With ballots for the February special election set to hit mailboxes starting this week, backers of an initiative to create a Social Housing Developer at Seattle City Hall are gonna put on a show.
The 43rd District Democrats and the Tech 4 Housing advocacy group have organized a Social Housing Saves Our Stages event Sunday night at Neumos on Capitol Hill.
Performers including Hollis, Tomo Nakaya, and Black Stax will join emcee Larry Mizell, Jr. in a night of music hoped to help inspire more people to get involved in the winter vote. Tickets are $20 at the door.
CHS reported here on I-135 to create a new public developer “to build, acquire, own, and manage social housing” in Seattle. If approved in the February vote, City Hall would fund the shaping of a new Seattle Social Housing Developer to first acquire and take over management of existing properties for affordable housing while also setting the groundwork for philanthropy and grants to create new renter-governed housing in Seattle.
I-135 backers claim the initiative would create a city-run, government-empowered, renter-powered entity to help keep buildings affordable and, eventually, build more new affordable housing. Starting the authority would be funded by the city budget and cost around $750,000 with ongoing funding to be determined from local and state sources. The city council would be required to sort out how to fund the department with the option to pursue bonds for the public developer.
The House Our Neighbors coalition is led by Real Change. The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission reports the group has raised more than $211,000 in campaign contributions including $100,000 from the Group Health Foundation in December.
Opponents include the Housing Development Consortium lobbying group that represents many existing nonprofit and affordable housing developers and lenders. The groups say the new public developer would increase competition for already limited funding for affordable housing.
UPDATE: A representative for housing and social justice advocacy and support group Solid Ground has clarified that the consortium it is part of did issue a letter raising concerns about the initiative but has taken a neutral stance on the initiative. “That’s in part because some of their members – including my own organization, Solid Ground – have endorsed and actively support I-135,” the rep writes. “Other HDC members who have endorsed I-135 include El Centro De La Raza, the Low Income Housing Institute, and AIA Seattle.”
Proceeds from Sunday’s night’s Neumos show will go to the performers, not the campaign to back the initiative. Organizers say the hope is to inform and spread the word about social housing. Meanwhile, clubs like Neumos have championed affordability as part of strategies to help musicians and the arts alive in Seattle.
King County Elections says ballots for the I-135 vote should begin arriving after January 25th for the February 14th election.
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More bureaucracy to do the same thing without a funding method. While this approach may work in Vienna, it will be a money-sucking, special interest sh*tshow in Seattle. Vote no.
Except this isn’t doing the same thing, this is a different model of leadership and ownership than the current model, which has existed for 40+ years in Seattle and clearly isn’t working. If you watched the most recent update from the King County Regional Homeless Authority and Seattle Human Services Department, and look at the KCRHA and Seattle’s dashboards on available shelter space and housing available over time and think this is working and not worth trying something new.
By law the development authority cannot tax and could not propose that type of funding stream. If you take the time to read about the organizers or watch any of the public debates, they have the support of long-term Seattle democrat Frank Chopp, whom is working with them to write a complementary funding bill in the WA legislature, so please stop it with this “no funding” nonsense. In a few years I’ve seen more movement from this group than the decade I’ve been here and seen largely stagnation from the current system while the private market “decision makers” that sit on the same boards making decisions about the problems continue to make six figure salaries while typically living far from the problem.
Also voting no – Friends working in affordable housing tell me this will only add to bureaucracy — existing funding is already too little — this initiative does not raise new funds.. just divides the funds further.
Isn’t quite a bit of Seattle Housing Authority housing devoted to moderate income residents? I thought they redeveloped properties like Yesler Terrace into mixed income models, and took a lot of abuse for it along the way from low income housing advocates because they were not adding low income units, just moderate income ones. If this is true, and I think it is, many of their developments are already mixed income. Other than public ownership and undiscovered new funding sources, how would this new thing be different?
Nope. SHA largely serves very low income people. The poor people who were pushed out of Yesler Terrace’s public housing were given subsidy vouchers and, hopefully, found homes in private housing elsewhere.
But Yesler Terrace and some of their other larger developments are mixed income, are they not?
Long-time AH worker bee here – I, too, say this initiative is dumb. We don’t need more bureaucracies. If there are problems with existing housing providers or funders, let’s fix those, including adding tenants to oversight boards. We don’t need yet another set of processes/forms/rules/empty funds.
If any of the people that have come out against this actually came out with their own proposals then I may be inclined to agree, instead they’ve mostly scoffed at the notion that a housing board should have anytime even approach a representative number of renters, it’s not promising for those of us who don’t make six figures in this city!
We have come up with our own proposals – and we implement them. We volunteer for housing levies. We change the policies of the housing orgs whose board of directors we sit on. We lobby the legislature to change things. We don’t need a new logo and an army of earnest young people with clipboards to do these things. We’re the earnest young, middle-aged and old people who are quietly changing things for the better.
Look at the current situation and tell me that your current model is working?!? This isn’t just a new logo and not sure why an army of earnest young people is a bad thing… This is a different ownership model, why does the idea of not giving our housing dollars away to private developers bother you so much?
Why does the idea of giving our housing dollars away to experienced, private, not-for-profit low/moderate income housing providers bother you so much Matt? If it’s about available money, why not work to increase the upcoming housing levy? I think the big thing for supporters like you here is the idea of building publicly financed housing for wealthier populations who are not currently the primary recipients of public and subsidized housing. This Initiative represents a dramatic expansion of governments role in housing and will cost an incredible amount of money to implement at any scale. It proposes to change our relationship to housing. Sorry, that’s way to much for me to support. But I may vote to increase the upcoming housing levy. I think that is achievable and ultimately more efficient than what is contemplated by the Initiative.
I fall in the middle income below AMI that is very quickly getting priced out of the city by private market forces. I’m against the current model because it has consistently failed and the definition of continuing down a path of failure is insanity. I do support more
funding in the housing levy, but we need “yes, and” solutions. The fact that this changes our relationship with housing is appealing to me, housing isn’t a commodity, it is a founding right of the United Nations, an imperfect but noble goal, and we are absolutely failing at it as a society.
I am torn. If the housing industrial complex that has been sucking billions of dollars from Seattle’s worn and weary tit for so many years with so little improvement, is nervous, I might just vote for it. Because the homelessness organization don’t seem to be accompishing much and accountability remains a perennial mystery. I walk by folks in so much need and wonder why they are left on the street in this way. Heartbreaking. On the other hand, might want to steer clear of fentanyl and meth. Those make you crazy and crazy makes those all the more appealing. Torn on this. Very much torn.
Just to be clear, we’ve had a few researchers and consultants tell Seattle and King County (as it’s an interlinked problem) that it would likely take one billion per year to address the homelessness and housing issues in our region, and until the past year we’ve been spending closer to 10-20% that amount, which may explain the results we’re seeing!
From talking with and getting to know people that have lived or are living unhoused and unsheltered, I’ve found that it’s often the lack of housing and the discomfort and rejection that comes with it that leads to the regular use of hard drugs like fentanyl to cope with those circumstances. For many others it’s unfortunate circumstances and/or untreated trauma that they are running from and it spirals from there. The best evidence-based practice for addressing these problems is housing and proper care, continuing to turn our backs on these issues and acting like they don’t exist will only perpetuate these problems.
Five years ago I would have supported big levy’s to fund housing for the homeless, but the “evidenced-based”, “housing-first”, “harm reduction” approach has been a disaster for the city. It doesn’t match the reality that the more we spend, the more the problem grows and the more we coddle drug addicts from Florida, the more that die in the streets. It is time for a new approach.
Okay, so you think it’s time for a new approach? How about housing owned by and occupied by a mixed income group of occupants who live in the city? How about a housing authority that requires a majority of the board to be tenants? That sounds like a new approach to me and that is exactly what I-135 is calling for