By Erica C. Barnett
This week on Seattle Nice, we asked the questions and proponents for two dueling social housing ballot measures answered them, in a debate that we hope will our listeners (including all of you PubliCola readers who vote in Seattle) decide whether to fund the social-housing developer voters approved at this time last year. Because of a state law limiting initiatives to a single subject, House Our Neighbors—the group that backed last year’s Initiative 135— had to bring forward a separate initiative to actually fund it.
As PubliCola readers know, HON wanted to put their measure, Proposition 1, on the ballot last November, during the high-turnout Presidential election, but the Seattle City Council prevented that from happening, citing unspecified legal concerns. The delay gave the council time to draft an alternative proposal that amounts to a “no” vote on the original social housing measure. Voters will also have the option of saying no to both measures, now known as Proposition 1A and IB.
Proposition 1A, the original proposal to fund social housing, would impose new a 5% payroll tax, to be paid by employers, on employee compensation above $1 million a year. If someone made $1,200,000 a year, for example, their employer would have to pay $10,000 business tax on the $200,000 in compensation above $1 million. The campaign estimates that the tax, which would be ongoing, would raise around $50 million a year to build or purchase housing affordable to people at a wide range of income level, all the way up to 120 percent of Seattle’s area median income. Residents who earn more would pay higher rents, subsidizing the rents of people who make less.
Proposition 1B, in contrast, would not raise taxes or fund the kind of mixed-income social housing as Prop1A. Instead, it would take $10 million a year, for five years, out of existing revenues from the JumpStart business tax—nearly two-thirds of which were originally earmarked for affordable housing—and spend it on low-income housing for people making less than 80 percent of the Seattle median income. The housing Proposition 1B would build wouldn’t be “social housing” in the same sense as Prop. 1A, because it wouldn’t include people paying market-rate rents; in this housing, the highest-income residents would still qualify as low-income and be eligible for publicly funded rent subsidies.
Tiffani McCoy of House Our Neighbors made the case for Proposition 1A, and Jessica Clawson, a land-use attorney at McCullough Hill, argued in favor of Proposition B. There’s also a “no on both” campaign, but in the interest of equal time, we limited our debate to the two main propositions.
If you’re on the fence about social housing or just want to understand more about what can be a really confusing issue, I highly encourage you to listen to this lively but very substantive debate about taxes and housing, with a brief discussion about neoliberalism for those of you who are still mad at Bill Clinton.
Listen now—ballots drop next week!
I guess I’m a little confused about how they arrive at $50 million for the estimated additional revenue, because if only 1% of Seattle population has an income of $1 million or greater, that doesn’t exactly add up when we’re talking about 750000 people roughly who live here (per the 2023 census data available). I’m under the assumption that a few at the very top must make a uber rich fortune to qualify this, but I’m also assuming those uber rich people will likely leave the city if they’re taxed like this, so we’re left with less to fill this proposed pot. That makes me feel a little skeptical that we can even achieve $5 million of additional revenue per year based on these hypotheticals. Does anyone want to help me understand what may be missing here?
As I note in the story, this isn’t an income tax paid by individual people—it’s a business tax paid on excess compensation above $1 million, so the people themselves won’t be affected directly at all.
More information about both proposition 1A and 1B is available here. https://ballotpedia.org/Seattle,_Washington,_Proposition_1A_and_1B,_Funding_Source_for_Social_Housing_Developer_Measure_(February_2025)
Tax any retail space empty more than 6-12 months. Require social services to occupy the space until a tenant is found.
(I know there is a reason with building mortgages, but who the fuck care about Selig or CBRE)
Well let’s see…on the one side is the meek, hopeful Tiffani McCoy working her heart out for housing solutions for the future, and on the other side is sleazy corporate land use attorney that works for a law firm that only represents developers and the uber rich. No need to listen, I’m in for social housing!
The amount of disused/unimproved land in Seattle could be put under a land value tax/ground rent that would alleviate the need to tax wages or increase property taxes and yield quite a bit of social housing or mixed-used development. But taxing speculators is the third rail in this city of hustlers, er entrepreneurs. Real estate deals are front page news, rather than actual productive development…this or that building sold or someone signed a lease but the homelessness and affordability “crises” keep rolling on. (Scare quotes to suggest a crisis that lasts multiple years with no concept of a plan, let alone any discernible change, is not a crisis — it’s the status quo.)