1. On Thursday, the city council held a special meeting to place their “social housing alternative,” along with the original social housing measure, Initiative 137, on the February 2025 ballot. The council’s alternative would use existing funds from the JumpStart payroll expense tax, most of which is currently earmarked for other affordable housing projects, to pay for traditional affordable housing limited to people making 80 percent or less of Seattle’s area median income.

The social housing measure proposes a tax of 5 percent, paid by businesses, on employee compensation over $1 million a year.

The council’s plan would slash funding for new housing from around $50 million to a maximum of $10 million a year over five years, drastically reducing the number of units could be built or purchased every year. Because the money would come from an existing tax, rather than a new tax on excess compensation, several affordable housing nonprofits have spoken against the plan—arguing, reasonably enough, that the plan would take JumpStart funding away from their own projects.

The council’s preferred option would not create social housing, a mixed-income housing model in which wealthier tenants (making up to 120 percent of Seattle’s median income) would subsidize rents for those making less, with rents permanently capped at 30 percent of residents’ income. Traditional affordable housing is designed to require ongoing rent subsidies, because the model does not allow any higher-income residents to live in the buildings.

Nonetheless, council members who supported the traditional affordable-housing “alternative” described it as a “proof of concept” for social housing before they voted on Thursday. (The special meeting was necessary because the council has been dragging its feet on putting I-137 on the ballot for months since the campaign submitted enough signatures to get the measure on the November ballot back in early July.) ”

The council alternative, sponsor Maritza Rivera said, “balances the need for innovation with the need for accountability” without giving “a blank check to yet another new agency that does not have the experience creating housing.” Councilmember Rob Saka said having two competing measures on the ballot was “simply good governance. … Given that both initiatives will be presented together, we’re centering choice [and] optionality.”

2. Also this week, the council’s land use committee voted unanimously in favor of a proposal to temporarily do away with design review for housing, hotel, and life sciences project in the greater downtown Seattle area. Design review, as we’ve reported, is an often lengthy process in which volunteer boards can require changes to the appearance of a building; developers say the process can add hundreds of thousands to the cost of projects because of construction delays, the need to hire architects to redesign projects, and the cost of aesthetic changes imposed by the boards.

The legislation moves on to the full council with an amendment requiring the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development to come back with a report next May detailing projects that are moving forward under the new rules. Although Councilmember Rivera pointed out that there won’t be much data available by then, a council staffer said the evaluation would still be helpful as the city decides how it plans to comply with a state law, passed last year, designed to streamline design review and prevent design review boards from delaying development based on subjective aesthetic preferences.