The signing

Governor Bob Ferguson signed seven housing bills at HopeWorks Station in Everett on March 27.

Senate Bill 6237, sponsored by Senator Jessica Bateman along with Senators Hasegawa, Nobles, Shewmake, Valdez and C. Wilson, requires landlords to disclose flood risk to tenants. The governor's office noted that California, Oregon and Texas already require comparable disclosures.

Senate Bill 6026, sponsored by Senator Emily Alvarado with a House companion from Representative Chipalo Street, allows housing in commercial and mixed-use zones. It was the governor's own request legislation and passed the Senate 35-14 and the House 69-27.

What SB 6237 actually requires, and when

SB 6237 passed the Senate 46-3 on February 11 and the House 65-28 on March 3, before Ferguson signed it March 27. It was enacted as Chapter 234, Laws of 2026, with an effective date of June 11, 2026 — not the signing date.

The bill reenacts and amends RCW 59.18.060, the section of the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act that lists a landlord's habitability duties. It adds three disclosures: that the property may sit in a special flood hazard area or an area of potential flooding; that the landlord's insurance does not cover loss of the tenant's personal possessions, so the tenant should consider renter's and flood insurance; and that county government holds further information on hazards, including flood risk, affecting the property. According to the Senate Bill Report on the bill as passed, the disclosure duty applies only to leases entered into after December 31, 2026, which means the requirement reaches new tenancies well before it reaches the existing rental stock.

The rest of the package

House Bill 2266, from Representative Strom Peterson, creates statewide permitting standards for permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, indoor emergency housing and indoor emergency shelters — the category the state calls STEP housing. Enacted as Chapter 232, Laws of 2026, it bars cities and planning counties from imposing siting or permitting conditions on STEP housing that are more restrictive than those applied to other development in the same zone, and requires transitional and permanent supportive housing to be allowed in any zone where residential dwellings or hotels are already permitted. It passed the House 56-39 and the Senate 29-20, both closer votes than the flood-disclosure bill.

House Bill 1345, from Representative Sam Low, authorises counties to allow rural landowners to build detached accessory dwelling units, with new water-use standards applying to rural ADUs.

Senate Bill 6027 gives local governments more flexibility in how they spend tax revenue earmarked for affordable housing.

The package's other headline measure, Senate Bill 6026, enacted as Chapter 236, Laws of 2026 and effective June 11, bars cities of 30,000 or more residents, and non-rural counties, from excluding residential uses in commercially or mixed-use zoned areas. It was Governor Ferguson's own request legislation, passed the Senate 35-14 and the House 69-27, and is aimed in part at converting vacant big-box and strip-mall sites — the Seattle Times cited store closures by Rite Aid, Kroger, Joann and Bed Bath & Beyond as part of the vacancy problem the bill targets. Bellevue's mayor, Mo Malakoutian, opposed the bill's removal of local ground-floor commercial requirements, arguing it removed local flexibility without guaranteeing new housing.

Why disclosure is the sleeper provision

Of the seven, the flood-disclosure requirement is the one that changes information rather than land use. Renters, unlike buyers, have historically had almost no formal channel for learning a property's flood history before signing. Buyers get title work, inspections and in many states seller disclosure; tenants get a lease.

That asymmetry matters more as flood maps are revised and as damage concentrates in units occupied by people least able to absorb the loss. A disclosure rule does not reduce flood risk. It shifts who knows about it before the money changes hands, and RCW 59.18.060 carries no separate penalty provision beyond the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act's existing remedies for habitability violations.