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Appropriations Committee reviews Commerce housing and homelessness funding; document‑recording surcharge highlighted
Summary
Jessica Van Horn, the committee’s housing analyst, briefed members on Department of Commerce housing and homelessness programs, the role of document‑recording fee surcharges as a major revenue source, and recent program investments including encampment response, permanent supportive housing and Covenant Homeownership assistance.
Jessica Van Horn, staff analyst to the Appropriations Committee, gave a budget‑focused overview of the Department of Commerce’s housing and homeless assistance programs and emphasized that document‑recording fee surcharges remain a key, volatile revenue source for those efforts.
Van Horn said Commerce accounts for about 2% of NGFO spending in the enacted 2023–25 budget and that roughly two‑thirds of its spending is in the Community Services and Housing Division, where the largest programs serve housing and homeless needs. She told the committee the state does not directly deliver street‑level services but contracts and grants to counties, cities and local nonprofit providers.
Why it matters: The department’s programs feed a network of local providers and county grantees; changes to document‑recording fee revenue or one‑time general fund supplements can materially affect grants that pay for shelter, rent assistance, operations and services.
Van Horn summarized key program and funding figures: the Department’s housing and homelessness programs drew on general fund state and document‑recording fee revenues for more than 90% of funding in the most recent fiscal year; the main document‑recording surcharge for housing and homelessness is $183 and the state also added a $100 surcharge to fund a Covenant Homeownership Program (effective Jan. 1, 2024). She said the $183 surcharge is split at recording: the county retains $54.90, $99 goes to the Home Security Fund (homeless assistance), $23.97 to the Affordable Housing for All account (permanent supportive housing), about $3.29 to landlord mitigation, and $100 to Covenant Homeownership when applicable.
Van Horn noted revenue volatility: document recordings peaked near 140,000 per month around 2020–21 and have since declined toward roughly 60,000 documents per month, reducing the expected yield from the surcharge relative to legislative assumptions. She said the Covenant Homeownership Program generated about $26.2 million in FY2024 revenues versus an assumed $50 million at enactment.
Major programs Van Horn highlighted included the Consolidated Homeless Grant (local distribution of general fund, federal block grants and recording fee revenues; the legislature provided $45 million per biennium in ongoing general fund support in 2023–25), the Rights‑of‑Way and Encampment Response initiative (initially funded in 2022; 2023–25 funding totaled $150 million with $60 million one‑time), Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) with a base budget of $130 million GF coming into 2025–27, grants to maintain emergency shelter capacity (base $111 million GF), and permanent supportive housing operations and services (base funding shown as $62 million GF plus $58 million from the Affordable Housing for All account). Van Horn provided program outputs from Commerce: of $44 million awarded for operations and services in FY2024, about $37 million was expended, supporting roughly 6,000 units with 90% in higher‑density counties and 68% of those units in King County.
On unsheltered homelessness counts, Van Horn said the federally required point‑in‑time counts show the unsheltered population increasing: “the unsheltered population has grown from approximately 5,500 people to 16,000 people in 2024.”
She also summarized pandemic‑era rental assistance: Commerce‑administered federal and disaster response funds totaled just under $1.1 billion across three fiscal years and assisted approximately 132,000 households with an average distribution of about $5,700 per household (she said the figure is a raw average and offered to provide median/mode if requested).
Committee members asked follow‑ups on whether funding increases corresponded to changing homelessness counts, data disaggregation by gender for unsheltered counts, historical document recording fee breakdowns, and program formulas for allocations to high‑need counties. Van Horn indicated she would provide some historical charts and additional clarifications upon request.
The briefing concluded with no committee action taken; members asked staff for follow‑up material on document‑recording fee forecasts and program outcomes.
