A renewal of Seattle’s affordable housing levy will take shape in a $970 million proposal set to hit the city’s ballot this fall.
Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the proposed levy Thursday and said it would support the development “of over 3,000 units of new affordable housing throughout the city” as well as making “first-of-its-kind investments” to “stabilize wages for workers who provide critical services to the lowest-income residents with the greatest supportive service needs.”
“The Housing Levy is a proven solution for delivering thousands of affordable housing options,” Harrell said in the announcement. “Rooted in our One Seattle values that everyone should have a safe place to call home, this plan invests to meet the scale of the housing crisis, doing more than ever to prevent homelessness.”
Harrell’s office said the Housing Levy is a seven-year property tax, last approved by voters in 2016, “that helps build affordable housing, keeps low-income families in their homes, and provides emergency assistance to move those experiencing homelessness into housing.”
The administration says that starting each update of the levy starting in 1986 has met or exceeded its housing goals.
The 2023 levy is planned to appear on Seattle’s November ballot.
But first, King County and Seattle voters will take part in an April special election to decide on the county’s Crisis Care Centers Levy, a $1.25 billion behavioral health levy to create a new “regional network” of emergency mental health care centers.
Both votes follow February’s approval of an initiative creating the Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority to acquire and take over management of existing properties for affordable housing while also developing new projects.
Harrell made the affordable housing levy renewal announcement at Thursday’s Housing Development Consortium 35th Annual Celebration held at the Seattle Convention Center.
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It sounds like the city is adding a new line item to this levy which the previous levies did not have. That line item would be an effort to subsidize workers in the homeless services industry using city funds. These people are not city employees, they are privately employed individuals toiling in a low wage sector. There jobs are no doubt difficult, but why would the recipient of contracted services, in this case the city, voluntarily pay more for the services they are receiving?
The-issue of employee wages should be addressed by the employer, not by the employer’s customers. If they can’t deliver homeless services for the money the city pays them, the employer should negotiate for a better rate of compensation from the city. Dedicating a chunk of the increased and now one billion dollar levy to this issue is a distraction from the very real need for more low income housing and a disservice to Seattle taxpayers.
The city provides these type of wage stabilization programs for small businesses and essential professions that tend to be low paying (like childcare), do you think we should do away with those?
Matt,
i think the levy money should be directed at building or obtaining low income housing, just as it has been in the past. These and the other “wage stabilization “ efforts you referenced are, by my observation, a recent phenomenon, and I think they should be eliminated In this case, they are tacked on to an already very large and massively increased levy. I think it’s inclusion on the levy now further evidences city policymakers too close relationship with existing low income and homeless services providers. I also think most voters will vote in favor without even knowing a good portion of the money will not be used to build or acquire housing, as it has been in the past for this popular, and now $1,000,000,000 levy.
There’s more to affordable housing than just building and obtaining units. The levy funding has historically also been used to fund operations, maintenance, and services for affordable housing. As Fairly Obvious points out, this is incredibly common around the country/world and becomes necessary when we price out the workers that actually do the hard work we don’t want to.
Also, following economics, the city has a need that nobody else is providing other than these NGOs whom still cannot raise enough funding to pay workers an adequate amount to do this necessary work. Your reasoning breaks down because the city has no competition for it’s needs, it is meant to serve the collective needs of the city.
Whom other, than other civic entities, is competing for the servicing and building of affordable housing, that by definition that is not a very profitable “market”? This creates a dog-eat-dog scenario where each city/town/state is competing with each other for a basic service…
Government subsidization of private workers, especially NGOs, is not a new concept.
Companies providing homeless services are not flush with cash to pay competitive wages and in today’s job market, these are the type of jobs that have trouble hiring. These are also jobs that we desperately need to solve the homeless problem. So Seattle padding their salaries is a useful expense. Subsidizing directly means that the money goes to the employees rather than the employer.
Seems like that’s well within the goals the levy has been pursuing and will continue to pursue.
Unfortunately our elected leaders continue to describe the housing crisis and the drug addict encampment crisis as one and the same. If this levy does not include funding for congregate shelters, in-patient drug treatment facilities, and mental health facilities and a commitment to zero encampments in the city, than it is sadly only growing the problem.
I agree that we need more than just housing, but addressing part of the issue isn’t “growing the problem”… This article also talks about the King County Crisis Care Center levy we will be voting on in a few weeks. Collectively, these will help in addressing some of these issues.
Yes, because it denies the problem. It sucks more and more money to the homeless industrial complex to implement a plan that is not working and away from building workforce housing and programs that would actually help individuals in crisis break the death spiral staircase we built for them and Seattle because we are “compassionate”. The cost of maintaining these building filled with unhousable individuals is going to be massive and concentrating these buildings in the city is creating permanent drug hot spots with associated dealers and crime. Many will just continue to chose to live in the park and steal for drugs if we let them. The “housing first” approach has failed. Why can’t we acknowledge the social experiment is killing the patient and move back to a treatment first approach?
From this logic, we should acknowledge that treatment first approaches have also failed, and focusing on treatment takes money away from preventive measures and fuels the drug markets and pharmaceutical industrial process…
We need “yes, and” solutions all over society to address these issues, one of them is our cities woefully lacking amount of affordable housing.
“Yes and” sounds great, but that sentiment must be balanced against available funding. We can’t do everything, and even if we could, we shouldn’t. We have to establish priorities and fund those lavishly while measuring their effectiveness. And sometimes we have to willingly say “no,” which is what I would say to a Housing levy, triple the size of the previous one, that tacks on subsidizing wages for sector workers.
It’s triple in size because most people who research affordable housing have said we continue to underspend on the issue and it ends up costing taxpayers more in the long run to deal with the lack of affordable housing. As for the inclusion of stabilizing wages for workers in this sector, this is city leaders recognizing a problem area and using the tools they have at their disposal to address it. Until we have more state and federal funding for this type of work, the city will need to step in to pick up the slack.
Every levy is filled with lofty promises and ends up with delivering nothing lol.
How many cycles of vote-and-regret we have to live with in Seattle? I think politics in Seattle is sadder than the weather honestly.
It really sounds like you just don’t like it here at all 🤷🏻♂️
Seattle is fine… Are there people who “likes” Seattle’s politics? It’s one of the worst run cities in the whole country.
It’s messy politics, but there are definitely worse run cities in this country… The weather and the politics are both quite wonderful here relative to many other places, I encourage you to get out of your bubble.
Looks like he wrote “politics in Seattle.” Dont think you can extrapolate “don’t like it here at all” from that.
This $970 million housing levy is a HUGE increase over the current version, and therefore a big increase in property taxes. Combined with the increase in property taxes if the April behavioral health levy passes, this is an enormous hit on property owners in Seattle. I am willing to spend a certain amount on addressing the homeless situation, but there is a limit to my willingness to do so.
I am also very skeptical that the new funding will actually make a difference in homelessness. If past is prelude, it will not.
If and when they build this affordable housing, could they include those sacrosanct Single Family Homeowner neighborhoods in NE Seattle??? It seems that all of the affordable housing is built and concentrated in central and southern Seattle, rarely north of the Ship Canal Bridge. If this program is going to work, we have to include all neighborhoods, not simply the ones that don’t have the money and political clout to fight the Developers and City Hall.
Yes please! I would love to see a citywide removal of SFH zoning to something like Minneapolis, that allows duplexes and triplexes in all residentially zoned areas.
This is totally false and is based on thinking that is at least 10 years out of date. Have you not heard of Ballard? Lake City? Liston Springs? The U District? Remember just a few months ago when acres of lower woodland park was nothing but tents as far a the eye can see?
Ever heard of the 200 units of low income housing built by Solid Ground in Magnuson park?
Communities north of the ship canal are more than doing their part and are just as impacted by the failures of seattle leadership to adequately address these issues. We have just as many food banks, shelters, and crime ridden encampments as the rest of the city. Maybe venture off the hill once and a while?
How about Wedgewood? Maple Leaf? Laurelhurst? I have ventured off the Hill (See name) and there are from my optics, still some strong SFH neighborhood holdouts.
I feel like a broken record, but these issues exist outside of Seattle and outside of the W Coast. I’m so exhausted with people feeling like their experience is exceptional without doing any sort of empathetic work to figure out what experiences are like outside of your own…
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in NE Seattle neighborhoods and generally see development and encampments concentrated in the same areas, largely away from the SFH neighborhoods. There are definitely a fair share of SFH areas in S Seattle that seem to have this ability to insulate themselves from reality, mostly along the waterfront, but by and large the majority of area in Seattle that is not being actively turned into multifamily housing exists on the north side (and to a lesser degree W Seattle).
Take a look at these two maps and tell me you don’t see a similar pattern…
Mandatory affordable housing: https://data-seattlecitygis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/SeattleCityGIS::mandatory-housing-affordability-mha-zones/explore?location=47.615423%2C-122.338233%2C11.00
2020 racial dotmap: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=213c1a8580654609bef5e5253b010ffe
Yes, there is additional affordable housing that gets built, but by far the majority is concentrated in central and southern Seattle, while wealthy SFH owners in N Seattle and along the waterfront have successfully repelled efforts to provide equitable growth.
Homelessness has declined over the last decade across the country and exploded on the west coast, which has become a magnet. Why? Because we allow people to set up tents in public spaces, do drugs, and steal without consequences. We can’t build our way out of the crisis if we don’t also build congregate shelters, institute a camping ban, enforce laws, and commit those to drug and mental health facilities that are too far gone to help themselves. This levy pours money down the same drain without adjusting the overall approach. This is the same approach they took in LA which grew the problem. Seattle voters need to say no to force elected leaders to finally acknowledge reality.
Homelessness has generally risen in areas with rapid population growth, much of that has occurred on the West Coast. Some people come for the services, but a vast majority are from the region.
Congregate shelters have been shown to have very poor effectiveness in getting people out of homelessness and/or addiction, that seems like throwing money down the drain… Housing and healthcare facilities (which are the two upcoming levies) have been shown to have a much bigger impact on these issues.
Population has grown most in the south not the west coast. Can you at least acknowledge there is a magnet effect within King County toward Seattle?
Southern states have seen growth across entire regions as snowbird baby boomers look for warmer retirement locations, but Western states have also seen significant growth, mostly concentrated in urban areas where there has been rapid growth.
I will acknowledge that Seattle has a magnet effect within King County, this is pretty typical for an urbanized area, they concentrate people, opportunities, and unfortunately negative externalities. Seattle draws people for all sorts of activities and services… healthcare, arts, sports… That’s just sort of how cities work 🤷🏻♂️
Isn’t land more expensive there?
Getting rid of SF zoning is in no way synonymous with providing housing that’s affordable to people earning less than half the median income, which is what we need, despite the propaganda from the building industry and City planners. It’s not just the wealthy who oppose those efforts..
By definition you can house more people per land area with multifamily housing… Therefore MFH can be cheaper than SFH, especially in Seattle where the cost of land is so high. Therefore, building and turning more multifamily units into affordable housing is likely going to be the best way to provide housing for those making below median income, rather than preserving 75% of the city for the most expensive type of housing.
First, 75% is a deliberate misrepresentation. Second, the people renting SF houses in those neighborhoods would not be able to afford the housing that would replace their current housing: townhouses and rowhouses for sale.
I’ve seen estimates as high as 80% from a few years ago, take a look at the maps… https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/10/06/seattle-renames-single-family-zoning-designation-to-emphasize-neighborhood-diversity/?amp
You are confusing between two things
(1) Affordable housing that you can afford
(2) Higher density housing
A lot of areas in North Seattle has had higher density housings especially around UW, Ballard, etc.
Now… does that mean that overall the housing will be more affordable? Absolutely yes. Does that mean it will be so affordable that YOU can afford it? No.
So if you are hoping (which was what you meant but didn’t say explicitly) that by pushing for what you are pushing for, you can get to Laurelhurst, Windermere, Briarcliff… I would say “keep dreaming”. But I don’t think there are a lot of people who are against density in transit nodes and arterials… which push the price down overall, then the market and your income will decide where you live.
So it sounds like you’re quite comfortable with the spatial wealth disparities that have been locked in place with exclusionary zoning since racial zoning has been banned… There are those of us that envision a world in which where you live isn’t indicative of your income/wealth, and that you shouldn’t be able to insulate yourself from basic societal problems with money.
As Kevin said, keep dreaming Matt.
“There are those of us that envision a world in which where you live isn’t indicative of your income/wealth.”
@Matt
Then why do YOU are complaining and wanting to live in certain parts of Seattle (Laurelhurst, Windermere, Briarcliff)? You should be perfectly content with living in affordable housing in South Seattle?
Wink wink?
I never said I was trying to live there, just that we should be building housing out there. I’m happy to keep dreaming and working towards a better world than settling for the crappy status quo 🤷🏻♂️
Also, I’ve lived in apartments and duplexes my entire life. My biological father, despite being diehard Republican to the point that he is an election denier, has lived off social security as long as I have been alive. I’m perfectly comfortable living in affordable housing in south Seattle, in fact I’m very close to having to do that because I’m likely to be priced out of Capitol Hill very soon…
Every city in the world, from time immemorial, has nicer areas (more expensive) and not-so-nice areas (less expensive). That is never going to change, in spite of your leftist “vision.” Get real.
There are many examples of more egalitarian societies and cities than what we have now, and even throughout US history our cities have varied immensely (central parks were often commons space for those whom didn’t own land and for livestock). I’m not naive enough to think that some level of disparity will exist, but what we have currently has been untenable for a while, and the aiming for a more equitable vision is better than settling with what we have now. Societies have innovated on social organization for a long time, and while we have continued to innovate technology, we are stuck in centuries old thinking on social structures…
Renters remember that YOU pay property taxes as a part of your rent. About a percent or more of the value of your apartment is annual taxes. You can find the taxes on your building which is public record.
Part but not all of rent increases is due to property tax increases. Your landlord won’t passively ignore the results at the ballot box on taxes due.
So a few dollars per month to provide the amenities of living in an urbanized area with centralized facilities that we all benefit from… That sounds like a good deal to me
I have lived and voted in D3 in Seattle for over 20 years. I have voted yes on every single housing related tax/plan put before us. And yet the homelessness situation is worse than it ever has been. I’m really tired of voting yes, giving the politicians more and more and more money, and having them be so so ineffective in spending it and solving the problem. I don’t know if I can keep voting yes. What’s that saying about if you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll get the results you’ve always gotten?