The Seattle Times
Apr 20, 2026
As the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Gerry Pollet, noted, the commission’s legislative hearing testimony was “incredibly misleading,” framing the bill as a burden on tribes when it targeted investment banks.
Twenty years. That’s how long Native American families across Washington paid rent on homes they were promised they would one day own. After 20 years of monthly payments, maintaining their properties and upholding all obligations asked of them, not one deed was transferred. Not one.
The promise of homeownership, extended to hundreds of Native families through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, remains unfulfilled. The institution responsible for this failure is the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. And now, thanks to a text exchange that is a public record, we know exactly how commission leadership felt about a bipartisan bill that might have fixed it.
“Awful bill.” That is how, in text messages exchanged by commission leaders in January 2026, commission Executive Director Steve Walker described House Bill 2527 — reform legislation designed to hold private investors accountable for fulfilling homeownership promises made to Native families. Consultant Nick Federici was equally dismissive. “It’s idiotic,” he replied to Walker, who also called HB 2527 “lame.”
These were not offhand frustrations vented in isolation. They were part of a coordinated campaign to kill Native homeownership legislation before it could gain traction.The mechanics of the state’s broken system are straightforward, and the betrayal embedded in that system runs deep. Under federal law created pursuant to the 1986 Tax Reform Act, states administering the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program must prioritize projects with an “eventual tenant ownership” component — meaning that after 15 years of renting, tenants gain the right to home conveyance.
In Washington, this provision has operated almost entirely in Indian country. Seventeen of the 18 projects that involve tenant ownership are in tribal communities, encompassing over 500 homes across eight tribal nations. Private investors received dollar-for-dollar reductions on their federal corporate income taxes. Native families received conveyance promises. Investors collected. Those families are still waiting. In 2024, the state auditor confirmed that the commission systematically failed to oversee this program. An audit found the program to be “little-known and largely misunderstood” within the commission. The agency did not request required five-year progress reports until 2022, despite at least one commission employee flagging the problem a decade ago.
At the time of the audit, 135 homes were eligible for transfer and had not been conveyed. Walker acknowledged at a legislative hearing that the agency “did not take necessary steps to ensure home purchase opportunities.” That acknowledgment now rings hollow.
The commission’s public posture — contrite, reform-minded, and apparently in the process of implementing new policies — is contradicted by its private conduct. State officials did not seek ways to fix their mistake. They sought to protect the institution and a phalanx of low-income housing profiteers from accountability.
The commission’s behavior exemplifies state political leaders’ indifference toward communities that have experienced centuries of displacement. In tribal communities where state actions decimated traditional kinship structures, housing shortages are severe, generational wealth is rare and the homeownership promises carry the weight of history, every year of obfuscation and delay compounds the injury.
HB 2527 was hardly radical. It would have held investors — who profited from federal corporate income tax credits for two decades while homeownership obligations went unfulfilled — accountable by threatening their future access to those credits. As the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Gerry Pollet, noted, the commission’s legislative hearing testimony was “incredibly misleading,” framing the bill as a burden on tribes when it targeted investment banks.As of early 2026, there are 352 native homes eligible for ownership, some of which reached the 15-year threshold six years ago. Another 454 homes statewide will become eligible by 2030. The commission says ownership transfer plans are now underway. But that’s empty without enforcement — and the text messages make clear that when enforcement was on the table, the commission’s leadership called it idiotic, awful and lame, helping sink the measure without even a public vote.Washington cannot credibly claim to be a leader on housing equity while its housing officials privately mock legislation designed to achieve Native homeownership. Commission leaders must now be required to answer — publicly — for the conduct revealed in their texts. And the Legislature must return in 2027 with a strengthened accountability bill, which cannot be covertly killed by agency leaders who have no intention of honoring this state’s promises to Native families.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Nick Federici’s title.
Gabriel S. Galanda: is an Indigenous rights lawyer in Seattle. He belongs to the Round Valley Indian Tribes.