Affordable housing effort moves to Senate
Our priority effort on affordable housing moved to the Senate Tuesday (Jan. 30).
Alex Bacon, a Seattle Central College member and president of Seattle Local 304, said all SB 6400 does would be to allow local governments to consider rent controls as one tool to cap housing costs that are pricing many state employees out of their communities.
“Housing in Washington is unaffordable for state employees and other workers,” Bacon told the Senate Financial Institutions Committee.
“It’s not just Seattle, it’s Bellingham, Vancouver, Spokane, even Ellensburg....
“The rent problem creates recruitment and retention problems for agencies like the Seattle College District.”
The high cost of housing “threatens the very viability of institutions like the Seattle district with all the turnover that we have,” Bacon said.