Safe Eastside has 90 days from the end of the legislative session to turn in enough signatures to make it onto this fall’s general election ballot, giving them a deadline of July 26.

The two targeted laws were a part of a broad slate of housing reforms passed in 2025, which lawmakers have dubbed as the “Year of Housing 2.0.” Once phased in, the Parking Reform and Modernization Act will bar medium and large-sized cities in Washington from requiring more than one off-street parking stall for every two units in an apartment building — and it will prohibit parking mandates altogether in the case of affordable housing, among other select uses.

The TOD law (which passed as House Bill 1491) will require local governments to rezone areas within a half-mile of light rail and commuter rail stations, and within a quarter-mile of bus rapid transit stations. TOD requirements kick in as part of the next scheduled update to their respective comprehensive plans, which chart out growth for decades to come.

Both policies were top priorities for Democrats in the legislature in 2025, intended to make a dent in the state’s acute housing affordability crisis. They featured prominently in Governor Bob Ferguson’s transition report on housing, which claimed that “no single housing policy” would be as effective for allowing housing construction as a transit-oriented development bill.

A referendum hasn’t qualified to make it onto the statewide ballot in Washington since 2020, when voters rejected R-90, which would have pulled back requirements for schools to develop sex education curricula. To get their referenda on the ballot, Safe Eastside would need to secure the signatures of nearly 155,000 registered voters — half the number required to get an initiative on the ballot.

Formed in 2021 as a political action committee, Safe Eastside‘s advocacy has mostly focused on opposing housing for people exiting homelessness in the Redmond and Kirkland area. Its first campaign targeted King County’s conversion of the Redmond Silver Cloud Inn for permanent supportive housing (PSH) as part of the Health Through Housing program.

Most recently, Safe Eastside has targeted plans for a new Plymouth Housing PSH building on city-owned land in Downtown Redmond, a project Redmond took over after it was rejected by the Kenmore City Council.

In addition to opposing the Plymouth project, Safe Eastside has called for the resignation of Redmond Council President Vanessa Kritzer for supporting it, and for the city to explore eliminating the separately elected position of Redmond Mayor. The group has also supported slates of right-wing candidates in recent election cycles, including Dave Reichert for Governor, Raul Garcia for US Senate, and the full slate of initiatives proposed by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood in 2024.

Safe Eastside has blasted the Plymouth project as targeting the “unstable type of homeless people” and Plymouth itself as a “wealthy NGO that gives pipes and needles to its tenants.” But permanent supportive housing projects, a type of response being scaled up in response to the region-wide homelessness crisis, has proven more successful than traditional shelter interventions. New data from King County’s Health Through Housing program showed that 95% of residents who end up housed in PSH were still housed a year later, compared to 58% at shelters.

You may be wondering, what’s the tie between parking reform and the Plymouth project? Redmond’s land use code initially would have required that Plymouth find room for 125 parking stalls, despite the fact that the residents in the building would be directly exiting homelessness, with a high proportion of people with disabilities, most of which do not own cars. The building is also located steps from Downtown Redmond’s new light rail station. The City approved a variance to allow the project to move forward with just four off-street parking stalls, but three individuals have filed appeals contesting that decision — including Nicholas Strathy, a Safe Eastside donor who is sponsoring the two referenda.

Those appeals are still active, with a July 2 hearing scheduled at Redmond’s Hearing Examiner.

In addition to the Parking Reform and Modernization Act barring cities from requiring off-street parking as part of affordable housing projects, the TOD law is also set to bar most off-street parking requirements close to light rail stations and bus rapid transit stops. It also categorically exempts the work cities and counties are required to do to encourage transit-oriented development from appeals under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), limiting the ability for future litigation to tie up projects. Those changes come on the heels of other SEPA exemptions in the name of streamlining housing production, including legislation that led to the dismissal of appeals of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan earlier this year.

“Critics warn the laws silence public input on parking impacts and remove environmental review protections long available under SEPA,” a Safe Eastside press release touting the two referendums read, going on to quote Strathy. “These laws are a direct assault on local democracy and public participation,” the quote said. “People had no idea these sweeping changes were coming. Now they’re finding out the hard way.”

If Safe Eastside is successful in getting either referenda on the ballot, their effective date would be put on hold until the results of the November general election are certified.

In the case of the Parking Reform and Modernization Act, that would push required implementation of new thresholds for minimum parking requirements back by around five months, if the voters ultimately affirmed the law. Cities between 30,000 and 50,000 residents would be required to conform within three years, and cities over 50,000 would have 18 months.

In the case of the TOD law, implementation timelines wouldn’t change due to a referendum appearing on the ballot — unless voters side with repeal. Puget Sound cities won’t be required to rezone areas around transit stations until December 31, 2029, with cities like Vancouver and Spokane required to make zoning changes by mid-2026 and 2027, respectively.

Safe Eastside has not yet publicized any signature-gathering events or provided an update on progress. The group was given the green light to start collecting signatures on June 12.

The post Repeal Referendum Campaign Targets State Parking Reform, Transit-Oriented Housing Law first appeared on The Urbanist.

Beginning in 2027, drivers ages 18 to 24 who incur two driving infractions will also be required to take a safe driver course within 180 days of notice or see their license suspended. Starting in 2031, the law modifies the requirement to a condensed traffic safety education course for young adult drivers with two moving infractions.

It may come as no surprise that adolescent drivers are more at risk of being involved in a serious collision than older, more experienced drivers. A relative lack of experience coupled with a developing brain impacts one’s risk perception and decision-making. 

A crash history analysis published in 2023 by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission uncovered something more. In Washington State, novice drivers between 18 and 24 years old who don’t complete a driver’s education course are at a 70% higher chance of being involved in a collision resulting in major injuries and/or fatalities than their peers who took driver’s ed. 

The Washington Traffic Safety Commission published a safety action plan in 2024 calling for a driver education overhaul similar to what ultimately became Everett Rep. Brandy Donaghy’s House Bill 1878. The plan also called for lowering the state’s blood alcohol limit to 0.05, but state legislators balked at that particular reform this session.

Driver’s education is more than learning how to operate a vehicle – it encourages reflection upon how one’s personal values and experiences influence decision-making behind the wheel, and helps to instill a sense of personal responsibility as part of the greater driving collective to keep roads safe for all people using them . 

Washington State had previously required all individuals getting their first license at ages 16 and 17 to complete a 30-hour in-classroom knowledge course and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction. For 18-year-olds and older, these requirements are lifted, and a person can technically acquire their license with the minimal knowledge and skills required to pass the written knowledge test and driving exam. 

Janine Koffel, the Distracted Driving, Speed Management, and School Zone Program Manager at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, holds a doctorate in prevention education and has been working in the field for 40 years. 

“When a young person whose brain is still under construction [does not] get driver training,” Koffel said, “they’re at a sort of fundamental disadvantage because their brain is still evolving and they don’t have any contextual learning to compensate for those emerging skills.” 

The complex task of driving relies on key executive functions: risk identification and evaluation, delayed gratification, and emotional regulation. These functions occur in the frontal lobe, one of the final regions of the brain to finish developing in adolescence, and development usually slows down around the age of 25. Because of this, adolescents’ brains are still malleable, which is why it is so important to introduce and ingrain the knowledge, skills, and habits of safe driving before development is complete. 

High costs are a barrier to safe driving courses

Students (and/or their parents) often have to shell out over $1,000 for driver’s education expenses on top of examination and licensing fees. The cost of a full driver’s education course in Washington State, which includes a minimum of 30 hours of classroom instruction and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, ranges from $600-$800 depending on the driving instruction company. Additional driving practice sessions often cost around $90-100 per hour. 

The fees associated with the written and behind-the-wheel exams can amount to over $100. These costs are about the same when taking these exams at the Department of Licensing (DOL). Some driving schools charge additional fees to students who choose to use one of these companies’ vehicles to take the test if they don’t have access to one otherwise. 

Cara Jockumsen, a traffic safety specialist with the DOL who worked on the new bill, explained that for people in rural communities where the spatial scale is much larger and incomes are generally lower than in urban and suburban communities, driving is more of a necessity for everyday life, and these costs pose a significant barrier. For low-income students in urban and suburban areas where the cost of living is generally higher, these costs pose a barrier as well. 

“The shift from school-based driver education to a privatized system over the last couple of decades has created some challenges that HB 1878 aims to address. Courses have become prohibitively expensive for many low-income students, and many parts of the state lack driver education programs. Private schools will typically locate where demand is greatest,” said Mark McKechnie, external relations director at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. “It is important to provide stipends to low-income students because it helps make them safer drivers. And it should also increase demand in currently underserved areas of the state, with additional resources to attract more driving instructors to these areas.”

The safety commission expects the benefits to be widespread.

“These changes benefit everyone on our roads throughout the state,” McKechnie said. “Young drivers who have not had driver education are involved in far more crashes than their peers who have completed an approved course.”

The business of driver’s education sometimes seems to compromise its intended purpose: to ensure drivers are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and decision-making capability to safely operate a 2,500+ pound machine. 

Another major component of this new driver education and safety bill seeks to address the cost of instruction by introducing a scholarship voucher program through the DOL to cover the average cost of driver’s ed for eligible individuals living in low-income households. The DOL will be able to issue vouchers to eligible novice drivers up to age 25, encouraging more young people to seek out driver’s education even after they are no longer legally obligated to. Today, such vouchers are offered through the Department of Social and Health Services and the Department of Children, Youth and Family Services. 

In order to fund the voucher program, the DOL will raise some of the fees involved in the licensing and registration processes by no more than $15 per fee. 

All accredited driver’s ed courses in Washington State require students to attend all 30 hours of classroom instruction in person, posing another barrier for many trying to complete driver’s ed. This means that people in rural areas who live far from the nearest driving school will have to find a reliable way to commute to and from their course, which usually lasts roughly two months, with no online-accessible alternative. Twenty states already accept hybrid online driver’s ed courses, and some states allow students to complete driver’s ed instruction virtually and at their own pace. 

This law allows the DOL “to authorize portions or all of a [privately offered] course to be online, self-paced,” Jockumsen said. “Any of the topics could be covered online, self-paced,” or online in a synchronous format. 

This aspect of the bill has drawn criticism from some driving instructors. 

Alex Hansen, President of the Washington Traffic Safety Education Association (WTSEA) and veteran driving instructor, argued in a letter about HB 1878 published online in March that returning driver’s education to public schools is the “most equitable way to reach all novice drivers,” regardless of systemic barriers. He criticized the bill for not suggesting this. 

Furthermore, Hansen points out that HB 1878 only encourages online components for private driver training schools and argues that it should also include offering online instruction in public schools, so long as it only applies to “limited modules that may lend themselves to that type of instruction. But never for a full course.” 

Returning driver’s education to more public schools – the 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of behind-the-wheel training – was discussed in the state legislature during a House Transportation Committee session in January. While transportation experts largely agree upon the access benefits of returning driver’s education to public high schools, feasibility is highly uncertain in the face of a projected multi-billion-dollar  budget deficit statewide, Koffel said. 

“I really value in-person education as a teacher,” Koffel said, adding she recognizes the pros and cons of in-person, synchronous online, and asynchronous online education, “but I also recognize that […] either strategy has advantages for different kinds of learners.”

Grappling with a shortage of driving instructors

Students’ access to driver’s education also depends on the availability of instructors. There are two routes to become a certified driving instructor in Washington State –the first of which involves leaving the state. 

“If you’re lucky,” Jockumsen said, prospective instructors can enroll in Western Oregon University’s driving instructor program. Only a certain number of Washington applicants are accepted into the program yearly. Oregon applicants are usually given priority, so if they reach capacity with Oregon applicants, Washington applicants won’t be accepted during that cycle. The other way to become an instructor is by training with and getting certified by an existing private driving instruction business. These two main routes often require prospective instructors to cover application, training, examination, and licensure fees, which can amount to over $1,000 out of pocket. 

The Washington DOL does not offer financial assistance to cover these costs; however, some of the more established private driving schools can encourage recruitment by offering financial incentives to prospective applicants. 

For instance, Olympic Driving School’s incentive package covers all training, initial licensing, application, and fingerprinting fees and pays trainees the state minimum wage while they receive the 100+ hours of instructor training. Additionally, the incentive structure offers a raise upon licensure as an instructor, a completion bonus after 90 days of holding an instructor’s license, and additional raises upon licensure as a road test examiner and once able to offer one-on-one lessons to new drivers. 

To stimulate competition in the driver’s education industry, the DOL recently launched the Driver Training School Business Guidance Pilot Program, which offers guidance and training for people seeking to own and operate a private driving instruction business. However, the program does not offer any financial assistance. 

Stalled progress on Target Zero safety campaign

This young driver education and safety bill is but one avenue through which Washington State hopes to achieve Target Zero by 2030, eliminating deaths and serious injuries on its roads. Unfortunately, rather than trending toward zero, state traffic deaths are on an upward trend despite the decades-long Target Zero campaign, which is leading some lawmakers to call for reforms — or a more realistic goal. 

As part of its Target Zero efforts, the state has made some headway on traffic enforcement and education measures. However, safe streets advocates have warned that the state has neglected safety-focused street redesigns, which they see as the key ingredient to reach the goal, as the state continues to lavish investments on highway expansion.

All road users play a part in keeping the roads safe while getting where they need to go. As long as driving is the most convenient mode of travel in Washington State, many people will drive. To develop the skills and habits to prioritize safety while driving, barriers to accessing driver’s education must be brought down. This bill is set to begin a long journey of making driver’s education more accessible to Washington residents, thereby making the roads a little less dangerous. 

Hopefully, complementary safe streets investments will be on the way, as well.

Correction: This article was updated on June 16th to remove a quote mistakenly included from an on-background source and replace it from one from Mark McKechnie, the external relations director at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. We regret the error.

The post Washington State Overhauls Driver’s Education System, Focusing on Young Motorists  first appeared on The Urbanist.

“We acted responsibly.” That is the accepted sentiment among Democrats in our state, and much of the media, regarding what they did and did not do in the past legislative session. If you start from not wanting to disturb the status quo much, and not facing up to a tax system that punishes working people while enabling the wealthy to coddle their millions, while starving revenue for public services, then, yes, Governor Ferguson and Democrats in the Washington Legislature acted responsibly. 

If you consider rising housing costs, health care costs, tuition costs, child care costs and the state government’s inability to respond to and hammer down these costs, then you would say that the Governor and the Legislature acted irresponsibly. And if you consider what the Trump regime is throwing at our state, and what we should be doing to protect and reinforce our public services in the face of Trump threats and removal of federal funds, then what the Legislature did not do can only be summed up as disregarding the public interest. 

Governor Ferguson and the state Legislature could have recognized the stagnation of wages, the increase in costs for fundamental goods and services, and diminishment of benefits faced by lower income working people. The Governor and the Legislature could have tailored policies and revenue to meet this economic reality and gained the support of workers, as opposed to plaudits from political operatives. 

The overwhelming 26-point victory for Seattle’s social housing initiative which will be funded by a tax on excess compensation, that is, compensation exceeding $1 million, could have been replicated at the state level to reverse the decades-long transfer of money from the middle class to the already very wealthy and to meet social needs (of which housing is a foundation). This could have been the pathway for rebuilding support for universal shared economic benefits and rights. 

But the Legislature, warned off by Governor Ferguson, stymied itself from moving forward, instead increasing the cost of public goods for working class voters. 

What got increased? Tuition at public colleges and universities will increase 3% – that’s an added cost of $1,500 for a four-year degree at the University of Washington and $150 a year at Seattle Central Community College, while the income ceiling for the maximum college grant (which completely covers students’ tuition) was dropped from 65% of the median income to 60%. That’s less than $80,000 for a family of four. Dropping this ceiling eliminates financial help for working class and middle class families, even as tuition is rising. Of note is that this was a Democratic bill, with no Republicans supporting this rollback which penalizes working class students. 

Under Ferguson’s leadership, Democrats heaped more child care costs on struggling families. The early ECEAP program (modeled on the federal Head Start program) was completely defunded. The already enacted expansion of ECEAP for three- to five-year-old kids was delayed for four years. The co-payments for the Working Connections Child Care program for low income and working class children were increased. If you are in a $50,000 two-person household, you will end up paying over $3,000 a year for child care.  

And for the 11th year in a row, the Legislature refused to fund child care worker compensation which was voted into state law in 2005. 

For years, Senator Marcus Riccelli has advocated for universal free lunches in public schools, as a wave of states led by Minnesota implemented in 2023. Nothing really radical about that… We know hungry kids can’t pay attention and that when some get lunches and others don’t, the stigma sticks with the poor kids. The cost for universal lunches: $115 million a year. That’s peanuts in a $78 billion budget, but too much for legislators to figure out how to fund.

There is nothing responsible about these cuts to public services. And there is nothing responsible about just waiting, as a sitting target, for the Trump cuts. Just considering Apple Health, Trump will take away from our state $1 billion a year. If we don’t make that up, half a million Washingtonians will lose health coverage. Trump will cut food stamps and school lunches for working class families. He already has cut jobs in the Forest Service, the National Parks, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the list goes on and on. 

A responsible Governor and Legislature would prepare for the coming storm with progressive taxation which enables us to maintain and expand public services, for health care, for early childhood education, for higher education, for maintaining our parks, for housing for the working class.

The instruments to do so are at hand: a wealth tax, as introduced by Senator Noel Frame (D-36th, Ballard) and approved by the Senate on the last day of the session.  This would place a 5% tax on intangible assets in excess of $50 million — a minor inconvenience for the wealthy that would bring in $1.5 billion a year for public services.  

We have a tax on capital gains which exceed $270,000. The Legislature just upped this tax to 9.9% for capital gains which exceed $1 million. If the Legislature put in place a similar tax on earned income, that would generate about $1 billion, while taxing 24,000 millionaires and billionaires, three tenths of one percent (0.3%) of our state’s population. 

We have ways to Trump-proof the state of Washington. What is missing is the political will, to, for example, call a special session to protect our state from Trump and stave off draconian cuts. Finding that will would be the responsible thing to do.

Correction: An earlier draft incorrectly stated Washington’s 24,000 millionaires and billionaires composed three-tenths of the state’s population, accidentally omitting the operant “of one percent.” This has been corrected. We regret the error.

The post Op-Ed: Democrats Acted Irresponsibly, Failed to Trump-Proof Washington State in 2025 Session first appeared on The Urbanist.

The impact of the 2025 session will be felt for years to come, with a myriad of long-discussed reforms finally getting across the finish line, from tackling parking mandates and lot-splitting, to historic landmarking, condo liability, rent stabilization and holding local governments accountable for housing production. But lawmakers are already looking ahead to the next set of issues to tackle when it comes to getting homes built — policy areas where solutions have been proven to be even more intractable.

Last week, the Housing Development Consortium (HDC) celebrated its tenth-annual Affordable Housing Week, and invited Senator Emily Alvarado (D-34th, West Seattle) to talk about the progress made this year. The former Director of Seattle’s Office of Housing, Alvarado is one of the most outspoken state level policymakers on the issue of housing, and she was the architect of this year’s hard-fought rent stabilization bill.

Attendees of the HDC’s all-morning kickoff session were mostly housing finance and advocacy professionals. After offering her take on why the legislature has become so focused on the issue in recent years, Alvarado pivoted to her vision of where the legislature needs to go from here.

“I think you’ve seen that the state has recognized that it needs to step up, because we have had local governments that have completely stood in the way of us getting that the housing that we need, between restrictive zoning and permitting processes that take too long, and regulatory burdens that make it difficult, between policies that have made it so you can’t site permanent supportive housing,” Alvarado said. “Locals have made it very hard, and locals have accountability that makes it hard for them to be brave in the space of housing.”

Alvarado touted the increase in direct state investment in housing over the past decade-and-a-half, with the amount added to the state’s Housing Trust Fund averaging only around $50 million per year in 2011 compared to a $782 million investment in housing over the next two years. But she called for bolder, more out-of-the-box thinking around how to pay for the more than 1 million homes state experts say will be needed in Washington by 2044.

“I think we need to dramatically rethink the way we finance housing in America and in this state and in this city,” Alvarado said, calling for scaling up resources and trying new approaches. She alluded to HDC’s early opposition to Seattle’s social housing developer ballot measure in 2022, which seemed to stem from a fear it would sap resources and support from conventional affordable housing. By the time that a companion initiative to provide direct funding for that public developer made it onto the ballot in 2025, HDC had become a supporter. The proposition scored a 26-point victory in February.

“And say what you want, because I know HDC has had different perspectives on this,” Alvarado said. “I’m really wanting to shout out to those folks who are bringing social housing to the discussion, because even if that’s not the right way, we need to do something different for how we finance housing.”

Alvarado noted that despite the big moves the legislature made around housing both in 2023 and 2025, fewer units are being permitted right now compared to years like 2018 — largely due to high interest rates keeping privately-financed projects from moving forward.

“That private market constraint is a problem that we face, and on the nonprofit and affordable side, we’re reliant on these sources that leverage, leverage, leverage, leverage — [a] totally inefficient waste of money to leverage every source of government,” Alvarado said. “What does it look like to actually put capital out there to get the housing built that we need? And so I think we need something big and bold, whether it’s West Coast financing of housing, whether we take on the supply chain and we take on development agreements to do something, whether we use the state’s balance sheet — how are we getting to the next level of financing that’s actually going to unlock what we need?”

Senator Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia), chair of the Senate’s housing committee, told The Urbanist she’s also interested looking at using state finance capacity to ramp up public housing construction. Two years ago, Governor Jay Inslee proposed to go to the voters for approval to issue $4 billion in bonds for subsidized housing, a move that the legislature declined to advance after concerns were raised over the potential impact on the state’s credit rating.

At the county level, using bonding capacity to fund social housing is an idea that is still percolating, after the King County Council approved a motion from County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay directing the County Executive’s office to explore the idea.

Bateman also pointed to additional work the legislature could do to speed up market-rate development.

“Within the control that we do have, how can we make housing construction happen much more efficiently? We’ve done some work on permit review or permit timelines, but we still have a lot more progress on that,” Bateman said. “And then, what new emerging technologies do we have that could be a potential for really breaking through on either the construction of housing the creation of housing — like manufactured housing, the new types of housing development that they’re doing in factories that can build a house in a week.”

One of the few housing bills that didn’t advance across the finish line this year was HB 1443, which would have required cities to allow mobile dwelling units (MDUs) on all residential lots within urban growth areas. It met opposition from the Association of Washington Cities, but would have created a pathway for the creation of lower-cost alternatives to accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that are much quicker to install.

While new ideas like that will likely continue to be put forward, other legislators are focused on making sure the bills that the legislature already approved are working as intended — work that gets less attention.

“The public likes big splashy bills,” Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline), chair of the Senate’s local government committee, told The Urbanist. “With TOD, with 1110, we have done a lot of big lifts. It’s really important to actually get wins out of those. And so just continuing to monitor its implementation is probably the top priority. And then I think working on clarifying the development code to be the second priority. Maybe it’s less flashy, but that’s where I think we should focus on.”

Salomon was also the force behind SB 5156, which would have directed the state to legalize smaller, less expensive elevators in smaller residential buildings. An essential tool in making small apartment buildings more accessible, the bill ran into opposition from both firefighter groups as well as elevator constructor unions, wary of opening up the tightly controlled market around who is certified to install and maintain elevators. After a 42-6 vote in the Senate, the bill failed to advance on the House side.

He said that even though the elevator bill didn’t pass, it served to send a signal to the Code Council that states are interested in exploring standards for elevators that are more aligned with what is in place in other countries. “We’re hoping that’ll drive some change, and that there will be openness to change,” Salomon said. “We got it out of the Senate, but there was a lot of opposition from labor, from firefighters, so I intend to work with labor to see if we can come to some agreement over the interim, so that we can move the bill.”

While local governments are set to be very busy implementing the long slate of changes approved at the state level this year, legislators don’t look to be taking a break either — at least not any time soon.

The post After ‘Year of Housing 2.0’, Policymakers Eye Next Big Housing Moves first appeared on The Urbanist.

What is a shared street?

A shared street, as defined by SB 5595, has a speed limit of 10 miles per hour and allows pedestrians to walk in the center of the street. Jaywalking laws — an early project of the auto industry — no longer apply. Cars are allowed but pedestrians have the right of way.

Rather than requiring pedestrians to conform to a highly ritualized process of walking along and crossing the street at specified times and locations so as to privilege cars, SB 5595 exempts pedestrians from this process and gives them true priority. The law establishes a clear hierarchy where bicycles must yield to pedestrians, and cars must yield to bicycles.

Shared streets may be new in the United States but they are common across Europe, where they go by various names such as “woonerf” or “home zone.”

A classic European shared street or “woonerf” is narrow and curbless with a clear zone suggested by paving materials and personal items like tables, chairs, and planters along the edges. It may also include bollards and other hardscape materials that protect personal items and provide refuge for pedestrians when the occasional car needs to inch past. The physical attributes of a shared street can vary.

Don’t we already have shared streets? What about Pike Place?

If you think woonerfs (or, as they are pluralized in Dutch, “woonerven”) already exist in the United States, well, there is no law against using the term whether it is accurate or not, and American architects love to call things woonerfs, even when they are just curbless streets or worse yet… parking lots.

The things we call woonerfs in America tend to be far more car-oriented than streets where the European legal definition applies, and it has become all the rage to affix that label to any curbless street, even ones that are vastly wide with multiple lanes of traffic, or where the primary function is vehicular throughput or access to parking.

Pike Place, which is currently governed by a City of Seattle ordinance that conflicts with state law, is the closest thing we have to a shared street here. The ordinance states:

No pedestrian shall cross an arterial street other than in a crosswalk, except upon the following portions of streets within the Pike Place Market Historical District:

(1) Pike Street, Pine Street, Stewart Street and Virginia Street, west of First Avenue;

(2) Pike Place between Pike Street and Virginia Street.

Pedestrians have the right of way and may walk in the center of Pike Place but the speed limit, you may be surprised to hear, is still 20 miles per hour. Fortunately, the design and operation of the Pike Place — with textured paving, clutter at the edges, a high volume of foot traffic, a location on the fringe of the downtown street grid, and (until recently) a continuous traffic jam — keeps speeds low, and the actual speed limit isn’t posted. 

Unless it is fully pedestrianized (and not shared with cars), Pike Place is an obvious street upon which to confer shared street status. Let’s hope it gets permanently pedestrianized first.

Lord, I have seen what you have done for others…

According to Wikipedia, which has a fairly thorough but certainly not definitive article on the topic, no state in the US allows a speed limit as low as 10 mph. None, whatsoever. SB 5595 is a groundbreaking new law that other states can replicate.

Shared streets have the potential to dramatically change the way we move around cities in the state of Washington. If you have been to any European or Asian city where shared streets are common, you have experienced the difference. Residents use shared streets as an extension of their homes, cafes spill into the street, and children move about freely.

If the tech industry gets its way, our cities may soon be radically reshaped by autonomous cars. But we are much better off as a society if we create cities safe enough for autonomous kids. When we give kids greater autonomy, we improve the lives of caregivers, as well, and we improve civic life overall.

A system of streets with pedestrian priority and much lower speed limits can enable 15-minute neighborhoods, where residents are able to serve their daily needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. It can provide greater dignity for people moving around neighborhoods that lack sidewalks. It can transform school drop-off lines to a pleasant walk. It can provide a safer space for people with mobility challenges. It can reduce the sense of isolation elderly residents experience when they lose the ability to drive. It levels the playing field and addresses the imbalance between cars and everyone else.

Are American streets too wide to be shared?

Shared streets are compatible with a range of urban environments. Rue de la République in Lyon, France, shown below, is considerably wider than the Dutch woonerfs above. This street could be successful if it were fully pedestrianized but the local authorities have decided to maintain vehicular access. The granite obstacles and active pedestrian land uses along the edges encourage very slow speeds. In addition, mapping apps have been advised to route vehicular traffic around it.

Oudburg, that shared street in Ghent, Belgium, is divided roughly into thirds, with fixed structures like tables, chairs, and bike racks on either side and a clear space in the center—indicated by distinct paving—shared by pedestrians, bicycles, and cars.

Oudburg was fairly pedestrian-oriented by American standards before it was rebuilt to provide more space for non-motorized uses. This physical transformation you see above occurred in conjunction with a traffic circulation plan that eliminated vehicular through-traffic in the center of Ghent.

A successful shared street has three basic characteristics. The first two are about governance: 1) a low legal speed limit and 2) a legal right for pedestrians to occupy the entire street. Both are provided by SB 5595. The third characteristic is 3) a physical design compatible with the other two.

So, that can mean eliminating curbs but it also requires features to reduce traffic volumes, slow speeds, and provide refuge for pedestrians. The Seven Dials district in London provides an excellent example. The shared portion of the roadway is narrow. Pedestrians can cross the roadway wherever they like and can walk down the center, but there are significant areas, protected by well-spaced bollards, where pedestrians can find refuge. Trees are a bonus.

Rue Cadet in Paris, below, is a variation on the Seven Dials example. In terms of regulation, this street is pedestrian-only but allows service vehicles with no time limitations and the speed limit is set at 18.6 miles per hour (30 kilometers per hour), although actual speeds are considerably lower. This design would be suitable for a shared street. There is a well-defined but narrow shared roadway in the center, a pedestrian comfort zone protected by bollards on the left, and built-up dining areas on the right.

Note the Paris example above doesn’t provide much protection from cars on the right side. This seems to work fine in Paris but American landscape architects should be wary. Our vehicles are larger and our car culture is… well, they don’t call this ‘Murica for nuthin’ — so a simple copy-paste is not always advisable. This will be especially important for the early implementations of shared streets, when users are getting acclimated to the concept.

The Shared Streets Law enables Washington cities to move more easily to a future where cars are completely eliminated on certain streets. Note the car parking sign behind the bike parking sign on the Barcelona example below. While cars are allowed on this street, the superblock circulation plan makes it less useful as a through-route for cars. With well-designed shared streets, you don’t have to wait for property owners to decommission their driveways to create high-quality pedestrian-centered public spaces.

The Shared Streets Law has the greatest potential in residential settings, especially in places that lack sidewalks. Antwerp, Belgium is building entire networks of garden streets, one of which is shown below. These are streets governed by Belgium’s woonerf law where the focus is improving safety while adding greenery and removing impervious surfaces.

The design of American streets vary but, with some creativity, we have the potential to retrofit them using the new flexibility provided by the Shared Streets Law.

The (relatively) short and winding road

Remarkably, the Shared Streets Law passed the Washington State Legislature on the first try, and made it through the legislative process virtually unchanged from the original that I proposed to Representative Julia Reed’s office in October 2024. This law only exists because of the diligent and responsive constituent service of Rep. Julia Reed of Washington’s 36th District. Her office engages with local safe streets advocates on a regular basis. 

Senator Emily Alvarado of Washington’s 34th District was the prime sponsor of the lead bill in the Senate and together they attracted seven co-sponsors each in the House and Senate. It is notable that SB 5595 was Alvarado’s first bill to pass out of the Senate after becoming a member of that body.

Every year since 2018, the City of Seattle’s legislative agenda included a desire for greater regulatory flexibility to set lower speed limits but they never proposed a bill. However, once a draft of this bill began to circulate, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) was enthusiastic. SDOT City Traffic Engineer Venu Nemani testified in favor and Mayor Bruce Harrell lobbied behind the scenes to get Republican support. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) supported the bill and numerous advocacy organizations, like Transportation Choices Coalition and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways did, as well.

My original name for the bill was the Woonerf Ban Repeal Bill. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the folks who guided the bill through the legislature emphasized its importance as a way to create more vibrant streets around the 2026 World Cup.

While the shared streets bill was bipartisan, it lost most (but not all) of its Republican support when Representative Joe Timmons (D-42nd, Bellingham) added an amendment to allow shared streets on certain state highways that serve as “the primary roads through a central business district.”

Belgian roots

The Shared Streets Law is based on Article 22 of the Belgian traffic regulation that defines woonerfs, consisting of four sentences, translated by my friend Jan Adriaenssens: “Within erven and woonerven:

1. “Pedestrians can use the full width of the public road; and playing is also allowed.”

2. “Drivers may not endanger or obstruct pedestrians. If necessary, they must stop. Furthermore, they need to be extra careful regarding children. Pedestrians may not obstruct traffic unnecessarily.”

3. “Speed is limited to 20 km per hour.”

4. “Parking is forbidden, except where there are visual markings like different surface colors, a letter P or traffic signs allowing parking.”

Rather than setting out specific requirements for drivers and pedestrians, as in the Belgian law, SB 5595 simply exempts pedestrians from the section that describes how they need to behave in the presence of cars and replaces it with a hierarchy of priority that puts pedestrians at the top and cars at the bottom. Notably, the speed limit enabled by SB 5595 is even lower than the one defined in Belgian law (10 mph in Washington State vs. 12.4 mph in Belgium).

Existing standards

With Washington State on the cusp of being the first jurisdiction to define and legalize shared streets, one would assume an organization like WSDOT or SDOT would bear the burden of developing standards and guidance for local jurisdictions. Seattle’s right of way improvement manual, called Streets Illustrated, doesn’t include guidelines for the design of shared streets.

Fortunately, both the National Association of City Traffic Officials (NACTO) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have useful guidance already. The FHWA’s publication, Accessible Shared Streets: Notable Practices and Considerations for Accommodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities is full of useful ideas.

That publication is focused on making shared streets more navigable by people with vision impairments but it covers a range of physical attributes and considerations that benefit all users. The examples show shared roadways that are too wide and lack the kind of physical barriers like bollards that provide the most comfort for pedestrians in shared environments but the document highlights a number of useful features:

• Portal treatments like raised crossings that slow vehicles entering the shared space. Aggressive neckdowns that narrow the entrance are also useful measures.

• Signs indicating pedestrian priority. Since shared streets are new, it is especially helpful to include signage that clearly spells out the speed limit and pedestrian priority.

• Generous comfort zones on wider shared streets. Pedestrians have the right of way in every part of a shared street but not all of the shared street should be shared and, where width allows, areas should be provided where pedestrians can enjoy refuge from the shared portion of the roadway. Even the narrowest shared streets have room for a bollard or other hardscape element.

Now what?

The Shared Streets Law goes into effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session, at which point local authorities will have the freedom to create shared streets. The local authority in Seattle, for example, is the City Council.

Seattle could take a number of possible approaches. For example, the city could designate streets as shared streets only when they have physical attributes somewhat consistent with that designation, like Bell Street. This is an infrastructure-first approach that would ensure no street is shared until its physical design supports the designation.

At the other end of the spectrum, if we want to be aspirational and bold, the city could designate every non-arterial neighborhood street a shared street. We’ve done this before, in 2016, when Seattle dropped the default speed limit on non-arterial streets from 25 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour. Doing this again, except dropping the limit to 10 miles per hour and allowing pedestrians to walk in the center of the street, would be bold indeed. While it is beneficial to allow shared streets to spread far and wide, drivers and pedestrians will need a chance to get used to the new regulatory framework. The number of signs alone that would be necessary to properly mark every new shared street under this approach would be vast.

A middle path between these two extremes could be to target every green street, festival street, healthy street, and neighborhood greenway, plus places like Ballard Avenue. Many of these streets are already signed “Street Closed” to allow pedestrians to legally walk in the roadway.

Lastly, an approach that is aspirational but equity-focused, would be to designate every non-arterial neighborhood street without sidewalks as a shared street. In Seattle, these streets exist primarily in the southern part of the city and north of 85th Street. Due to the lack of sidewalks, these are shared streets already. A shared street designation could change the balance of power, at least in a regulatory sense but this would need to be followed up with actual physical interventions to ensure compliance with the lower speed limit and safety for people walking in the street.

The passage of Washington State’s Shared Streets Law marks a historic step toward reclaiming public space for people, not just cars. Cities in every corner of Washington State now have a new tool that allows them to dramatically drop speed limits, prioritize pedestrians, and enable a range of innovative street designs. Their challenge will be to use that tool to reshape neighborhoods for the better.

The post Governor Signs Washington’s First-in-the-Nation Shared Streets Law first appeared on The Urbanist.

Passage of House Bill 1837 in both chambers of the Legislature this session means that Paterson’s wish might finally come true. HB 1837 sets targets to boost Amtrak Cascades frequencies, reliability, and speed. Meanwhile, Amtrak’s soon-to-be upgraded SoDo rail yard built will host new and improved Amtrak Airo trains to one day accommodate that vision.

In 2024, only 48% of Amtrak Cascades trains arrived within the defined on-time performance window of 10 minutes. The bill lays out a long-range vision to bring that number up to 88% – and keep it there while expanding service. 

HB 1837 sets a service target of at least 14 round trips per day between Seattle and Portland and a minimum of five round trips per day between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. This would more than double service, as Cascades schedule currently tabs six daily round trips to Portland and two daily round trips between Seattle and Vancouver.

The bill does not allocate funding to guarantee these upgrades are achievable. Instead, it establishes planning and coordination priorities for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) as it manages existing intercity passenger rail investments.

According to the bill, WSDOT must integrate performance targets like speed, reliability, and emissions into all ongoing and future planning for the Amtrak Cascades line, which runs from Vancouver, British Columbia to Eugene Oregon via Western Washington’s I-5 corridor.

While in the Senate, the bill was amended to remove speed benchmarks originally set on the bill. Instead the bill calls for an independent study by the Joint Transportation Committee to review WSDOT’s service development plan to guide that benchmark setting.

Laws like these are nothing new.

In 1993, the state Legislature passed legislation setting high-speed rail goals, such as 2.5-hour trips between Seattle and Portland by the year 2000 and 150 miles-per-hour service (241 kilometers per hour) across the state by 2030. 

However, the current top speed on Amtrak Cascades is 79 mph, trip times between Seattle and Portland continue to exceed three hours, and ultra-high-speed rail dreams remain in the planning phase. The 1993 targets ended up being aspirational rather than galvanizing the state to action.

For advocates like Paterson, the passage of HB 1837 signals that long-awaited upgrades may finally be on track.

Rep. Julia Reed (D-36th, Seattle), sponsor of the bill, said the measure provides clear guidance to WSDOT while enabling the state to stay competitive for federal funding.

“The bill basically sets target goals for the Cascades service development plan, which is a federally required plan that WSDOT puts together that lays out how they plan to develop the service for the Cascades in the coming years.”

Republican obstruction could imperil plans

The Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program and other fund matching programs would be the likely source of grants to states to make improvements on their rail system. However, the Trump Administration has been much more hesitant to make transit investments, particularly in Democratic-run states.

In fact, Amtrak has already laid off roughly 20% of its top-level managers and executives in a cost-cutting move in the early days of the second Trump Administration. While the feds hope to save about $100 million in annual costs with the layoffs, it could hinder Amtrak’s expansion plans.

Local Republicans share Trump’s hesitancy to invest in transit upgrades. Sen. Curtis King (R-14th, Yakima), who voted against the bill, said he’s skeptical of the practicality and affordability of the bill, saying that it will only result in more funding needs.

“We don’t know anything about it, and to wait 10 years to find out, I have a real concern with that,” King said.

However, for Reed and supporters of the bill, this passage is an essential part of taking steps into improving the train system.

“I’m not under any illusion that we’ll just snap our fingers and this service will automatically appear,” Reed said. “It’s going to be expensive. It’s going to require state investment, but we can’t even start making those investment decisions until we hear from WSDOT what it would take to meet those goals.” 

The bill also mandates a new annual reporting requirement. By December 1 of each year, WSDOT must submit a detailed update to the Legislature on implementation progress, project performance, and any barriers encountered, such as right-of-way constraints or scheduling conflicts with freight railroads.

For Bill Moyer, executive director of Solutionary Rail, that level of accountability is key.

“We finally have a vision bill,” Moyer said. “This is not just about trains, it’s about climate, it’s about housing, it’s about mobility justice. And it’s about connecting communities throughout the corridor, not just Seattle and Portland.”

Moyer’s group helped lead the charge in advocating for HB 1837, pushing lawmakers to recognize the value of improving existing rail service as a climate-friendly and socially equitable mode of travel.

Overcoming freight obstacles

One of the issues for intercity passenger rail is that Amtrak doesn’t own most of the tracks it runs on. In Washington, that means coordination with freight rail giants like BNSF Railway. Federal law gives freight operators incredible leverage over the tracks in shares with Amtrak and other transit agencies. That means passenger trains are frequently stuck behind freight trains, throwing off Amtrak’s schedules and meaning unexpected delays for riders.

Back in 2003, BNSF agreed to work with Amtrak and WSDOT to improve the system by 2023 with a master agreement. In 2006, WSDOT released a long-range plan that outlines their plans of improving Amtrak Cascade. Yet hitting the 2003 targets has remained elusive without greater investment and coordination.

“We feel that WSDOT has not tried hard enough to work with BNSF to achieve the goals of the long-range plan,” Paterson said.

However, Paterson feels confident that growing support for a more robust interstate transit system will allow WSDOT and Amtrak to achieve the goals laid out on the bill.

HB 1837 doesn’t solve the entire freight rail issue, but it does task WSDOT with improving scheduling coordination with freight rail to reduce passenger delays. 

Complement or competition for high-speed rail plans?

For supporters of the bill, this isn’t just a technical planning measure, it’s about restoring a public good.

Sen. Marko Liias (D-21st, Edmonds), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said during final passage that HB 1837 lays the groundwork for restoring the Amtrak Cascades to its former glory.

Some critics argue that Washington should be focusing instead on a more ambitious ultra-high-speed rail project linking Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, B.C. That proposal, backed in part by Microsoft and Amazon, would build entirely new rail infrastructure aspiring to hit top speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, other rail advocates argue more incremental Cascades improvements are more quickly attainable, economical, and practical and that a brand new high-speed rail line could turn into a boondoggle.

But Reed says HB 1837 doesn’t compete with the ultra-high-speed vision, but rather complements it.

“I think it’s a false choice to say we’re either going to have intercity rail or high-speed rail,” Reed said. “I think the truth is that intercity rail is already here and needs to be improved and high-speed rail is something we have to build in the future.”

HB 1837 is now awaiting a signature by the governor. It will become law by default on May 20, unless it is vetoed.

SoDo rail yard overhaul lays groundwork for service upgrades

In a hard-hat tour earlier this month, Amtrak unveiled progress on its SoDo rail yard expansion, which was funded by Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Amtrak President Roger Harris led the tour and stressed the importance of the Seattle hub.

“The Pacific Northwest is a key priority for Amtrak, with the popular Amtrak Cascades line between Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, B.C. and points in between, as well as our Long Distance Coast Starlight and Empire Builder trains connecting the region,” Harris said in a statement. “This critical investment will help us meet growing customer demand for a new era of rail with brand new trains that will upgrade safety, reliability, and comfort.”

The nearly $300 million project will create maintenance bays to service the Amtrak Airo train sets and provide capacity for future service expansions, which will be needed to hit frequency goals. Amtrak expects to open the new facility in 2027. Airo trains are set to begin entering service on the Cascades in 2026.

Those Airo trains will be faster, bigger, and more accessible – plus they will also address a service pinch created by the deterioration of aging Horizon train cars across Amtrak’s fleet, which has hit the Cascades particularly hard. This spring, Amtrak scrambled to replace Cascade’s 26 shelved Horizon train cars with alternate Amfleet I train cars. However, those replacement cars have less passenger capacity than Horizon had offered. The new Airo sets will be a reprieve, especially at peak demand times when train capacity will be stretched. 

Beyond serving the Cascades line, the SoDo facility will also maintain other Amtrak and Sounder services that go through King Street Station, which is just north of the facility.

The post Washington Legislature Greenlights Framework for Amtrak Improvements first appeared on The Urbanist.

Senate Bill 5148, sponsored by Senator Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia) and known as the Housing Accountability Act, will add a brand new layer of oversight on the work that local cities and counties do to allow — or inhibit — housing construction.

“The intent about the Housing Accountability Act is to connect the dots between the land use actions that cities take and the outcomes that they get,” Bateman told The Urbanist. “If you have regressive land use policies and things that contribute to the overall cost of housing, making it less feasible, then you have a direct relationship to that outcome. You have the ability to change those things, and at the same time, cities will come to us and ask for infrastructure funding and housing funding… every single kind of funding that they want.”

Right now, the state’s role in implementing local Comprehensive Plans and new zoning ordinances is mostly advisory, with the Commerce Department regularly asked for guidance. However, nothing in place requires local governments to follow those recommendations. A jurisdiction can only be found out of compliance with the 1990 Growth Management Act (GMA) if an individual citizen or group files a complaint at the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB).

As it stands now, organizations like Futurewise have stepped in to fill the role of forcing local cities and counties to follow the law. Most recently Futurewise filed an appeal against the City of Mercer Island at the GMHB, alleging a failure to plan for housing that’s available for households of different income levels throughout the city’s borders, as required by House Bill 1220, which passed in 2021.

But with an appeal required against every jurisdiction to determine they’re out of compliance, two neighboring cities can have the exact same regulations in place, but only one gets held accountable by way of an appeal — an inherently inequitable process. SB 5148 is intended to level the playing field.

The act is set to create two tiers of state review of housing plans. A voluntary tier would allow cities to submit their plans and ordinances on their own accord and their own timeline — something that already happens now, by and large. But now, those plans and ordinances don’t actually take effect until the Commerce Department gives its stamp of approval. In other words, cities and counties can’t ask for Commerce’s guidance and then decide to go their own way, if the state believes their regulations aren’t aligned with what the law says.

For jurisdictions that don’t submit their plans voluntarily, the Housing Accountability Act also creates a targeted review track. Every year, the Commerce Department would be able to select up to 10 cities or counties that are not pulling their weight when it comes to allowing growth, and determine whether they’re in compliance with state law. The criteria for targeted review includes looking at whether a city is meeting its countywide growth target, whether housing production is lagging far behind other neighboring jurisdictions, when adjusted for population size, and whether the type of housing within that jurisdiction is more than 80% single-family homes that are far out of reach of median buyers.

If the state deems a city or county to be out of compliance, the clock starts on a 120-day period where a correction or revision has to occur in order to get back in compliance. If that doesn’t happen, the jurisdiction may not qualify for specific grants and loans under state programs, including the public works assistance account and funding for water pollution control assistance. But there’s another big incentive to get back in compliance — the builder’s remedy.

As long as a jurisdiction is found to be out of compliance with state housing law, that city or county can’t deny a permit application for a housing project as long as it includes a certain ratio of units dedicated as affordable housing. Builders could set aside 20% of the units as affordable housing available to households making under 60% of the area median income (AMI), or 50% of the units as workforce housing for households making below 80% of AMI, or all of the units as housing available to moderate-income households, at under 120% of AMI.

With guardrails that prevent builders from siting housing projects in critical areas, outside of the urban growth boundary, or in areas where residential uses aren’t already permitted, the provision — on paper, at least — would circumvent existing zoning and development standards and allow builders to go bigger and taller than they would otherwise be able to. Ultimately, the provision isn’t intended to be used; the aim is a nudge to get cities back into compliance before the builder’s remedy becomes an option.

California’s builder’s remedy dates back to a 1990 law, but it mainly sat unused until recently — after law professor Chris Elmendorf wrote a paper on the topic that appears to have spurred more usage. California’s law primarily served as a bargaining chip for housing developers. Virtually no builder’s remedy projects have actually been permitted as initially submitted, but the applications have often forced local governments to reckon with their own land use regulations.

“The builder’s remedy in California has been useful because it has made cities take planning for housing growth much more seriously than they otherwise would have, and it has made it easier for state housing regulators to enforce state law by giving it some teeth,” Max Dubler, Policy Manager for California YIMBY, told The Urbanist.

In 2022, when the City of Santa Monica’s housing element was found to be out of compliance by the state of California, a developer submitted a series of project applications, many of which well exceeded the local zoning allowances. The next year, after the city came back into compliance, a settlement agreement was reached with that developer, in which the original applications were suspended and projects that conformed with the city zoning code were able to move forward instead.

“There are situations in which local governments have been intransigent in blocking new housing until the developer brought up the possibility of using builder’s remedy, which focused those governments’ attention on how best to comply with state law in all of its permutations,” Dubler said.

Earlier this year, a new California state law took effect that clarified the builder’s remedy, making it easier for developers to utilize but scaling it back, requiring that projects continue to conform to existing zoning and density requirements for any underlying site. Instead, builder’s remedy projects in California now qualify for streamlined permitting and environmental review.

SB 5148 faced considerable opposition from local governments and their advocates, who argued that the state should be focused on funding badly needed affordable housing, even as subsidized affordable housing continues to be sited on a disproportionately small share of the state’s residential land.

“The assumption, or presumption I guess, is that cities won’t follow the law without the state looking over their shoulder, and we haven’t really seen any evidence that would support that,” Carl Schroeder, the Government Relations Deputy Director for the Association of Washington Cities, told the House’s housing committee earlier this spring. “We don’t control whether people come to build in our community, particularly on the lower-income side that needs subsidies and resources.”

But Bateman argues that local governments actually do have quite a bit of control over whether they are truly paving the way for housing growth within their borders.

“They’re saying that they’re innocent, that they’ve got no ability to address market factors, when in actuality, there’s a lot of things that are within their control that impact the market and what actually gets built in their communities, let alone them actually having to abide by the laws that we passed,” Bateman said.

What SB 5148 is certain to do is bring more scrutiny to just how actively cities are working to reduce those barriers — or working to keep them in place.

“I think it’s going to make a difference,” Bateman said. “It’s first of its kind in terms of how we have accountability for the housing element of the Growth Management Act land use planning. So we’ll see what happens.”

The post The Builder’s Remedy is Coming to Washington State first appeared on The Urbanist.

These two bills represent two major pillars of what is being touted as a second “Year of Housing,” following a spree of housing-related reforms in 2023, interrupted by a relative lull in 2024’s shorter legislative session.

“I’m confident when folks look back at this legislative session, they’ll call it the session of affordable housing,” Ferguson said before breaking out the pens. “I think what you’ll see today from the bills is strong bipartisan support from the legislature to get these bills to my desk, which reflects the fact that this is a statewide problem of great concern.”

Several major housing bills remain unsigned, including House Bill 1491, Washington’s sweeping transit-oriented development bill, Senate Bill 5148, which adds a brand new layer of accountability for local governments around housing permitting and zoning, and House Bill 1576, which reforms local regulations around historic preservation. Governor Ferguson has until May 20 to take action on those remaining bills.

Parking reform

Senate Bill 5184, sponsored by Senator Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia), represents one of the most comprehensive parking reform bills enacted in any US state. In any city with more than 30,000 residents, builders will be prevented from being required to add more than one off-street parking space for every two units in an apartment building, nor more than two spaces for every 1,000 square feet of commercial space.

On top of that, cities can’t require any off-street parking spaces when issuing permits for a number of specific uses, including with affordable housing, senior housing, child care facilities, smaller apartment units (below 1,200 square feet) and commercial spaces (below 3,000 square feet) and commercial spaces in mixed-use buildings.

The goal is to allow builders the full flexibility to match parking with actual expected demand, and nothing in the bill prevents property owners from building more parking than what is spelled out in those new caps and exemptions. New surface parking lots take away scarce space that can go to other uses, and parking structures can add tens of thousands of dollars for every space added — costs that have to be passed on to future tenants and business owners.

The success of SB 5184 this session caught many housing advocates by surprise. Parking issues had previously been a third rail that many legislators were wary of addressing, given the degree to which local governments have pushed back on anything that would limit their ability to manage parking. But in the end, the potential benefits outweighed the costs for many legislators.

“There’s a growing sense of support for more proactive ways to address our housing crisis. And so you’re seeing legislators on both sides be more accepting things that have been typically taboo, like modernization of our parking minimums,” Bateman told The Urbanist. “That’s something that a couple years ago would be a complete non-starter.”

Implementation of SB 5184 will happen in phases. Cities with over 50,000 residents will have a year-and-a-half to update their land use codes to comply with the bill, allowing builders to take advantage of lower minimum parking requirements by early 2027. Cities with between 30,000 and 50,000 residents will have three full years to comply.

Counties with more than 30,000 residents are also covered by the bill. This will have a relatively big impact on places like White Center, and in unincorporated Snohomish County along frequent transit routes like the Swift Blue line and the future Everett Link light rail line.

Another less-noticed bill that Governor Ferguson already signed, House Bill 1183 sponsored by Rep. Davina Duerr (D-1st, Bothell), also includes provisions around parking that impact all cities, regardless of size. When fully implemented by the end of the decade, all affordable housing projects, along with buildings constructed to passive house standards or via mass timber and modular construction will be exempt from parking requirements.

Rent stabilization

The signing of House Bill 1217, sponsored by Senator Emily Alvarado (D-34th, West Seattle), represented the culmination of years of work to end the state’s ban on rent caps, in place since 1981. After several years of failed attempts to impose a ceiling on annual rent increases, most recently in 2024 where the measure was blocked in the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee. After a series of setbacks that looked to doom the measure for yet another year, HB 1217 was approved on the final day of the legislative session, with only seven Democrats voting against it across the two legislative chambers.

The approved cap on rent hikes will vary from year to year, with the state adding an annual inflation adjustment based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) onto a base 7% limit. But no matter how high inflation rises, that cap can be no higher than 10%. That final compromise represents an increase from the initial flat 7% increase approved by the House in February, but a major barrier against exorbitant rent increases that can force tenants from their homes. And it matches similar rent stabilization policies already in place in both California and Oregon.

“This law is a good beginning. It’s long overdue, and it’s urgently needed,” Alvarado said Wednesday. “Forty percent of the people in the state of Washington are renters or manufactured homeowners, and before today, they had no protections over how high the rent can go, leading to pain and to devastating destabilization of families and communities.”

In the end, the parking reform bill and the rent stabilization represent two major areas for housing reform where Washington made major advances in 2025. But despite the significant number of measures adopted, there’s much left for legislators to do to ensure that every Washingtonian has a safe home.

“We need so many more homes in this state, a million more homes,” Alvarado said. “And we have to reform zoning and permitting and land use to make it easier to build homes of all types in all communities. We need significant public investment so we can increase the supply of truly affordable homes for folks with disabilities and for seniors on a fixed income, for working families who are locked out of home ownership. We also need tenant protections, and we need protections for homeowners to keep people out of foreclosure. We can do all things, we can do them together.”

The post Rent Stabilization, Parking Reforms Become Law in Washington first appeared on The Urbanist.

The budget process this year was particularly tricky due to an estimated $16 billion deficit over the next four years. Also complicating matters was Ferguson’s continued resistance to adding more progressive sources of revenue to the state’s coffers while refusing to make sufficient suggestions for cuts to make up the difference. 

Democrats had to go back to the drawing board two times after Ferguson complained about the amount of new taxes included in their budget proposals. While their former proposals included $21 billion and then $12 billion in new taxes over four years, their final proposal only adds around $9 billion. The new budget also contains about $2.7 billion in cuts over the next two years, with more to come in the future. 

“I think in the House, our primary message on the budget from beginning to end was that we needed to take a balanced approach,” Rep. Laurie Jinkins (D-27, Tacoma) said at a press conference at the end of the legislative session. “And if you look at the operating budget in particular, there are seven billion dollars of reductions and about eight billion, give or take, in revenue in the budget.”

Noteworthy moves during session

This legislative session will perhaps be most remembered for its housing bills, as both chambers passed the rent stabilization bill along with a host of bills to address the state’s housing supply. 

It was also largely successful for labor, who managed to avoid the state worker furloughs originally proposed by Ferguson while championing a bill providing unemployment insurance for striking workers. Labor interests also pushed to support immigrant rights with HB 1875, already signed by Ferguson, which allows for the use of paid sick leave to prepare for or participate in certain immigration proceedings. 

Also passed and signed is SB 5840, which prevents medical debt from being reported to credit bureaus, and HB 1858, which closes a fee loophole for big banks, generating over $60 million per year for housing assistance and shelter investments. Awaiting signature is HB 1213, which removes a large loophole from the Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) program and HB 1163, which institutes a gun permit to purchase requirement. 

And Ferguson received the $100 million he had demanded for a grant program to hire new police officers across the state.

The revenue question

The new revenue in the budget is largely a result of an increase on already existing taxes, including raising the state’s business and occupation (B&O) tax and introducing new sales taxes on more services such as advertising, lobbying, security, temporary staffing, and more products containing nicotine. The capital gains tax was also raised, and the budget would levy a new electric vehicle tax credit that would primarily target Tesla. 

The budget contains a new 0.1% “public safety” sales tax option for local municipalities, while failing once again to lift the property tax revenue growth cap from 1% annually. 

However, this tax package is far cry from the initial proposals from both the House and the Senate, which featured new progressive revenue proposals such as the wealth tax and a payroll expense tax similar to the JumpStart tax in Seattle. The latter proposal in particular might have assisted Seattle, as companies already paying the Seattle tax would have received a tax credit and would have been less incentivized to move out of Seattle to nearby cities like Bellevue. 

Ferguson dashed cold water on these bolder revenue proposals earlier in the session, particularly opposing the wealth tax, which he said he would veto. In tandem, Microsoft, along with other big companies in Washington including Costco, T-Mobile, and Nordstrom, embarked on a multi-billion dollar lobbying campaign against the wealth tax. These two forces were enough to dissuade lawmakers from their initial proposals.

Rian Watt, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (and board vice president at The Urbanist), maintains that progressive revenue proposals remain popular with the public.

 “Voters in November defended capital gains with a higher percentage than any elected official on the ballot, and they’ve demonstrated that when they understand where their tax dollars are going to, they are more than willing to tax the rich to pay for vital programs and services,” Watt said.

A poll run by The Seattle Times last October found 66% of respondents favored the idea of a new wealth tax. And Democratic lawmakers haven’t given up on the idea. On the last day of session, the Senate made a largely symbolic vote on a smaller version of the originally proposed wealth tax, while knowing the proposal was already dead in the House. 

Speaking about the wealth tax vote, Senate Majority Floor Leader Jamie Pedersen (D-43rd, Seattle) said, “I think this was a significant step forward and an opportunity for us to present a vision of what the world could look like in terms of better funded public schools and perhaps less regressive taxation if we were able to call on some of our most fortunate community members to contribute a higher share of their property to the general welfare.”

“I suspect that we’re going to have a second crack at the wealth tax,” said Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43rd, Seattle). “I believe that the Senate did the right thing in passing that bill because it was a message to the Executive’s office, a message […] to those of us who are in the House that this is still an active and alive proposal that we’ll be able to revisit.”

The Association of Washington Business, Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and Washington Roundtable remain unhappy with the much smaller revenue package eventually adopted by the legislature, issuing a press release entitled, “Legislature passes largest tax increase in state history.”

Business interests are not the only ones disappointed by the final budget. Watt was also skeptical about the final compromise that was reached. 

“I think this time of year, we always hear lawmakers are facing difficult choices, and what they want us to hear is that the choices are difficult. What I hear is that this is a choice,” said Watt. “And this year, lawmakers again, with the support of the governor, made the choice to turn away from tested, proven progressive revenue sources and instead balance the budget through a combination of cuts to vital services and regressive sales tax increases.”

Cuts, cuts, and more cuts

“The unfortunate reality is that the state legislature took action to prevent the amount of the harmful cuts that would be made to programs that people depend on, but we in the legislature did not find a compliant partner in the Executive’s office in that project,” said Scott, referencing Ferguson’s repeated demands for a smaller revenue package. “And so I think that we’re left with a much more bitter than bittersweet feeling about what could have been if we had executive leadership around reducing the amount of harmful austerity measures that would be implemented in this year.”

While agencies and local governments are still busily analyzing the impacts, the newly passed budget contains many painful cuts. 

Built into the budget is a long delay in the expansion of eligibility under the Fair Start for Kids Act for subsidized child care and early learning programs. Research by Dr. James Heckman found that “high quality birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% per year return on investment.” Washington’s early learning program was set to become an entitlement in 2026, and eligibility for subsidies for child care was set to expand to families with higher incomes.

While campaigning last summer, Ferguson posted the following on Facebook: “Too many Washington parents have had to quit their jobs because they can’t afford child care. It’s unacceptable. It’s hurting families, and losing our economy billions. I’ll fix it. We will reduce what families pay for child care, and expand access.”

But with the delay in the Fair Start for Kids Act expansion, Washingtonians won’t see a fix in child care affordability anytime soon. The expansions are currently delayed until after 2029.

The Abortion Access Project has been slashed by $8.5 million, which represents a 55% cut. This is in spite of the fact Washington state abortion providers have seen a 23% increase in patients since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“These cuts were not inevitable: the legislature was unable to correct the state’s regressive tax code and instead of taking bold and innovative action, they have fallen back on outdated strategies of cutting services from those who need them the most,” read the statement from Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. “This is the largest cut to abortion access in Washington’s history, coming at a time when abortion access and reproductive health are under existential threat nationwide by the Trump Administration and federal courts.”

Also included in the budget are cuts to higher education. “We will see reductions in state support for our four-year colleges and universities, reductions in support for our community and technical colleges, reduction in state financial aid  for students at independent colleges,” said Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D-34th, West Seattle). 

According to UW Impact, the state will be paying a lower share of university employee cost-of-living adjustments while also imposing an overall 1.5% cut to public universities. The University of Washington Center for Behavioral Health and Learning, which trains mental health practitioners, also only received partial funding for the next fiscal year. 

The Washington State Hospital Association released a statement saying they are “disappointed that many of the budget cuts were in health care and long-term care.” The budget does not fund Dolly Parton’s “Imagination Library” program that provides free books to children under age 5. It also fails to fully fund the successful state-owned rights of way encampment resolution program.

Even K-12 education did not receive the level of investment that seemed possible at the beginning of the session, with the House not matching the fervor of the Senate’s champions for increasing investments in education. The Washington State PTA and state K-12 education associations sent a letter expressing their disappointment in the budget outcomes. They wrote that HB 2049 “exacerbates the inequities between school districts based on ZIP code.” They also wrote that in terms of special education, “little will change in terms of delivering the services that are needed to help these students flourish.” 

“People will realize it when they’re trying to get services, and they’re going to see more wait times or delays, and we don’t know what’s coming from the federal government and we know it’s not  going to be good for access to health care for the most vulnerable,” said Senator Manka Dhingra (D-45th, Redmond). “So those are the realities when we cannot have a budget that has the money needed to run the state effectively and efficiently and look out for the most vulnerable amongst us.” 

Looking ahead

At the end of the session, Ferguson released a statement instead of speaking to reporters.

“I look forward to carefully reviewing the budgets line by line over the next few weeks,” Ferguson wrote. “When that review is complete, I will share my thoughts with the public in greater detail.”

Ferguson continued his earlier arguments that the only way to protect the state from the Trump administration’s penchant for weaponizing federal funding was to maintain the Rainy Day Fund and “to budget in a way that prepares,” which in Ferguson’s mind appears to mean adding less progressive revenue and therefore making more cuts. 

But not everyone agrees with Ferguson’s approach.

“The governor’s interest in protecting Washington against potential federal claw backs is both appropriate and totally understandable,” Watt said, “which is why it’s all the more baffling to me that he was not supportive of proven new progressive revenue sources that would have put Washington in a stronger position to invest in its own economy and its own people.”

Scott has identified four silos of funding he thinks are at particular risk from the Trump administration going forward: higher education, cash assistance programs (including Medicaid, known as Apple Care in Washington state), housing, and abortion access. He hopes to revisit the wealth tax next year to bolster investment in these four areas.

“The governor would probably be interested to know that not all of the revenue options that could have been raised were raised in the session,” Scott said. “And so, as a result, I think we’re going to have a lot to look forward to as state lawmakers next year, and I know I can’t wait to get started on filling in a number of the gaps and trying to restore funding to some of those programs that were on the chopping block this year.”

Watt is also optimistic about next year’s session.

“Most Washingtonians understand the urgency of the moment that we’re in right now, and they want their leaders to dream big and fight for big things in the state, and they didn’t get that this session,” Watt said. “And so I imagine that this will set us up for future sessions in which lawmakers have more opportunities to fight for the things that most Washingtonians want, which are great communities, well-funded programs, and services.”

The post Washington State Budget Compromise Leaves Many Hoping for More first appeared on The Urbanist.

On Wednesday, April 23, with four days before the end of the Washington state legislative session, educators gathered in Olympia to support progressive revenue and fully funding our schools as the state balances its budget. They were joined by healthcare workers, rural fireland workers, and by a group of mourners for Ayşenur Eygi, the American citizen and Seattleite killed by Israeli soldiers in September of 2024 – whose calls for an American investigation into her death the U.S. government has thus far ignored.

At the rally on the capitol steps, speakers like Senator Rebecca Saldaña and Seattle Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson spoke to the need for new progressive revenue. One educator from the rural Raymond school district, which has roughly 40 educators, reported they could lose up to half of their staff for the coming school year. Though disparate on the surface, these movements were unified in opposition to Bob Ferguson’s threat to veto the proposed wealth tax.

It is precisely this selective deafness that motivated socialist Representative Shaun Scott (D-43rd, Seattle) and a group of Seattle educators, independent of that protest, to stage a sit-in at Ferguson’s office.

Educators across the state of Washington are straining themselves to meet the needs of children struggling to navigate an often hostile and confusing political environment, to say nothing of how Covid lockdowns have affected their mental and social development. Speaking as one of those educators, I can say the situation is far from hopeless if education institutions receive the resources necessary to meet this significant and ever-evolving challenge.

However, fully funding education will only support one pillar of the state’s social foundation: children’s lives do not begin and end at school. How can I expect a student to concentrate on writing essays about poetry when they tell me they’re worried their mother “will work too hard and faint again” just to support their family? What bright future do they have to look forward to when the average price of a home exceeds the lifetime earnings of many workers? Do not even the best schools sink when built upon a social foundation of quicksand?

Educators grew fed up after Ferguson ignored pleas given through proper channels by the people who helped him into office. They wanted clarity on why the governor feels these cuts are appropriate. Ferguson is opposing the majority of his own party by threatening to block progressive revenue, ignoring former Governor Jay Inslee’s warnings against the drastic cuts Ferguson supports as the Seattle Times reports that Ferguson’s popularity is rising amongst Republicans — and plummeting among Democratic and independent voters. In an TVW interview, Senate Minority Leader John Braun (R-20th, Centralia) said that Ferguson was a “breath of fresh air.”

After the rallies on April 23rd, workers from across the state left postcards at Ferguson’s office requesting a meeting. They hoped the new executive might demonstrate his appreciation for their concerns. Instead he blew them off. In one of the final days of the 2025 session, the governor was not in Olympia but instead at a fundraising luncheon for the Housing Development Consortium in Seattle. 

That’s why three educators, along with Scott, stayed seated in the Governor’s office beyond 5pm, when security warned the office would be closing.  

Capitol security informed everyone that the governor wasn’t present and that they needed everyone to leave or they’d be cited for trespassing. 

“Could his staff come out so we could get a meeting with him, get him on the horn?” one of the educators asked, but to no avail. Scott and the educators remained in the office after a security officer notified them that they would be cited for trespassing.

Despite their threats, security did not force anyone from the office, instead entering into a dialogue and listening to their concerns (unlike the governor).

“We’re sitting,” Scott said. “We didn’t come here with weapons, we didn’t come here with the intent to disrupt. We came here with the intent to have a conversation.” 

Shane Esquibel, the governor’s interim chief of staff, soon arrived to direct Scott to the governor’s website to schedule a meeting, and said that he couldn’t guarantee one before leaving to answer a call coming in on his smart watch.

“Maybe [a meeting with the governor] would help him save him from himself in the sense that many of the cuts that are facing the people of our state are very unpopular,” Scott said after Esquibel had left. “We feel he should probably have a sense of urgency around making sure that he doesn’t go down this road. Nobody here would prefer to be here. We’re taking this action because we believe, with the session almost being done five or six days from now, many of the other alternatives have been exhausted.”

Educators couldn’t help but feel like their voices didn’t mean much next to the richest in the state, which seem to be driving the governor’s political stances.

“We’ve come down so many times this session asking to have a conversation with the governor,” an educator sitting beside Scott said. “But Brad Smith (the president of Microsoft) gets a little bit mad, can get Bob Ferguson right on the phone and say ‘hey, don’t do that,’ and he says ‘okay cool,’ because he can spend a couple million dollars to fund a PAC. We don’t have that ability, sadly. As a public school teacher, I don’t have enough money quite yet to do that.”

Scott recalled some of the recent cuts that have come before the legislature in the preceding days: child care and early learning access, clawing back benefits from the blind and disabled, delays to public pensions, and the closure of disability centers. “The question a lot of people in our state are asking is why those cuts are even being considered before even implementing a test case wealth tax at a very low level,” Scott said.

Cuts to social programs will have big impacts on working families.

“If the governor can’t meet with us, there is the expectation that he would also not be able to meet with the families who had kids that got kicked off childcare. He probably would not be able to meet with the retirees who are going to see declining pension investments in the coming years, nor with the teachers who are going to be taking delayed pay due to another bill that passed,” Scott said. “These are going to present a lot of problems to a lot of people who are never going to get an opportunity to travel down here to say anything to the governor.” 

“There are many people who are still asking for answers about these questions,” Scott added. “This [sit-in] is a mechanism to see if we can get the accountability that is being denied through other means.”

“I think it’s great that these decisions matter to you that much,” a capitol security officer said in reply. “So is the wealth tax one of your main concerns at this point?” the officer asked.

Scott answered, “Well there are a number of issues. Number one: the fact that you’re more willing to have this conversation with us, as somebody who’s going to see pension reductions, than [Ferguson] is. The second issue has to do with the fact that we’re not even considering passing a wealth tax that tests levels. It’s not about the wealth tax in and of itself, it’s about harm reduction” 

Scott went on to emphasize the seriousness of the situation while recognizing the political irony of a Democratic governor as committed to austerity budget cuts as Ferguson: “The frustration being felt among lawmakers pales in comparison to the pain that is felt among public sector employees, retirees, kids, and people depending on our institutions to work for them. In this climate, there is very little difference between the course of action being taken in this Washington and the other Washington. We see mass layoff of public employees and ransacking of the social safety net federally, and as of yet there is no distinction between that policy direction and the one that is being pursued here.”

“I wish I had answers for you,” the security officer replied.

Eventually, security decided to leave the office, and Representatives Natasha Hill (D-3rd, Spokane), Lisa Parshley (D-22nd, Olympia), and Darya Farivar (D-46th, Seattle) left the floor to join Scott and express their solidarity with his cause. 

With votes still pending on the house floor, Scott and the other legislators returned to the floor at 7pm. Hopefully, the work these and other legislators have done to provide the governor with plans to balance the budget without significant cuts to the social foundations of the state will not be squandered by a veto.

Millions of voters elected Ferguson at least in part because they believed he would protect Washington from a Republican administration in the other Washington. However, it appears the governor has more in common with the slash and burn tactics of Elon Musk and Donald Trump than the passionate and hardworking people who are trying to keep this state functioning, like Scott and the representatives who joined his demonstration.

When I was in the governor’s office just before the sit-in, a security guard said it would be impossible for Scott to obtain a meeting because “the governor has no intention of returning to Olympia.”

“Ever?” I quipped.

Now I speak seriously: If the governor still has no intention meeting with those legislators working tirelessly to hold this state together, if his priority is cozying up to the megarich, if this so called “Democrat” governor can support no cuts to highway expansions but billions taken from social services, he should never return. Would it not be better if those who feel the cracks in society’s foundations occupied his office indefinitely?

The post Op-Ed: Why Educators Staged a Sit-In in Governor Ferguson’s Office first appeared on The Urbanist.