Frank Chopp remembered as champion for WA housing & homelessness

But in the 1970s and ’80s, poverty was widespread enough that neighborhood activists created the Fremont Public Association to provide food assistance, clothing and jobs programs to low-income and homeless residents. Its motto: Freedom from Poverty through Action.  

It was there that Frank Chopp got his start as a community organizer and coalition-builder dedicated to improving the lives of poor and working people.  

He led the Fremont Public Association (now called Solid Ground) as executive director from 1983 to 2000 and built the organization into the citywide affordable-housing and services provider it is today, recognizing a need to tackle poverty at a systems level, according to Shalimar Gonzales, Solid Ground’s current CEO.  

Chopp’s antipoverty organizing in Seattle was a launching pad to a career in the Washington Legislature that spanned 30 years, 20 of them as Speaker of the House. He remained committed to affordable housing and homelessness and helped create some of the state’s most consequential affordable-housing and homelessness initiatives and funding sources.  

Chopp died on March 22 at the age of 71 as the result of a cardiac arrest. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Long, and two children. 

In the wake of his passing, elected officials, housing and homelessness advocates, community organizers and civic leaders shared an outpouring of tributes about the impact Chopp had in and out of the Capitol and the legacy he’s left on Seattle and Washington’s affordable housing and services. 

A political force 

Chopp was first elected to represent Seattle in the state House in 1994. He quickly moved up the ranks to lead the House Democratic caucus by the end of the decade.  

In 1999, he became co-speaker of the House when Democrats and Republicans split control of the chamber. Three years later, Democrats won the majority, and he began his nearly two-decades-long stint as speaker — the longest in state history.  

Those who worked closely with him knew him as someone with “relentless optimism,” a passion for helping working families, a talent for passing difficult policies and a willingness to build coalitions and work across the aisle.   

Chopp was at times a divisive figure, known for his hands-on approach and assertive leadership style. But that approach helped Chopp pass some of the state’s most impactful pieces of legislation in recent years.  

“I’ve not met anyone who could introduce a dramatically status quo-changing bill and pass it in one year, except for Frank Chopp,” Chopp’s longtime seatmate Rep. Nicole Macri, D-Seattle, said.  

Chopp co-founded the Housing Trust Fund, which has distributed more than $2 billion to affordable-housing projects across the state. He helped create Apple Health and Homes, which uses Medicaid dollars to fund housing and other services for the state’s most vulnerable residents. He helped create a dedicated funding stream for homelessness services through the state’s document recording fee, which people pay when they file real estate deeds or other paperwork.  

And when that funding turned into a new housing project or health clinic, Chopp made an effort to attend as many openings as possible, Macri said. 

“It’s not extreme to say Frank Chopp played the key role in creating every major Washington state housing program over the last 30 years,” said Tedd Kelleher, Department of Commerce housing division co-acting assistant director, in a statement. “His legacy lives on in the housing programs and hundreds of thousands of Washington households helped by his work.” 

While his personal credits are long, the number of policies he worked on behind the scenes is longer. He worked on the Fair Start for Kids Act, which uses a capital gains tax to pay for expanded child care access, and the Washington College Grant, one of the most generous financial aid programs in the country.  

Chopp helped craft the state’s covenant homeownership program, which passed in 2023 and helps people who have been impacted by discrimination receive funding to buy a home. It was an idea that Chopp had for years, Macri said, but he turned over the work to prime sponsors Rep. Jamila Taylor, D-Federal Way, and Sen. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, who got it across the finish line.  

“His doggedness and attention to every detail made that program work,” Taylor said. “People who have been impacted by discrimination now have a path toward owning their own home, and Frank’s name will forever be a crucial part of that.” 

Having started his career as Speaker during a divided House, Chopp knew how to work alongside those he disagreed with.  

Former House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, R-Yelm, said Chopp “loved and respected” the House of Representatives and honored its process, even at the expense of his own policies. When Wilcox announced his retirement last year, he named Chopp among Democratic lawmakers who are “partners in the coming reemergence of a government that works.”  

Chopp stepped down as Speaker in 2019, but continued to serve as a lawmaker until retiring last year. At the time, he said he had no intention of slowing down, and he remained involved in lobbying lawmakers on his priorities.  

Both the House and the Senate held moments of silence for Chopp on Monday.  

“I don’t think anybody who served with Speaker Chopp failed to learn from him, failed to learn from his relentlessly optimistic pursuit of positive change for Washingtonians – sometimes relentless to the point of frustration for those of us who served under his leadership,” House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Seattle, said. 

A lasting impact on housing and homelessness 

Chopp was born in 1953 in Bremerton’s Harrison Hospital. Chopp’s parents, Frank Sr. and Anne, met on the picket line at the coal mine where they worked in Roslyn. They moved to Bremerton where Frank Sr. found work as a union electrician.   

Politics was a common topic of conversation at the family dinner table. In an interview for Solid Ground’s 50th anniversary, Chopp said President Franklin Roosevelt was considered a god in his household because “FDR stood up for working people.”  

Chopp moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington, from which he graduated in 1975. The following year he joined the North Seattle Community Service Center, which worked to support the newly created Fremont Public Association.  

Chopp’s time at the Fremont Public Association fostered his decades-long attention to affordable housing.  

“When you’re trying to address the human need that’s in the community, [you have] to have a sense of not only energy, but also anger,” said Chopp in Solid Ground’s 50th-anniversary interview. “That anger can be turned into a creative energy to do something about it instead of just saying ‘That’s terrible, let’s have a little bit of charity.’ No, we have to change society and figure out ways to get it done.” 

Chopp helped establish a program to help women and children experiencing domestic violence and homelessness. The Broadview shelter and transitional housing program was launched in 1983 and still operates today.  

He also helped create Seattle’s Coalition for Survival Services, a group of nonprofit safety-net service providers, in recognition that the organizations could have a bigger impact with local politicians if they worked together. That work eventually led to the creation of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, which continues to advocate on such issues.  

Chopp helped co-found the Low-Income Housing Institute (LIHI) in 1991, along with Michael Reichert of Catholic Community Services and Scott Morrow of SHARE.  

LIHI executive director Sharon Lee was working on housing development for Fremont Public Association at the time. Lee told Cascade PBS that the Public Association’s board of directors did not want to own and manage housing projects, so Chopp spun the work into a separate nonprofit.  

Chopp’s close relationship with LIHI combined with his political power occasionally drew criticism. In 2022, Chopp attempted to redirect $2 million away from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority earmarked for two other nonprofits to give to LIHI for tiny home village construction. Chopp and Lee refuted claims that it was an inappropriate move.  

Today, LIHI has more than 3,800 units of affordable housing and operates the vast majority of the region’s tiny home villages. In 2005, LIHI opened a 57-unit property in Bremerton named Frank Chopp Place. It was named after Chopp not only to honor his work on housing, but also because the apartments were constructed on the site of the old Harrison Hospital where Chopp was born.  

Lee said of course she appreciates Chopp’s decades of work on housing and homelessness policy. But she also appreciates his grassroots commitment to people in need.  

“He’s always on the right side of all these issues,” Lee said. “Other politicians are super-calculated. He’s just solid. He has the interest of people who are struggling, people who are facing challenges.” 

Solid Ground’s Gonzales similarly said that while Chopp deserves credit for the creation of thousands of units of affordable housing around Seattle and King County, she appreciates that he just wanted to help people.  

“When I think about Frank, I think not only about someone who’s a brilliant speaker and visionary, but someone who is so rooted in humanity that they can be Speaker of the House and be setting up tables behind the scenes because extra hands are needed,” Gonzales said.  

Chopp continued to advocate for affordable housing after his retirement from the Legislature. In recent months, Chopp worked to support the newly created Seattle Social Housing Developer’s effort to build mixed-income, publicly owned affordable housing. Chopp endorsed the successful February ballot initiative to create a new business tax to pay for the construction of social housing.  

In 2019, the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA) gave Chopp a lifetime achievement award.  

“He accomplished what should’ve gotten him three lifetime achievement awards,” said WLIHA executive director Rachael Myers, who worked on Chopp’s 1996 reelection campaign. “What he accomplished for housing, and homelessness and low-income people in general, is more than most could imagine in one lifetime.”