In this episode, Washington State House Rep. Jessica Bateman talks about championing an ambitious and successful bill that aims to increase housing density in Washington, and the politics of housing in general.

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David Roberts

After decades of effort by urbanists, which often felt like the work of Sisyphus, housing has arrived as a political issue. Big environmental groups have come around to the idea that dense housing is a crucial climate strategy, support is growing from unions worried that their members can’t afford to live where they work, and polls show that the public is increasingly convinced that there is a housing crisis.

Over the last five years, a wave of good housing legislation has been building on the West Coast, spreading from California to Oregon and now to Washington state. In this last legislative session, some 50 housing bills were put forward in the Washington legislature and more than a half dozen passed, any one of which would have been historic.

One of the most significant bills that passed this session — and one of the biggest surprises — was House Bill 1110, which legalized so-called “missing middle” housing statewide. Every lot in the state will now be permitted to build at least two units of housing, four units when located near transit, and up to six units if some portion are set aside for low-income homeowners.

And that's just one bill. Other bills would legalize accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on all lots in the state, require municipalities to integrate climate change into their growth plans, sharply restrict local design review, and ease permitting of multi-unit residential housing. It's a feast.

The lead sponsor of HB 1110 is Rep. Jessica Bateman, who represents the capital city of Olympia. She was elected in 2021 and quickly established herself as a champion of equitable housing and a tireless organizer. Through sheer force of will, she brought together a broad coalition that was able to push the bill over the finish line, defying predictions.

Like Washington state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, who I interviewed for Volts back in 2021, Bateman is widely seen as a rising star in the legislature. I was excited to talk to her about her bill, the wave of other housing bills this session, and the broader politics of housing at the state level.

Alright, then. Representative Jessica Bateman. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.

Jessica Bateman

Thank you so much for having me.

David Roberts

I'm so excited to talk to you. I've got so much I've got so much I want to ask you about. But let's just briefly start before we get into the nuts and bolts of the bills, et cetera, maybe just tell us a little bit about you're new to the Washington legislature as of 2021. So maybe just tell us a little bit about your history and how you came to the legislature and how you picked up an interest in housing along the way.

Jessica Bateman

Well, I am new to the legislature, but I'm not new to legislative politics. I was a legislative assistant for three and a half years to former State Representative Chris Reykdal. He's now the Superintendent of Public Instruction. And before that, I came to Olympia to go to Evergreen. That's how I got involved in politics in my first campaign for I-1163. That's how I got started working as a legislative assistant, and then I became a planning commissioner for the City of Olympia working on comprehensive planning, and then I ran for City Council, was there for five years.

On city council. We dealt significantly with a growing unhoused population in Olympia and how we were going to manage and deal with that, which led me to working on permanent supportive housing and also more broadly, housing policy and how we create and build housing in Washington and the systemic barriers to doing that. We also worked on passing middle housing legislation while I was there. And when I came to the legislature, my goal was to legalize middle housing statewide. I didn't know I was going to do that in my second year as a legislator.

David Roberts

Don't get used to this heady success. I don't think it's typical.

Jessica Bateman

It was just by happenstance representative Nicole Macri had sponsored a middle housing bill for a couple of years, and she had other work that she was doing. So last year in 2022, I sponsored House Bill 1782, and then this year it was House Bill 1110.

David Roberts

Well, we're going to get into that in just a minute. So you've had your hands on housing policy directly at a municipal level, and this is kind of where the rubber hits the road with all this stuff. A slightly more general question, it seems like I and a bunch of other people I mean, not really me. I'm peripherally interested. But I know a bunch of people who have been banging their head on this wall for years. Decades of just urbanism housing in general, the dominance of cars, the lack of housing, et cetera. All this. And it seems like in the last, I don't know, call it five years, the dam has broken a little bit and things are happening.

Like, there's tons of bills passed in California recently, Oregon, and now Washington. I was looking at the list on Siteline for the listener. Sightline is a local non-profit research house. Awesome on housing. They list 50 bills related to housing that were proposed in the ledge this session. I mean, obviously not all of those passed, but it seems like housing has finally kind of roared onto the agenda. And I just wonder if you have any insight into how or why that happened and if you feel like do you have any sense that you're part of a movement, like a group of people here who are pushing this?

Or is this just like one of these things where the time was right and history turned and things changed?

Jessica Bateman

I think it's a lot of all of those things. Honestly, the reason why we were able to take action on housing this year is multifaceted. One of the core issues is that our housing crisis continues to get worse. And as it gets worse and is experienced by people across the state, different generations, people are seeing their kids living at home. People like my dad, who just retired from Boeing, and watching his youngest, my little sister, who's a nurse, not being able to get a starter home of her own like he did, build her own family. It's a lot more relatable how the housing crisis is impacting people.

And it's a kitchen table issue that people, if they're not struggling with not being able to find a first home, which in Washington, first time homeowners, can only afford a home in three counties, and they're all in eastern Washington. That was a number from session, it might have gotten worse now. They're struggling with rent prices and seeing hundreds of dollar rent increases that put them more at risk of becoming homeless. And as a result of that, they're asking questions like, why can't we have more housing? Or what can we do to stop this? And thinking about having neighbors that live in middle housing becomes less ...

There's less stigma associated with it when people see it as something that their families could benefit from. Having said that, we've had a housing crisis that has been growing for years. And we have seen those that are in housing policy have really experienced a lot of frustration watching a lot of good housing bills die over the years. And last year, 1782, my middle housing bill died. Fantastically. In a year when the housing crisis was bad then, we'd seen 15%, 20% year-over-year increases in home prices. And so last interim, I and a group of other House Democrats got together, and we're talking about what are the barriers to passing housing legislation.

And there's a number of them, but one of them was the structure and the way that we organized our committees. We had a local government committee, which is where all the zoning and land use policies went. That's how you create more housing. And then all the symptoms of not having enough housing, like tenant protections, helping folks stay where they are, keeping them housed, that was in another committee. And then you had the investment in truly affordable housing through the Husing Trust Fund in a different committee. So we worked to create one committee that was all housing, everything housing holistic view.

And I think that was integral because as you saw, I mean, if you look last year versus this year, how many housing bills made it through the process, there was a significant uptick. And I also think us talking about the connection between housing and climate. I've been working on this issue for eight years, and my very first City Council race, the environmental organizations in my community, called me a developer-shill, because I was pro- unabashedly pro-housing.

David Roberts

That's just automatic now, though. That's just like part of the landscape ...

Jessica Bateman

Totally, which is why come up with something new because that's what's been thrown at me for eight years. However, it is frustrating as someone who partners with organizations and environmental groups to have them not see that connection, which is very real. Like if we're not going to address land use, then we're not going to realistically address our climate goals in Washington state. So to see premier environmental organizations stepping up and saying land use and climate are inextricably linked, we have to address both. And also, on the other side, equity. The way that communities have excluded people by race and by economic means through single family neighborhoods is very explicit.

And so we had a coalition this year that really focused on working families, communities of color, the environment all coalescing around the one issue that really does impact all those different facets. Because even though we're going to get into a wonky conversation, I'm sure at the end of the day this is really about people. And people having an opportunity to have a home, people having stability, people having the ability to put down roots in their community, to build equity, start families, have livable, walkable neighborhoods, have a future. That's what this is about.

David Roberts

I love both sides of that answer, but I particularly love the first side since a recurring theme on this podcast is that in the spirit of Elizabeth Warren procedure matters, the structure of the bureaucracy matters, administrative capacity matters, it's boring, no one pays attention to it, but it really does matter. It really does affect results. Okay, one more general question. I think sort of ordinary people at this point have probably grokked that there's housing problem going on. But some of the questions I get are like to what extent is it a West Coast thing versus a countrywide thing?

To what extent is it an urban thing versus a statewide thing? How universal is it? Like is Washington particularly bad or is it just bad like all the other states are bad because housing policy is bad everywhere.

Jessica Bateman

I mean, the country has millions of homes behind to keep up with population growth for building and constructing housing. So it's obviously not Washington state, or West Coast specific. However, you do see the real struggle to build housing commensurate with population growth in especially those high opportunity areas where people are really going to for jobs and economic opportunity. They also can be areas that are really good at weaponizing public policy to prohibit housing from being built. And that's a real challenge, which is one of the reasons why we have to address it at the state level.

Which is why you've seen California and Oregon. Oregon was first. But Oregon, California and Washington state. I do think if there's data that shows that Washington is particularly bad in terms of our per capita construction of housing, I think we are the lowest for that.

David Roberts

No kidding. Yikes.

Jessica Bateman

So we do lead the pack, unfortunately. But on the West Coast in particular, it is nationwide, but it is also really, I think, dramatic on the West Coast, where you see so many people wanting to come here for jobs and for opportunity. And in Washington state, it's not just impacting the large cities like Spokane, Seattle, or Tacoma, that statistic earlier about first time home for first time home buyers. It's only affordable in three counties, and they're all on the east side of the state in really kind of rural, expansive counties where there's not a lot of job opportunity.

So a part of this is about where do people want to live and what systemic policies do we have that make it difficult to build housing? And that is not specific to any one city. The vast majority of cities outlaw middle housing or anything other than single family homes in the vast majority of their areas where they can build housing. That's not specific to only Washington state. Other states are also in that vein as well.

David Roberts

So let's get to middle housing then, in your bill. I want to cover this bill, and then maybe we can mention talk about a couple of the other bills briefly at the end. But just by way of introducing this subject, I have like a little 32nd rant. I feel obliged to deliver because every time I talk with a policymaker in Seattle, I talk about this. What you see in Seattle, and I think this is typical of a lot of growing cities, is you got a lot of people coming here, you've got these single family neighborhoods that are fixed in place that won't allow anything to be built.

And so all new population, basically any working class people who move here, are put in big apartment buildings along giant arterials. So what you have increasingly in Seattle is a completely two-tiered bifurcated system. You're either living in a nice house in a quiet single family neighborhood, or you're in a big apartment building on a five lane, six lane street. And it's terrible on so many levels, but it's just so grossly unjust. And it just puts this sort of economic inequality in physical form all around you. And what's missing there? What's missing between these big apartment buildings on the arterials and the quiet single family homes, is what's called middle housing.

So maybe just start by telling listeners, maybe who aren't up on these debates, what do we mean by middle housing? And then let's talk about your bill.

Jessica Bateman

Well, your observation is correct both in the description of what middle housing is and constitutes. So middle housing is everything between a single family home and an apartment or multifamily housing. So that could be a duplex. Two units that are connected, threeplex, fourplex, sixplex. My bill goes up to a sixplex. I think technically middle housing can go. I'm not sure how large they can go, but the largest that we have in my bill is up to a sixplex. The description that you gave is very apt in Seattle and the vast majority of cities, but using Seattle as an example, they only allow the construction of single family homes in over 75% of the city.

And so you have this economic and racial segregation where people that have historical wealth or connections or intergenerational wealth, they've been able and they have these homes. The median home price in Seattle is almost a million dollars. And then you have the new people that have no way of accessing homes like that to buy or to rent. And it's also about a person's health. Whether or not you get cardiovascular activity is do you live near a park? Do you feel safe to go to that park? Do you have sidewalks?

In terms of upward mobility and our investment in that from the state and education, well, so much of your lifetime income earning potential and your opportunity is based on your zip code and the people that live around you and the opportunities that are provided.

David Roberts

And also if I could just insert also I've seen it. I'm pretty sure this has been said explicitly in Seattle planning documents is that these people who live on the arterials are referred to by city planners as buffers, basically for that air pollution that the cars create and the noise pollution that the cars create. Buffers to protect the single family homeowners from that nasty pollution, which is just, like, manifestly grotesque, I think.

Jessica Bateman

Right, and our opportunity is really dependent upon that opportunity being available to others. And so I have a little sister, she's 27. I own a home. I won the lottery, I got lucky and I bought a home at just the right time. I have a fixed mortgage. I know year over year, give or take, how much that's going to increase. There's a significant amount of stability there that I want other people to have. And also, I couldn't afford my home today if I had to buy it now. As a legislator who has two jobs, so also as a city council member, having gone through that experience, we tried to pass middle housing legislation and it took us over two years, 44 public meetings, 1,200 pages of written comment, three public hearings.

And I can tell you that the way that we have these processes at the local government level, we hear from predominantly homeowners and older whiter, male homeowners that would like to maintain their property values. They have a definite stake in the status quo staying as it is. And it's by design, and it's been that way forever. And it's not embedded with equity because folks that don't live in the community yet, they're not voicing how new housing would provide them with an opportunity. You just add so many layers.

So that's why having a statewide floor for zoning is so important. It also creates stability and predictability for people that build housing so they can know statewide it's predictable, which is great. So the bill as it stands now, it went through a lot of changes in the process. It would apply to cities 20,000 or greater. Cities that are 20,000 to 75,000 would have to allow, will have to allow two units on all parcels, that allow residential construction. They would also have to allow four units near transit and four units anywhere if one unit is affordable. And that's up to 60% AMI for renters and up to 80% for a person who's going to buy the home.

David Roberts

One of the things I was wondering about, reading about this is this category of cities from 20,000 to 75,000 is that most of them what is the sort of distribution of cities here? Because I know the cap for that was lower in the previous bill and it got raised some. So you're including more cities now. And I don't have any sense of what percentage of cities or which.

Jessica Bateman

I'd have to look at the numbers. What I can say is the bill started at any city of 6,000 or greater, so it impacted more cities when it started. And that was by design. We wanted to be really ambitious at the start. The vast majority of cities in Washington are small. There are over 260 and most of them are small. So when we increase that population threshold, the implementation at 20,000, we knocked off a whole bunch of cities. But the ADU bill that passed, which we can talk about, applies to all cities. And so the thought was for these smaller communities that really pushed back on how this change in housing would impact their community and what their community felt like and what their community needed, we could argue that, okay, well, the ADUs felt they felt less opposed to that.

David Roberts

Right.

Jessica Bateman

That drives me crazy because it's not embedded in best practices or data or science.

David Roberts

Well, what in a housing policy is not ultimately like comes down to feels. There's not a lot of rational discussion around this where you look. So from 20,000 to 75,000 every lot, you can build at least two things. And if you're close to transit, four things. And if you set aside one apartment for low income housing, four things.

Jessica Bateman

Correct.

David Roberts

And then 75,000 up is all one big category?

Jessica Bateman

Yes. That's four units anywhere, six units near transit, and six units anywhere, if two are affordable.

David Roberts

Has Inslee signed it yet? It is passed the House and the Senate, and it's waiting for a signature, or has been signed?

Jessica Bateman

it's going to be signed on Monday the 8th.

David Roberts

By the time this pod is out. So when this is law, if I'm a single family homeowner anywhere in the state, in a big-ish city, I can sell my home and my lot to a developer. The developer can knock down the house and build a fourplex. That can happen anywhere in a city over 75,000?

Jessica Bateman

Correct.

David Roberts

So it's four anywhere, six close to transit, and then six with some affordability?

Jessica Bateman

Right. And then we have that third category, which is the contiguous cities, which are cities that are right up along it's kind of technical, but the largest city in a county of 275,000 or greater, so using Thurston County, Maya County, for example, the largest city is Lacey. Any smaller city that abuts up to it is a contiguous city has to allow duplexes everywhere. And so that was it started out being in the 75 category, so it would have allowed more homes and hounds near transit and anywhere if one or two were affordable. That got narrowed down in the Senate so it's just two anywhere.

David Roberts

But just for listeners, the reason this category exists is because there's all these like Seattle is surrounded by all these little communities, sort of satellite communities that are kind of part of the Seattle sort of municipal area. They're not really small towns per se.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, the thought being we want to make more housing available and abundant where people are and where people want to go. And naturally that's where economic opportunity and social opportunity exists. So Seattle being the largest city in the state, you have all of these smaller cities that are adjacent. It makes sense that they would also we want housing to be there too.

David Roberts

Well, this is huge. This seems like a genuinely huge and fundamental change. We can get into the politics of it later. But I want to touch on a couple of other aspects. What does it say about parking? Because parking is also sort of roaring onto the agenda as a thing people are starting to care about and look at and think about the negative effects of what does it say in particular about — because a lot of cities, I think listeners are familiar, a lot of cities have parking minimums. So theoretically one way a city could avoid this missing middle housing is by putting parking minimums.

So if you build four units on your lot, if you're required to put four parking spaces in, that kind of is going to eat a lot of the space and inhibit a lot of the growth. So what does it say about parking?

Jessica Bateman

Love the parking. All the feels about parking. Parking adds ... not only does it add cost to constructing homes, it also takes up in our urban areas valuable space that could otherwise be used to house a person. So we prioritize vehicles over people when we create minimum parking requirements. It also doesn't make sense because you would want the person who's building the housing to make a market-based decision about: is it marketable to build this now? Will I be able to sell it or rent it if there is no parking? They're going to be much more aligned with that objective.

David Roberts

Yeah, there's something weirdly Soviet about how we think about parking. Why should bureaucrats be picking a number out of the air and deciding that's the minimum, it's just so goofy. We don't do that with any other service, product or service.

Jessica Bateman

So much of housing policy is really about the people that are currently housed wanting things to stay the same. And when other people move here, they inevitably it's more people, it's more traffic, it's more noise, it's more interactions. And so a lot of these policies underneath them, it's really about the people that are currently here kind of wanting to buffer themselves from any kind of impact.

David Roberts

Yes, I am subscribed to my local next door, and I can tell you anytime a new apartment building is announced, anytime new housing is announced anywhere, that is the first comment. Where are people going to park?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, people get really upset about it. So the bill started out more ambitious, and it ended up you cannot have minimum parking requirements for the homes that are available near transit. So for the two units and the four units near transit, no parking minimums in the neighborhoods. We initially started with only being able to require one space per lot, and that got expanded to one space per unit. So if it's a duplex, you can require two parking spaces if it's a fourplex, four and sixplex. Six. And yeah, your guttural response is correct. That was a concession that I had to make.

They can also, if they want more parking, they can go through a process to appeal essentially to the department of commerce to say, we feel like more parking is necessary, but they have to demonstrate that it is because of some impact to public safety. We were pretty explicit in how they actually have to provide evidence for that, because, well, cars are kind of inherently dangerous anyway, so it'll be hard for them to make that case. So there is some restriction on how much they can require. It's not as much as I would have liked, but again, this is a watershed moment in terms of land use policy in Washington state, and I'm optimistic about us in the future being able to come back and make tweaks if necessary.

David Roberts

Kind of a side note, but I'm curious. A lot of these bills pivot around what is and isn't close to transit. So are there complications in identifying exactly what does and doesn't count as a transit stop, or what does and doesn't count as close to transit? Because a lot of money and a lot of rules are now hinging on that distinction?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, and I know one question came up recently about, I think, trolleys in Seattle, which was not something that we accounted for in the bill, but actually, apparently by the definition in the bill for frequent transit would qualify. So the department of commerce is going to be going through a process to answer some more of these specific questions as it relates to what constitutes the different forms of transit. It does get really technical really quickly. And we were also concerned with one thing we heard a lot was bus stops can change and that is technically true.

But we want housing near transit because the utilization of transit is predicated on density. So that's really necessary. But there's going to be some more fine tuning of specific definitions around things like whether trolleys qualify or not. We did take out ferry terminals. That was something that was taken out. I have to go back and look at the exact specific definition that we ended up with for transit, though.

David Roberts

I'm curious about how exactly this is going to interact with local municipal government. It's worth stating, does not dictate any citing or design issues. It doesn't tell local governments that they have to cite anything anywhere in particular or design anything any particular way. It's just sort of minimum requirements. But I'm sure there was and will be resistance from some local governments sort of notoriously around Seattle, like out on the islands, Mercer Island and whatever. They are enthusiasts about pulling up the drawbridge and not letting anybody else come out there, not letting anybody else live there, not letting transit come there.

So I'm wondering, are you worried about shenanigans by local governments trying to circumvent these things? For instance, I think there's an exception for environmentally sensitive land and maybe there's something about historical land. I can imagine local communities abusing those rules. Sort of like what do you foresee in terms of the push and pull between this law and local governments who for whatever reason don't want to do it?

Jessica Bateman

Right, I think it's human nature to want to keep things the way that they are. And I don't inherently have ill will towards people that think that way because it's just kind of like how people tend to operate. But I do think it's our responsibility as lawmakers to be thinking about planning for the present, but also the future. And so that's why the statewide legislation is so important, because at the local level, so much of the response is inflammatory. It's an inflammatory and I'm talking like inflammation because people get really upset and they go to their city council folks and you are the closest to the people there and you just naturally want to make them feel better.

And you also I think there's a part of this that some cities feel like the state's coming in and telling them what to do. So I do anticipate that cities will try to find creative and innovative ways to circumvent this legislation. And I'm already thinking about ways that we can ensure that cities are held accountable for their responsible, fair share of providing housing. California has created an Office of Housing Accountability and they actually review housing elements in good detail. And the Attorney General there has a way of holding folks responsible if they don't do what they're required to by state law.

So that's one thing that I'm looking at. And then also really analyzing how historic districts are deemed valid.

David Roberts

Oh my goodness, so much shenanigans there in Seattle. Please do something about that. All of Wallingford neighborhood is trying to become historical, which is just goofy.

Jessica Bateman

So we need parameters, I think on I am a fan of historic architecture. I'm a housing nerd. I'm going to Palm Springs next week and I'm going to take a tour of the mid-century modern houses ...

David Roberts

I did that very fun.

Jessica Bateman

Right? And we also know as people have weaponized SEPA, a really good environmental policy to obstruct creating more housing. They also weaponize things like historic districts to obstruct the creation of more housing and to keep their neighborhoods kind of covered in amber and staying that way for all time. So those are kind of two areas that I'm looking at.

Also, I would say that these laws will become effective in the next round of comprehensive plan updates. So it's going to be a rolling implementation based on the city's comp plan update. The largest cities going in 2024 and then they've got six months for implementation to pass their building codes. So 2024-ish for the next round, the first round of cities. So we have some time, but I'll be thinking this interim about ways that we can prevent those very things from happening.

David Roberts

And is there provisions in there about homeowners associations and their covenants and things like that? I feel like I saw something mentioned that it's ...

Jessica Bateman

So the bill applies to all future homeowners associations. So if you create and build a homeowners association, this law applies to you. It does not apply to homeowners associations retroactively because we can't change the land use of a contract that already exists that people entered into when they purchased a home.

David Roberts

Interesting.

Jessica Bateman

So there are people that argue that we can and there're really smart legal experts that tell us, no, you in fact cannot do that. Other states that have passed similar legislation have not made it apply retroactively. I would also add the bill itself, it was kind of a wing and a prayer that this bill survived this year.

David Roberts

Yes, I know. I've been reading about it.

Jessica Bateman

It came back from the dead a number of times. So I think there's an interest definitely because there was a lot of conversation about there's no secret that not having this apply to current homeowners associations. There are a number of them in Washington state.

David Roberts

Yeah, I was going to ask, do we have a sense of how common that is, how big of a swath of housing those covenants cover?

Jessica Bateman

I don't have that figure off the top of my head, but it's larger than one would assume and the equity component is really bad. I mean, if you look at some of the areas, this bill will not be applying to some of the wealthiest whitest economically.

David Roberts

Those are the places with the covenants, right? I mean, those are the places with homeowners associations.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah. So there's an interest because of this bill. I think a lot of people in the legislature are talking about, hey, what can we actually do? And how can we push the envelope and look at this issue of homeowners association? So I anticipate we'll see some legislation on that next year.

David Roberts

And is there anything in the bill along economic justice lines sort of anti-displacement? I know the one provision is you can build bigger buildings if you set aside a unit for affordable housing. Is there more all along those lines?

Jessica Bateman

So one bill that we passed a couple of years ago was House Bill 1220, which requires all cities to assess displacement risk. And Seattle has done that. You can see a map that Seattle has. And so what this bill does is it allows cities that have deemed an area to be at risk, a high risk for displacement. They can basically pause implementation for up to ten years. That law, House Bill 1220, requiring cities to do an assessment of at risk for displacement. It also requires that they have a better mapping out of the housing needed for different income bands.

We can go really into the weeds on comprehensive planning processes in Washington state, but cities have never been required before to go into detail on the different income bands of housing needs. So those two things were brand new. They just went into effect. They're in effect now, brand new. And so the question came up with the bill was, how do we protect for displacement in areas with classic examples, south Seattle, and I don't think we've answered that question thoroughly yet. I don't think cities know how. And that's what they said to us when they realized what they were going to have to do for implementation of 1220.

We don't know what to do for displacement. And they kind of looked at us like, give us money to give people money. And the state, you want to talk about the numbers? I mean, we need a million homes over the next 20 years. Half of them need to be affordable at up to 50% AMI. That is not a number that the state can budget for the Housing Trust Fund. I mean, as a comparison, just the data, the Housing Trust Fund, which is our largest bucket of funding for affordable housing in Washington, that's capital dollars for the construction of truly and meaningfully affordable housing, was created 1986.

We've built 55,000 affordable homes since then.

David Roberts

Yeah, not quite on pace for half a million.

Jessica Bateman

Right, so what that tells me, and the whole premise of House Bill 1110 and some other supply side bills, is we need to figure out sustainable and progressive funding and revenue for massively increasing our investment in truly affordable housing. And at the same time, we have to make it systematically easier to build homes of all shapes and sizes a. to respond to the market and the demand there because let's be clear, half of those homes also need to be 50% and above AMI. And we have nurses like my little sister that also can't find an affordable home for her which is not spending more than 30% of her income on housing. So we need housing all over the place and of all shapes and sizes.

And the supply side bills this year are really focused on looking at there's some obvious low hanging fruit ways that we are making it difficult, in some cases impossible to build nimble, smaller, more modest homes that are also better for our environment and also increase equity in our communities.

David Roberts

Right. And for some reason this is controversial, but I feel like it's also worth noting that just building a bunch more homes is in and of itself an affordability strategy that's when you increase supply, prices come down. This is not controversial in any other market or any other area of public policy, but for some reason it's very controversial here. But ...

Jessica Bateman

It is.

David Roberts

Housing supply is an affordability policy.

Jessica Bateman

Right. I mean, one of the other things I think about with our investment because advocates for affordable housing will rightfully say, well, you need to increase the investment in the housing trust fund. And I agree that we do. As long as we have these restrictive policies that make it really difficult and expensive to build housing, the price per unit cost that the state is investing. We'll house more people if we make it easier and cheaper and more efficient. And that's not just like me saying that as a talking point, that's really true. There's a ton of research that shows us how we make it more difficult and expensive to build housing.

But minimum parking requirements are a clear example and we get pushback the same people who demand that any new housing has to be affordable also push back on maintaining minimum parking requirements. So going back to the displacement question, we're going to have to continue to do more work because I think simply saying that we can pause implementation of building more housing is not a sufficient answer to anti-displacement.

David Roberts

Yeah, well, let me ask on that exact note, maybe this is obvious and I'm just not getting it, but why do we assume that enabling more middle housing in these areas would produce displacement? Like what's the connection there?

Jessica Bateman

The argument that we heard from a couple of cities was you're going to see land values increase and demand in these areas already exists and with the opportunity there, you're going to see people being priced out either in their rent or selling their homes and having a developer come in and build the sixplex. That is then not affordable. And I can't argue that the value will go up and we will see some tear downs happen, although tear downs of existing structures happen only when it's economically a good decision for a developer to do that. Like in Olympia, my home and my property.

The structure is the most valuable asset on the property. It would make no sense for a developer to come in and bulldoze it down unless they were going to make a significant amount to recoup those costs and then make a profit. But in some areas, like Seattle, that might happen because of the land value, cost is so high and the demand is so high. But I would also argue on the flip side that say a black family that owns a single family home, should they not be able to sell it and make that profit and make decisions about what they want to do with that investment?

David Roberts

It seems like a species of argument, which I hear a lot of, which always slightly baffles me, which is like we can't let these places get nice because then people will want them and come buy them. So the only way to protect poor people in their housing is to keep the places they live grimy and unattractive and low value. That does not seem like a viable or attractive long term solution to me. Like that can't be the way we're protecting people.

Jessica Bateman

Right. And that's what the cities, they're saying it's inherently more affordable housing, naturally occurring more affordable housing. And that by legalizing middle housing in those areas, we are going to displace the people that currently live there. And so that was the argument that we heard and the compromise was allowing for the folks, those areas to pause implementation.

David Roberts

Right. Let's talk about a couple of other bills. This one, the middle housing bill, is sort of your baby. A couple of others which you did not sponsor but voted for, which I think are at least worth noticing. The other big one I think on housing is ADU reform accessory dwelling units for people who are not nerdy on this topic, which just means you can build a nice little unit on your property, a second unit on your property and rent it out or sell it to someone. What does the ADU bill do?

Jessica Bateman

So that's House Bill 1337, sponsored by Representative Mia Gregerson, who has been fighting for this bill for years and it finally passed, which is amazing. You can build an ADU on any lot. Actually, I think two ADUs on any lot, it lifts local barriers on ADUs.

David Roberts

Any lot period in the state.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, it impacts cities smaller than the middle housing bill. Yeah. So for the cities that are included in the middle housing bill, they'll have the choice, the ADUs count towards the unit count. So unfortunately you won't be able to like in cities where fourplexes are legal, you can't do a fourplex and two ADUs, but you could do a duplex and two ADUs. The whole point, both of them, is to offer more flexibility and that is successful. So it caps impact fees and parking mandates, legalizes two per lot and sets baseline standards for minimum lot sizes and the ADU size and height.

I didn't sponsor that bill, so I don't know all of the technical details, but I do know that it works in concert with House Bill 1110.

David Roberts

Right. And then one other worth mentioning, just for my friend Mike's sake, is single staircase buildings have been legalized. This is way nerdy in the weeds for housing people, but this is something that a lot of people have really set their hearts on. Were you involved in that at all? Or could you explain the benefits of a single staircase building or why that's an issue at all?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, I wasn't involved at all, but I was thrilled to see it move forward. And I think we made some changes in the house that requires the state building code to develop recommendations for single stair buildings for up to six stories and to adopt those changes by 2026. And that's important because when you have the requirement of two staircases that takes up valuable space that could be used for housing people, it also puts limitations on where things like windows can be in terms of the architecture of the building and the design of the building. So it can make it a much more livable space by being able to utilize that square footage for something other than a staircase.

They do that in other countries and it's completely safe up to six stories. So it was really a common sense solution, I think. And I know that the people who build houses and architects and designers are very excited about it, and rightfully so.

David Roberts

One of the things that has vexed local urbanists here in Seattle and I'm sure in other cities too, is what's called design review, which is you propose a building, you come up with the plans, your building, obeys all the codes, is ready to go. And then it has to go through this design review process where a board of architects ...

Jessica Bateman

Volunteer architects.

David Roberts

Yeah, volunteer architects come and be like that brick shade is a little too dark red. I'm into more of a lighter red. And then you have to have another meeting and another meeting, and this adds millions of dollars onto the cost of building anything and takes forever and appears to benefit no one, as far as I can tell, other than the volunteer architects who get a sense of power over all the buildings.

So that ODS process has been not nuked. There was a bill that would have nuked it that didn't pass, but it's been ...

Jessica Bateman

I know, I wanted that one.

David Roberts

It's been reduced to one meeting, right? Is that what happened?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, one meeting. And it requires the local design standards to be clear and objective. And so that means subjective is what the current process is, where you have volunteer ... listen, I get it. Architects, that's what they do. That's their job. And when you're given it's like the luxury of infinite choices and the luxury. So much of this process is all centered around the people that already have housing. Like the people that are on the committee, the volunteer architects, they have homes and they're being asked like, what shade of terracotta versus brick red should it be? And when it's the most obnoxious.

It's when they're making these decisions about something that is currently a parking lot, a completely unused space that could be housing during a housing crisis. And they're taking years to do it. And so by establishing this as clear and objective and not subjective is a huge improvement. And then also by not allowing more than one public meeting is also a huge improvement. One of my observations is this is so asinine for people that are not in these circles, that don't see these processes all the time, but the people that have been doing it for years, that are on these design review or local governments, this is just how they work.

Right. And so it takes people from the outside looking in, going, this is not the best way to do things we do need.

David Roberts

Oh my god. Anybody I try to explain it to, they're like, really? That happens to every building. What?

Jessica Bateman

Right. And you can have a set list of like, here are the shades of color for a certain area. It's in a book. Like, it doesn't have to be this group of people that is really subjectively looking at this and evaluating it.

David Roberts

Right. There were a couple of other bills that reduced permitting barriers that were good. The one other bill I did want to call out is 1181, which is basically tells cities to integrate climate change into their planning. Maybe you could just tell us what that bill does.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, House Bill 1181 is sponsored by Representative Davina Duerr and it requires cities to add a climate element to their comprehensive plans, which is a mandatory planning process they have to do. It's incredibly important because it does things like have them account for how are you going to reduce vehicle miles traveled and making the connection between land use and vehicle miles traveled and where you put housing and how you have energy in your buildings and putting those things all together. It's really essential for cities to be required to do that. Some cities were already doing things like that, but it was really only certain cities and usually more progressive liberal cities.

David Roberts

Right. So this is just you have to consider that stuff. You have to take it into account.

Jessica Bateman

You have to take it into account. You have to plan for how you're going to address it.

David Roberts

Right. That's a lot of bills. A lot of pretty big bills. There are a couple of big ones that didn't pass. I think probably the most significant one that went down this year was the one about transit-oriented development, which again, for non-nerd listeners is just this idea that transit stops, transit locations are obvious areas for density. That's where you want to put a lot of people. You want a lot of development around transit stops. And a lot of times that's just prohibited by current law. I saw a lot of predictions at the beginning of the session were that that was the one that was going to pass and that your bill was going to have trouble.

And then one thing happened, and then another thing happened and somehow yours got through and this one didn't. Can you explain what that bill does and is it going to rise from the dead next time around?

Jessica Bateman

So the Transit Oriented Development Bill is sponsored by Senator Leos and it would require cities to legalize higher density housing near major transit areas and more frequent transit. The idea being like in Seattle and these high economic opportunity areas in and around transit, you want to have more housing be the standard. So things like more stories of housing being an option for multifamily housing, more.

David Roberts

Than sixplexes, presumably. Right.

Jessica Bateman

We're talking about 100, right? Yeah.

David Roberts

Big buildings.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah. They ended up using far floor area ratio in the bill, which is really talk about wonky and confusing. No offense. Sightline. Thank you. So the bill did not it made it through the Senate. And I think, honestly, that people didn't really understand what it did, which happens sometimes. And then when it got to the House, a lot of emphasis and focus was on the fine details and there became a lot of negotiation and concern and feedback, a lot of conversations about minimum affordability requirements. There continues to be a growing number of people in the Democratic Caucus in the House that really believe that you have to have affordability requirements if you're going to let developers build this higher density housing.

David Roberts

I don't want to beat the subject to death, but I have to pause there. Again, I'm sure you've been involved in these discussions. I just want to know. It sounds to me like those worries about affordability requirements were a big part of what led to the bill not passing. And I'm just like, in what world is the no bill passing better than the status quo? Because as we were saying, build a bunch of big apartment buildings around transit, it's going to lower the average housing prices. Like it is an affordability strategy. So what is the ... could you explicate that debate a little bit more so I understand what the hell is going on.

Jessica Bateman

I've heard people say that it's possible to build more affordable housing because where I come from, you know, the work that I've done, you know, I've talked with developers. I'm not an expert in the creation or construction of housing, but I tend to believe that we should make it easier to build housing of all shapes and sizes because we make it incredibly difficult, expensive to do. And we have to own that. We have to be really honest about that accept what the problem is. And then if we want truly affordable housing, we need to subsidize it, we need to pay for it because expecting someone to do that themselves, whether or not that's a noble goal, it's less likely to happen than if we make it easier to build the bare minimum.

You can't build what's not legal to build, so you can't build a seven story building if it's illegal to do so. Middle housing, you can't build a sixplex if it's not legal to do so. In my bill, there is an incentive to go higher and include affordability. That's a choice. Some non-profits, especially things organizations like Habitat for Humanity, will take advantage of that. We have folks that believe that the developers can, if we do a minimum threshold of affordability requirements, that they absolutely can do that. We should expect them to do that. And then we have folks that think that you should let the market decide.

And then some folks like me that think we should also be investing more in affordable housing and subsidizing that cost and increasing that investment. There's a lot of other tools and things that we can do to do that. Also things like Land Trust and how can we partner with communities so they can invest in some of these opportunities and create truly affordable housing with our help and assistance? At the end of the day, if the housing doesn't get built, no one gets housed. And that figure of up to a million people over the next 20 years, half needs to be truly affordable and half needs to be 50 AMI and above.

We still need housing for the 50 and above. So no housing versus housing. I mean, I can't really understand that argument either. However, what I will say is that Representative Reed was the person who worked diligently once it got to the house and she did a tremendous job trying to piece that thing together and keep it moving and ultimately was not able to do that. The other thing I would say is that 1110 was worked on much further in advance, had more time for people to process. It was introduced last year and then during interim I was meeting with people across the state, building a coalition, visiting with the AWC.

The TOD bill was relatively new for people. They didn't weren't as familiar with it. We are going to have to come back to it because if we're going to be honest with ourselves about transit and the CO2 that comes from it in Washington, I don't see how we're going to be able to address that without having TOD.

David Roberts

Yeah, people have a lot of really weird hang ups about tall buildings. I think this bill invokes a lot of those. But if you go to the Vancouver suburbs, they have rail stops and they're surrounded by tall buildings and then they sort of go out from there and it's perfectly nice tall buildings are not scary.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, we're running out of land. We have a growth management act that stipulates where we need to build new housing, which is in cities. We need to preserve our rural areas, our farms, our forest lands and ecosystems. We have to build up. And what I ask people when they're opposed to housing is where are the magical homes going to be built? Because we have to build them somewhere. We are not going to stop people from moving here or people from having children. You have to go up. That's the only option. So I'm looking forward to a future where we have abundant homes of all shapes and sizes for everyone and where people aren't afraid of taller buildings and it doesn't disrupt what they think is the character of their neighborhood.

I think the character of the neighborhood is defined by the people that are in it and a sense of community and opportunity. So I think we're in the liminal space right now where people are coming to terms with the single family home with the white picket fence and the garage and the lawn. That's not the reality for all the homes in the future like it was in 1950. And it wasn't environmentally good back then either.

David Roberts

So you're pretty confident the TOD bill will be back next time around?

Jessica Bateman

I think so. And I think there's going to be a lot of work that will be done during interim to see where we can get more support for that bill and see how to move forward.

David Roberts

And then another bill that failed was lot splitting, which maybe just very briefly explain what the significance of that is and why you think it failed.

Jessica Bateman

Oh, boy. So it was really sad that the lot splitting bill died. That was by my co-conspirator in housing Representative Barcus, and it allows for people to more easily split a lot. So, for instance, I have a good friend, single mom, she's got a lot. She's got a single family home. It's large enough. She'd like to split it and build an adu and sell it. And the process is quite cumbersome, difficult to navigate and expensive. And so this bill would make it easier for people to do that legally so they can sell the second unit.

And it's important for opportunity when we have bills, legalizing ADUs and middle housing because people will want to take advantage of those things and they want to be able to create equity and make an investment. So it makes that more difficult.

David Roberts

Right. And this, you think, will also be back, or is there some irradicable level of opposition somewhere or is this just something that also you think people need to sort of wrap their heads around?

Jessica Bateman

I think the bill will come back next year. I think that there's an entire year from now for people to kind of wrap their minds around all the bills that passed. And I think they'll become more comfortable with something like that. I think there was some concern around the overabundance of housing that might be created if lot splitting passes two. I definitely think that was a part of it.

David Roberts

Oh, right. Because if you split your lot in two, then all of a sudden you can make four units because you have two lots, right?

Jessica Bateman

Theoretically. However, there are some real constraints that are just naturally occurring. Like, you can't feasibly build more than so many units on a space because cities still have the ability to maintain and create things like setback requirements, minimum lot sizes, et cetera. So height restrictions, if they have a two story height restriction in a single family neighborhood, that would apply to a Duplex as well. So I think so much of this is making people comfortable with what is the new normal and that this is not going to result in a complete overhaul of neighborhoods, that the cranes aren't going to come in and make everything look completely different.

It's going to kind of meld seamlessly. I live in Olympia, and I live down the block as little apartments and ADUs and a school, and there's a shelter and a grocery store. It's all a part of my close knit community and it's cool.

David Roberts

And it's fine. It's all fine.

Jessica Bateman

Right. And it's going to be great.

David Roberts

The one other thing that didn't pass that I wanted to mention, because insofar as there's any sort of note of off note or note of dissent about all the great housing progress that got made this year, is that the tenant protections bill did not pass. And I think there are people in the environmental justice community saying sort of the housing supply without the tenant protections is just going to screw us again. So maybe just explain what were the tenant protections and do you think they'll be back?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah. There were two bills. One was basically a rent anti-rent gouging bill that would have given the Attorney General the authority to take people to court if they are deemed to be increasing rent at a rate that is exploiting people and rent gouging super important. That did not pass. And then we also had a bill that would cap, like an inflationary cap on how much a landlord can increase rent year over year. Neither of those bills passed. These types of bills have for years failed to move forward in the legislature. I think there's a significant skepticism amongst lawmakers that these are bills that will help solve the problem.

So I think there's a lot of work that continues to need to be done building a coalition to make that reality different, to see a different outcome.

David Roberts

Do you think they'll solve the problem? Like, is this the policy you would pick to protect sort of low income homeowners?

Jessica Bateman

I support a reasonable cap on, like, an inflationary increase like they did in Oregon. I don't think that's going to solve the problem. I think it's going to be a near term fix that will ultimately not address the underlying issue, which is a lack of supply. I haven't seen a lot of data tell me that rent control actually results in lower prices for renters. And the underlying solution is really that we need to make housing available to more people. We need housing that's abundant. We need people to have choice. There needs to be competitive options for people, which right now it's essentially a monopoly.

And there's so much of a limited supply that people are able to just the demand is so high, they're exorbitant costs. But this is going to continue for a while. So in the meantime, we will continue to have people that are getting hundreds of dollars rent increase, $1,000 rent increase. And I am terrified as a lawmaker about my constituents being evicted and not having anywhere to go, because there is literally nowhere to go. So I see that as an interim step. The rent gouging. I think that if there is an aggressive and systematic increase in rent that is deemed to be gouging, I think that the Attorney General should have the ability to investigate that and hold people accountable for that because that is happening.

But there are people that really fundamentally believe that rent control is an essential solution and without it, that we are not going to see people be protected, that people will continue to fall victim.

David Roberts

Yeah. This is a deep and long standing debate in the urbanism world, a very heated debate. Are those kind of forces fixed in place or do you think there's enough wiggle room that this has a chance next time around?

Jessica Bateman

There would need to be a significant amount of work to build a coalition and to talk with lawmakers and to make I mean, the reality is that rent control bills and rent stability bills have died year after year in the legislature. So you have to be really honest about how do you change that outcome. And if there's not enough support amongst lawmakers now, how do you change that? And you do that by talking to them, getting broader coalitions of people together to talk about what's happening now to people and what will continue to happen, and coming up with a solution that legislators can support.

The legislature is filled with groups and organizations that represent them and the people that represent the landlords and the multifamily housing associations have a very large presence in the legislature and are there every day.

David Roberts

And people who get evicted do not have a large lobbying presence.

Jessica Bateman

No, they don't.

David Roberts

Speaking of forming coalitions and changing the political balance of power and political dynamics, I got some questions about how that happened. I talked to some of your colleagues and people who are involved in and around this stuff and they all you were singing your praises along exactly this lines, which is this middle housing bill failed last time and then you did the work of building a bigger coalition. Because in the politics, from my point of view, like someone who lives in Seattle and is continuously frustrated, it just seems like NIMBYs are like, everywhere and have a lock on everything and have a lock on every process from the local level to the state level. Somehow you overcame that.

So maybe just tell us a little bit about what the modern pro-housing supply coalition looks like.

Jessica Bateman

Well, first we had the most diverse freshmen class of lawmakers arrive this year, and so ...

David Roberts

The young people are coming. The young people are coming.

Jessica Bateman

Exactly. Young people. They're closer to the issue of housing instability, insecurity. They're more likely to be renters.

David Roberts

Yeah, they're all living it.

Jessica Bateman

Right. We've got members of Color now in our caucus. That number keeps growing as well. They also are disproportionately them and their constituents are disproportionately impacted by a lack of housing. So that was huge because they ultimately really changed the dynamic towards the more progressive side of this conversation. And I made it my mission. Last year, I went out and met with people in District. I went and met with the association of Washington Cities who was very much opposed to my bill last year. I met with their Legislative Priorities Committee and said, this is why I'm passionate about this topic.

David Roberts

They ended up endorsing your bill, didn't they?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, a week before it passed.

David Roberts

Still though.

Jessica Bateman

After 25 hours of negotiating with them, they ...

David Roberts

Still kind of blew my mind, I mean, this is for listeners. This is the AWC. The association of Washington Cities.They just represent all these little, whatever, 260, all these little cities and towns around Washington. And I would say it's fair to generally characterize their past behavior as on the NIMBY-ish side of the spectrum.

Jessica Bateman

They've been opposed to legalizing middle housing statewide for years. And so last year they didn't take it really seriously in terms of negotiating. And this year we did a lot of work. Prior to session, I reached out to them, and then during session I continued to do that. But I think fundamentally, when I looked at the problem of the bill not passing last year, I thought, this bill is being talked about in such a wonky way. From a zoning perspective, we have to talk about this like it's a kitchen table issue because it is. It's impacting where people are growing up, where they're not growing up, where they're taking jobs.

If they're taking jobs, it's impacting people like my dad who contemplated postponing retirement so he could help his daughter with a home. It's impacting people's daily lives in all types of ways. And we needed to talk about it like that. And because it impacts the environment and climate change is something we've talked about, we need to be talking to environmental organizations. And because it impacts and exacerbates these inequities with opportunity we need to be talking to organizations and communities of color labor, and we also need to be talking with people that build housing.

David Roberts

Yeah. How would you characterize labor's disposition toward housing supply currently?

Jessica Bateman

Well, the Washington State Labor Council last year at their conference passed a resolution stating that they supported eliminating single family zoning.

David Roberts

Hey, well, alright. It's one of these things that I've learned when talking about unions, never to sort of assume the obvious thing, but you'd think, like, building lots more housing would be looked upon favorably by the people who build houses. But I guess you can't always assume that.

Jessica Bateman

It took them some time to come to that conclusion. The young people are coming. Like the environmental organizations that supported this bill five years ago, I don't think that would have happened. They had an influx of new, young, diverse members getting on their boards and saying, hey, climate and housing are definitely linked, and we need to be taking this seriously.

David Roberts

So you think environmental groups coming around that was significant in the politics of this?

Jessica Bateman

Oh, 100%. Absolutely. Futurewise was the premier organization that I worked with last year. It was sightline. So to have Futurewise really leading the charge with an actual dedicated lobbyist, this was one of their two priorities that their board voted on. Sierra Club, Washington Conservation Voters. Absolutely.

David Roberts

That's great.

Jessica Bateman

We have folks that are serving in the legislature that they associate the old school environmentalism as a different one than today. Today we know that dense housing is good for the environment, and it didn't used to be associated that way.

David Roberts

And population, the old school environmental, if you told them if you limit housing, you're going to limit inflow of population, they're like, exactly right. Population. People are bad, people are bad. You still hear some of that, but I think that's fading, at least in terms of their active public.

Jessica Bateman

I've been working on this issue for eight years, and I've seen a change in how environmental groups talk about this issue and who's showing up at those tables for environmental organizations. Personally, when Futurewise told me that they were making this bill one of their top two priorities, I almost cried. And I said thank you, because not only I would love your help as a lawmaker, it really helps to have an organization support your work, but also to me, it did represent a C-change in how we're talking about housing and land use, and that gives me a lot of hope for the future.

David Roberts

So you got environmentalists on board more or less. You got unions more or less on board. Even the AWC, the Association of Cities, is titularly on board. If I'm thinking about state politics, who do I identify as sort of the concentration of opposition? Is there like, an organized faction that opposes this stuff, or is it just kind of ambient NIMBY sentiment?

Jessica Bateman

Before it was the AWC, but not this year. So the entire time that I worked with them, they were negotiating in good faith in terms of wanting to eventually get to a yes if they could. And so they were not actively opposed to the bill. They were neutral, and then they got to support at the very end. We did have a lot of the old school environmentalists individually emailing legislators and saying that middle housing conflicts with preserving the environment and tree maintenance.

David Roberts

The trees, my God, it's like a trigger word for me.

Jessica Bateman

Now. Tell me about it. I was on city council for five years. So yeah, that was kind of it. And then individual cities that were members of the AWC, but not speaking for the whole association, like the city of Auburn being a prime example, they were very much opposed. But that was basically it. There was no organized those were more tangential. There was no organized group.

David Roberts

And a similar question, how would you characterize the Republican Party's disposition toward these issues? Certainly at the federal level and in the sort of face of the party is very much like, we must preserve the suburban style of life at all costs. Joe Biden is coming to force you out of your house, et cetera. But you had a Republican co-sponsor, which is somewhat brain scrambling for me. So are they split on it? How would you characterize where they're at on these issues right now?

Jessica Bateman

I would say at first that politics nationally is different than it is at the state level. And I know that's what we see in the news, and I don't watch the news, but that's what people are used to and accustomed to for their lens at the state level. I work with Republicans. I get along with Republicans. We could be on the opposite sides debating a bill, and then we go to lunch in the member cafeteria and we sit next to each other and talk about kids and pets and it's very cordial and affable. So I would say that legalizing middle housing, despite being like a free market, right aligned theory policy, that a lot of Republicans, it conflicts with their big government, the state telling cities what to do, when actually, in reality, cities are telling property owners what they can and cannot do with their properties.

So it really ...

David Roberts

These people are supposed to hate meddlesome regulations, right.

Jessica Bateman

The message of local control, which is current law, middle housing cities currently have the authority to make their own local zoning decisions, and that's called local control colloquially. Well, this is when people talk about it, they call it preempting, preemption of local control. It's very much of like the federal government coming in and the state government coming in and preempting. Well, local control doesn't have a really great history either if we want to go back in history on that. And yet that message is really hard for Republicans to get away from because that strikes a chord with them.

David Roberts

Well, also local control disproportionately empowers the aforementioned older and whiter people, which also coincidentally happen to be the sort of base of the Republican Party, so it's not the ...

Jessica Bateman

Also the Democratic Party.

David Roberts

This is not all about policy. It's very much about them having power.

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, I mean, the people who vote in elections tend to be older whiter property owners. So that could be said, it could be true of Democrats as well.

David Roberts

True.

Jessica Bateman

However, we did get some Republicans. So the fact that Representative Barcus was a co-sponsor was huge. He was my number two on the bill. He didn't just co-sponsor it. He was the number two, which is extremely significant. Actually. His office is right across the street from my house.

David Roberts

Who does he represent?

Jessica Bateman

He has a property management company and then he represent, I think it's District 2. It's like right abuts my district, south. So Lacey and Tumwater south. And so he believes fundamentally that we need to have more housing that's available and that abundant housing is a significant pathway to a solution. That's why he co sponsored the bill. And he did a tremendous amount of work outwardly, talking with people, going on interviews, podcasts, radios, really stepping out and defending this bill. And then in his own caucus, when it came to the floor, he had to describe it to his caucus members and whatever he said to them inside, that caucus was successful because we got a ton of Republicans to support the bill in the House.

David Roberts

Really?

Jessica Bateman

Yeah, it was a vote. We have 98 members.

David Roberts

So this was bipartisan in a real way, not just the, like, one rebel Republican?

Jessica Bateman

No, they voted a significant number of them voted for it on the House floor.

David Roberts

Does that extend to other housing bills? Is that a general move on housing policy? Or was there something in particular about middle housing that resonated, do you think?

Jessica Bateman

I think the middle housing bill, I mean, it was pretty amazing objectively how much support it got. I think some people voted for the bill honestly because they just saw how hard I worked it and were like, just, okay, fine, leave us alone, Jess. I hope not. I hope that they really wanted the policy, but me meddling and getting in their way might have had something to do with it. But he really cultivated a sense of what the bill was, helped them understand it. That's the other thing that people underestimate the influx of bills that we get and how the sheer number and magnitude.

So when you have someone right in the other party that is shepherding it, that's the other thing. Like throughout the whole process when I was negotiating with the AWC, I was constantly checking in with him, letting him know what was happening, where it was going. So he was attuned so when it eventually got to the House floor, he knew the bill. It wasn't like a different bill because it changed a lot. But then it went to the Senate and we didn't have a Representative Barcus in the Senate. So all the Republicans over there, that was a brand new bill to them that they didn't understand and know.

And Senator Trudeau was the sponsor in the Senate. It didn't move in the Senate. So then she was the person who shepherded it over there and did an incredible job getting that bill passed. I still don't believe that it passed. It's going to be signed on Monday and until it's signed, I still don't believe that it happened.

David Roberts

This is how I feel about the Inflation Reduction Act to this day. Is there a Republican co-sponsor for the TOD bill, for the Transit Oriented Development Bill or any of these other sort of big ones?

Jessica Bateman

I don't think that the TOD bill got a Republican co-sponsor. And a lot of the supply bills, they garnered Republican support because like the streamlining permitting process and design review, et cetera. But the TOD bill the Republicans are not shy about telling you they will not support a bill that has minimum affordability requirements in it.

David Roberts

That's just what a bizarre place to draw a line in the sand. We will not help poor people. If you try to help poor people, we're out.

Jessica Bateman

Well, they view it as and you could talk to Representative Barkus about this because he's kind of the housing lead over there. But I think from what I've heard, the best way to get more housing is to make it easier to build more housing. And there's certain things I agree with that, I think ...

David Roberts

Why not both?

Jessica Bateman

Right. There's also politics and I think there might be political reasons why they might have that position as well. I'd let them articulate that. But my point is that if we want a bill to pass, we have to figure out we have the majority in the House so we can move it on our own.

It always helps to have Republican supporters as well, if possible. So any path forward would have to figure out that in some way.

David Roberts

Yeah, I'm just so curious just from a political standpoint about because this issue does not on the merits cleanly fall along what you would think of as ideological lines. It's more of a culture war split. And I'm just so curious. But to summarize, it's not monolithic opposition to anything having to do with housing as it is on, let's say, many other public policy issues, at least it's mixed.

Jessica Bateman

In the House especially. I mean, the Republicans, they have a listserv that I subscribe to and they talked about the progress that they made on housing and they mentioned the middle housing bill. And so leadership has supported the fact that their members supported that bill and they're talking about it publicly. That's awesome to a significant degree. Yeah. But I think the Senate was a little different. We heard the floor speeches on the Senate be different than they were in the House, much more focused. I mean, Senator Fortunado in the committee, in the Housing Committee, his first question was, he said, I don't like this bill, and I don't like it because my next door neighbor might sell their property and someone might build multifamily housing on it, and that would be right next to me.

David Roberts

Well, at least he's effing honest, right? This might personally inconvenience me and reduce my property value.

Jessica Bateman

I think he also added renters might live there because then ...

David Roberts

Worse yet, imagine they might even ride bikes.

Jessica Bateman

And Representative Barcus, I looked at him and I was like, do you want to respond to that? And he said, well, first, we love renters. Thank goodness. Because I was like, I don't even know where to go with that. I mean, I was in shock. I'm newer here, and this is my first in person session. So I was a little surprised by the comment, but Representative Barcus did a really good job. But my point is, I think as younger Republicans maybe get elected or the same kind of diversity of their caucus happens, hopefully we'll see the change in attitude around what used to be a controversial issue and I think is now becoming much more mainstream and honestly supported by the average constituent.

David Roberts

Interesting. I'm a little curious. When will the middle housing take effect? I'm sort of curious. Once the aforementioned older whiter people who live in the single family neighborhood see things happening, I'm guessing at least some of them are going to go complaining to the representatives, and it will be the politics for Republicans will get complicated somewhat. So A, when will things start happening as a result of this bill? And B, are you worried at all about kind of backlash to implementation?

Jessica Bateman

I'm not worried about a backlash to implementation because of my own experience in the city of Olympia after we passed our own middle housing. It is not a fundamental change that happens overnight. And in fact, we're going to have to do more work. It's not just about legalizing these home types. It's making sure that we have the workforce to build them, which we currently don't, that we have financing products for people to buy these different types of homes that typically haven't been purchased by people. There's a ton of work that's going to have to go into incentives, like a ton of stuff, when it will be implemented.

It's going to be a rolling implementation based on cities and which counties they're in based on their comprehensive planning process updates, super wonky. I know the largest more populated counties, Snohomish, King, Pierce. They're going to be implementing in 2024. They're the next cycle. And then 2025, another group of cities, and 2026, et cetera. So it's going to be a rolling implementation. They have six months to adopt building codes, which are the codes that allow for the housing. Department of Commerce is going to be doing model ordinances for them because some of the smaller cities are like, we don't have the staff, we don't ever done this before, which isn't a hollow argument actually.

And so Department of Commerce is going to be doing a lot of work in the next year and ongoing I anticipate coming back next session and there are a lot of other things that we're going to have to address and so I'm looking forward to working on more housing legislation in the future.

David Roberts

Awesome. Okay, final question. I kept you much longer than I said I would, but I love this housing stuff. I think most of where housing policy, the rubber hits the road is the sort of interplay in local municipalities and states. But is there anything in particular that the federal government could do that would make your job substantially easier, that would make these housing reforms substantially easier? Is there one or two things you could point to?

Jessica Bateman

I mean, they could say that any federal funding, the requirement is you have to legalize, you can't make it illegal to build middle housing.

David Roberts

Right nationwide middle housing bill, that would be something.

Jessica Bateman

I mean, it's not legalizing middle housing nationwide. It would be saying if you want our money, you need to have policies that are aligned with our climate and equity goals. You can't have climate and equity policies that conflict with our goals if you want our money. And right now they've taken what was considered a proactive and progressive position of incentivizing based on making these good decisions. So much more of a carrot approach. But listen, we are not going to make progress like New York. They just went through and we're trying to be more aggressive with legalizing, more modest home types statewide and that quickly fizzled out with pressure from stakeholder groups that were opposed.

And that was a governor supported initiative. Just like last year, 1782 was a governor request legislation. We don't have time. The urgency to make sure that we have a planet that we can live on, that we have housing that's affordable for people in places where they want to live. I mean, the time was ten years ago and we need to take it really seriously and do everything. There's just really common sense things and making funding a prerequisite that you have policies that allow people to live in your cities is one of them.

David Roberts

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this super educational and interesting and heartening and thank you so much for all your work on this issue. I feel like the state is going to be better for your efforts. So, Representative Jessica Bateman. Thanks again for coming on.

Jessica Bateman

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

David Roberts

Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.

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Washington state Democrats are tackling the housing crisis

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