You can learn more about the Seattle Social Housing Developer at socialhousingseattle.org
The backers of the ballot measure approved handily by Seattle voters this week to create a business tax to fund the city’s new Social Housing program have a message for city leaders.
They are also expecting a legal challenge to the new tax.
“Despite a half million dollars in corporate spending and the unscrupulous tactics of our City Council and Mayor, last night Seattle voters delivered an unambiguous message: Now is the time for Seattle to take bold, innovative action to meet our housing and homelessness crises,” the House our Neighbors group said in a “Prop 1A Wins” statement.
Tallies show Seattle voters strongly supporting the new housing development effort with 69% backing the decision to fund the program and 58% supporting the House our Neighbors tax option to do it.
The approval opens the way for a new 5% tax on companies for every dollar over a million paid to a Seattle employee in annual compensation including salary, stock, and bonuses to fund the city’s new public Social Housing Developer. Backers say it will add up to around $50 million a year to fund the development authority and power its ability to borrow to build or acquire 2,000 units of housing over 10 years.
Support for the new tax outpaced the Seattle City Council’s $10 million alternative that would have utilized existing JumpStart funding and limited the Social Housing Developer to offering affordable housing to only the city’s lowest income levels, a restriction social housing advocates say undermines the purpose of the program and hopes of creating affordable housing across multiple tiers of income. That option was backed by big companies like Amazon, of course, and Mayor Bruce Harrell.
The vote could represent a challenge for Harrell as he seeks reelection this year.
“Last night’s results left no doubt that Seattle voters want our city to act quickly to create permanently affordable social housing for people living on a range of incomes — and we believe that our wealthiest corporations should help pay for it,” the group said.
House our Neighbors says it also is expecting “a legal challenge from the corporate interests who sought to defeat this measure.”
The results were part of strong progressive showing in the low-turnout February Special Election. CHS reported here on Election Night on the wave of support for the social housing tax and the landslide support for two levy renewals for Seattle Public Schools.
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Congratulations to House Our Neighbors for a well-earned victory that will help make Seattle a better place for everyone. Social housing is a tried and true option for creating stable, affordable housing and I am so impressed with all the volunteers who made this happen.
Where has this worked in the world _with this model specifically_? Vienna’s social housing system is not remotely comparable to this. Singapore’s is also nothing like this.
It’s been lauded internationally and hope has been expressed it will be a national trend. Ergo, possibly too threatening to survive challenges.
The argument against 1a was basically, “This helps everyone and is therefore outrageous.”
More like giving $10M a year to an unelected and unaccountable board (to taxpayers) has been tried with not great results see Monorail, Sound Transit, Regional Homeless Authority, Black Brilliance Project etc etc etc
Exactly.
$50 million.
The results the other direction (no housing) is much worse so….. I’m cool with it
Ignoring for a moment whether or not this is the best way to spend money, or whether the group responsible for spending the money has the knowledge and experience to accomplish what they’ve set out to do, there is something that people seem to be forgetting. Nearly all of the people who make over $1 million a year work for companies that have offices outside of Seattle, as well. Watch how quickly these people redomicile to Bellevue or elsewhere. The projected revenue will be a fraction of what is being projected and it will mostly go into administrative expenses rather than actually building anything. The money these people spend will also move out of Seattle. It’s not that I don’t understand the sentiment behind the effort. I just try to think pragmatically about these things. Office vacancies in downtown are substantially higher than most major metros in the US. Retail has moved out and we continue to have crime and filth. Pushing businesses out of the area isn’t going to help the cause
That and the choice of much of the building seems to be in the most expensive locations. Huge swathes of land by the new light-rail stations by north gate and beyond.
Then let it happen…. Been hearing this same crap for decades. “Then we will pack up and leave!!!’” And Seattle keeps growing. Can it already
Seattle could still grow. This will only be a tax on a few hundred people. Easy enough for Amazon to just move their office to Bellevue – it’s not about where they live but rather where they work.