Tag Archives: affordable housing

The Phillis Wheatley YWCA — How city’s effort to protect ‘a central hub’ in Seattle’s Black history could block affordable housing project

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The building as it looks today

By Ayla Nye/UW News Lab

With an affordable housing project set to demolish the building, a December landmarks board hearing could determine the future of a 21st Ave property the city calls “a pivotal location in Seattle’s African American heritage.”

The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections has taken the unusual step of delaying the development of a 49-unit apartment building just off E Madison to determine if the 108-year-old building should be protected on the grounds that the property holds historical and cultural significance, according to the SDCI.

The Madison Inn Work Release, formerly known as the Phillis Wheatley YWCA building, is up for a landmark nomination, a designation that could protect the building from demolition and many types of construction.

Stephanie Johnson-Toliver, president of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, voiced her concern about the planned building demolition.

Johnson-Toliver is a fourth generation Seattleite. Her family moved to Seattle in 1913 and she has owned her house in the Central District for nearly 30 years. In 1945, her mother was a member of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA Girls Reserve.

“The Phillis Wheatley was created to meet the needs of Black women and children,” Johnson-Toliver said. “They helped shape young women’s opinions and attitudes and we’re socially uplifting them with education and recreation,” she said.

“Established from the ‘Culture Club’ in 1919, this site has been a central hub for black intellectual life, community gathering, black social justice and legal defense groups,” the nomination prepared for the city reads. “It initially functioned as a meeting point and community center, significantly contributing to the social fabric of Seattle’s African American community.”

Ben Maritz is the current owner of the Madison Inn property and the founder of Great Expectations, an affordable housing developer. Maritz has been developing the property since he bought it in July of 2020.

“We went through a whole process, including design review, and received the master use permit, I think, over a year ago,” Maritz said. Continue reading →

Affordable developer Community Roots Housing begins ‘disposition’ process for six more Capitol Hill and Central District properties

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(Image: Community Roots Housing)

Affordable developer Community Roots Housing has not yet put the properties up for sale but an ongoing “disposition” process will include six area apartment complexes including three in a cluster around Capitol Hill’s Miller Park neighborhood.

The early steps in the effort come as the developer says it is facing ongoing challenges from the pandemic including financing issues around its development projects including the new affordable mass-timber development Heartwood at 14th and Union. It also comes in a string of sales the developer has said are strategic transactions and not an effort to sell off its main portfolio. CORRECTION: CHS incorrectly described the Heartwood as a “publicly supported” project but a Community Roots Housing spokesperson says the development was not financed with any public subsidy. We have updated the post.

Previous sales have included some of the more expensive to maintain stock held by Community Roots Housing, created in 1976 as Capitol Hill Housing. The new roster of properties being moved forward under the publicly supported developer’s “Policy Framework for Use of Physical Assets” is different than those recent sales — each of the six properties is subject to federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Housing Assistance Payments contracts.

The six properties are the Elizabeth James, Four Twelve, Hazel Plaza, Mary Ruth Manor, Silvian, and Union James apartment complexes, according to a July Community Roots Housing board update. Continue reading →

Seattle Social Housing Developer names first CEO

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The Seattle Social Housing Developer has its first leader. The authority announced that Roberto Jimenez has been appointed as its inaugural Chief Executive Officer.

Jimenez’s career in providing affordable housing includes his work with Mutual Housing California where officials say he doubled the organization’s housing portfolio and maintained a housing development pipeline with $500 million in active real estate development while “successfully engaging residents in board governance.” As Chair of the Board of Housing California, he helped lead statewide housing policy and advocacy efforts,” SSHD says. Continue reading →

43rd District Town Hall: affordable housing, strengthening public healthcare, and pushback on the liquor board

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Chopp

The group of legislators representing Capitol Hill in Olympia say their work in 2024 is focused on increasing the supply of affordable housing, strengthening public healthcare, and taking on an issue of civil rights that has caused outcry in the city’s queer-friendly queer communities.

Sen. Jamie Pedersen, Rep. Nicole Macri, and Rep. Frank Chopp gathered Saturday for the 2024 43rd District Town Hall at First Baptist Church to answer community questions and discuss the most important legislative issues they’re pursuing.

The current legislative session has reached the halfway point as the state’s lawmakers meet for only a 60-day period in even years under Washington’s two-year budget system.

Chopp has long-held a focus on addressing housing concerns and cited the Home and Hope Program, which acquired 30 major sites in King County that created 7,000 homes as an example of progress.

The Housing Trust Fund supports the financing of thousands of low-income housing units across the state. The Apple Health and Homes Program allows individuals who are experiencing chronic homelessness who also live with a medical condition to have housing as part of their medical treatment.

“70% percent of the chronically homeless have a serious medical condition, a mental illness, substance use disorder, a major physical disability,” Chopp said. Continue reading →

‘Largest-ever investment into affordable housing’ — Seattle City Council finalizes 2024 budget but faces big gap in 2025

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The view from Capitol Hill’s Pride Place. Affordable housing spending will reach an all-time high in the city in 2024.

Teresa Mosqueda will step up to represent Seattle constituents the King County Council.

Kshama Sawant is off to start a new national party.

The two veteran Seattle City Council members marked the passage of the final city budget under their watch in familiar fashion with budget chair Mosqueda celebrating wins for human services and housing and Sawant standing alone in opposition to the final compromise package.

The final 2024 Seattle budget plan was approved 8 to 1 by the council acting as committee Monday. Tuesday will bring a final vote, a formality in the multi-month process.

“Thanks to affordable housing and homelessness advocates, our labor partners and human service workers, community members, and our Select Budget Committee colleagues, this budget includes the City’s largest-ever investment into affordable housing—yielding nearly $600 million for affordable across the biennium,” Mosqueda said in a statement. Continue reading →

Affordable, LGBTQIA+ focused, and neighboring Neighbours, Pride Place creates a new home for Capitol Hill seniors

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After decades of community hope, Pride Place is filling with residents.

On Broadway between Pike and Pine, the affordable housing for LGBTQIA+ seniors is the first of its kind in Washington. There are 118 new homes in the project. The conveniences of modern construction and quality windows will help keep dance club Neighbours a good neighbor.

The ribbon was cut on a cold fall night in late October but energy from the new senior residents cut the chill. Taking the stage was Laney, a resident of Pride Place who had been waiting a long time for queer elders to be placed at the forefront of the community’s needs.

“Pride Place is the kind of place my friends and I talked about in our 40s, something we could only dream about,” Laney said.

Pride Place is special. Applicants must financially qualify for the building that is utilizing “affirmative marketing” to reach out to underrepresented communities and help make the new building a home for the LGBTQIA+ senior community. The building cannot restrict leasing to queer-identifying seniors because of federal housing law. Instead, Pride Place is reaching out to LGBTQIA+ seniors who meet income requirements.

Laney was a longtime resident of Capitol Hill until COVID hit and she took to the road in her minivan, leaving behind her close-knit queer community. It wasn’t a decision she took lightly, while her travels over the next couple years were full of adventure she couldn’t forget those she had left behind.

“I missed my queer community,” Laney said. “I returned to Seattle but there was no way that I could afford my apartment on Capitol Hill any longer — I couldn’t return to my beloved neighborhood.” Continue reading →

The Fredonia: Sale means new life for 115-year-old Capitol Hill apartment building with proceeds helping to create ‘hundreds of affordable units’ in Seattle

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(Image: Community Roots Housing)

Affordable housing provider and developer Community Roots Housing has sold the 115-year-old, three-story, 12-unit Fredonia building bringing more change to the built environment along Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E and illustrating there remains a strong market for even the Hill’s oldest and smallest apartment buildings.

It is a free market — the buyer won’t be an affordable property manager or a Public Development Authority. It won’t be the city’s newly formed but not yet operational Seattle Social Housing developer. According to King County property records, the buyer is real estate investor Bryan Syrdal and Tributary Investments, a company that purchases and develops mixed-use properties with market-rate rents. The price for the Fredonia? $5 million.

Tributary has not responded to CHS inquiries but a spokesperson for Community Roots said the sale makes sense for the organization to move on from a historic building with only a handful of units and “a lot of capital needs.” The proceeds from the sale will help Community Roots provide “hundreds of affordable units” elsewhere in the city, the spokesperson said.

UPDATE: Syrdal tells CHS he is looking forward to renovating the building.

“I own and have renovated a number of older properties and used to sit on the Ballard Landmark’s board,” Syrdal writes. “My partners at Meriwether Partners have renovated and own projects of a similar profile.”

Continue reading →

The Rise — ‘the largest building constructed by any affordable housing provider in Seattle’ — opens on First Hill

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(Image: The Rise)

Tuesday’s ribbon cutting ceremony at the latest affordable housing development to open in Seattle will be extremely unusual — it will take place on the 17th floor, at the top of The Rise, the new set of First Hill structures in a joint project from Plymouth Housing and Bellwether Housing.

“The new building is the result of innovative solutions to development of affordable housing and strong partnership between local and state leaders and nonprofit developers,” the affordable housing providers said in a statement on the opening. Plymouth’s collaboration has risen on surplus Sound Transit land at Madison and Boylston, “the largest building constructed by any affordable housing provider in Seattle.” Continue reading →

Seattle proposal would free affordable projects from design review — and give all developers path to skip public meetings

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The affordable mass timber Heartwood project from Community Roots Housing at 14th and Union (Image: AIA Seattle)

The city’s COVID-19 emergency has ended but its affordable housing emergency continues. New legislation shaped by the pandemic and championed by the mayor and city council would speed up the public approval process to create new low-and-middle-income apartment buildings by exempting the developments from time consuming and expensive design reviews. The effort could also produce a two-year test where any major development in the city could choose to undertake a public review as is currently required or pursue the streamlined administrative design review with public feedback but without public meetings.

Mayor Bruce Harrell sent legislation to the Seattle City Council this week to begin the process of winding down what critics say is one of the city’s largest bureaucratic barriers to more rapidly addressing its housing issues. Continue reading →

Seattle starts affordable housing fund powered by tax on its largest employers — UPDATE

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The city is putting more of the revenue raised by its tax on Seattle’s largest companies to work to create affordable housing. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to dedicate JumpStart tax funding to a new program dedicated to investing in organizations and projects officials say are working to address displacement and “redress the longstanding harms of discriminatory housing practices.”

Sponsored by Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, the JumpStart Acquisition and Preservation Program will dedicate up to $2 million a year to administrate a new effort to offer “technical assistance and funding to support CBOs (community based organizations) interested in acquiring and developing affordable housing” and, later, funding to support “acquisition and development activity and loan application.” Continue reading →