Affordability, housing, Mayor Harrell

Seattle Affordable Housing Awards Plummet Amid Economic Challenges
Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin

By Erica C. Barnett

The city will award far less money to affordable housing projects this year than it has in previous years—just $53 million, compared to $147 million last year. Those funds will pay for just four projects, including two in north Seattle, one in the Central District, and one in Beacon Hill. In comparison, last year’s awards—known colloquially as the “NOFA,” for the Notice of Funding Availability that starts the funding process each year—funded 12 projects across the city.

Another 18 projects that applied for funding this year will not receive it.

City officials, including Mayor Bruce Harrell and Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin, announced the awards yesterday at El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill; the event also included announcements about homeownership programs that are not part of the affordable-housing NOFA.

PubliCola reported on the reduction in funding on Tuesday; the Seattle Times had its own story on the awards yesterday.

A primary reason for the reduction, Winkler-Chin told PubliCola Wednesday, is the need to “backfill” projects that are unable to pay their construction loans due to issues like the increased cost of labor and construction materials (which went up 15 percent last year), the concrete strike, interest rate hikes, and “operational issues,” like tenants failing to pay their rent.

Typically, an affordable housing project gets a certain amount of funding from OH—say, $10 million— based on a set of assumptions about what the project will cost to build and how much revenue the project will take in from rents once it’s up and running. Those assumptions then inform the size of the loan the developer will be able to get from a bank after construction is complete and the building is leased up.

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If those assumptions are wrong—if, say, construction costs spike, there’s a concrete strike, and 20 percent of the tenants aren’t paying rent—the bank will reduce the size of the project’s “permanent” loan based on the new numbers, leaving a gap. If an expected $10 million loan gets reduced to $8 million, the Office of Housing will step in to fill that gap. And when that happens, say, 50 times, the gap works out to around $100 million—about the size of the reduction between 2023’s awards and this year’s.

Ben Maritz, an affordable-housing developer whose proposal the Office of Housing did not fund this year, said unpaid rents have become “the biggest problem” for providers who need those revenues to pay their construction loans.

Rents in subsidized housing, which are set by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development based on local median, have climbed much faster than wages for low-income people, making it harder and harder for tenants to keep up, Winkler-Chin said. “A lot of people are unable to really recover and pay their rent, and that does have an impact on how much of a loan a developer can get as they’re building up their housing.”

Another reason for the lower award amounts, Winkler-Chin said, was that the city had already “forward-committed” funding from the JumpStart high-earners payroll tax and the housing levy in previous years—guaranteeing funds for projects that were in the works but wouldn’t begin construction until later. About 43 projects funded in previous rounds of funding are currently in the works, the Office of Housing confirmed.

The JumpStart fund, most of which is supposed to go toward low-income housing, has reportedly been frozen as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s effort to address an estimated budget shortfall of more than $220 million.

But there may be other factors contributing to this year’s relatively paltry awards.

The JumpStart fund, most of which is supposed to go toward low-income housing, has reportedly been frozen as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s effort to address an estimated budget shortfall of more than $220 million. Projects already funded through JumpStart will continue moving forward, but  revenues from the payroll tax are reportedly not being dedicated to new projects, reducing the overall pool of funds for affordable housing significantly. Last year’s city budget, for example, included $138 million for affordable housing from the payroll tax.

Asked about the reported freeze on the use of JumpStart funds for new projects, Harrell spokesman Jamie Housen said the City Budget Office’s “direction to the Office of Housing (OH) is to use JumpStart [Payroll Expense Tax] funds on housing. Payroll tax is one of several large revenue streams in the OH budget, and the annual NOFA opportunities are just one of the ways OH makes investments in the community. Other investments include supporting operations, maintenance, and services (OMS) for affordable housing providers—including wage increases for staff who work in affordable housing buildings—and providing support for increased costs on previously awarded projects.”

Every year since its inception, Seattle mayors have used JumpStart funds to fill budget gaps and fund priorities that aren’t in the JumpStart spending plan; last year, about $89 million in repurposed payroll tax revenues allowed the city to pile the budget with new programs (like the police surveillance system Shotspotter as well as generous police recruitment bonuses). This year, given the size of the deficit, it’s probably that the new council and Harrell will again view JumpStart as a solution to help close the revenue gap without cutting pet programs or laying off large numbers of city workers.

If the the payroll tax is converted, at some point in the future, into an all-purpose funding source for city needs, that would represent an abandonment of its official, legally codified purpose: Building new housing, funding small businesses, and supporting climate-friendly economic development.

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Considered Hiring Ceis to Embed in Homelessness Authority, Council Starts Government 101 Briefings

Editor’s note: Due to a glitch, this article went out to newsletter subscribers earlier today but was not published on the site. We apologize for any confusion.

Mayor Bruce Harrell reportedly planned to hire controversial consultant Tim Ceis to serve as a city representative inside the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, where Ceis would work to reorganize and “fix” the organization, according to several sources. The plan to embed Ceis inside KCRHA hasn’t happened—PubliCola hears the mayor’s office decided it would be “too controversial”—but Harrell did manage to more or less singlehandedly appoint his longtime ally (and Garfield football teammate) L. Darrell Powell as the agency’s latest interim director.

It’s unclear whether the mayor plans to send someone other than Ceis over to the homelessness authority, which he recently criticized (along with Seattle-King County Public Health) to the Seattle Times, characterizing both the KCRHA and Public Health – Seattle & King County as “county” functions that should be doing a better job addressing homelessness and fentanyl, respectively, than they are. The city is actually a joint partner in both efforts, and provides a majority of KCRHA’s funding.

Ceis, a former deputy mayor whom Harrell hired to advocate for changes to Sound Transit’s station locations last year (Ceis received $310,000 to push for a plan that will eliminate stations near First Hill and in the Chinatown/International District), was recently criticized for his efforts to elevate business-backed candidate Tanya Woo, the business-backed candidate who lost last November to District 2 council incumbent Tammy Morales, to the city council. The eight elected councilmembers appointed Woo to replace former citywide councilmember Teresa Mosqueda late last month.

Neither Ceis nor Mayor Harrell’s office responded to requests for comment.

Now that Woo’s appointment is complete, the council has said it plans to get to work implementing the policy changes they promised during their campaigns, like hiring more police officers, getting “back to basics” like reducing visible drug use and filling potholes, and finding waste and inefficiencies in every city department.

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(Why they couldn’t start holding committees during the first month of their terms is unclear. The new council decided not to hold a single committee meeting until filling the vacant position. In contrast, the council filled the most recent several vacancies while holding committees and conducting a typical full roster of council business.)

But first, the new council members’ committee agendas consist of a series of Government 101-style briefings from city departments and council staff about what the departments do, how the division of powers works when it comes to the budget and executive departments, and how the city functions as a whole. On Monday, council central staff director Ben Noble held a briefing to explain how the city budget works. Throughout, new councilmembers offered suggestions about how the budget could change this year—including adopting a whole “new model” for budgeting, “benchmarking” Seattle’s spending on certain areas (say: homelessness or transportation) in comparison to what other cities, such as Houston, do; and “driving efficiencies” by “consolidating functions” that are being done by multiple departments.

“Taxpayers need to see some good return on investments, and members of the public, they’re just not seeing that today. And I think the number one area where the members of the public are seeing lack of ROI is in our homelessness spending.”—Councilmember Rob Saka

Councilmember Rob Saka, in particular, said he would like to see the overall city budget (written by the mayor’s budget office, but amended and approved by the council), change to reflect the values of the “two-thirds net new council,” which is politically to the right of the previous council. “We need to align our budget priorities with the priorities of everyone here that sits at the dais,” Saka said, “not that of previous councils.” Specifically, he added, the city’s “taxpayers… need to see some good return on investments, and members of the public, they’re just not seeing that today. And … I think the number one area where the members of the public are seeing lack of ROI is in our homelessness spending.”

Saka, along with new councilmember Maritza Rivera, promised to “audit the budget” during his campaign. On Monday, both said that they do not think a full “budget audit” is affordable or feasible. (The exact definition of a “full budget audit” has always been vague, and the city already conducts routine audits of its departments).

“It would be great to audit the full budget, but that’s not practical,” Rivera said. This is something their opponents noted repeatedly on the campaign trail, but both stuck with their “audit the budget” promise until the end of the campaign, abandoning it only once they were securely on the council.

Affordability, Elections, housing

Social Housing Backers Propose New Tax on Pay Above $1 Million
House Our Neighbors director Tiffany McCoy and social housing supporters at City Hall on Tuesday.

By Erica C. Barnett

House Our Neighbors, the group that in 2023 passed an initiative setting up a new development authority to create permanently affordable, mixed-income housing, filed a Seattle initiative on Tuesday—I-136—that would impose an “excess compensation” tax on employers with workers who make more than $1 million a year. HON’s goal is to put the measure on the ballot in November 2024.

HON will need to collect more than 26,000 valid signatures from Seattle residents to get the initiative on the ballot.

The proposal, if adopted by voters, would impose a 5 percent tax on individual compensation above $1 million, including stock options, bonuses, and deferred compensation; the tax would be paid by businesses, not employees. The proposal is modeled on the city’s JumpStart payroll tax, with at least two significant differences: It would only kick in after the first $1 million in compensation (JumpStart currently applies to companies whose workers make over $182,000), and it would apply to grocery stores and health care companies, both currently exempt from the JumpStart tax.

Also, unlike JumpStart, the social housing tax could not be raided by the mayor and city council to fill budget holes unrelated to its purpose.

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HON estimates that the tax could bring in about $50 million a year and create around 2,000 new units of housing over 10 years, through acquisition of existing buildings and the construction of apartments, including two- and three-bedroom “family-size” units.

At a press briefing outside City Hall on Tuesday, HON director Tiffani McCoy noted that an earlier version of the proposal would have involved building or buying 2,500 units, but those would be all studios and one-bedroom apartments—not the two-and three-bedroom units for which there is much greater untapped demand.

Tomorrow, the city’s Office of Housing will announce which Seattle projects will get funding through the latest annual Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) process; this most recent round of awards, which amount to just over $50 million, represent a fraction of the $147 million the city handed out last year.

McCoy called social housing a way to provide permanently affordable housing outside the existing affordable housing market, which relies on complex funding streams and can be sold off if a nonprofit housing provider is short on funding. While “we have tremendous affordable housing partners” in the city, McCoy said, “there is no level of government that has a plan to address our housing crisis at scale. There isn’t a plan from the private sector. And the affordable housing sector is constrained by what the Housing and Urban Development Department decides year to year.”

Unlike traditional affordable housing, social housing would be funded, in part, by rents from tenants at higher income levels; the buildings would be open to people making up to 120 percent of the Seattle area median income, who would pay rents closer to market rates than lower-income tenants.

Additionally, “social housing will not be vying for the limited funds of the housing levy or JumpStart,” said Ben Maritz, the affordable-housing developer who drafted HON’s high-level business plan. Tomorrow, the city’s Office of Housing will announce which Seattle projects will get funding through the latest annual Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) process; this most recent round of awards, which amount to just over $50 million, represent a fraction of the $147 million the city handed out last year.

Guest Contributor, immigration, King County

Beyond the Border: Addressing the Asylum Seeker Surge in Our Own Backyard

By Palmira Figueroa and Ben Maritz

It was one of Pedro’s sons who gave him the idea. A friend of his made the trip earlier that year and experienced no issues getting across the border, posting about the entire journey on TikTok. Pedro, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, had been living in Colombia with his family of six for the past three years, doing odd jobs when he could find them, and decided to set out for a better life in the north.

Salvador, an Angolan from the embattled exclave of Kabinda, had been bouncing around various African countries, unable to return home. He learned from a friend that it was possible to buy a cheap ticket to Brazil, a country which doesn’t require a visa for entry. Once in São Paulo, he joined the stream of migrants from every part of the world heading to the United States for safety and economic opportunity.

A lot has been written about Texas paying for buses to send migrants to New York and Chicago, but the federal government itself is also paying for people to travel away from overwhelmed shelters near the border—a policy that has impacts in unexpected places, like Seattle.

Pedro and Salvador both recently passed through an informal asylum-seeker encampment at the Riverton Park Church in Tukwila, a community-run facility that is now overwhelmed. Every week, 30 to 50 new asylum-seekers arrive, most with young children. The federal government has policies in place that allow people to cross our border, but has provided no resources to help provide them resettle. The church is woefully overcrowded and the vulnerable people staying there are getting desperate.

How we got here

Today, most people who reach the border seeking asylum—about 2.3 million a year—are processed and released, especially those who are traveling with children. They are assigned the next available court date, which the most recent arrivals have told us is currently sometime in 2029. Federal law makes asylum-seekers eligible to work six to eight months after they apply for asylum; in the meantime, they receive no assistance or accommodation.

Three-quarters of the migrants are from places further afield than Mexico, including South America and Africa. Some people cross 20 countries before they arrive in the United States. Because the migrant facilities at the southern border are completely overwhelmed, authorities are encouraging migrants to travel to other places within the United States, ideally where people have access to family or other resources. A lot has been written about Texas paying for buses to send migrants to New York and Chicago, but the federal government itself is also paying for people to travel away from overwhelmed shelters near the border—a policy that has impacts in unexpected places, like Seattle.

The local crisis

Both Salvador and Pedro passed through shelters near the border that had no capacity to accommodate them, and so paid for them to travel to Seattle—Salvador by plane, and Pedro and his family by bus. They arrived at the church just like the dozens that are still arriving each week – disoriented, penniless, and full of hope.

The Riverton Church, under the leadership of Pastor Jan Bolerjack, has long played a leading role in caring for our most disadvantaged neighbors. It was the site of a sanctioned homeless encampment until early 2023, when the Low Income Housing Institute built a tiny house village on the site. Seattle police officers and other law enforcement agents had been referring people to the Riverton Shelter ever since the first migrants started showing up in Seattle about a year ago. The officers knew Pastor Jan would welcome them.

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Today the church is a buzz of languages and chaos, with hundreds of people from around the world overflowing its fellowship hall, sanctuary, parking lot, and green spaces. It’s wet, muddy, and cold, but smiles abound and a spirit of optimism is palpable. Children play, families cook and sing, teens gossip. After a harrowing journey across South and Central America, the American dream is palpably just around the corner.

The people at the church, like those at similar overflowing facilities around the country, are here to seek safety and happiness. They are ready to learn, work and to fully take part in our society. But they still face tremendous short-term obstacles and have essentially no resources available to help them. Most are from countries without families or established communities in the region and so don’t have a natural network to turn to. Unlike refugees, a different category of migrants, they are not eligible for federal assistance.

The asylum-seekers in Tukwila and elsewhere need help filing their immigration cases. They need English language training. They need jobs. But most of all, in the immediate term, they need housing and basic sanitation so they can restart their lives.

What’s Needed

In December, King County allocated $3 million to rent 100 rooms in a hotel in SeaTac through June for some of the most vulnerable asylum-seekers. This is a costly, partial, and temporary solution. During our most recent cold weather emergency, many families living outside the church were moved to hotels by volunteers who used their own funds, but only for a few days.

What is needed is a permanent resettlement center which can welcome the migrants and be a base from which local and state governments can provide assistance. Since there is no end in sight to the flow of migrants, this facility and its funding must be open-ended, not time-bound. It should be located near transit, services and amenities such as schools for the many children in the community.

This group of people is very different from other homeless community members who are living unsheltered. While they certainly carry their share of trauma, they do not generally suffer from the issues that our urban unsheltered community goes through. They are ready, able, and eager to work and grow in their new community. A small amount of targeted assistance will get most asylum seekers into a place where they have work permits, a job, and stable housing.

We are calling on our local, county, and state government to step in and do what the federal government has failed to do: Care for the asylum-seekers and help them become a part of our community while they wait for their asylum cases to be adjudicated. Concerned citizens should write to their elected officials (a list of state local officials can be found on the new VoteWA Voter Portal) and let them know that helping this worthy group of new Americans should be a priority.

What is needed is a permanent resettlement center which can welcome the migrants and be a base from which local and state governments can provide assistance. Since there is no end in sight to the flow of migrants, this facility and its funding must be open-ended, not time-bound. It should be located near transit, services and amenities such as schools for the many children in the community.

Today, Salvador is living in the county-funded hotel and working as a translator and community organizer among the asylum seekers; he’s also enrolled at Seattle Central College, working toward his GED. Pedro and his sons are working in construction and building toward a life of independence in their new country.

Meanwhile, in December 2023, the most recent month for which data is available, 302,034 people were processed at the southern border, an annualized rate of 3.6 million and an increase of roughly 50 percent increase over the record-breaking rate of the most recent fiscal year.

Washington has long taken pride at being a Sanctuary State and rejecting xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment. Now is the time to invest in welcoming and embracing our new neighbors and letting them join our community with dignity.

Palmira Figueroa is an immigrant, a community organizer and long-time immigrant rights advocate. Ben Maritz is an affordable housing developer based in Seattle.

homelessness, King County, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Asks Embattled Homelessness Authority to Come Up With Budget Cuts

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell has reportedly asked the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to come up with budget cuts of between 2 and 5 percent; the city has the authority to do this because the KCRHA receives more than half its funding from the city. The request is a sign that the city’s budget crunch will directly impact the homelessness authority’s ability to expand or maintain the work its contractors do to address homelessness in the region.

It’s also more evidence, for those who are looking for it, of Harrell’s disillusionment with the agency, which has gone through tremendous upheaval (and a number of unsuccessful, very high-profile initiatives) in its first two years. Harrell has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the KCRHA’s approach, ranging from the agency’s efforts, under former CEO Marc Dones, to invest in new approaches like medical facilities for people with significant needs and single-family group homes for people exiting homelessness, to the size of the KCRHA’s budget itself, which Harrell has declined, even in good budget years, to significantly increase.

Harrell’s office would not specifically confirm the request for KCRHA to come up with cuts, but spokesman Jamie Housen said that “[g]iven the 2025 forecasted budget deficit facing the City, we are evaluating all options to drive efficiencies, optimize investments, and prioritize the needs of residents.”

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According to multiple accounts, Harrell chose the KCRHA’s new interim director, L. Darrell Powell, without much direct input from the KCRHA or King County, which provides nearly half the agency’s budget. Powell—a former financial director at the YMCA of Greater Seattle, United Way of King County, and the College Success Foundation—was Harrell’s teammate on the Garfield High School football team and more recently served on his mayoral transition team and fentanyl task force.

At a recent press conference announcing the new CARE Team, Harrell jokingly praised the “proud pop,” who was among the assembled supporters, for being the father of starting Husky cornerback Mishael Powell, who “won the Husky game singlehandedly” the previous week.

Housen said Powell’s “name came out of a meeting with the mayor and several members of the Mayor’s Office where multiple names were discussed and considered. I do not know if it was the mayor who first originated his name, but he certainly agreed with the suggestion.”

King County Executive Dow Constantine said he learned about the selection of Powell from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock, who “brought this name to me and told me about his qualifications and background. … I did not talk directly with the city, but others did, and understood that … the mayor knows him, and he sounded like a person who would be able to bring some good qualities to this still interim role, and hopefully gaining the confidence of the various parties [involved in] KCRHA, including the city of Seattle.”

The KCRHA has hired a search firm that ordinarily does executive searches for regional nonprofits to identify candidates for the permanent CEO position. As we reported, the search has been going slowly; the search firm, Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, just finalized a job description for the position last month.

Business, Police

New Bite of Seattle Owner Will Keep Despised Payment App; City Will Resume Graffiti Prosecutions

1. Last year, many people attending (or hoping to attend) the Bite of Seattle were dismayed to discover that the annual food festival’s new owner, payment processing company Cheq, was forcing people to view menus and purchase food from vendors using a clunky app that slowed down orders, eliminated interaction between local vendors and the public, and effectively barred anyone without a working smartphone or credit card from attending. (It also required vendors to adopt Cheq’s payment platform instead of using their own systems or accepting cash.) Local Reddit threads chronicled attendees’ complaints in real time, and a followup article on Eater detailed the difficulty vendors had using the new system.

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported last week that Cheq sold the Bite of Seattle to a Bay Area-based food-festival producer called FoodieLand, which produces branded events around the country.

On Tuesday, Seattle Center director Marshall Foster confirmed that Cheq will still be the payment system for the event, “but it won’t be your only choice.” In theory, that was true last year as well; Cheq set up a separate line where people who couldn’t use the app could buy tickets to exchange for food, but it was reportedly far away from vendors and added an extra step to an already cumbersome process.

Cheq “took on Bite of Seattle as an opportunity to really beta test its new software platform” last year, Foster said. “The company had a good experience. They learned a lot. They decided, ‘We’re not in the event business.’ And they found an organization … [whose] sole mission as an organization is to create local food focused events.”

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2. On Friday, City Attorney Ann Davison announced the city will resume enforcing its law against graffiti, after a panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by a US district judge in an ongoing case brought by protesters who were arrested for writing slogans on a barricade outside SPD’s East Precinct during protests against police brutality in 2020.

In a statement, Davison called the ruling an “important victory” for “the people of Seattle.”

“Graffiti is a massive problem for our City, costing taxpayers, businesses, and residents millions of dollars while creating widespread visual blight. We must have as many tools as possible to protect neighbors and residents impacted by graffiti,” Davison said.

Davison has asked for a jury trial in the case. The protesters’ defense rests, in part, on the argument that the city’s graffiti ordinance is so overbroad that, if interpreted literally, it would ban children from using chalk on sidewalks; the defendants also argued that the city violated their freedom of speech, by selectively enforcing a supposed prohibition on chalk writing while explicitly encouraging chalk writing in other contexts.