Washington's package
Governor Bob Ferguson signed seven housing bills at a ceremony at HopeWorks Station in Everett on March 27, according to the governor's office.
The centerpiece was Senate Bill 6026, governor-request legislation sponsored by Senator Emily Alvarado allowing housing in commercial and mixed-use zones. It passed the Senate 35-14 and the House 69-27 — comfortable bipartisan margins in both chambers.
The rest of the package addressed distinct problems. House Bill 2266 creates statewide permitting standards for permanent supportive, transitional and emergency housing. House Bill 1345 authorizes counties to allow rural landowners to build detached accessory dwelling units. Senate Bill 6237 requires landlords to disclose flood risk to tenants, and Senate Bill 6027 gives local governments more flexibility in spending affordable-housing tax revenue.
Colorado's narrower instrument
Governor Jared Polis signed House Bill 26-1001, the Housing Opportunities Made Easier (HOME) Act, on March 25, 2026, alongside a companion measure, Senate Bill 26-001, giving local governments additional zoning flexibility. The HOME Act was sponsored by Representatives Andrew Boesenecker and Javier Mabrey and Senators Tony Exum and Julie Gonzales.
The law requires subject jurisdictions to allow residential development through administrative approval on qualifying properties of five acres or less owned by school districts, colleges and universities, boards of cooperative services, housing authorities, transit districts, or qualifying nonprofits. Qualifying parcels must sit within three miles of a municipality or in a county area with a census population of at least 5,000. Jurisdictions must comply by December 31, 2027, or by June 30, 2028 if actively updating their zoning code.
Analysis: the two approaches differ in more than scope. Washington rezoned by land-use category — commercial and mixed-use zones statewide. Colorado rezoned by landowner identity, applying only to parcels of five acres or less held by schools, colleges, housing authorities, transit districts and qualifying nonprofits. That confines the law to a far smaller inventory of land than a category-wide rezoning reaches, and ties its effect to how much developable land those specific institutions happen to own in each jurisdiction.
Timelines and enforcement
Neither law produces housing quickly. Colorado's compliance deadline falls at the end of 2027 at the earliest, with a further extension to mid-2028 available. Rezoning is a precondition for construction, not construction itself, and the interval between a zoning change and a completed unit typically runs several years.
Enforcement is the recurring difficulty with state preemption of local zoning, and Texas supplies a concrete example of the mechanism working through a statute rather than a threat. Senate Bill 785, passed by the 89th Legislature and effective September 1, 2026, amends the state Occupations Code to require municipalities that zone to allow new HUD-code manufactured homes by right in at least one residential district, and bars them from demanding a special-use permit unless other residential property in that class faces the same requirement.
The Texas law also carves out exceptions that show where preemption stops: private deed restrictions recorded before January 2, 2025, historic districts, and a small number of cities without commercial or industrial zoning. Colorado's compliance dates and the Texas effective date both illustrate the same point — a state can change what local governments must permit, but it changes nothing about what anyone chooses to build.
Why state preemption keeps recurring
Both laws address the same structural problem: local governments control zoning, and local political incentives frequently favour restricting new housing, while the costs of that restriction fall on a regional or statewide population that has no vote in the jurisdiction making the decision.
State preemption is the standard response, and its recurrence across states with very different politics — Washington under a Democratic governor, Texas under a Republican one — suggests the underlying dynamic is structural rather than partisan.
Analysis: Washington's margins are the notable political detail. A 69-27 House vote and 35-14 Senate vote on commercial-zone housing means the measure drew support well beyond the majority caucus, so the recorded votes do not divide along party lines. What that implies for the law's durability is not something the vote tallies establish.
The measures also differ in what they require of local governments. Colorado's HOME Act mandates administrative approval, removing discretionary review for qualifying projects, which is generally more effective than simply permitting a use while leaving a discretionary process in place. Whether either law produces measurable additional housing will not be answerable before the end of the decade.