[Civic Minute] 1.1 million new homes / no more masks in healthcare settings / Amazon Go scales back

Sunday, February 26th - Saturday, March 4th, 2023

In brief: Washington state will need 1.1 million new homes in the next decade according to a new report; the state's last remaining mask mandate, for health care facilities and prisons, will end on April 3rd; on March 1st 520,000 Washington households lost their extra pandemic allotment of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits; Amazon announced that it's closing eight of its high-tech Amazon Go convenience stores across the country, as well as pausing construction of its new "HQ2" in Northern Virginia; Seattle Public Schools is joining school districts across the state in preparing for possible layoffs in the face of budget cuts due to declining enrollment; Tuesday was the 22nd anniversary of the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake; and there was a flurry of activity in Olympia as the house of origin cutoff this upcoming Tuesday the 8th approaches.

Editor's note: This week's newsletter has been triaged due to time constraints.

Top News Stories

The state's last remaining mask mandate, for health care facilities and prisons, will end on April 3rd. [Seattle Times, KING 5, MyNorthwest, KUOW]

Amazon announced that it's closing eight of its high-tech Amazon Go convenience stores across the country, as well as pausing construction of its new "HQ2" in Northern Virginia. [Amazon Go: GeekWire; HQ2: GeekWire, Seattle Times]

On March 1st 520,000 Washington households lost their extra pandemic allotment of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (SNAP is the program formerly known as food stamps that helps low-income households pay for food). [Seattle Times, Crosscut, KING 5, KUOW]

Seattle Public Schools is joining school districts across the state in preparing for possible layoffs in the face of budget cuts due to declining enrollment. [Seattle Times, KING 5, MyNorthwest]

Tuesday was the 22nd anniversary of the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake, which was the impetus for eventually replacing the Alaskan Way viaduct with the deep-bore tunnel. [KING 5, MyNorthwest]

KUOW published the first in a series of stories looking at the Native boarding school system in the Pacific Northwest, which was active from the 1880s until the 1940s. [KUOW]

The state held its first "carbon allowance" auction under its new cap-and-trade-style system, which covered the first quarter of this year and is expected to have generated hundreds of millions of dollars (the numbers will be announced this upcoming week). [Seattle Times, KNKX]

Paul Roberts looked at the plight of the 136,000 Washingtonians who have been told that they have to repay thousands of dollars in pandemic unemployment benefits that they received from the federal government in recent years. [Seattle Times]

And this one isn't a top news story, but Seattle Met looked at the richest people in Washington by net worth. [Seattle Met]

Meanwhile, in Olympia

For the sake of time I'm just highlighting a handful of notable bills that passed out of their house of origin this week; I'm planning to do a full rundown next week of what's still alive after the March 8th house of origin cutoff and what's not, along with an update to my big bill tracker.

Passed out of their house of origin

SB 5280 would require clergy to report sexual abuse allegations to authorities (with some religious exceptions), similar to existing requirements for teachers and therapists.
SB 5078 would allow firearms manufacturers to be sued by individuals who are impacted by gun violence.
HB 1469 would prevent local law enforcement officers from complying with out-of-state requests related to prosecuting people for receiving abortions or gender-affirming care; and SB 5242 would require insurance companies to cover abortion coverage with no co-pays or deductibles.
On the road safety front, SB 5583 would require more driver's education for teenagers, and HB 1683 would give signing bonuses to state troopers.
SB 5536 would make illegal drug possession a gross misdemeanor instead of a felony, after a state Supreme Court ruling in 2021 struck down the state's existing felony drug possession law.
SB 5599 would make it easier for at-risk youth to be able to get medical care.
SB 5235 would allow the construction of accessory dwelling units more broadly across the state.

Real Estate Corner

Washington state will need to build 1.1 million new homes in the next decade according to a new state report (and King County will need to build 17,000 per year more during the same period), more than half of which will need to be affordable to households making less than 50% of area median income. [Seattle Times, Publicola]

A report by the City's Office of Sustainability and Environment found that Seattle's tree canopy coverage declined slightly from 2016 to 2021, from 28.6% to 28.1%. We gained roughly 1,500 acres of tree canopy in that period but lost nearly 1,800, for a net loss of 255 acres--with 43% of the net loss coming from parks and green belts despite the fact that they only made up 14.2% of the city's tree canopy in 2016. If you want to learn more about our urban canopy, the Seattle Times story on this one is a great read--I, for one, learned that a lot of the deciduous trees that were planted in parks 100 to 150 years ago after the native forests were cleared are reaching the ends of their natural lifespans, and are being replanted with longer-living evergreens as they die off. [Seattle Times, Crosscut, MyNorthwest]

The federal government awarded a neighborhood coalition called Reconnect South Park $1.6 million to study the possibility of removing Highway 99 through South Park (the plan would involve diverting traffic to 509 and I-5 instead). [Seattle Times, KING 5]

An industry coalition led by the Building Industry of Washington sued the state in an attempt to overrule building code changes made by the Washington State Building Council that would require heat pumps to be used in place of gas furnaces in new residential and commercial buildings. [Seattle Times]

Habitat for Humanity finished a 13-unit condo building on Capitol Hill with units that are affordable to potential homeowners who earn 80% or less of area median income (these are all sold, but both Habitat and Homestead Community Land Trust occasionally have a small number of below-market-rate homes available for purchase on an income-restricted basis). [KING 5]

Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate tracking survey ticked up again last week to 6.65%, a three-month high. [Freddie Mac, Seattle Times]

And we should get the official Northwest Multiple Listing Service data this upcoming week, but according to my model of the dataset for Seattle, February's median home price will likely see a slight increase from $803,750 in January, which is consistent with typical seasonal trends. Buyers are starting to come back to the market in larger numbers like they usually do this time of year, and the percentage of homes receiving multiple offers and having their prices bid up is increasing like it typically does--but all indications so far are that it's going to be a mild spring season, with homes selling quickly and many getting multiple offers, but escalation levels not reaching the crazy levels we've seen the last two springs.

Thank you to everyone who's sent me a real estate referral or used me as an agent yourself! If you need a residential real estate agent to help you buy or sell a home of any kind--or you know someone who does--I'd love to be of service. My website is here, or see here for client reviews.

Ending on a high note

It turns out that story of the $747 million Powerball ticket being sold at a Fred Meyer in Auburn within a week of the day that Boeing's Renton assembly line turned out its last-ever 747 has another twist on that same theme: the lucky winner has worked at Boeing for 36 years, and bought the ticket on a whim after she realized the connection between the jackpot amount and the Boeing news.

And I just learned that Bad Lip Reading has an Instagram account! Or if Instagram isn't your thing, they're always available on YouTube, too. You're welcome.

Sol Villarreal
Broker, Windermere Real Estate
sol@windermere.com
solvillarreal.com

206-765-6108

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