Updates on Washington's rent cap debate in the state legislature
Stories by Tacoma News Tribune journalists, with AI summarization
This list of stories illustrates the debate among Washington state lawmakers about capping annual rent hikes to safeguard renters while addressing fears of stifling housing supply. House Bill 1217 initially proposed a 7% cap, but Senate amendments raised the proposal to 10% plus inflation, sparking criticism from advocates who fear increased evictions.
The legislative session is scheduled to end on April 27.
Other discussions highlight landlords' concerns over maintaining profitability and critics who argue that caps could hinder new housing development. Policymakers seek solutions such as broader renter protections, housing density increases, and supply-focused reforms to stabilize the housing market.
The summary above was drafted with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists in our News division. All stories below were reported, written and edited by McClatchy journalists.
'You cannot expect people to think about opportunity — to have hope — with the ground shaking underneath them,' sponsor Sen. Yasmin Trudeau says. | Published January 13, 2025 | Read Full Story by Simone Carter
A series of rallies were scheduled throughout the day at the state Capitol on Thursday, Jan. 30. | Published January 30, 2025 | Read Full Story by Simone Carter
Opponents argue the proposal would be bad for small landlords and scare off housing developers. | Published March 11, 2025 | Read Full Story by Simone Carter
'What a landlord does is they charge what the market can bear. But Washingtonians can't bear it anymore,' said state Sen. Emily Alvarado. | Published April 11, 2025 | Read Full Story by Simone Carter
'The difference between what the House passed and what the Senate passed is so extreme,' said Michele Thomas, policy and advocacy director for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. | Published April 19, 2025 | Read Full Story by Simone Carter
This report was produced with the help of AI tools, which summarized previous stories reported and written by McClatchy journalists. It was edited by journalists in our News division.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
36 minutes ago
- Axios
Freshman wishlist: Adam Schiff vs. Trump 2.0
Sen. Adam Schiff has some advice for President Trump when attempting to demean him: Pick one nickname. Why it matters: Schiff rose to cable TV stardom as an anti-Trump foil while leading the first impeachment. "Shifty Schiff" or "Watermelon Head" learned to give as good as he got. Trump called Schiff names. Schiff ensured he was impeached — twice. "[T]he cardinal rule of nicknames is: Just stick with one," Schiff told Axios in an interview. Schiff translated his MAGA notoriety into a safe Senate seat, first battling through a tough, expensive primary. Now he's ready for round two with Trump. "I've been thrust back into a lot of that responsibility again because what he's trying to do in the second term is even worse than what he tried to do in the first term," Schiff said. Zoom out: Before Trump dominated the national conversation, Schiff considered himself a fairly nonpartisan national security expert. He endorsed Jim Mattis for Secretary of Defense in 2016 when other Democrats didn't. Schiff had hoped for another rebrand in the Senate. "I was expecting a Biden or a Harris presidency, and the ability to just focus exclusively on what positive things I could get done," he told Axios. What to watch: He is enjoying visiting redder areas of the state after spending years representing just a slice of heavily Democratic Los Angeles. He shared about one such visit in the state's northeast. "I knew I had made progress when one of the farmers looked at me and said, 'I don't know why he calls you watermelon head. You have a perfectly normal-sized head.'" But it's doubtful he'll revert back to a less partisan posture, given the direction of Trump's second term. Driving the news: Two days after our interview, Trump deployed National Guard troops to tamp down on ICE protests in Los Angeles in opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.). "This action is designed to inflame tensions, sow chaos, and escalate the situation," Schiff posted on X on Saturday. He also repeatedly called for violence to stop at protests. "Assaulting law enforcement is never ok," he posted Sunday. Zoom in: Schiff tried to pass a resolution shortly before our interview to stop the administration from stripping civil rights leader Harvey Milk's name from a Navy ship. He has demanded financial disclosures from the White House, written letters to stop DOGE from shutting down USDA offices and tried to block the repeal of EV rules. "Most of my days are spent trying to walk this line between stopping the administration from violating the law and ignoring the Constitution on the one hand," Schiff said, "and continuing to deliver for Californians..." Schiff recognizes that his clashes altered his career trajectory. "I have my brand pre-Trump and my brand post-Trump," Schiff told Axios. Between the lines: Schiff's leadership in the House's first Trump impeachment made him a mortal enemy to Trump and his allies, leading to a "weirdly personal" dynamic, Schiff said.
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Sen. Mike Lee, House conservatives demand changes to Trump's tax bill
WASHINGTON — Fiscal conservatives are demanding a number of changes to the Republican-led reconciliation package, including the elimination of some provisions that were key to getting the bill through Republicans' slim majority in the House last month. The House Freedom Caucus began circulating a memo Monday evening outlining dozens of changes to the tax package, which passed the House in a narrow 215-214 vote in late May. The bill is now being considered by the Senate, but House conservatives have made it clear they are not satisfied with the final product — and are demanding their colleagues in the upper chamber make edits. 'Through the negotiations in the House and the hard work of the President and the White House, we took significant steps to improve the reconciliation package known as 'One Big Beautiful Bill,'' the memo reads, according to a copy obtained by the Deseret News. 'However, there remain substantial concerns and a great deal of misinformation circulating about the bill. … Below, please find specific recommendations for the Senate to deliver a product we can pass in the House.' At the top of the list — underneath a headline that reads: 'The Senate Needs to Improve the House OBBB' — the fiscal conservatives are demanding Senate Republicans find deeper spending cuts than those included in the current resolution. The tax reconciliation package currently allows for up to $3.7 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. However, the bill includes only $1.3 trillion in spending cuts to offset those costs, raising concerns among Republicans that the package will raise the national debt. While GOP leaders, including Utah Rep. Blake Moore, argue the report doesn't factor in the economic growth that will likely come from the tax cuts tucked into the package, members of the Freedom Caucus say 'savings are backloaded and are subject to the whims of a future Congress, heavily affected by future policy changes and tax extensions, and unlikely to fully occur.' Notably, the conservatives are also demanding the Senate scale back an agreed-upon increase to federal deductions for state and local taxes paid, also known as SALT. Republican leaders offered to increase the current deduction cap to $40,000 — up from the current $10,000 limit — for individuals who make $500,000 or less a year. That cap would then increase by 1% every year over the next decade and remain permanent after that period. The policy mostly affects high-tax states, but the changes were made to appease a group of blue-state Republicans who repeatedly threatened final passage if a higher deduction was not included. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have pushed to undo that deal, arguing it 'disproportionately benefits high-income households in high tax (Democrat-run) states,' according to the memo. That's unlikely to go over well with the faction of New York Republicans who spent months negotiating a SALT increase. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who helped lead that charge, has warned for weeks that if the Senate changes the numbers, he and his fellow New York Republicans would reject the bill. 'Cool. Good luck with that,' Lawler said in a post on X shortly after the memo was released. The memo also urges Senate Republicans to 'hold the line' on certain provisions included in the House version, including language that would fully repeal green energy credits passed by the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act. 'Hold the line on the House OBBB reforms to significantly strengthen the rollback of IRA subsidies for wind and solar to end during President Trump's term — otherwise they will inevitability be renewed as in the past,' the memo states, 'and, by that point, the grid will become generally unreliable with no quick fixes to inevitable widespread unaffordability and power outages.' That demand comes in response to a push by some Republicans in the Senate — including Utah Sen. John Curtis — who want to preserve some of the clean energy tax incentives in the IRA, arguing they are crucial for Trump's agenda to remain energy independent. Conservatives are similarly pushing for deeper cuts to Medicaid benefits, outlining specific changes that would 'protect the most vulnerable' while addressing 'money laundering, fraud, and abuse.' Suggested language would be to implement specific definitions to crack down on Medicaid coverage for undocumented immigrants as well as stricter work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The demands come as Senate Republicans have hinted at major changes to the House-passed reconciliation bill — with some suggesting to ease the deep spending cuts already passed while others have argued the package does not go far enough. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has been at the forefront of demanding those changes, telling the Deseret News that 'everyone understands there are going to be some modifications made to the House bill.' 'Nobody believes that the House bill, unadorned, unmodified, is going to pass,' he said. For example, Lee supports maintaining the full repeal of the IRA green energy credits as well as cracking down on illegal immigrants relying on Medicaid. Meanwhile, the president is telling the Senate to 'make the changes they want' — sending mixed messages as Republicans consider alterations to the budget framework advancing policies on the border, energy, national defense and tax reform. Some of the hard-to-convince lawmakers hope their stubbornness will ward off any of their Senate colleagues from making drastic changes, noting the drawn-out process in the House should deter them from doing so. 'I think after seeing how painful of a process this is and how difficult it is to get anything through this side, I think that will send a strong message in the Senate that you can't really change it,' Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the Freedom Caucus, told the Deseret News last month. Contributing: Brigham Tomco
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
RFK Jr ousts entire US vaccine panel over alleged conflicts
US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced he was dismissing all current members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, accusing them of conflicts of interest -- his latest salvo against the nation's immunization policies. The removal of all 17 experts of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and an official press release. Kennedy, who has spent two decades promoting vaccine misinformation, cast the move as essential to restoring public trust, claiming the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies. "Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda," he said in a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services. "The public must know that unbiased science -- evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest — guides the recommendations of our health agencies." In his op-ed, Kennedy claimed the panel was "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest" and had become "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine." He added that new members were being considered to replace those ousted -- all of whom were appointed under former president Joe Biden. ACIP members are chosen for their recognized expertise and are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest. "RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are taking a wrecking ball to the programs that keep Americans safe and healthy," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in response. "Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion," Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who expressed concern about Kennedy's track record during his Senate nomination but ultimately voted in his favor, wrote on X. "I've just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I'll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case." - 'Silencing expertise' - The decision drew sharp criticism from Paul Offit, a pediatrician and leading expert on virology and immunology who served on the panel from 1998 to 2003. "He believes that anybody who speaks well of vaccines, or recommends vaccines, must be deeply in the pocket of industry," Offit told AFP. "He's fixing a problem that doesn't exist." "We are witnessing an escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines," added Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. Once a celebrated environmental lawyer, Kennedy pivoted from the mid-2000s to public health -- chairing a nonprofit that discouraged routine childhood immunizations and amplified false claims, including the long-debunked theory that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. Since taking office, he has curtailed access to Covid-19 shots and continued to raise fears around the MMR vaccine -- even as the United States faces its worst measles outbreak in years, with three reported deaths and more than 1,100 confirmed cases. Experts warn the true case count is likely far higher. "How can this country have confidence that the people RFK Jr. wants on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are people we can trust?" Offit asked. He recalled that during US President Donald Trump's first term, several states formed independent vaccine advisory panels after the administration pressured federal health agencies to prematurely approve Covid-19 vaccines ahead of the 2020 election. That kind of fragmentation, Offit warned, could happen again. ACIP is scheduled to hold its next meeting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from June 25 to June 27. Vaccines for anthrax, Covid-19, human papillomavirus, influenza, Lyme disease, respiratory syncytial virus, and more are on the agenda. ia/jgc
