January 31, 2002

The latest housing heroes

Seven people received 2001 Washington Housing Hero awards for getting legislation passed to overcome hindrances to a 1999 law that exempted nonprofit low-income housing from paying property taxes.

The 1999 law removed property taxes on "very-low-income rental housing owned by nonprofit organizations financed with state or local funding that serve populations that are predominantly at or below 50 percent of the area median income," according to the hero awards' sponsors, the Washington Low Income Housing Congress and the Washington Low Income Housing Network.

Then-Department of Revenue Director Fred Kiga, now Gov. Gary Locke's chief of staff, "identified issues making it difficult to implement" the 1999 law, the two groups said. As a result, the Legislature last year passed House Bill 2098 and Senate Bill 6092 "to correct the technical problems in (the 1999) law," the two groups said. "Kiga made these bills a priority for the Department of Revenue."

For this, the two housing groups named Kiga as a housing hero along with the following legislators who pushed the bills through: state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle; Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane; Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park; Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle; Rep. Carolyn Edmonds, D-Shoreline; and Rep. John Pennington, R-Carrolls.

"Tenant incomes have not risen as much as maintenance, utilities and operating costs," said Carla Okigwe, executive director of the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County. "Without the property tax exemption, many nonprofit would have to raise their rents beyond the reach of current tenants. Given the shortage of low-cost housing, some of these tenants could have become homeless."

Lynn Davison, chair of the Low Income Housing Congress, described the 2001 legislative session as "very, very tough, and (yet) the housing agenda faired well."