Legislative Update Week 3: Help Keep All of Our Bills Alive!
Here with your weekly dispatch from Olympia! Grab your morning coffee and let’s dig in. This week lawmakers were busy in committee meetings, hearing gobs and gobs of bills. This is a pivotal point for how bills take shape, and it will soon be time for decisions on which ones will keep moving along the legislative process. All of our bills are currently on the move so I’ve got the nitty gritty for you below.
Still getting settled into the important bills for 2026? I hopped on a livestream with our Executive Director Alex and resident-legal-brain, Tim, for a conversation on HB 2266 – removing barriers to STEP housing. Catch the recap of that conversation, and learn more about how we’re fighting for increased access to emergency shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing types.
STEP Housing – HB 2266
Our priority bill to remove barriers to STEP housing is moving in both the House and Senate. HB 2266 had its first committee hearing last week, shoutout to the more than 1,000 folks who signed in PRO! It’s now scheduled for a vote on Tuesday – let’s take this momentum straight to the committee members’ inboxes, and email them to vote YES on HB 2266!
And the Senate Committee on Housing will be hearing its version, SB 6069, on Wednesday. Flex your clicking fingers, smash that button, and sign in PRO. Then forward this email to a friend and ask them to sign in PRO by Wednesday morning!
Encouraging Middle Housing
The House Committee on Housing is getting a lot of attention from us right now-it’s not only the home committee for STEP housing, but for a number of important bills that will make it easier to build more affordable middle housing in more places.
HB 2228 / SB 6001 Scissor stairs – This is another of our priorities that has a version in both chambers. HB 2228 is the furthest along, having been voted out of its committee! 
Next up, we’ll wait for it to move through Rules, and then on to the full House floor. The Senate companion, SB 6001, had its first hearing last week so we’ll be watching for a vote
HB 2304 Condo Liability – For its first hearing in the House, this bill got over 400 Sign-ins in support, which is a great way to kick things off. Pats on the back all around and hats off to our partners at Housing Development Consortium for their organizing on this bill. Your next step is to email the committee to bring this for a vote, and vote YES!
Balancing Needs in Rural Areas
To round out our Growing Together campaign updates for the week, we’ve got LAMIRDs and ADU’s – we love our acronyms in land use planning.
HB 1345 to allow rural ADU’s has been revived from prior sessions, been voted through the House chamber, and will be picked up in the Senate. Futurewise has worked carefully over the past few sessions to address concerns of development in rural areas, while still building towards solutions for housing options in rural communities. This is a difficult issue, but this bill strikes a good balance of these needs.
First, HB 2269 to allow middle housing in LAMIRDs (limited areas of more intensive rural development). This bill was voted out of committee and will be on its way to Rules.
Did you miss our first policy roundtable and have some FOMO about it? I got you covered- you can watch the conversation here!
Not only do we break down how you can get involved in important issues this year, but we also took it back to some major recent wins for housing (HB 1220 might ring a bell!) and what these laws look like now that they’re being implemented in comprehensive plans all across Washington.
And mark your calendars (and RSVP here to get reminded on Facebook) for next week’s discussion on how we can support more middle housing. Hint: Washington state’s building codes are an important place we can pay attention and advocate for regulations that help us build more housing types, for all income levels, in all neighborhoods. It’s wonky but that’s why we’ve got Markus Johnson from Maker’s Architecture and Urban Design on deck to talk through these bills with us!
It’s great to be back in the (sometimes chaotic) flow of session with you, thank you for showing up, for paying attention, and for taking action – your efforts really do have an impact on the decisions our legislators make!
Onward,
Marcella
