Tag: mandatory housing affordability

City Council, housing, Mayor Wilson

With Major Reforms Years Away, City Could Make Temporary Changes to Housing Fees Next Year
Downward trend: Permits to build new housing have continued to plummet, exacerbating Seattle’s housing shortage.

By Erica C. Barnett

Although a proposal to temporarily slash the Mandatory Housing Affordability fees paid by developers in most residential zones appears dead for this year, the City Council’s land use chair, Eddie Lin, said to expect legislation early next year that will address what housing developers have identified as a critical problem:  The fees, which pay for affordable housing, have become make-or-break for new housing projects thanks to the skyrocketing price of construction since MHA passed seven years ago.

As we’ve reported, developers sought a two-year, 80 percent reduction in MHA fees earlier this year, arguing that the development “pipeline” in Seattle is drying up; without the temporary cut, they argue, they won’t be paying any MHA fees because new housing simply won’t get built.

Mayor Katie Wilson had planned to propose a bill backed by the Housing Development Consortium, a large coalition of affordable housing developers and advocates, when the deal fell apart. Groups like the Seattle Renters Commission argued that cutting MHA fees would eliminate a key source of funds for affordable apartments, and council support for the bill also seemed on the verge of evaporating when Wilson pulled the bill.

Lin, who supported Wilson’s proposal in principle, said he supports both short-term MHA. fee relief and long-term reform. “MHA was never supposed to be a completely static thing. … It should be more responsive to updates in our zoning, updates into the housing ecosystem.” But, Lin added, “that’s going to take years, and we need to do something in the short term. And I think the pressure for that is only going to continue to build as permits continue to plummet.”

So far this year, according to the city’s housing dashboard, developers have filed permits have been filed to build just 1,137 new housing units citywide, down from 8,600 during the same period in 2020, when new permits were at their peak.

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“Hopefully we’ll be able to do something in early 2027” to provide a short-term solution to MHA fee pressure, Lin said.

In a bit of positive news, the latest report on MHA, from the city’s Office of Housing, shows that fees brought in about $47 million last year, reversing what appeared to be a long-term decline. But the gains are likely short-term, for a couple of reasons. First, more than half of last year’s MHA fees, around $24 million, came from just four large apartment buildings, according to the report—and nearly half of that amount, $10.6 million, came from a bond-financed senior housing project for the nonprofit Horizon House, a large windfall from an unusual type of project.

The second reason next year’s MHA fees are likely to drop off is that most of the remaining 2025 money, more than $20 million, comes from new housing (generally townhouses) in areas zoned for low-density developments. These low-rise (or LR) zones are almost certain to see a major drop-off in new housing permits thanks to legislation, passed last December. that allows up to eight apartments per lot in former single-family areas, which are not subject to MHA fees.

The Office of Housing report acknowledges this new reality, noting that “MHA-applicable townhome development could fall off going forward,” as developers start building in neighborhood residential areas to spare themselves the expense of MHA fees.

“Until we update MHA, especially in the LR zone, we’re going to see development in neighborhood residential, for better or worse,” Lin said. “Because why would you build an LR if you can build the same thing in neighborhood residential?”

Affordability, housing, Mayor Wilson

Proposal to Temporarily Cut Fees on New Housing Is Dead (For Now), Negotiators Say

By Erica C. Barnett

A proposal that would have given developers an 80 percent break on Mandatory Housing Affordability fees for two years is dead, according to an email to members of the Housing Development Consortium sent by HDC director Patience Malaba yesterday afternoon.

In her message to HDC members,, Malaba wrote, “After careful consideration, I informed the Mayor’s Office that HDC was withdrawing its support for advancing the proposal at this time. Following that decision, the Mayor’s Office chose not to move the legislation forward on a summer, pre-budget timeline and instead will convene a stakeholder workgroup to continue refining the proposal and related policy considerations.”

Wilson’s office confirmed that the proposal isn’t moving forward. “this month,”

Instead, Wilson said in a statement to PubliCola, “we will be setting a table with labor, affordable housing providers, community-driven organizations, and market rate developers to identify shared, collaborative solutions and make sure that our city and region takes every action possible to 1) expedite and encourage housing production 2) support community-driven development, 3) build the critical affordable housing  our city and region needs and 4) prevent displacement of low-income households and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities.”

Developers who have been waiting for the legislation say its failure will jeopardize about 30 projects immediately, and make new housing projects far less likely, at a time when market-rate housing development has slowed to a trickle.

The HDC, which represents affordable housing developers, had been negotiating with the mayor’s office for months over the proposal to temporarily reduce MHA fees, which private-market developers must pay as part of the 2016 “grand bargain” that allowed taller buildings in exchange for payments into an affordable housing fund.

Behind the scenes, a number of HDC members and advocacy groups raised concerns over the last several weeks that the MHA “holiday” would lead to the end of the program itself, which is based on the principle that “housing should pay for housing.” New housing, according to this logic, causes displacement and other harms, and MHA fees offset those harms.

Downtown Emergency Service Center Daniel Malone sent an email to Wilson last month expressing “deep concern” about the proposal, which he said would reduce local funding for the kind of housing-first projects DESC builds at a time when federal funding may dry up.

“As we explore solutions and mitigation strategies in preparation for unprecedented federal disinvestment in our existing programs, we will need to rely more on local resources than ever before,” Malone wrote. “Allowing housing developers to receive the benefits of upzoning to only create luxury apartments for the few who can afford them isn’t a solution; it adds to our problems by decreasing the production of affordable housing units.”

Opponents of the temporary fee reduction reportedly sought concessions like a cap on the number of new apartment buildings that could take advantage of the break on MHA fees, along with “backfill” of MHA revenue that would be “lost” due to the fee reduction by other city funding sources.

However, since many of these hypothetical new building projects wouldn’t happen, at least according to the developers who would build them, without the fee reduction, it’s misleading to describe these as “lost” revenues.

Scott Berkley, an organizer with Tech 4 Housing, said the group was “disappointed to see this worthwhile proposal fed to the insatiable maw of the Seattle Process. We encourage the mayor and city council to move beyond a revenue source that demands middle and working class renters fund affordability, while expecting nothing of our city’s wealthiest homeowners and corporations.”

Nicole Macri, a state legislator and deputy director of strategy for the Downtown Emergency Services Center, said there are better ways to reduce costs for developers than slashing MHA fees, even temporarily. The city could, for example, “refund permit fees, or a portion of permit fees, if you deliver the project in X amount of months, or give a partial sales tax exemption for projects” that are finished on time, Macri said. “There are many things the city can control, including the permitting fee,” without giving developers a temporary break on MHA fees, she said.

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The city’s budget process starts in August and ends in November, meaning that any “stakeholder workgroup” process would be delayed until next year, past the point when many developers have said they will have to cancel projects that won’t pencil out with MHA fees attached. The fees range from $6.75 per square foot in the small “urban industrial” zone to $50.46 per square foot in places like north Beacon Hill, with most fees ranging between $10 and $20 a square foot.

In a statement, the leadership of the pro-housing group Seattle YIMBY urged Wilson “to show true leadership on housing by making hard choices to prioritize the homes that can be built right now. Our housing crisis was not caused by having too little process. Seattle has a critical window to show the region we are ready to act, ready to deliver thousands of new homes, millions in new tax revenue, and millions more for affordable housing as we start building again.”

MHA originated at a time before large majorities of Seattle residents agreed that building more housing, not just purpose-built low-income housing, is an urgent need. It also began at a time when development was booming, and for years, it produced tens of millions of dollars of funding for affordable housing projects. But fees have plummeted in recent years, going from a high of $74 million in 2021 to an estimated $22 million last year, because of a precipitous drop in the number of housing projects in the pipeline. UPDATE: Actual MHA revenues last year were $47 million, according to numbers published on July 20, thanks mostly to several large apartment buildings. We’ll have more on this in a separate post.

Emily Thompson, a partner at GMD Development, said a lot of developers are currently in their fifth or six round of “corrections,” which occur just before a permit is issued. “I think that shows the applicant is slow playing it because as soon as you get our permits you have to start” the development process. As for the argument that giving developers a break will reduce MHA proceeds, Thompson says, “Any amount of zero dollars is zero dollars”—that is, if developers don’t build because of MHA fees, there won’t be any MHA proceeds anyway.

Development has slowed precipitously since its peak in 2020 and early 2021. So far this year, developers have only filed permits for 1,134 units of housing. By this time in 2020, in comparison, there were more than 8,600 units in the pipeline, which increased to more than 20,000 units by the end of that year.

Meanwhile, according to data provided by the Housing Roundtable, a group of developers who had been pushing for the MHA “holiday,” more than 50,000 units that were going through the city’s development pipeline between 2023 and 2025 have since been canceled.

PubliCola has reached out to Malaba and Mayor Wilson’s office and will update this post when we hear back.

 

Affordability, Density, podcasts

Will Dialing Back Fees on Housing Fix Seattle’s Construction Crash?

 

Photo by Joshua T. Garcia, via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Seattle Nice this week, Sandeep and I brought on two special guests to explain why developers want a holiday from Mandatory Housing Affordability fees, which are added on to of the cost of every new multifamily residential building in Seattle. The fees pay for affordable housing (or a developer can skip them by building affordable units on sight), but they’re bringing in less money than ever as housing development slows.

Since MHA passed, in 2019, Seattle has undergone a political evolution on housing. Density, which neighborhood activists and most political leaders once saw as having an entirely negative impact on neighborhoods, is increasingly seen as a necessity as Seattle’s renter majority grows. Many people no longer agree that the city should segregate renters from property owners by restricting them to dirty, polluted arterials far from parks, libraries, and tree-lined streets. There’s a growing consensus that to reduce the cost of housing, you have to build more of it.

Our guests this week, land use and housing consultant Natalie Quick and former Seattle Chief Operating Officer Marco Lowe, don’t go so far as to call for a total repeal of MHA, but they do make a strong case for its eventual replacement with an incentive-based approach called funded inclusionary zoning. FIZ, which we’ve covered at PubliCola before provides tax breaks, similar to Seattle’s existing Multifamily Tax Exemption program, in exchange for a requirement that developers build affordable units on site. Instead of charging a fee for housing, which drives up rents, FIZ makes it possible for affordable and market-rate housing to coexist.

As Marco points out, housing slowdowns don’t just lead to a shortage of housing, driving up rents. They also deplete city resources, because when developers decide it’s too expensive to build, the city loses out on all other kinds of non-MHA revenues, from sales taxes on materials to taxes on real estate transactions to property taxes on the housing itself.

This one’s a wonky episode, but one well worth listening to if you want to understand why so little new housing—particularly larger units—is getting built right in Seattle right now and what the city could do to reverse the trend.

Editor’s note: This story originally identified Marco Lowe as the former Office of Economic Development director. This error has been corrected.

City Council, Development, housing

Developers Ask for Mandatory Affordable Housing Fee Holiday as Permits for New Apartments Dry Up

By Erica C. Barnett

A group of apartment builders is asking Mayor Katie Wilson and the City Council to consider rolling back the fees they pay every time they build new housing. The developers, calling themselves the Seattle Housing Roundtable, are asking the city to reduce Mandatory Housing Affordability fees by 90 percent this year, followed by an 80 percent reduction next year and a 75 percent reduction in 2028, with a goal of permanent MHA reforms by the following year.

According to Ian Morrison, an attorney with the land use firm McCullough Hill, MHA “was a good idea when it was originally envisioned, at a time when interest rates were much lower and the economic climate was a lot more positive and predictable.” But, he added, “What we’re seeing now, using the city’s own data, is MHA as a part of a project that was viable in the late 2010s no longer work.   That means housing will not be built in Seattle today.”

The Seattle City Council approved MHA in 2019 as the final component of former mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA). The program made developers build affordable housing or pay a fee every time they built new apartments in Seattle’s multifamily areas (at the time, Seattle still had single-family zoning). In exchange, they were allowed to build more densely.  The framework took for granted that new market-rate apartments have a negative impact on neighborhoods that developers must mitigate by funding affordable housing.

This consensus has shifted just in the seven years MHA has been in effect, as scarcity has made apartments increasingly unaffordable and more people understand that density is an environmental necessity and an answer to growing demand for housing. At the same time, the funding MHA produces for affordable housing has plunged from a high of $74 million in 2021 to just $22 million last year as development has slowed. Last year, developers filed applications to build fewer than 2,000 new apartment buildings, a drop of almost 90 percent from a peak of 17,400 units in 2020.

Developers and land use attorneys we spoke to seemed reluctant to say outright that the city should get rid of MHA altogether, although it negatively impacts their bottom line. Holly Golden, a land use attorney at HCMP Law Offices, said that with lower fees, “you’d still see millions of dollars of MHA fees, plus new construction jobs and permit fees to keep [the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections running during the building downturn. … Getting projects started provides a huge financial benefit to the city budget at a time when they really need it.”

Taxes on construction are inherently volatile, and there’s a real question about whether MHA aligns with the reality of Seattle as a majority-renter city with an acute housing shortage. If the city agrees to an MHA “holiday” and development rebounds, a surge in other funding sources like the Real Estate Excise Tax could help offset the loss of MHA dollars.

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Not every jurisdiction funds affordable housing by charging a fee on development. PubliCola has reported on a concept called funded inclusionary zoning, in which developers get tax breaks for including affordable housing in their projects. The concept flips the script on development, treating density (i.e. apartments, i.e. renters) as a good thing while also ensuring that affordable housing gets built. Developers aren’t charitable organizations—if a project doesn’t make sense to them, they won’t build it—so instead of penalizing new housing with fees, cities like Portland are trying incentives to build new housing at all income levels.

“There are ways to ensure that inclusionary zoning programs work for the long term and are well calibrated to ensure they don’t impede housing,” Morrison said. “But getting those details right takes time.”

Eddie Lin, the head of the city council’s land use committee, told us on a recent episode of Seattle Nice that he’s “open to a temporary reduction in MHA fees. It needs to be tailored to the right size to get construction going, but not more than we need.”

Eliminating MHA completely, Lin continued, is a nonstarter; the fee, he said, remains “incredibly important for developing additional affordable housing. … We want to be mindful of not giving away too much more than we need to.” MHA reform, he said, might include addressing the fact that developers currently have to pay a fee for building in low-rise zones but not in neighborhood residential—the former single-family zones that now allow essentially the same density as low-rise areas.

Ray Connell, managing director at the developer Holland Partner Group, said it’s possible the impact of MHA and other taxes and regulations in real time by looking east across Lake Washington. “All the cranes are in Redmond,” where fees are lower, “so projects get started,” Connell said. “It’s amazing to go over there and see a bunch of new projects and cranes in the sky. Why is it happening over there? It’s not a hard cost issue, and it’s not an interest rate issue. Yes, it’s the jobs… but it’s also the additional fees that we have to face on this side of the lake.”

Redmond recently adopted an aggressive inclusionary zoning package that says 10 percent of all new units in housing with 10 or more units must be affordable. In four years, Connell said, “there won’t be cranes in certain areas of Redmond. … We can’t get those areas of Redmond to work anymore.”

City Council, Density, housing, land use

Cathy Moore Wants to Make it More Expensive to Build Middle Housing

By Erica C. Barnett

In a recent meeting of the Seattle City Council’s special committee on the comprehensive plan, Councilmember Cathy Moore laid out her case for imposing fees on new housing in the city’s traditional single-family areas, where—under a state law passed two years ago, HB 1110—the city is required to allow up to four units on each lot (or six within a quarter-mile of frequent transit stops or when two of the units are affordable.)

The council is gearing up to adopt “interim” zoning changes to comply with HB 1110, which Seattle must do by June; ordinarily, the city would have adopted the new rules as part of the city’s overall comprehensive plan update, but Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced his legislation far behind schedule, leaving the council with little time to consider the plan.

A half-dozen homeowner groups have appealed the plan, arguing that specific new “neighborhood centers”—commercial areas near transit where the proposed plan would allow apartment building—will harm the character of their historically single-family areas.

Simultaneously, the city is considering changes to its Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) legislation that would expand MHA to the new neighborhood centers, adding 21 percent to the area of the city that’s subject to MHA, while continuing to exempt the new “neighborhood residential” zones—the new name for the city’s former single-family areas—from the fees.

Moore’s objections boiled down to two main points. First, she argued against the concept of neighborhood centers, noting that the city is already increasing the amount of housing that can be built “throughout the city,” by allowing up to four units on every single-family lot. (Moore specifically opposes a new neighborhood center in Maple Leaf, which she argued would amount to “sacrificing” the entire neighborhood to density.)

Second, and more vociferously, she argued that the city should impose Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) requirements on all new housing in former single-family areas, effectively mandating that developers build or fund the construction of at least one affordable unit for every three to five market-rate units they build.

MHA, which has been in place since 2019, allows developers to build more housing in certain parts of the city; in exchange, they agree to build affordable housing on site or pay the city’s Office of Housing, which funds housing elsewhere. The size of the fee varies depending on where in the city the new housing is located, and by how much of a height bonus developers receive. As housing construction slows, so do MHA revenues; currently, the City Budget Office projects that MHA will bring in $22 million in both 2025 and 2026, down from $68 million in 2022 and $59 million in 2023.

“We’re going to open up the city to tremendous development and density, which is good, but we need to make sure that we’re utilizing all our tools,” Moore said, “and MHA is a powerful tool. It can be tweaked, but to simply say it shouldn’t apply across the board, I think, is a missed opportunity. And again, it’s a calibration of, what are the costs that we consider valuable in this society?”

Representatives from the mayor’s office, the Office of Planning and Community Development, and two consultants that looked at the impact of the MHA program on housing in Seattle, BERK and Heartland pointed to 2024 BERK/Heartland study showing that developers of low-rise housing—the townhouses, fourplexes, and other low-density housing types that will be allowed in single-family zones under 1110—opted to build these units outside MHA areas because the additional height bonus didn’t benefit low-rise developers enough to make up for the large fees they would have to pay to build in those areas.

A separate study, from ECONorthwest, showed that “middle housing” developments are extremely sensitive to cost increases, falling off dramatically as the cost to develop each unit increases. That same study found that middle housing is currently feasible in only 19 percent of the proposed new neighborhood residential (former single-family areas), and most of those won’t be redeveloped; imposing new fees on new housing in those areas would make it far less likely that developers would choose to build new housing there.

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OPCD planning manager Geoff Wentlandt noted that by adding new neighborhood centers to the city’s zoning maps, the city will be increasing the areas of the city subject to MHA requirements by 21 percent. But imposing MHA fees on small developments in former single-family areas, Wentlandt said, would reduce the amount developers would make on projects below levels that most developers would be willing to accept. “We really want to prioritize seeing the production of middle housing in the new neighborhood residential zones. Everyone agrees that middle housing is a high priority, and want to make sure it comes to fruition,” Wentlandt said.

Moore pushed back on this, arguing that developers should be willing to accept lower profit margins in exchange for the ability to build in new areas. “My understanding is, in the past, when they were building, they expected 15 to 20 percent return on investment, and they’re still seeking those kinds of high level [returns],” Moore said.

“If you talk to some of the smaller for-profit developers… they’re not looking to make more than 10 percent return on investment. And so things do actually pencil out. When we talk about penciling out, are we talking about we’re penciling out at 15 percent profit, or are we talking about penciling out at 10 percent profit? Nobody’s really answered that question, what does it truly mean to pencil?”

Moore also suggested that OPCD was arguing that “six dollars”—the difference between a typical $22-per-square-foot MHA fee when the program was introduced and the $28 it costs today—is making it so that projects don’t pencil out. “I think we need a policy discussion about whether we think $6 to ensure that we continue to have affordable housing in the city is a cost that we think is appropriate for our developers to absorb and reduce their return on investment a little bit,” Moore said. “I guess I’m unconvinced that the $6 is really, across the board, going to be the thing that prevents affordable housing.” (The $6 change reflects an annual inflation adjustment, not an increase in real terms.)

Christa Valles, a senior advisor in the mayor’s office, pushed back on this, saying, “I would just like to be really clear we do not consider our position on this as backing away from MHA. …  This is a really difficult environment right now for housing development, and we want to make sure that the infill that we hope to see under HB 1110 has the support that it needs to happen.”

According to the BERK study, the MHA fee itself makes up a small percentage of overall development costs; but, as costs for other elements of development increase, the fee can be a deciding factor in whether a project gets built. In real dollars, building four 1,250-square-foot units would add $140,000 to the cost to develop a property, using the current $28 “typical” fee. Even if a developer decided it was worth it to pay an extra $140,000 to build those four units, the fee would get passed on to future renters or buyers, making the housing less affordable.

Moore also suggested “carving out an exemption” to MHA requirements “for people, families, who are wanting to develop their lot,” as opposed to developers building the same type of housing for new residents.

Implementing the changes Moore suggested—that is, eliminating at least some neighborhood centers and imposing fees on all new development in the city’s traditional single-family neighborhoods—would make it far more expensive, less feasible, and less likely that middle housing would be built in neighborhoods across Seattle. Developers would reasonably opt out of building in places where they would make less money, choosing either not to build in Seattle or to concentrate new housing in areas where it has always been allowed—along large, busy arterial roads where Seattle’s renter majority is currently concentrated.

Affordability, Density, housing, Maybe Metropolis, Taxes, zoning

Maybe Metropolis: The Solution Is More Density, Not Just More Taxes
Image of three developments allowed in some former single-family areas, from least to most dense: residential small lot, low-rise 1, and low-rise 2.
MHA’s modest upzones on a sliver of Seattle’s single-family land include (l-r) residential small lot, low-rise 1, and low-rise 2. Images via City of Seattle.

By Josh Feit

The JumpStart tax, city council member Teresa Mosqueda’s payroll tax on big employers like Amazon, is posting standout numbers. This year, JumpStart will fund $97 million in affordable housing investments, including nearly $80 million for 1,769 units of affordable rental housing. Last year, the $71.4 million it provided toward affordable housing amounted to almost half the $153 million total raised by all the city’s affordable housing funding streams.

The Jump Start tax teases out the nexus between surging tech job growth and housing prices by capturing nouveau corporate Seattle’s impact on the market. That is: As the hyper growth of tech companies like Amazon inflate local housing prices, the city is taxing them to help fund affordable housing. It’s a good look, and it seems like a logical offset for the influx of high-earning tech employees. And, let’s be honest: It also feels good.

However, as much as I agree with the logic of an Amazon tax, and as much as it’s bringing in, I think there’s a more germane and effective way to raise affordable housing dollars. Luckily, it’s already part of our affordable housing strategy—sort of.

I’m talking about 2019’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program, a fee on new development in designated parts of the city, which brought in an impressive $50 million in 2021 itself.

Given that Jump Start outpaced MHA by $20 million, why am I focusing on  MHA as the smarter policy? For starters, MHA, which came with a series of targeted upzones that allow more housing in more places, actually attempts to undo the root cause of our housing crisis: prohibitive zoning laws that discriminate against multi-family housing in the vast majority of the city. These historical zoning laws cordon off nearly 75 percent of the city from multifamily housing, pinching supply and thus fueling steep housing prices.

While conventional wisdom holds that upzones and new development inflate housing costs, a 2021 UCLA report found that the latest studies show the opposite: Five out of six studies looking at the impact of market-rate housing determined that new market-rate density “makes nearby housing more affordable across the income distribution of rental units.”

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Conversely, those who warn that upzones lead to gentrification, have a hard time explaining why gentrification is alreday happening in Seattle today, under our status-quo zoning that prohibits the very density urbanists are calling for. More logically, the prohibition on new development in so much of the city is spiking prices for the limited housing that is available.

Seattle gained 130,000 people between 2010 and 2020 (13,000 a year) and another 8,400 during the first year of the pandemic, many of them tech transplants. These newcomers didn’t cause the housing shortage, though—they merely brought it into sharper relief. The MHA strategy, which encourages housing development, is actually in the position to do something about it.

MHA, which came with a series of targeted up-zones, actually attempts to undo the root cause of our housing crisis: prohibitive zoning laws that discriminate against multi-family housing in the vast majority of the city.

And MHA might be worth more money than JumpStart. The MHA data point that interests me most is $13.4 million, a subset of MHA dollars raised. This figure represents the amount of money MHA raised specifically from developments built on land where it was previously prohibited: multifamily housing built on land that was upzoned in Seattle’s previously exclusive single-family zones.

Passed in 2019, MHA didn’t merely tack a fee onto new development; it also upzoned tracts along the edges of 27 single-family zones, allowing small-scale density in some previously single-family-only neighborhoods by expanding low-rise and neighborhood commercial zones and creating a new “residential small lot” zoning designation. These modest upzones, which the city adopted on just 6 percent of single-family land, allow new housing that fits in seamlessly with single-family houses.

Interestingly, this modest bit of geography— 6% of the single-family zones, or  4% of the city’s total developable land—accounted for nearly 20 percent of all MHA dollars. This outsized production could represent an upward trend. Last year, the same modestly upzoned fraction of single-family areas brought in 12 percent of the money raised from MHA overall, $8.3 million out of MHA’s $68.3 million.

This disproportionate performance indicates that pent-up demand for development on formerly cordoned-off land could be a spigot of affordable housing cash. Consider: There’s a lot more developable land where that 6 percent came from, and the city could increase the potential density of those areas more dramatically than it has to allow multifamily and commercial development, for example. If the city council and Mayor Bruce Harrell had the courage to stand up to Seattle’s NIMBY class by extending the upzones further into exclusive single-family areas and by opting for denser upzones, Seattle would generate far more cash for affordable housing.

Sure, $80 million from the JumpStart tax  is helping a lot. But the truth is, we need far more money for housing. According to the Office of Housing, MHA helped fund 990 units in 2021. But, according to the Regional Affordable Housing Task Force , we need 12,000 a year. Unfortunately, JumpStart’s impressive figures could dampen any move to expand the more on-point MHA approach, which raises money for affordable housing (and could raise a lot more) while actually addressing the crux of the housing problem by freeing up land for development.

In this way, JumpStart could unwittingly play to the interests of single-family homeowners (and their ever-appreciating property values) by shifting the focus away from the central role these homeowners play in the housing crisis, holding them harmless and avoiding bold policy solutions by taking their communities off the table.

According to the MHA numbers, the 4 percent of Seattle that we timidly opened up to more housing construction is trying to tell us something: The table is bigger than we think.

Josh@PubliCola.com