Tag: social housing

City Council, Elections, housing

Seattle Nice: Social Housing vs. “Social Housing”
Social housing in Vienna, Austria, by Rosso Robot on Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

This week’s “Seattle Nice” offers a preview of the upcoming campaigns for and against the initiative to fund social housing, I-137, which will go on the February ballot next to a competing measure from the city council that would provide a much smaller amount of funding for traditional affordable housing. I argue that by taking the unusual step of pitting social housing against affordable housing on the ballot, the council is attempting to thwart a proposal that enjoys broad voter support; Sandeep counters that the new social housing developer has no experience building housing yet, so they need guardrails to prevent them from wasting taxpayer money.

As we’ve reported, Initiative 137 would fund the social housing developer created by last year’s I-135, imposing a 5 percent tax, paid by businesses, on workers’ earnings in excess of $1 million a year, which the campaign estimates would bring in about $50 million a year. The money would be used to purchase or build an estimated 2,000 permanently affordable homes, at a wide range of incomes, over 10 years. The plan assumes that nearly half the residents of social housing would be higher-income tenants—those making between 80 percent and 120 percent of Seattle’s median income—and that these tenants would subsidize rents for lower-income renters.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

The council’s alternative, in contrast, would kneecap the social housing developer by providing just $10 million a year, for five years, to build standard affordable housing for people making less than 80 percent of median income; this type of housing requires ongoing operations subsidies, because it has no higher-income residents to subsidize rents. The council’s plan would also nix the new tax, taking money out of the existing JumpStart payroll tax fund, which currently funds other affordable housing projects, to pay for this affordable housing—a zero-sum game that pits affordable housing developers against each other.

Assuming there’s no legal challenge (the city charter requires competing council initiatives to be on the “same subject” as the measures they’re attempting to defeat, and there’s a real question about whether social housing and standard affordable housing are similar enough to meet that standard), both I-137 and the council alternative will be on the ballot next February. I’m confident we’ll be talking (and arguing) a lot more about the proposals between now and then.

Also: We talked briefly about proposed $50,000 bonuses for new police officers hired from other departments. SPD is the only city department routinely allowed to keep funding for hundreds of unfilled positions and use it for virtually any purpose.

City Council, Development, Elections, housing, Mayor Harrell

Friday Fizz: Council Advances “Alternative” to Social Housing, Design Review to End (Temporarily) Downtown

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.

City Council, Elections, housing

Council “Alternative” to Social Housing Would Raid JumpStart for Small, Short-Term Affordable Housing Pilot

By limiting eligibility, the proposal would eliminate a crucial element of social housing’s funding plan.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Maritza Rivera is sponsoring an alternative to Initiative 137, the proposal to fund permanently affordable “social” housing through an excess compensation tax, that would raid the existing JumpStart payroll tax to fund a much smaller affordable housing program that would be limited to lower-income tenants.

A key element of the original social housing proposal is that higher-income tenants would subsidize the rent of lower-income tenants by paying more, but that council’s proposal eliminates that subsidy by imposing much lower maximum income limits.

Assuming the council passes it, the competing measure will appear alongside the social housing proposal on the February 2025 ballot.

Initiative 137 is the second half of the social housing proposal from House Our Neighbors, whose 2023 ballot measure, I-135, created a public development authority to build permanently affordable mixed-income housing. I-137 would impose a 5 percent tax on annual employee compensation above $1 million, to be paid by employers, raising up to $50 million a year to build and purchase housing.

In contrast, the council’s proposal would take $10 million in annual proceeds from the existing JumpStart payroll tax— currently earmarked for unrelated affordable housing, small business, and equitable development programs—to fund the social housing developer. The measure would provide a total of $50 million for new housing—to be administered through the city’s Office of Housing—before expiring in five years.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Unlike the social housing initiative, the council’s alternative would cap renters’ incomes at 80 percent of the area median, effectively converting social housing into traditional low-income housing. A key element Seattle’s social housing plan is that people earning up to 120 percent of median income would help subsidize the housing costs of lower-income tenants by paying higher rents, ensuring that the housing becomes self-sustaining.

The council delayed action on I-137 earlier this year, ensuring that it won’t appear on the high-turnout Presidential election-year ballot in November. Instead, voters will choose between the two competing measures in a special February 2025 election.

During the council’s weekly briefing on Monday, Rivera said the council’s alternative to I-137 “allows the new public development authority to demonstrate proof of concept, rather than the city simply handing over a blank check to yet another new agency with no track record of creating housing. … If they succeed in delivering positive results, the city can expand this effort in the future, but we need to receive results first and foremost.”

The legislation would amend the spending plan for the JumpStart tax, removing funds from other priorities to pay for the limited five-year pilot. The city also plans to use JumpStart funds to close a $250 million budget gap this year.

City Council, Elections, housing, King County, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Opposes Funding Social Housing; County Councilmember Zahilay Seeks $1 Billion Housing Investment

1. Mayor Bruce Harrell told members of the City Council that he opposes Initiative 137, which would fund social housing by imposing a tax on employers who pay workers more than $1 million a year. Instead, he wrote in a Tuesday email, he supports putting a competing alternative on the ballot that would provide no new funding—for example, an alternative proposed by the Seattle Times editorial board that would force the social housing developer to “compete for Housing Levy dollars.”

The housing levy, funded through a property tax, primarily pays for low-income housing built by nonprofit housing developers; the social housing developer hopes to build mixed-income developments where higher-wage workers’ rent would help subsidize housing for lower-income residents.

“Social housing as a concept may prove to have benefits, but the City has also been advised that Initiative 137 comes with legal risk,” Harrell wrote. “Voters interested in exploring the concept of social housing ought to have an option to do so that allows social housing to be established as a successful proof-of-concept before further increasing taxes.”

In the email, addressed to Council President Sara Nelson, Harrell said he had “spoken to you and members of the City Council individually last week and this week.” But Tammy Morales, the council’s most progressive member and a supporter of social housing, was not among them. In an email to Harrell’s deputy chief of staff, a staffer for Morales said Harrell has consistently “iced out” Morales, despite the fact that she is one of the council’s two longest-serving members.

“The Mayor has never returned a phone call from Councilmember Morales, hasn’t reached out to meet with her (at least not this year, I can’t speak to previous years), consistently does not invite us to events, and does not seem interested in even trying to extend an olive branch to our office,” the staffer wrote. “We have been working hard to pass the Mayor’s legislation through Land Use Committee. The very least he could do is meet with her.”

Morales challenged Harrell, then the District 2 council member, in 2015 and lost; she was elected four years later.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

2. King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay has proposed his own potential funding measure that’s strikingly similar to the social housing proposal, except that it would not require a new development authority or taxing source. Instead, Zahilay’s legislation would ask County Executive Dow Constantine to establish a “regional workforce housing initiative” that would develop a plan to use at least $1 billion of the county’s $9 billion in available debt capacity to build permanently affordable housing at a variety of income levels.

Much like the social housing proposal, Zahilay’s legislation anticipates that higher-income renters would subsidize apartments for their lower-income neighbors through higher rents.

“If we are going to have a functioning society, we need our workers, especially essential workers, to live closer to where they work,” Zahilay said.

Instead of creating a new public developer, like the one voters approved for social housing last year, Zahilay’s plan would rely on existing public developers, like the King County Housing Authority, and nonprofits that already develop and operate housing. He said he doesn’t consider his idea a competitor to social housing, although it would fill a similar niche in the market—permanently rent-restricted housing for people making up to 120 percent of the are median income. The rents would be set “at whatever monthly cost it takes to maintain and operate the buildings and pay down the interest and principal on the debt,” Zahilay said.

Also like social housing, the new housing Zahilay envisions would operate essentially outside the housing market, with rents that would remain “constant, other than to reflect interest rate changes on debt service,” according to the legislation. How all this would work, what kind of rents would be required to make the plan feasible, and how much housing the county could fund with $1 billion are all to be determined: Zahilay said he’s “asking [the executive] to do the analysis and create an implementation plan in a way that pencils. I think there would be some pushback if it was directive.”

City Council, Development, housing

Back from Recess, Council Takes Up Design Review Downtown, Continues Delay on Social Housing Measure

By Erica C. Barnett

In a surprise cameo, former city councilmember Kshama Sawant showed up at the council’s first post-recess meeting Tuesday to denounce the “council Democrats” for a shelved proposal—which was not on the agenda—to adopt a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. The plan, proposed by Sawant’s District 3 council replacement Joy Hollingsworth, would allow restaurant and bar owners out of an agreement they made a decade ago to start paying the full minimum wage by next year.

In response to pushback, Hollingsworth pulled her legislation and announced that she’s working on a “balanced solution.” The last time that happened, Council President Sara Nelson quietly dropped her proposal to reduce the mimimum wage for “gig” delivery drivers.

The meeting also included a perfunctory, unilluminating discussion of Initiative 137, which would fund the city’s social housing developer by increasing business taxes on employee compensation above $1 million a year. Before going on break, the council delayed a vote to put the initiative on the November ballot, ensuring that it will appear in a low-turnout February special election rather than the general election in a Presidential election year; they’re required to discuss the measure at the beginning of every council meeting until they take action.

The delay is already lengthy by recent historical standards. In 2014, the city council delayed a vote on the preschool levy on the ballot by one week; in that case, the city proposed a tax increase to pay for affordable preschool, but also placed a competing a union-backed measure that require a higher minimum wage for preschool workers, without new funding, on the ballot alongside it.

During the meeting, Morales tried to ask whether the council was working on an alternative ballot measure, but was shot down by Councilmember Dan Strauss, who said he could respond to that question privately or in a closed executive session.

“The point of having this as an information item is so that we can share with the public what we’re contemplating, and if we’re contemplating
an alternative, I think the public deserves to know that we’re contemplating an alternative,” Morales responded, then Nelson cut off the discussion, ordering the audience, “Do not speak!” when they shouted their opposition to the opaque process. (It’s becoming a familiar move.)

Earlier this month, the Seattle Chamber was polling on an alternative to I-137 that would siphon money away from the housing levy to pay for social housing, rather than raising taxes. One possibility is that the city attorney’s office is still wordsmithing the council’s alternative, which has to be on the same topic as the original initiative.

On Wednesday, the council’s land use committee held an initial public hearing on a proposal that would temporarily exempt residential, hotel, and life sciences buildings in the downtown area from design review—a lengthy process in which volunteer review board members look at the aesthetic aspects of a development and, more often than not, require developers to change their buildings.

Design review has been used to require changes to materials and brick colors, reduce the number of apartment in multifamily developments, and mandate specific retail footprints, often in the interest of making new buildings conform to the existing scale and “character” of nearby single-family areas. According to a Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections memo on the proposal, which would last three years, design review for residential projects currently takes between 10 and 25 months.

The proposal, billed as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan would also give the OPCD director more authority to approve some specific variances from the land use code for developments that are exempt from design review downtown—like setbacks, the location of mandatory open space and landscaping, and the type of street-level uses that are allowed.

Somewhat unusually, several councilmembers took issue with the conclusions of a memo from the council’s central staff that seemed to argue against the temporary exemptions.

“It is unclear what problem [the bill] seeks to solve,” the memo says. “Greater downtown, the general planning geography subject to the proposal, is not capacity constrained. The City’s development capacity dashboard, which was last updated in 2022, indicates that greater downtown has zoned capacity for approximately 110,000 additional jobs and 41,000 additional housing units.”

Ketil Freeman, the staffer who wrote the memo, added Wednesday that the city could make other decisions to encourage a more residential vibe for downtown, such as creating more “green streets” like Bell Street in Belltown.

Nelson—not always a supporter of new development—pushed back on the “zoned capacity” argument, citing data that shows a decline in the number of units permitted and under construction the downtown area. (The “plenty of zoned capacity” argument is more commonly used by anti-growth activists pointing out that the city has sufficient zoning to build more than enough housing already—always failing to note that most of this “capacity” isn’t accessible, because it’s under people’s current homes).

Bringing more receipts, Nelson noted that while there may be capacity to build 41,000 more housing units downtown, that isn’t translating into actual housing: According to current data, development permits and construction starts downtown declined over the last year. Finally, she said the green street in Belltown “does have a lot of complaints surrounding it around public safety, and it’s clear that that eyes on the street, more people circulating downtown, is a better way of of ensuring more public safety.”

Several public commenters argued that the legislation would give too much authority to unelected experts, rather than the city council, to—as one speaker put it—”zone the city.” What the legislation would actually do is take away some authority from the unelected design review boards, and the city’s unelected hearing examiner, to delay projects because board members don’t like the brick color, think the exterior walls aren’t “curvy” enough, or decide a new building looks “too historic”—all real examples we covered last year.

The land use committee didn’t vote on the proposal on Wednesday, but could do so at its next meeting on September 18.

City Council, Police

Moore Says SOAP Zones Won’t Apply to Sex Workers; Former Chief Diaz Still Making $28,000 a Month
Councilmember Cathy Moore, with City Attorney Ann Davison

1. Late last Friday afternoon, City Councilmember Cathy Moore announced in her newsletter that in response to public feedback, she plans to amend her proposal to revive the Aurora Avenue “Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution” zone so that only sex buyers and pimps are subject to the orders.

Anyone arrested for patronizing a sex worker or promoting loitering for the purposes of prostitution could receive a SOAP order that requires them to stay out of an area extending several blocks east and west of Aurora between N 85th St. and N 145th St.; if police caught them inside the area, they could be charged with an additional gross misde,meanor for violating the SOAP order.

The change would remove a part of the proposed new law—which also reinstates a misdemeanor, prostitution loitering—that organizations that work with sex workers regard as highly problematic, from groups that argue for decriminalization to organizations that consider all sex work exploitative.

Audrey Baedke, the co-founder of Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST), said her organization considers anyone who has traded sex for something of value, such as money or drugs, to be a survivor. But on this issue, REST—which Baedke said does not take official policy positions, such as endorsing legislation—agrees with groups that support decriminalizing and destigmatizing sex work: “SOAP does not have benefits to survivors.”

SOAP orders (and similar Stay Out of Drug Areas orders, for people accused of drug-related felonies) became common in Seattle in the 1990s, and at one point the two types of zones expanded to cover nearly half the city. Baedke, who started REST 15 years ago, said that in the past, women who got SOAP orders “would get a charge on their record … and in our experience, their trafficker would not support them to do diversion, so they would move to Pac Highway,” south of Seattle, or stay in the area and get arrested over and over.

“Will this move people out of the area? Yes. Will it help victims? Not as it’s written,” Baedke said. “Sure, you can move this off Aurora, but it doesn’t get rid of the problem. If you’re not okay with it happening on you street, I hope you’re not okay with it happening online or somewhere else.”

The proposal apparently still includes the prostitution loitering law, which lowers the burden of proof for police to stop women and others they suspect of being sex workers. During public comment last week, sex workers and people who live near Aurora described being stopped by police when simply going about their business because they “looked like” sex workers. According to the 2018 Reentry Work Group report that led to the decision to repeal the loitering law, such laws disproportionately impact “cisgender and transgender women of color.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

2. The council is currently on recess, and the loitering, SOAP, and Stay Out of Drug Area laws remain among the items they left unaddressed before leaving; another is Initiative 137, the social housing measure. The council decided not to put the measure, which would raise payroll taxes on employers on salaries above $1 million, on the November ballot, instead bumping it to next February; the council plans to put a competing measure that would take funds from the existing housing levy on that ballot, but did not complete that work either before going on recess.

The council said one reason they had to delay I-137 until a less favorable date for the initiative was that initiative supporters took too long to turn in signatures and get their measure qualified for the ballot, which they did on July 23.

A look at recent history is instructive: In 2021, when supporters of Compassion Seattle—a measure that would have required the city to spend 12 percent of its budget on human services while strengthening the city’s authority to sweep encampments—qualified for the ballot on July 28, the council placed it on the November ballot the following Monday, August 1. (Weeks later, a superior court judge struck the measure from the ballot.)

When the council returns from recess, the 2025 budget (and the projected $260 million budget deficit) will consume most of their time; as part of that budget, Moore has said she’ll propose unspecified funding for a “receiving center” for sex workers trying to leave the industry.

3. Nearly three months after Mayor Bruce Harrell removed him as chief, former Seattle Police Department chief Adrian Diaz is still classified as Police Chief and being paid more than $28,000 a month despite the fact that he was officially replaced by Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr in May. According to internal SPD records, Diaz’ “job code” is “Seattle Police Chief.”

UPDATE: According to SPD, Diaz’ time cards show that he has been working full-time, but he is still technically on leave; SPD Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey said Diaz “has recorded time other than medical leave for hours spent cooperating in litigation or other investigative matters, at the request of the City, all of which is consistent with his current leave.”

By the end of August, Diaz will have made $84,000 during the three months since he was removed as police chief. Rahr makes slightly more than Diaz, so the annual compensation for both of the SPD officials being paid as “chief” is nearly $700,000. Under ordinary procedure, a chief who is removed from that position would have to return to their previous rank, which for Diaz is that of lieutenant. Following this rule would reduce Diaz’ salary significantly, but his base salary (not counting any overtime) would still be more than $200,000.