2025 Policy Platform

Protecting tenants by prohibiting abusive and extreme rent increases that are used to punish, displace, and deny tenants of their rights by capping yearly rent increases, provide mechanisms to challenge excessive rent increases, and provide more time to adjust to rent increases.

Though Washington state has barred local law enforcement agencies from collaborating with federal immigration enforcement, the Department of Corrections is exempt from these policies. As a result, immigrants who are incarcerated by the Washington DOC face double punishment after the completion of their sentencing by being transferred to immigration detention and facing deportation. This campaign would seek to end the collaboration between DOC and ICE.

Expands labor protections for domestic workers to ensure nannies, house cleaners, home health care workers, and others are paid minimum wage, receive necessary breaks and days off, and have protections from retaliation and other abusive labor practices.

 In the last few years, Washington State has seen a growing population of migrants who have recently arrived in the country and are seeking asylum. This population is arriving without strong connections to existing community support or resources to navigate the immigration system and meet their basic needs. In the most recent session, we won $32 million for support, including for the creation of a resource hub for newcomers. For the upcoming session, we plan to request increased funding.

Restricting the use of solitary confinement in state correctional facilities and long-term private detention facilities—including the Northwest Detention Center—only when there is no other safe means of preventing harm to facility staff or incarcerated individuals. The restrictions would necessitate a process for less restrictive detention to be tried first, clear documentation, limits on the length of time in solitary confinement, and allowing people to still have access to programming following the end of solitary confinement.

Including funding in the biennium budget for legal services to navigate the immigration and naturalization system.

This bill deprioritizes traffic stops for non-safety-related reasons to help law enforcement better enforce traffic laws that pose a serious threat to driver safety. It also establishes a grant to support local initiatives that provide solution-oriented responses to nonmoving violations for low-income road users.