Capitol Hill’s affordable 12th Ave Arts was developed by Community Roots Housing, also a Public Development Authority (Image: City of Seattle)
The search has begun for candidates to be part of the first board to lead Seattle’s new Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority.
The Seattle Renters’ Commission announced this week the call for community members to serve on the board will be open through March:
Seven of the 13 board members will be initially appointed by the Seattle Renters’ Commission. Per the terms of the initiative, the board members appointed by the Seattle Renters’ Commission shall include at least one (1) member who has experienced housing insecurity; at least one (1) member who has experienced financial eviction; and at least one (1) member who has been displaced. In addition, they shall represent a range of incomes, including three (3) members living at 0-50% Area Median Income (AMI); two (2) members living at 50-80% AMI; and two (2) members living at 80-100% AMI.
Under the initiative, the board will also include a MLK Labor representative, a rep from El Centro de la Raza, a green development professional from the city’s Green New Deal Oversight Board, plus two more reps appointed by the City Council and another picked by Mayor Bruce Harrell. Board members “representing residents, community organizations, and the labor representative” will be paid for their work. The members will spend up to 20 hours a month helping establish the new PDA.
CHS reported here last month on the next steps for social housing development in Seattle after I-135’s victory in the February special election.
The vote to establish a public developer to acquire and take over management of existing properties for affordable housing while also developing new projects showed strong support for the effort across the city with especially strong support across most of District 3.
You can learn more and apply to join the board here.
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Establishing this commission, which is based fuzzy math at best and as of yet unfunded, is going to require significant technical expertise in financial structuring, real estate, public funding and fair housing compliance. Even if some of this expertise is outsourced to consultants, and there is City staff to provide support, the board ultimately still has to provide direction and oversight. It would seem that the good intentions who set the board make-up did not think also think about requirements to do the job. Having representation of lived experience is important and necessary, but it does not appear that it is balanced with any professional experience that will be required to actually launch this PDA. Look at SCIPda or Community Roots, their boards have a diversity of professional real estate experience… for a reason. And those are established PDAs. Even if the council and Mayor choose appointments that do have technical knowledge, they will be the minority at the table. While I didn’t vote for this commission, I’m dissapointed that it doesn’t seem like there is an acknowledgement of what will be needed to launch it. Assuming the Council finds any funding for it.
Are there any actual landlords on this commission?
Or is that perspective totally irrelevant?
This is an idiological exercise. So, irrelevant.
Won’t someone think of the landlords?!?!?!
Totally irrelevant. This is for SOCIAL / EQUITABLE / AFFODRABLE-TO-RENTERS-&-OWNERS HOUSING. The landlords, on balance, have totally failed us. We need their ‘expertise’ as much as a move to social democracy would need the perspectives of the corporate bankers. As much as jews needed the perspectives of the Axis after World War II. Why not just let the fox into the henhouse? I could go on and on with clichés and expressions that underscore the ridiculousness of such a suggestion.
And, no ‘Glenn’, it’s not ‘an ideological exercise’. This plan is an attempt to create a survival mechanism for many thousands for people and a chance too thrive for hundreds of thousands more. The privilege and on these comment bards is sometimes blinding.
If landlords wish to weigh in, they can attend meetings, write letters with suggestions, etc. They have had every opportunity to advance change and weigh in forever and their contributions have typically been ‘what the market can bear’ and ‘woe is me’. Even the good, smaller mom & pops failed to get organized toward protecting more-affordable housing through grandfather-clauses, abatements or other means they were more than welcome to suggest for decades as Seattle’s housing affordability crumbled.
Lordy, it is mystifying- how so many fail to see what has occurred with the disappearance of ‘livability’ for most and the remedies that are being explored to fix the crises.
Why the fuck does there need to be a landlord
More of the same lazy comments from people who have no vision for any other than what is working for them… 🙄
The board contains a representative from El Centro, who has a lot of experience developing and managing affordable housing. There will also be a green development professional, as well as three housing professionals appointmented by the mayor…
So 5 development/housing professionals, 7 renters stratified by income, and one MLK labor representative. To me that sounds like a decent mix to develp low and middle income rental housing in the city 🤷🏻♂️
Saying a renter is qualified to develop housing is like saying a grocery store custoner is qualified to run a grocery store. It is not so. As you noted, the majority of this group will be renters, which is clearly by design, and where power will be centered on this board. The other appointees, especially the mayor’s will be window dressing.
And I am not absent ideas other than what is working for me. I am in favor of increasing low to moderate income housing in this city through various policies, such as dramatically increasing dollars available to existing low to moderate income property developers ( State money), expediting and/or waiving permit and design review for their projects, prioritizing city property available for such development, etc. And I am open to other reasonable ideas as well. But I do not think this approach makes any sense. Sorry if that does not conform with prevailing sentiments in our fair city. Note: I can make a statement without ending it with a smug shoulder shrug emoji.
The existing boards have been heavy the other direction and have seemed to favor the developers and financiers for at the expense of others for the past few decades, so I guess I’m ready to try an alternative approach.
And no, this isn’t like saying a grocery customer is qualified to run a grocery store. Shopping in a grocery store is nothing like having a place to live. Housing development and management has a huge impact on the day to day lives of everyone in this city. God forbid that the majority of the board be people who would actually use this housing, not elites that are going to tell others the best approach…
Not to mention, co-ops are quite common in Seattle and around the world, so yes, grocery shoppers are quite capable of managing grocery stores 🤷🏻♂️
Those Co-ops hire professionals to manage their stores. I lived in a co-op building in nyc, we hired professionals to clean the brickwork and maintain the roof.
The structure of this is to have each building have its own board, presumably they would coordinate with other buildings and the larger board for similar maintenance contracts…
Just to clarify – El Centro uses a paid development consultant to do their development work, they do not have on staff expertise. They also only develop low income housing, they have no experience developing/owning/operating anything at above 60% AMI. Likewise, a green development professional is a specific thing, and it is not specific to mixed income multi-family housing. I believe the Mayor gets 1 appointement and the council gets 2. I don’t know that we can count on both coucil seats going to a real esate development professional. So chances here are two of the total seats, at best.
So one of the board members has a known strategy for development work with the hardest part of the housing sector, that sounds like a good thing to me?
Also, social housing doesn’t mean there will not be private companies involved in the development and building of social housing units, there’s nothing stopping the board from hiring consultants. The goal is to have the housing be for people and not a commodity, it doesn’t mean someone isn’t getting paid to design and build new units.
Structuring this PDA that is not based on real math – there is no road map – is going to be way more complex than desigining and building new units. The architecture and construction is the easy part. Getting to that part is going to be really hard, and if you have no expertise to guide or manage the consultants, that is a recipe for this being a waste of everyone’s time.
LMAO, good luck comrades
I assume Board members and their friends and family would not be eligible for the the coveted taxpayer funded apartments due to the conflict of interest and city ethics rules?
ANYONE meeting the eligibility requirements would be eligible. Why is this concept so hard for so many of you?!!!
Too many United Statesians run to petty ‘if I can’t have it, why should you’ and exclusionary means tests because, apparently, they have cheating temperaments and assume everyone else will. They feel undeserving and assume the same for everyone else.
Newsflash to the petty and the ignorant: More than 80% of Singaporeans live in housing built by the Singapore Housing Board which is a public developer of housing by and for the people by way of the government.
There is NO REASON Seattle cannot do similarly with this new plan. Hong Kong -pre-modern-China- had a similar scheme that also developed affordable business spaces(!). Otherwise, expensive Hong Kong and Singapore would have been too expensive for most of their citizens. Sound familiar?
I’m guessing most of the posers here already got theirs or are too challenged in the brain to work out that the current state of affairs and the many other lame, too-timid non-solutions are not working. Drastic change is necessary or Seattle will be SF/Manhattan- overpriced money funnels for the wealthy and their trustafarian kids.
PS- design reviews matter; affordable, green and aesthetically-pleasing mustn’t be mutually exclusive.
Thank you for stooping low enough for us knuckle scrapers to understand you. It must be so difficult having all the answers and being morally superior. Your burden is immense.
Thank you! I’ve seen so much of the “If I can’t have it, why should you” mentality and it’s so frustrating that people have such a hard time understanding that when more people are better off, there are so many indirect ways we all benefit. And even if we didn’t all benefit….humans deserve housing and there’s no magic wand to make that happen quickly and overnight and in a way that is going to satisfy everyone.