law makers (forgiveness, not permission, folks. –ed). It is legal, but you have to watch the time you spend on lobbying – contact us to learn more. You can always meet with lawmakers as an individual. Always be thoughtful and careful about how you talk about housing and homelessness – not furthering stigmas and stereotypes – we have training around this to help you be as successful as possible.
- Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a new proposed rule that will evict family members that are unqualified because of their immigration status. To set the facts straight, HUD currently doesn’t subsidize that person’s part of the rent. This is inhumane and we need to submit comments to HUD. If you want to – the National Low Income Housing Alliance has a webpage about this topic (I looked, but couldn’t find this information – their website is https://nlihc.org/ - I hope you have better luck than me –ed.)
- Mark your calendar for our annual conference – it is usually in May. We changed it to fall this year – November 6th-7th in Spokane – we rotate sides of the state to have the conference. (one year it is on the right side, and the next year it is on the wrong side… -ed)
- Let us know what is missing from our policy objectives.
- James – Michele really helped walked me through talking points, what to as. She really gave me a good script to follow.
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