Gov. Bob Ferguson recently announced that his proposed budget includes $244 million for affordable housing projects.
At first glance, that figure sounds substantial.
But after years of similar investments, Washingtonians should ask a harder question as the legislative session approaches: Why is housing still becoming more expensive, not less?
The answer is not a lack of funding.
It is the policy framework governing how, where and whether housing can be built at all.
Washington’s housing market operates under layers of state mandates that steadily drive up costs before a single shovel hits the ground.
Chief among them is the Growth Management Act, which restricts land availability, concentrates development into narrow urban boundaries, and increases competition for a limited supply of buildable land.
When supply is artificially constrained, prices rise.
That is basic economics, regardless of how much public money is later injected to offset the damage.
At the same time, lawmakers continue to advance rent control and rent stabilization policies that may sound helpful on paper but often produce the opposite result.
Many builders and property owners respond by delaying projects, reducing investment or exiting the market altogether. When the return on building new housing becomes uncertain, fewer units get built.
When fewer units are built, affordability worsens for everyone.
The state’s response has increasingly been to backfill these policy failures with taxpayer dollars.
That approach may create isolated projects, but it does nothing to fix the underlying system. In fact, it often masks the real problem by allowing lawmakers to claim progress while the broader market continues to tighten.
True housing affordability will not be achieved through headline budget numbers alone. It requires structural reform. That means reexamining how the Growth Management Act is applied, restoring flexibility for communities to grow responsibly, and ensuring housing policy does not discourage the very people needed to build homes. It also means recognizing that private builders, not government programs, produce the vast majority of housing and must be allowed to operate in a stable, predictable environment.
As the Legislature convenes, Washington residents deserve more than another spending announcement.
They deserve honest reform that expands supply, lowers costs and allows housing to be built at a pace that meets real demand. Until that happens, even hundreds of millions of dollars will continue to deliver far less relief than promised.
As economist Milton Friedman once warned, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
Anthony Mixer
Chehalis
