Residential Infrastructure Fund

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Residential Infrastructure Fund
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Who Cares About Infrastructure?

• Infrastructure is boring!

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What does Infrastructure have to do with Housing
and Conservation?

• We Want to Reduce Our Carbon Footprint The
  Washington Climate Action Team identified compact
  and transit-oriented development as a top
  priority and one of the most promising ways to
  meet their goals.
• We Want to Conserve Our Natural Resources The
  Puget Sound Partnership Action Agenda calls out
  the need to focus growth in urban areas.
• We Want to Lower the Cost of Affordable Housing
  Development Currently, affordable housing
  developers are responsible for absorbing the
  costs of infrastructure required to build their
  units, adding to the overall project budget and
  raising the per unit price.

• Aging and Inadequate Existing
• Infrastructure
• Increasing Population
• Limited Local Budgets for New
• Infrastructure
• Limited State Funds for New
• Infrastructure
• No Specific Funding for Residential
  Infrastructure Or Accommodating Growth

BUT
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Goals of the RIF

• The residential infrastructure program is
  created in the department to provide loans and
  grants for public infrastructure that supports
  increased capacity for affordable residential
  development in dense, transit proximate areas.
  

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What Are We Trying to Achieve?

• Maximizing capacity to accommodate growth
• Maximizing density
• Maximizing affordability both overall as well as
  at each level of affordability
• Maximizing transit ridership
• Incentivizing conservation through transfer of
  development rights

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Funding the RIF Peak Real Estate Excise Tax
Revenue

• Using the Fiscal Growth Factor
• The Fiscal Growth Factor is the figure used to
  determine how much the state budget can grow,
  under Initiative 601. It is derived from a
  projection of a rolling average of growth in
  personal income.
• The proposed REET inflator simply compares the
  growth in REET receipts to the fiscal growth
  factor.  Any REET that exceeds the growth in REET
  allowed by the fiscal growth factor each year is
  placed into the infrastructure fund. 

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Growth Pays For Growth!
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REET is More Volatile than Retail Sales or
Construction Sales Taxes

• Helps Decrease Budget Bow Waves
• Is Pro-Cyclical (Only Goes Up in a Good Economy)

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Eligible Counties

• Walla Walla
• Skagit
• Jefferson
• Clallam
• Thurston
• Grays Harbor
• Lewis
• Spokane
• Whatcom

• Whitman
• Chelan
• Douglas
• Clark
• Pierce
• Snohomish
• King
• Kitsap