Seattle Forward

Creating More Affordable Housing: The Right and Wrong Way

UPDATE to the post below: On Wednesday, the Council's Budget Committee voted 7-2 (Juarez and myself opposed) to use debt financing of $29 million dollars to build affordable housing in the city. As I argue below, this is a very bad decision. The Council will take a final vote on this matter on Monday, November 21 at 2 p.m.

Seattle city government is on a path to create 20,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years, the biggest surge in the supply of affordable housing we’ve ever seen in Seattle.

To accomplish this ambitious goal, we placed a measure on the August 2016 ballot that renewed and doubled the city’s affordable housing tax levy. Seattle voters approved this tax increase by 71 percent, a strong affirmation of Seattle’s commitment to caring for our most vulnerable neighbors. This tax will raise $290,000,000 for rental housing development and preservation, home-ownership assistance, homelessness prevention, and housing stability services. 

We adopted new laws that require every builder of commercial office space and multi-family housing (e.g. apartments, condominiums) to directly contribute funds to building affordable housing or to build units on their own. This mandatory affordable housing requirement is unprecedented for Seattle.

Caring for Seattle's Children

“Child poverty is an open sore on the American body politic. It is a moral failure for our nation that one-fifth of our children live in poverty,” so wrote Nicholas Kristof in Sunday’s New York Times.

Of course, he’s right. It is a disgrace that the “lottery of birth” has such devastating impact on our children, including right here in Seattle.

There is good news to report, however.

In Seattle, we have strategically assembled a “continuum of care” from birth to age five, implementing a strong series of proven, evidence-based solutions to help our kids have a strong and fair start and to make sure they are ready to thrive when they reach kindergarten. As the City Council prepares to vote on next year’s budget in the coming weeks, I’m asking my colleagues on the Council to strengthen this continuum of care even more.

Why is this so important?