Rep. Travis Couture speaks against majority party's rent control bill
1 Video View·Feb 14, 2024
Rep. Travis Couture, R-Allyn, votes against House Bill 2114, a rent control bill from majority Democrats that limits how much landlords can raise rents. Couture warns the regulations will be devastating for young people and others in the rental market by placing even more regulations on landlords who will flee the market further shrinking the housing market - the exact opposite of what Washington state needs to do. The bill passed the House along party lines, on a 54-43 and now moves to the Senate.
you know I think everybody in our state
wants to be able to go
home
and as I think about my kids one of
which is 17 about to be 18 years old
about to go out on his own hopefully
soon
someday I think about is he going to be
able to find a place to live in the
community in which we raised
him
and sadly Madam speaker I don't think
that that's going to be able to be a
reality right now and that really
saddens me that my family can't my kids
can't live close to
me in my County Mason County we have the
fifth highest shortage of housing per
capita in our
state the median income is like
$66,000 for one of my constituents but
the price of homes are so high that you
have to have almost double that income
to be able to get
something and what is difficult about
that is because you need those houses to
be able to have
rentals and kids like mine are not going
to be able to attain home ownership
right away but those houses need to be
there in order for them to be rented
out I lost many friends that moved out
of the state that had rental properties
as a part of their retirement plan and
not all regulation is bad Madam speaker
but when 24% or more of the cost of a
price of a house is regulation in our
state sometimes there's well-intended
regulations that have unintended
consequences I follow a famous economist
Frederick Hayek and he has a quote that
says the Curious task of Economics is to
teach to men how little they know about
what they imagine they can
design and what strikes me about that
quote Madam speaker is sometimes in our
in our Zeal to do something great and to
help people who need it the most
sometimes government can actually hurt
government can hurt and constituents who
own properties all across my district
have been emailing me and contacting me
at nauseum about how this is going to
hurt their ability to stay in the rental
business which harms the ability of kids
like mine to be able to attain a rental
property someday you have 30 seconds
remaining thank you madam speaker um I'm
I I ask for a no vote on this bill
although I think that it's well
intentioned this is going to be
devastating for our kids and for our
communities I think we should take a
step back thank you