What are local leaders doing to address housing affordability? Public invited to solutions forum
A coalition of Thurston County organizations is hosting a public forum on Jan. 15 aimed at making the concept of homelessness less complicated, and to try and come up with solutions to the ongoing housing crisis.
The forum, called “Housing Instability: A Solutions Forum,” will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15, at the Capital Event Center at ESD 113, 6005 Tyee Drive SW in Tumwater.
The event is being put on by the Thurston County League of Women Voters, the local NAACP chapter and Olympia for All. Dave Toler, chair of Olympia for All, said the event will help address the missing link between homelessness and housing affordability and stability.
Toler said housing instability is the precursor to many other social ills in the community, including homelessness, employment instability and mental health.
“The research shows that housing instability is a real strong risk indicator for all of those, and plainly put, we’re at a record level of evictions that this state and this county, Thurston County, have never seen before,” Toler said.
According to data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Eviction Research Network, nine Washington counties, including Thurston, broke eviction filing records in 2024.
Washington State eviction filings show that as of July 2023, the state exceeded the monthly historical average. October 2023 marked the highest monthly count of over 2,000 cases per month. Since then, the state has filed more than 1,900 cases per month.
Clark County had the highest eviction rate of 3.4 filings per 100 renters, according to the research. It was followed by Pierce and Spokane at 2.9%, then Thurston at 2.4%.
From September 2023 to August 2024 in King County, there were 7,362 eviction filings and 401,313 renters. Thurston County saw 916 filings in the same period, with 37,865 renters.
Toler also cited data from the Thurston Regional Planning Council that shows 54% of Thurston County renters are experiencing housing instability. He defines that as spending more than 30% of monthly income on rent.
That number is up from 44% of cost burdened renters in 2021. That same year, the average renter in Olympia was paying more than 45% of their monthly income toward rent.
“When you’re constantly stressed about whether you have a home or not, you’re not in the best place,” Toler said. “And so that’s why we’re focusing on housing instability, because we feel like it’s been something that really hasn’t been looked at.”
He said they also will address the question of, what can local leaders do to help reduce housing instability in our community?
Toler said there’s not one solution, but a basket of solutions. From Olympia for All’s perspective, Toler said social housing — affordable housing that is managed and provided by the government or nonprofit organization — is an important part of that basket of solutions.
He said the State Legislature has been particularly focused on market approaches, and considering the data on housing instability keeps getting worse, it’s time to see if the way the problem is being approached is actually working.
“We probably do need more housing,” Toler said. “But the question is, will it alone solve this problem?”
A policy-level perspective
Jessica Bateman, senator-elect for the 22nd Legislative District, said going into the 2025 legislative session, housing continues to be one of the largest issues Washington residents face.
Bateman said the Crosscut/Elway poll, a regular survey of Washington voters, showed that 68% of people polled said they support limiting the amount rent can be increased per year. Also, 63% said they support funding for more affordable housing.
“I like to say we had the year of housing in 2023 where we passed a lot of really great legislation to help alleviate this burden, but it was really just a step in the right direction,” Bateman said. “We have to have a decade of really focusing on and emphasizing addressing our housing shortage.”
Bateman said there’s currently a shortage in Washington of about 150,000 to 250,000 homes, and a million have to be built in the next 20 years. She said to do that, the state has to make it much easier, more cost effective and more efficient to build housing of all shapes and sizes.
Bateman is starting her new role as a Senator for the 22nd District this week, and she said she’s looking forward to continuing to focus on housing solutions.
“We cannot afford to have an incremental approach to addressing it,” she said. “We have so many residents in Washington that are spending a third to half of their income on their housing costs, and it’s getting worse every year.”
Bateman is planning to introduce a number of bills to the legislature to help tackle housing instability. The first is Senate Bill 5148, called the Housing Accountability Act.
She said the bill would help ensure it’s legal to build middle housing, accessory dwelling units, co-living spaces and permanent supportive housing anywhere. On top of that, it would require cities to analyze these types of housing and ensure development regulations make it feasible to construct more types of housing.
Bateman said a big hangup on getting different types of housing built is parking requirements and lot sizes. She’s planning to introduce the Parking Reform and Modernization Act to help address that issue.
“Most cities in Washington still require a certain number of parking spaces to be built before you can actually build the housing or retail or commercial,” she said. “So if I want to build an ADU on my property, as required by law that it’s legal to do that, cities can have minimum parking requirements.”
She said if you can’t build the parking space, you can’t have an ADU, and that’s not taking full advantage of limited infill space.
“We’re not using that efficiently, and we’re requiring parking when it might not even be necessary,” she said. “As an example of that, the City of Olympia is doing it well in their downtown for multi-family housing apartments, it is not required to have a parking space.”
Bateman said an example of the same concept not being done well is the Capital Mall in Olympia. It’s an area the city is looking to address through the Capital Mall Triangle Subarea Plan.
She said if you go to the mall now, 90% of the parking spaces are vacant. If developers were to propose building more in that space today, it wouldn’t meet the minimum parking requirements and they would have to add more spaces.
“This bill is really aimed at allowing for flexibility and some common sense and utilizing space efficiently,” Bateman said. “We need to make sure that we’re allowing for all of these homes of all shapes and sizes. And one way that it can make projects completely stop in their tracks is by requiring a percentage of parking spaces.”
Craig Chance with the Housing Authority of Thurston County said he’s hoping folks come to Wednesday’s event and get out of it an appreciation for building homes for mixed incomes, and that folks become more accepting of different types of housing in their neighborhoods.
He said he also encourages people to reach out to their representatives in Congress to emphasize the importance of getting federal housing bills passed that can provide housing vouchers and subsidies.
“We preach to the choir, but their staff always reminds us, when they hear from the public and they hear about success stories, they relay those stories to their more reluctant colleagues, and that helps get full and even sometimes greater funding for the program,” he said. “So it’s a little bit of a hope that people have appreciation for the mixed income model and also that people are willing to advocate for those voucher subsidy dollars.”
The forum on Wednesday will include a question and answer session at the end. Toler said it will be a two-way conversation between community members and panelists.
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