“Amsterdam’s city government wants to build 52,500 houses by the end of 2025. This means building an average of 7,500 houses per year, of which 2,500 will be in the social housing sector and 1,670 in the medium-priced rental sector.” (Image: City of Amsterdam)
The primary election to decide which of the candidates vying for the open District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council won’t be decided until August but residents have another important vote in their hands right now.
How the city decides on I-135 will be an important factor for the next D3 representative as they will either need to help shepherd and shape the effort to create a new public developer “to build, acquire, own, and manage social housing” in Seattle or champion alternatives to address the city’s housing crisis if the initiative fails with voters.
How each candidate comes down on the I-135 question might also be a helpful deciding factor in making your D3 decision.
Below, CHS has checked in with D3 campaigns and asked them about their support for the initiative and the effort to address affordability and the housing crisis in the district and beyond.
- Joy Hollingsworth (CHS) ✅: “I am voting YES, because we need to explore all options that create and protect affordable housing– and on council, I’ll be an unwavering advocate to making sure we invest in community-led solutions,” Hollingsworth tells CHS. “We have to explore all pathways from affordable housing to home ownership opportunities for our community.” Hollingsworth said as a renter and third generation District 3 resident, she will “bring needed perspectives to strengthen this and other overdue investments in affordable housing.”
- Alex Hudson (CHS) ✅: Hudson took a less direct route but said she is voting yes on the initiative. “There’s no question that Seattle has a housing affordability crisis, one that causes suffering, homelessness and displacement and prevents people from living full lives,” Hudson said. “We need a broad range of solutions and a wide variety of housing.” —
As The Stranger put it, I-135 isn’t perfect. Few things are. But elements of the initiative, like bonding rent revenues, are intriguing and hold real potential to lead to beneficial outcomes. In recent days I’ve been consulting with a wide range of affordable housing policy experts to dig down into the details of this measure, and while my due diligence work is continuing, I’m comfortable at this point saying I am going to vote yes on I-135.
Hudson tells CHS she is thinking about solutions beyond the social housing developer the initiative would create. “I firmly believe that political leaders will need to get creative and urgent about finding additional resources to put towards the creation of affordable housing,” she writes. “The problem is large, and the current level of funding available is inadequate to meet the need. When I’m elected, tackling the housing crisis will be my number one issue, and I’m committed to pushing forward thoughtful and constructive ways to make a meaningful difference for Seattleites now and in the future.” - Andrew Ashiofu (CHS) ✅: Ashiofu has been the most involved of any of the D3 candidates in pushing I-135 forward. You may have seen him at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market working as a volunteer to drum up support for the vote. “I have had the privilege of living abroad and also traveling to nearly all the continents except Antarctica,” Ashiofu told CHS. “And I have experienced and have seen the impacts of social housing and how that has helped create housing. My three ‘A’s’ around housing are affordability, accessibility, and availability.” Ashiofu said he supports the “Amsterdam” model for social housing where the city council has decided that 40% of new homes built must fall under social housing affordability rules. He also believes we need to expand the county Multifamily Tax Exemption program.
- Ry Armstrong (CHS) ☑️: Why no green check for Armstrong? The first-time candidate’s support for the initiative comes with a caveat or two. “While I am still meeting with community leaders on the topic, I believe in supporting I-135 as it stands theoretically, but have concerns about where this funding will come from and the power of the board inherently created by the initiative,” Armstrong said. “I agree with what it stands for and fully support it, but I would implement rent stabilization measures as well to prevent corruption long term because there are portions of the language, in my opinion, that do not go far enough.”
- Asukaa Jaxx, a fifth D3 candidate, has not yet provided contact information to the city’s election campaigns registration site.
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 have mostly relied on Seattle Times op-eds while some nonprofit and affordable housing developers and lenders have said the new public developer would increase competition for already limited funding for affordable housing.
Housing and social justice advocacy and support group Solid Ground says the the Housing Development Consortium lobbying group it is part of did issue a letter raising concerns 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,” a representative tells CHS. “Other HDC members who have endorsed I-135 include El Centro De La Raza, the Low Income Housing Institute, and AIA Seattle.”
“Several housing agencies already are creating ‘social housing’ through tenant-owned co-ops, land trusts, and mutual housing serving low-income households in perpetuity,” the formal opposition statement on the initiative penned by old-school Seattle homelessness and housing advocates Alice Woldt, David Bloom, and John Fox reads. “Initiative sponsors could have proposed dedicating more city housing dollars for these efforts instead of public-private partnerships they disavow,” they conclude.
King County Elections says ballots for the I-135 vote have been mailed for the February 14th election.
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I appreciate that this is a challenging balance for any candidate hoping to get elected to the City Council. I mean, how could anyone be against housing people, right? Unfortunately, most proposals like this don’t make a responsible effort to outline how they will be funded. While everyone is for more housing, specifically affordable housing, a large group of voters will be apposed to whatever mechanism is proposed to fund it.
So this ends up being another one of those “we’ll figure it out later” statements. It’s so easy to spend other people’s money.
It would be very brave, and probably politically stupid, to come out opposed to this proposal. But I’d appreciate it if one of the candidates would actually try to push for the creators of this to be accountable to funding. It might look a little like leadership instead of saying would is prudent in the moment to get elected.
I’m somewhat impressed with Armstrong’s reticence and the mention of rent stabilization and corruption. Seems a more measured less politically expedient response.
“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…”
Isn’t the City already doing this? I know of at least two properties on Capitol Hill (200 block of Harvard Ave E and 500 block of 10th Ave E) which were recently bought by the City from a private developer, and are being managed by the LIHI. These were newly completed buildings intended to be market-rate housing until the City took them over to house the formerly homeless. However, this approach is very expensive (acquiring the buildings for something like $300,000 per unit; ongoing management expense for LIHI), and is not sustainable.
One of the things that’s different about this Initiative is they want to expand public housing availability to much higher income people. The projects you mentioned are available only to specific populations. Really, this Initiative proposes public housing on a mass scale available to a much wider population of residents. Current funding from federal and state sources restricts resulting housing to lower income people. The Initiative rejects that model, which is why they need new funding sources.
This isn’t social housing. It’s public housing, but Initiative backers needed a new name to overcome some of the negatives associated with public housing. Marketing at it’s best. If you think 40 percent of available housing should be publicly owned, that wealth building, including equity creation for current and future homeowners, should be completely wrung out of the system, and that taxation levels should be dramatically raised commensurate with those lofty goals (hello Amsterdam and Vienna), then this is your Initiative.
You got so close to accurately describing the differences, but then you went off the rails. This is a very different “public housing” model than most previous attempts in the US, and your attempt to lump it in with that racist and elitist failure is ridiculous. This would create a leadership structure that represents people actually living in the city and in this type of housing to guide the management and growth of the housing they provide. It also caps income at 120% AMI, instead of 60-80% of like most current projects, and would have a sliding scale rent that uses those higher income renters to help subsidize part of the lower income rents. Please explain how housing for those at the bottom 50-60% of income is “high income” housing?!
As for your comments about wealth, that’s great for those who have enough to get into that racket, but by trying to squeeze profit out of housing you’re making it more expensive and/or unavailable for those who need it the most. Also, home ownership as wealth building has been pushed as an anticommunist message for ~100 years now to get people bought into capitalism, who has aggregated the wealth in that period? All that wealth building and equity are only as good as the markets and those seem to take regular dives every 10-20 years that absolutely destroy those at bottom who were told ownership was the only way to prosper by a society that tips the scales away from providing affordable and decent rental housing.
Like you, I used the word “higher” not “high” when describing the income levels eligible for housing under this model. I see no disagreement with our descriptions on that aspect as we agree that higher income people would be eligible for publicly owned and administered housing (public housing) under this Initiative. And this is public housing renamed to avoid association with what you inaccurately describe as a racist public housing system.
I also see no disagreement with my description of the Initiative wringing profit and wealth creation out of the housing system.
You don’t contest my analysis on that score. As you say above, Initiative supporters like you think that is good thing because they believe capitalism isn’t fair and harms people.
My parents grew up in public housing. Once they were adults they managed to work and save, bought a rundown triplex in which they raised a family, and over time entered the middle class. No college educations, no big time jobs, just a lot of hard work. It doesn’t happen for everyone, and it is definitely harder for some people than others, but Initiative supporters efforts to eliminate wealth creation through home ownership as a path to prosperity is nothing I will ever support.
Please read up on the history of public housing in the US if you don’t think it was racist? I highly recommend the book The Color of Law.
You falsely state that I-135 is proposing to make public housing available to “much higher incomes”, when the model caps incomes at 120% of area median income. By definition, nearly half of households in the region make more than this wage, so describing this as applying to “much higher income” is pretty disingenuous!
As for your family history, I’m glad that your parents were able to find success, many others don’t.
Finally, I-135 doesn’t eliminate or outlaw private market housing, people are more than welcome to continue trying that path if they want to, and many will, particularly if like you they want to leverage their property (although that can backfire as we’ve seen and cause people to loose everything). I-135 is an alternative option that some will choose and it should relieve some of the pressure on the existing housing market so that more people can afford that option if that’s what they choose.
Word. 100%
And LIHI is an outsourced/contracted manager. They might do good or great work but the idea here with I-135 as I understand it is to, essentially, create a new public utility that builds, owns and manages quality housing using a trust and public-lands acquisition to control the cost of housing -instead of using housing to make rich and well off people richer and more well-off- which is what’s happening now, for the most part.
I won’t even go into the politics and dysfunction of much of the homelessness industry.
This plan may be short on specifics and less-than-perfect (it sure reminds me an idea that I proposed a couple of years ago, if less specific and not-as-good as my plan) but it beats the crap out of everything else going and they got it to a ballot.
The great con of capitalism (as we do it in the USA and as it’s been exported to suckers globally)? “Creation of wealth”. Look, we all need good food, clean air and water, clothing, desirable shelter, efficient transport, education, health care and arts/leisure/sport. Everything else is noise and noise, in this context) is a luxury.
We can afford, societally, to provide all of these things to each other and do it to a far superior level than we have in the past. Yet, so many still defend the idea of “creating more and more wealth” for what in reality is a very, very few at the expense of the very, very many. No more. It has to stop and this is one way to get the system to change. Or will we continue to be suckers?
For those relative few who ‘got theirs’: Greedy/ignorant defenders of the relative status quo (because innovative new change-agent proposals such as I-135 are ‘imperfect’) are rarely or NEVER vocal about the imperfection of EVERYTHING they defend such as a seeming birthright to marginalizing ‘wealth creation’ through an unfair and absurd, corrupt and asinine system. And, me thinks we must call BS on it.
Bringing up those properties is a good example of why this makes sense. Those were purchased with emergency funding at ridiculous costs despite sitting empty on the private market… Meanwhile, the concentrated poverty at these buildings leads to issues that are then used to push back against future buildings so enough housing isn’t built and the problem festers until the next “emergency”.
I-135 would instead have a locally representative leadership board overseeing the development process for mixed income housing intended for the bottom ~60% of incomes, rather than only those at the very bottom. That will both prevent people from falling into poverty and homeless in the first place, and create housing that is representative of the community instead of “low income facilities”. Not only will this provide housing for those at the very bottom, but also for the workers who make the institutions and businesses we all rely on daily run and are being rapidly priced out of the city.
This is what Seattle is best at, performative governance. We don’t have a plan, we don’t have funding but it all sounds SO good. Much like creating public safety via non police responses to crisis situations that no one seems to have seen in their neighborhoods but it sounded good. It’s easy to create feel good narratives but another to actually create structural mechanisms that produce results.
In recent years, there were huge re-development projects done at Holly Park and Rainier Vista in south Seattle, and these are now mixed-income properties (formerly for low-income only). I think they are Seattle Housing Authority developments, but am not sure.
I wonder how these were financed…..suspect lots of federal money was involved They are very attractive and successful. Why not repeat this approach in other areas, using existing housing developers (including SHA) instead of creating a new agency?
Yesler Terrace is another example of a recently renovated and redeveloped mixed income development of SHA. While the majority of SHA units are lower income, they have redeveloped their larger properties under a mixed income model. So, some of what I-135 envisions is already being done, but supporters want control of the development for reasons Matt cited above, and want to make 50 to 60% of Seattle residents eligible-to live in their public housing. Of course their giving up federal dollars to get there, which will place the burden of this Initiative squarely upon Seattle taxpayers. Not wise, in my opinion.
For Yesler Terrace the SHA sold off public land that had previously been used for affordable housing to a private developer for a sweet deal and all they have to do is provide some below market rate apartments in their developments for 20 years, afterwards they will be going up in price and we start the game all over again 🤷🏻♂️
From the “lessons learned” section of the National Association of Home Builders case study on the Rainier Vista project: “A large-scale project is susceptible to market trends. This is particularly the case with public-private partnerships, because there are unpredictable cycles in private development. With the Great Recession slicing through the middle of the project timeline, the participation of the private sector stalled until the market started to recover. This delay held up the project proceeds that the public housing was depending on, which made for a longer completion of the project.”
Public development corporations like SHA and the one proposed in I-135 cannot create funding streams via conventional means like taxes, however, the group organizing for I-135 have the support of long-term WA democrat Frank Chopp to propose complimentary state legislation that will help fund housing for all.
The biases of the author of this piece show. He dismisses opponents of I-135 as mostly relying on Seattle Times op-eds for their information, and refers to other long-time housing advocates opposing this initiative as “old school”. Seattle already has a low income housing program and a management organization to administer it. If they are not working as well as some people would like, let’s fix them instead of creating a new bureaucracy.
Will this new board have eminent domain rights!!! the city has no land to give, they sold all their surplus years ago.
It’s gonna be a hard pass for me on I-135. Can we please not create yet another city agency, without a clear funding source, to continue to not actually solve the underlying issues causing the housing affordability crisis.
These aren’t city agencies, they are public development authorities incorporated by the city that have their own charters and governing boards separate from the city leadership. They vie for city and federal money as well as public land and bond money to build housing based on their mission and board of directors. I-135 proponents are saying that the current housing development authorities are not working, and are proposing a new public development authority to address these deficiencies with a governing board that is more representative of the people living in this housing, units open to both low and middle incomes on a sliding scale, and a mission to build long-term affordable housing that will stay affordable and not raise after private developer agreement periods end…