Inslee’s housing and climate proposals

From the Governor's blog:

Gov. Jay Inslee's 2022 supplemental budget proposes significant funding to reduce poverty, increase housing and resources for homeless individuals, expand K-12 learning supports, invest in clean transportation and green economy, decarbonize buildings, and protect salmon habitat.

The governor released his budget in Olympia on Thursday and was joined by David Schumacher, director of the state Office of Financial Management. The full budget presentation followed three events earlier in the week, with new salmon investments, climate strategy investments and homelessness funding.

The climate strategy includes lots of electrical decarbonization efforts, including a $1,000 tax credit rebate for e-bikes, and up to $7,500 for electric cars. There's also an unspecified investment in clean bus technology, and improvements to transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure."

On the housing front, there's $800M to build new affordable housing and help people stay in their homes, and, of note to our readers, a proposal to legalize missing middle" housing types:

Inslee is proposing a change to statewide policy that would allow for creation of a greater variety of middle housing" types such as duplexes and townhomes in areas within a half mile of major transit stops in large cities. This change will also allow duplexes in most areas of large and mid-size cities. The state will provide technical assistance, including developing a model ordinance, to help cities implement these new measures.

One can dream that eventually housing" and climate" will cease to be discrete initiatives in the minds of our politicians (and voters). But good stuff nonetheless. On to the legislature.

More reporting and commentary: Seattle Times, Publicola, The Urbanist.