The 2024 Washington state legislative session begins next week, as lawmakers meet for 60 days to debate and pass legislation. Here at Fuse, we’re focused on making progress in key areas that will give all Washington families a chance to thrive.
To advance these priorities, we’ve identified a number of bills that, if enacted, would bring needed progress on everything from making Big Oil corporations pay to clean up their pollution to building enough affordable housing for everyone to have a home.
All of these bills can also be found on the Take Action page, where you can send a letter of support to your lawmakers in just a few clicks. We’ll update these as they are filed or passed and session continues, so check back regularly to see what we’re fighting for!
Expanding affordable housing across Washington
No matter how much money we have, we should all be able to live in a home we can afford. We’re fighting for rent stabilization legislation to limit yearly rent increases, so that families can stay in their homes. House Bill 2114 would limit rent increases to 5% and give families six months notice if a landlord wants to raise it by that maximum to give them time to plan and budget.
We’re also continuing our advocacy to build more affordable homes every year with a permanent funding source created by rebalancing the tax rates on the sale of multi-million dollar properties. This legislation would eliminate the real estate excise tax for property sales under $1 million, while increasing the rate on multi-million dollar property sales, raising $220 million per year for permanently affordable housing across the state.
Rebalance our upside-down tax code and fight wealth inequality
We’re going to continue the fight to make sure that Washington’s ultra-wealthy pay their share for the community services that we all rely on by supporting new approaches to taxing wealth, including Senate Bill 5486 to create the wealth tax.
We’re also working to expand the Working Families Tax Credit with House Bill 1075 to allow everyone over the age of 18 to apply for this life-changing yearly cash. Just as in 2023, we’re supporting HB 1045 to create a Guaranteed Basic Income pilot program that would help struggling working families afford rent and put food on the table.
Extending life-saving benefits to all working Washington residents
Immigrant workers who pay taxes in our state deserve to access the same kinds of unemployment insurance benefits as other workers. So we're joining with immigrant justice partners to make this right by passing House Bill 1095 to give all workers the help they need if they’re laid off by their bosses.
Stop Big Oil from price gouging Washington residents
We’re supporting legislation to hold Big Oil corporations and other polluters accountable for price gouging the people of Washington. Proposed legislation would require oil companies to report data on their profits while also creating an oversight division on oil industry pricing, empowered to investigate price-gouging, and issue fines.
Washington already regulates price gouging by natural gas and electric utilities, it’s only fair that oil producers should be subject to the same kind of oversight of their responsibility to the people of our beautiful state.
Again, all of these bills can also be found on our Take Action page, where you can send a letter of support to your lawmakers in just a few clicks:
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