Luna Reyna
Underscore Native News + ICT
Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series by Underscore Native News and ICT examining how systemic affordable housing issues in the Pacific Northwest have undermined Indigenous self-determination and equity.
A bill that had the potential to impact homeownership for Native peoples across Washington state did not move forward during the state’s 60-day legislative session that closed last week.
The proposed legislation, House bill 2527, was introduced with bipartisan support after Underscore + ICT’s reporting last November revealed more than 300 homes eligible for ownership through the state-managed federal housing program still had not been transferred to ownership.
Advocates and lawmakers pushed for reform to ensure Native families finally gained homeownership.
Confusion about the program and “misleading” information from the Washington Housing Finance Commission kept the bill from moving forward but expect to see an updated bill next legislative season in January 2027.
“The testimony from the commission director and staff was, I think, incredibly misleading that they tried to make it about the tribal housing authorities and they didn’t even explain or acknowledge that the investors are the 99% owners,” said Washington state Rep. Gerry Pollet, Democrat, said at the Jan. 26 public hearing, who sponsored the bill. “And the key reason the bill didn’t move forward is that some of the Democrats on the committee didn’t want to put the burden on the tribal housing authority. The bill is not about the tribal housing authority, it’s about the private investors being held accountable.”
What was in the bill?
The bipartisan bill called for “increasing opportunities for tenants to own homes under eventual tenant ownership programs established under the federal low-income housing tax credit program.”
“What this bill does is say the Housing Finance Commission can fine, doesn’t have to, but it will have a tool now to say, ‘If you willfully don’t follow through on the eventual tenant ownership obligations that you signed up for under our rules and federal and state law, then you may be debarred, as we call it, not able to take on new obligations in the state for a period of time,’” bill sponsor Democratic state Rep. Gerry Pollet said at the Jan. 26 public hearing.
The bill would require the private developer who is allocated federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits for providing the funds for the Native housing authority to build the housing to “establish a reserve or escrow account required by Housing Finance Commission rules, HFC agreements, or federal rules.”
As Underscore + ICT reported in November, 11 of the 17 eventual tenant ownership projects with Native nations were meant to include reserve accounts but none of them were funded. In one case at Nooksack it was not funded based on a determination made by the tax credit investor, Raymond James, that the funding of those accounts would result in a tax liability to the partnership.
Regardless of who should have funded the original reserve accounts, the commission claims that since early 2023 when the commission shared a new compliance framework for housing authorities to follow no Native nation has chosen to continue to include tenant reserve accounts in their new transfer plans.
The bill also calls for the investor to “inform residents, tenants, or purchasers of their rights and responsibilities to have ownership transferred to them as required by law or agreements.” While the investor is the 99.99 percent owner of the homes until year 15, when the home should be transferred to the family, they have been a silent owner until now.
Because of the two decade-long absence of policies, oversight and guidance by the commission, each Native nation’s housing authority has struggled to implement tenant purchase options. Through the August 2024 Eventual Tenant Ownership program Guide for Property Owners and Residents and the July 2025 updated commission housing tax credit policies the commission has begun to inform residents of their rights and responsibilities.
Pollet believes a bill requiring oversight to make sure residents are being informed is still necessary because the current guide is largely legalese with no culturally appropriate examples of how to understand what percentages would mean in regard to affordability of a mortgage, and how to obtain one on a reservation.
“I wouldn’t trust the commission, as far as I could throw them when it comes to explaining that you have a right to own your home based on their testimony, because you do have an absolute right to be offered the opportunity to own your home and at very minimal cost or no cost, that’s what the federal law requires,” Pollet told UNN + ICT. “And their testimony was essentially that there’s no right to own your home and they implied that it could be very expensive, when in fact, the payment requirement should be either nothing or incredibly inexpensive.”
The bill also calls for the investor to inform the tribal government development partners of rights, responsibilities, and requirements. The commission believes this is covered by the new policies.
Finally the bill would have required the investor to meet terms and conditions as a private developer of housing developments in partnership with tribal government development partners and to “ensure that ownership of homes is transferred to tenants in a timely manner pursuant to the terms of agreements approved by the Housing Finance Commission or pursuant to applicable state or federal law.”
Until now, when a tenant would reach year 15, the investor would withdraw from the partnership and no longer have any stake in whether or not the home was ever transferred.
In the past, when any Native housing authority or investor was out of compliance, the commission has claimed that its only option for accountability has been to notify the IRS of noncompliance. The IRS will only get involved within the 15 tax credit years that the home is in the program. This means that the commission was notifying the IRS knowing that the IRS wasn’t going to respond. Including requirements of the investors to ensure that ownership of homes is transferred to tenants in a timely manner would mean all parties are holding the commission accountable adding additional oversight.
The requirements of the commission in the bill are to monitor the progress of all development agreements using eventual tenant ownership options and post the progress and successful ownership data on its website. Tenants would then be informed there about the programs and allow them to comment or file a complaint anonymously, and to prohibit developers from participating in any program funded or administered by the Housing Finance Commission for two to five years if they are in violation of their requirements.
Housing Finance Commission objections
The commission leadership, however, claimed during legislative hearings that the bill would negatively affect tribal housing authorities.
“Many of the measures of this bill are not aligned with the auditors, findings nor recommendations,” said commission’s executive director, Steve Walker, during a legislative hearing on Jan. 26, 2025. “Instead, they require us to focus on enforcement and punishment, to debar owners from financing housing for up to five years, and even to do a look back and retroactively take punitive action. This would be a step backwards. Instead, we think continuing our work collaboratively with tribal housing authorities is the best way to ensure tenant ownership.”
When legislators asked him to clarify the commission’s objections to developer accountability measures, Walker responded by calling it, “a very complicated program.”
He went on to share that, “It was never contemplated in any of these 17 projects that the keys would just be turned over. Each of those 17 have a different ownership strategy at year 15. In some instances, the resident renting household has the opportunity to buy the unit at a price. So that’s far different from turning the keys over.”
“So it’s hard to answer your question directly, because we have 18 different circumstances, and none of them are simply turning over the keys,” Walker continued.
However, the language in the original ownership plans for each housing authority are almost identical to each other, as the tribal housing authorities were relying on the same consultants, often Travois and RTHawk Housing Alliance, to develop their Low-Income Housing Tax Credits applications.
Walker said “in some instances, residents are not interested in purchasing or can’t come up with the cost.”
Pollet called Walker’s statement “ludicrous.”
“I felt like the commission’s testimony was not just misleading, but deliberately misleading,” Pollet said.
The audit showed that people are interested and eager to learn more about the option to own the home. Underscore and ICT reporting and the audit revealed that cost is not a barrier.
For example, the Nooksack Indian Tribe’s transfer plan only requires that after 15 years of good tenancy, 85 tenant-homebuyers pay $1 for the deeds to their homes. Each Native nation has the authority to determine cost. If a payment is required it is affordable for the tenants based on their income.
“Walker is aware of this example but chose not to share it with you, instead falsely suggesting the LIHTC [Low-Income Housing Tax Credits] homes of concern are generally only available for purchase after 15 years,” Gabe Galanda, a citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and founder of Indigenous rights law firm Galanda Broadman said in an email to legislators after the hearing.
Walker also said, “half of the units aren’t even to year 15, so wouldn’t be available to transfer,” but Underscore + ICT reporting does not show that.
As of 2026, 369 eventual tenant ownership homes have reached a year 15 mark, according to documentation provided by the commission. That is nearly 70 percent of all the eventual tenant homes in Indian country in Washington state.
Walker said that the commission wants to take a proactive, collaborative approach with their new policies in place as opposed to a punitive approach. But considering it took evictions of potential homeowners on Nooksack and an audit for the new policies to be put in place, legislators aren’t convinced, and want a bill to hold them and the developers accountable in the future.
“The developers have demonstrated that they will cut a corner for $1 in their pocket, and the commission has demonstrated that it has, at best, a lapse of attention and concern for the tenants in Indian country,” Pollet said. “Why would we let them continue to have no accountability?”
Developer responsibility
Since the beginning of the eventual tenant ownership program in Washington state in 2005, the commission has treated the developer as a silent owner with no responsibility or accountability in the success of the program. Advocates believe that because they receive millions in tax credits, they should be a present party.
Underscore + ICT has reached out to Raymond James multiple times over years of reporting on this, as the company is one of the investors for the eventual tenant ownership properties, for comment. They have never responded.
According to Walker’s testimony during the Jan. 6 legislative hearing, the partnership agreement between the investor and the developer, meaning the tribal housing authority, would detail if developers were responsible for the past reserve accounts.
He went on to explain that, “the partnership owner, which is the tribe and the investor, are responsible for delivering eventual tenant ownership per whatever plan they submitted to us when they applied.” Meaning that according to Walker the investor should be more of a present partner and has some responsibility to make sure that tenant ownership is achieved.
But statements remain contradicting from Walker, as he then claimed that the commission is not in the position to hold the company Raymond James accountable.
“They would be in a position to hold them accountable if we passed this statute,” Pollet said.
Pollet went on to explain that the commission does have authority to approve and enforce the tax credit agreements with the developers.
“The commission makes the agreements absolutely meaningless when it says we’ll sign agreements or we’ll approve agreements and authorize funding, but we won’t be able to hold you accountable to them,” Pollet said.
Walker remained firmly against accountability measures in the bill.
“This bill would take us backwards and feel like we’re being very punitive to the very people we are trying to be collaborative with,” Walker said at the hearing.
Margret Graham, commission communications manager, denied UNN + ICT’s request for an interview with Steve Walker to address the hearing, or to provide context around the commission’s current perspective on the bill and future policy implications.
What happens next?
Since the new policies began to be implemented in the last few years, progress towards homeownership has moved forward. According to the commission, the process of transferring the actual deeds is underway for 17 of the 25 eligible eventual tenant ownership homes at Spokane Tribal housing.
The 91 homes at Tulalip have approved transfer plans, transfer plans for 45 homes have been approved at Colville, and transfer plans for 35 homes have been approved at Quinault. The housing authorities will need to submit the list of the homes they plan to convey to move forward.
According to the commission 39 Nooksack homes and 20 Lower Elwha homes are getting closer to a transfer plan but they do not have one approved yet.
There are an additional 24 homes at Nooksack that reached year 15 in 2020 that have made no progress toward homeownership, and 22 more homes that reached year 15 in 2022.
There are 68 homes that will reach year 15 and are eligible for ownership at Yakama Nation this year.
The remaining 162 eventual tenant ownership homes across 5 Native nations don’t hit year 15 until 2027 or later. The commission says that they are all nearing approval of their transfer plans.
According to Pollet, the bill died in committee because after the commission’s testimony at the hearing, people thought that the bill would be attempting to regulate tribal housing authorities. But as he said, it holds the private investors accountable.
The fight isn’t over.
“We’ll look at some revisions, and we’ll reintroduce a version of the bill next year,” Pollet said.
This story is co-published byUnderscore Native NewsandICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.
The post A Washington housing investor reform bill died in committee this legislative session appeared first on ICT.
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