In the decade-plus since Washington last ushered in a new governor, statewide home prices and rents have soared, more people have experienced homelessness than ever before and the housing gap has widened.
It’s no surprise that homelessness and Washington’s high cost of living regularly rank high among voters’ concerns.
But the race for Washington’s next governor has revolved largely around public safety and hot-button national issues, leaving less oxygen for questions about how to make homes across the state more affordable or how to help people transition off the streets.
“It gets kind of frustrating when you’re not seeing anybody address what you think is the biggest issue around,” said Terri Anderson, a Spokane tenant advocate and interim director of the statewide Tenants Union who supports state limits on rent hikes.
With the primary election approaching, the landscape reflects Democrats’ bet that they can hold onto the governor’s mansion by tying local Republicans to Trump’s politics. Conservatives, meanwhile, hope simmering resentment over public safety and inflation can wins them the seat for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president.
Yet housing affordability will be one of the most prominent challenges facing whoever spends the next four years as governor.
Consider nearly any measure: The median-income household can afford to buy the median-priced home in only three of Washington’s 39 counties, pushing some young home shoppers out of the state altogether and perpetuating the state’s persistent racial homeownership gap.
Nearly half of the state’s renters are spending more than the recommended third of their income on housing, leaving tight budgets for emergencies, basic needs or future down payments. At the same time, more people were reported homeless in Washington last year than ever before, and it’s happening at an unprecedented rate.
To meet the growing need, Washington needs more than 1 million new homes in the next two decades, hundreds of thousands of them affordable to people at the lowest end of the income ladder, according to state estimates. Building the most affordable homes will demand significant government funding.
“We need a moonshot approach,” said Ryan Donohue, chief advocacy officer at Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties, which advocates for government funding to help build affordable homes for sale.
Progressive advocates aren’t the only ones warning that the next governor will need a laser-focus on the state’s housing crisis. Lobbyists for local governments already plan to seek more state dollars for housing and homelessness. Landlords, Realtors and developers say the next governor should prioritize boosting the supply of all types of homes.
High housing costs are squeezing people from Spokane and Yakima to Vancouver, Wash. and Seattle, said Greg Lane, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington. “It really is becoming more of a statewide issue.”
Reducing homelessness
The state’s four main gubernatorial candidates disagree over the main driver of homelessness, as well as how to fix it.
Democratic candidates Bob Ferguson and Mark Mullet say Washington’s rising homelessness crisis is tied to the state’s growing affordable housing gaps, while Republican challengers Semi Bird and Dave Reichert say mental illness and drugs are to blame, though Reichert also wants more affordable housing.
Experts say empirical data shows that lack of housing is the root cause of today’s homelessness crisis. Gregg Colburn, assistant professor at the University of Washington, has closely studied this issue and said if elected leaders don’t understand that, then “my fear is that those policy prescriptions will keep us in this situation for longer.”
All four candidates agree the state needs to increase drug-treatment beds and invest more in the state’s mental health infrastructure, but plans vary widely on how to help people living in tents, vehicles and shelters exit homelessness.
Ferguson said he wants to build more permanent and transitional housing, tiny houses and parking lots for people who live in their vehicle, while also increasing the state’s investment in youth homelessness prevention and intervention, which has already shown strong results. Mullet said he also favors tiny homes and safe lots and wants to continue to support the state’s Housing Trust Fund, which helps to fund low-income housing projects, while increasing arrests of people who use drugs in public.
He would like to see people placed in substance use disorder treatment programs after being arrested and proposes using the state’s annual cannabis tax revenue to pay for more treatment facilities.
Both Republicans have proposed moving homeless people out of cities and placing them on state-owned land.
Bird said he wants to activate the National Guard and clear 20 acres of state land to create an “inpatient care program” for people living outside. He didn’t say how he plans to address people who don’t need drug or mental health treatment.
Reichert has publicly proposed sending homeless people to McNeil Island, which is currently being used by the state to house sex offenders in a special commitment center. He did not say in an interview what would happen to people currently housed there.
“This particular proposal aims to offer a controlled environment where comprehensive services can be delivered, but it requires thorough vetting to ensure it is humane and effective,” Reichert said.
Their proposals echo Donald Trump, who has said while campaigning for president that, if elected, he would ban homeless camping, arrest violators and send people without homes to “tent cities.”
Proposals to move homeless people out of public view and into concentrated, controlled settings come at a time when cities along the West Coast have been granted more control over how they enforce laws banning camping after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of a key ruling that created limited protections for people living outside.
Lobbyists for the City of Seattle and King County said they’ll be pushing Olympia for more funding to help operate permanent supportive housing.
Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said she’s hopeful that Washington’s next governor will consider making a separate housing budget, similar to the state’s transportation budget.
Ferguson proposed a housing department in his cabinet that would report directly to him about “the progress we’re making.”
Reichert said a “Director for the Homeless” position in his administration would “oversee acquiring some facility where we could house the homeless” with services and substance use treatment.
Mullet ridiculed Ferguson’s proposal, saying “the last thing that we need is more bureaucracy in housing.”
Capping rent hikes
The next governor will also face questions of how best to rein in Washington’s sky-high rents that leave some tenants one emergency away from ending up on the streets.
Progressive lawmakers and renter advocates have pushed for what they describe as “rent-gouging” legislation to limit annual rent increases to between 5 percent and 15 percent, depending on the proposal.
Although overall Washington rents have been basically flat over the last year, a recent Census survey found more than half of Washington renters received a rent increase in the last year and roughly one in 10 were behind on their rent payments.
The winning candidate for governor will be the one who “promises to address the root causes of homelessness, which include rent gouging,” said Michele Thomas, policy and advocacy director at the Washington Housing Alliance Action Fund. The group pushes for more affordable housing funding and renter protections.
Landlords and developers also see limits on rent increase as a key issue for the coming years in Olympia — one they strongly oppose.
Most candidates for governor oppose any limits on rent hikes, too.
“That’s big government,” Reichert said.
Republican Bird and Democrat Mullet, who is backed by landlord and Realtor groups, also oppose the idea, arguing it will drive builders out of the state or increase housing costs.
Only Ferguson backs limits on rent increases, though he is noncommittal on the level of rent hikes that should be allowed.
“We cannot have predatory increases to individuals that disrupt their lives and, in some cases, even result in them becoming unhoused,” Ferguson said.
Building more housing
The question of housing supply has more bipartisan support in Olympia.
A number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle generally agree the state should find ways to encourage more development of housing at various price points to meet the state’s projected need for a million new homes in the next two decades.
In a written policy platform, Ferguson says he would look for ways to speed up permitting, require denser development near certain transit stops, allow property owners to split their lots to increase density and expand down-payment assistance for first responders, teachers and social workers, among other broad ideas.
Housing affordability is “the issue I heard the most” while campaigning, Ferguson said.
Reichert said he also supports allowing property owners to split their lots and boosting development near transit.
Reichert said the state should expand construction job training, crack down on theft from construction sites, limit fees on new construction and allow development in more areas than the state’s Growth Management Act currently allows, an idea typically opposed by environmental groups averse to sprawl.
Rising home prices have reached an “unsustainable” level, Reichert said.
Reichert also supports a developer-backed initiative set to appear on this fall’s ballot to prevent the state from restricting the use of natural gas in new home construction.
Bird proposed rolling back recent changes to state energy codes for new buildings, and Mullet said the state should do more to incentivize local governments to speed up permitting for new housing construction.
Building more housing affordable to people with the lowest incomes will require more than cutting red tape. Affordable housing developers typically tap into government funding or tax credits to make their projects pencil out.
To fund that much-needed housing, state lawmakers have poured money into Washington’s Housing Trust Fund in recent years, but nonprofit builders and advocates say more is needed.
Lawmakers have, in recent years, floated the idea of increasing taxes on real estate sales as one possible source of funding for affordable housing, an idea the Washington Realtors and others fought hard to kill.
Ferguson said his proposed budget would reflect “greater investments for housing,” but declined to endorse any new taxes or fees. Reichert said the state should look to existing and surplus funds, not a new revenue source.
While candidates can avoid some specifics as they seek votes, whoever lands in the governor’s seat will face growing calls from all corners to do more to tackle the state’s affordability crisis.
“We’ve got to be aggressive on housing policy,” said Washington Realtors CEO Nathan Gorton. “This has got to be an every year thing.”
