Washington lawmakers are trying again to pass a bill that would make the state the third in the country to have a statewide rent control law.
House Bill 1217 would cap annual rent hikes at 7% for residential properties that are 12 or more years old. It would also prohibit rent increases during the first year of tenancy for such properties.
The bill cleared its first hurdle in the state Senate last week, with the Housing Committee voting in Olympia to advance the measure to the Ways & Means Committee, which is scheduled to consider the bill on Friday.
Washington would join Oregon and California as the only states with statewide rent control laws if the bill is passed by the full Senate by the state's April 25 legislative deadline, and signed into law by Gov. Bob Ferguson, with the provisions going into effect immediately.
A similar bill died in the Ways & Means Committee last year when it failed to garner enough support from Democrats, whose party holds the governor’s office and a supermajority in the Legislature.
Lawmakers representing both parties have expressed concern that HB 1217, like last year's bill, could raise costs and drive multifamily developers to other states without rent control, such as Arizona, Idaho and Montana.
The bill comes as the Evergreen State struggles with a shortage of affordable residential housing that has contributed to some of the nation’s highest apartment rents. Washington had the fifth-highest median rent in the U.S., behind California, Hawaii, Colorado and Massachusetts, according to census data released last fall.
In greater Seattle, average asking rents have increased 33% over the past decade to over $2,000 a month, above the nation's average of $1,754, according to CoStar data.
Large tech companies such as Amazon and Microsoft have been criticized for driving up housing costs in the Puget Sound region, where rents are projected to peak next year at just under $2,200 a month — nearly 42% above their average of $1,547 in 2015, according to CoStar data.
West Coast measures
Although cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York have passed various forms of rent control, Oregon was the first in the nation to pass a statewide law in 2019.
That initial law limited annual rent increases for houses and apartments 15 years or older to 7% plus the local rate of inflation. Oregon lawmakers, concerned about potential double-digit rent increases during a period of runaway inflation, amended the law in 2023 to cap annual increases at 10%, including inflation adjustments.
California's law, also passed in 2019, caps rent increases at 5% plus inflation up to a maximum of 10% per year, for rentals that are 15 years old or more. The law allows landlords to raise rents to market rate between tenants and also requires landlords to show just cause to evict tenants.
Since then, California ballot measures to dramatically expand rent control — sponsored by affordable housing advocates — have failed in 2020 and last year.
Nearly 62% of voters in November rejected Proposition 33, a ballot measure that would have repealed California’s Costa-Hawkins Act, a 1995 state law that forbids local rent controls on housing built after that year. If passed, the initiative would have allowed cities to impose rent control on a broader range of housing, including single-family homes and newer apartments.
Washington's HB 1217 would exempt newer buildings and owner-occupied homes such as duplexes and single-family homes with up to two rental units. Affordable housing complexes that are already regulated by public housing authorities and nonprofits would also be exempt.
The state House approved the bill by a 54-42 vote on March 10. The Senate House Committee voted 5-2 on March 26 to advance the measure after West Seattle Democratic Sen. Emily Alvarado introduced provisions to "find compromise" between tenant advocates and real estate landlords and developers who have fought the bill.
"Housing is the single greatest cost in a household budget, and when your housing costs go up, your budget gets swallowed," Alvarado said at the March 26 hearing. "This bill is a simple guardrail for the many, many people in this state who just want to make sure that they can have a little bit of control in that household budget and plan and save.”
The housing committee's changes included lowering the cap on mobile and other manufactured housing to 5% from 7%. The revisions also include a requirement to study the legislation’s effects on residential construction and rents after 10 years and a sunset clause that would require the legislature to re-approve the law after 20 years.
“Taken together, these changes continue to move us in the direction of this being a balanced bill with reasonable guardrails,” Alvarado said.
But the revisions were not enough to win support from the housing committee's two Republican members, who voted against advancing the measures.
Sen. Chris Gildon, a Republican from Puyallup, said rent control, combined with the effects of an unrelated bill in the Legislature that would remove the annual cap on property tax increases, could severely disrupt residential development in the state.
“I have a real fear for our housing market at large, over time, should both of those policies” pass, Gildon said.