Lawmakers push Inslee to allow private construction

EPHRATA — A number of local political leaders and owners of construction companies are asking Gov. Jay Inslee to alter his “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” closure order and allow construction on private homes to resume.

“We’re pushing hard to make that happen, and it should happen,” said Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake. “We need to get some part of our economy moving.”

Dent said Republicans in the state legislature were working on “another letter” to Inslee encouraging the governor to lift the ban on private home construction, especially given that essential construction projects — government buildings, schools and low-income housing — are all still under way despite the closure.

“That just doesn’t make any sense to me,” Dent said. “There are a lot of things we can get back to doing.”

Of the 143,000 first-time claims in Washington for unemployment insurance for the week ending April 11, the Employment Security Department reported that nearly 17,300 of those were by construction workers.

In a separate letter, Grant County commissioners Cindy Carter, Tom Taylor and Richard Stevens wrote that the moratorium on development of single-family residences will worsen the region’s lack of affordable housing.

“There is no doubt these are unprecedented times for our state and nation,” the commissioners wrote. “By enacting restrictions on single-family residence development, this is perpetuating the economic divide, impacting revenue sources for our constituents and local government agencies.”

Katy Wooderson, marketing director for Hayden Homes, which has several big developments in Moses Lake, said the company is very concerned about those customers who sold their current home in anticipation of their new home being completed and are now looking at being temporarily displaced.

“Our biggest concern is the customers who have already committed to moving into newly purchased homes that don’t have alternative housing available,” Wooderson wrote in a statement to the Columbia Basin Herald. “The priority is to make sure those people can move into their homes.”

In a letter dated April 9 and provided by Hayden Homes, Moses Lake resident Joyce Holmes said she faces homelessness at the end of April because she has already sold the home she lives in while the construction shutdown has prevented the completion of her new home.

“I can’t find short-term housing. I can’t afford a hotel for me and my elderly mother and two pets,” she wrote. “I am in panic mode.”

Holmes also wrote that her father died “in the hospital alone” more than two weeks ago because of the COVID-19 closures, and that all of these things happening at once have turned their lives “upside down.”

“Please help us and people like us get into our homes,” she wrote. “We need help fast, please.”

Dent said, however, that there is little anyone can do except plead with the governor to change his order and hope he listens.

“There’s nothing we could do unless we get back into session,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].