Today the Seattle City Council will more than likely vote to place an alternative on the ballot alongside Initiative 137. Still, we wanted to address some of the more uninformed remarks that came out of certain city council members upon introducing this alternative, which was not discussed and drafted in the light of a public process.
First and foremost, this council alternative shows that they would rather take money from programs for low-income individuals than from the wealthiest businesses in our region. They would rather defund the JumpStart spending plan, which allocates funding for affordable housing, advancing the Seattle Green New Deal, and other community priorities. We adamantly oppose defunding JumpStart for social housing. This is why, through Initiative 137, we hope to establish an employer-paid, excess compensation payroll tax to fund the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD)
With that major concern out of the way, we want to directly address the concerns council members raised about House Our Neighbors and the SSHD.
Claim 1: Backers of I-135 Were Not Transparent with Funding Needs
We understand that not all council members followed the I-135 process closely, so allow us to refresh everyone’s memory.
House Our Neighbors wanted to create a well-funded social housing developer in one single initiative. However, when we crafted I-135 we quickly learned that we were constitutionally prohibited from including a revenue source alongside the creation of the SSHD. First, Public Development Authorities do not have taxing authority, which means giving the SSHD taxing authority would be illegal. Second, a funding source in I-135 would violate the state constitution’s single subject clause, which governs initiatives.
All communication from the I-135 campaign made this clear, and it also made clear that we would follow up I-135 with a funding initiative. Virtually every media outlet reported these facts for the duration of that campaign, and the subject even came up in the endorsement interview with the Seattle Times Editorial Board. (We told them they would be the first outlet we invited to our press conference announcing the funding initiative for I-135). HON can’t be held liable for the lack of basic fact-checking by this council.
Claim 2: Montgomery County Does Things “Different”
It’s hard to know how to address this claim, because it’s so vague. But, for the public’s sake, let’s give a quick explainer on the Montgomery County, Maryland Housing Opportunity Commission (HOC). Our friends over at the Center for Public Enterprise explain it well in their article, “The Basic Logistics of Public Development”.
The HOC is both a HUD-affiliated public housing authority and a housing finance agency. Much of their housing was historically subsidized either with federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) or vouchers, but over the past few years HOC has taken the approach of building its own projects without federal subsidies. For this housing model to financially take off, they use cross-income subsidy, which uses rents from mixed-income tenants to pay off loan money borrowed for projects. The first project completed using this new model was a 268-unit multifamily complex. The building includes 81 apartments affordable to households between 50% and 65% of the area median income.
The SSHD, a brand new agency, structurally differs from the Housing Opportunities Commission. The SSHD is not a HUD-affiliated Public Housing Authority. It does not have a $1 billion balance sheet. It does not have the same level of local government support that the HOC enjoys. What’s most important is that HOC and the SSHD share the same mixed-income and publicly-owned-in-perpetuity housing model.
When we say that Montgomery County, MD is currently doing social housing, and that Seattle can also replicate this model, what we mean is this: We, too, can build our own housing without federal subsidies like LIHTC. We can employ the cross-income subsidization model that the HOC’s mixed-income (aka social housing) portfolio employs. We can serve a mix of incomes with this model and create high-quality, publicly funded and owned housing here in Seattle.
Claim 3: Social Housing Supporters Have No Track Record or Knowledge about Housing
Given the council's lack of basic understanding about what SSHD is or how it works, it should be no surprise that their ignorance and hostility also extends to the people who are responsible for launching the SSHD. The 13-member governing board of the SSHD has a public housing finance expert, an architect, two board members who have done decades of affordable housing development, an urban planner, and–for the first time–a majority of renters. (Unfortunately, there is a renter seat unfilled on the board due to the failure of the city council’s housing committee to appoint new renters to the Seattle Renters Commission for close to a year.)
The first CEO of the SSHD is Roberto Jimenez. Before stepping into this position he was the CEO of both Mutual Housing California and Mutual Housing Management. Prior to that, he worked at Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation in Ventura, CA, where he was Real Estate Development Director. From 2005 to 2016 he was the Director of the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation (FHDC) in Woodburn, Oregon. During those 11 years, he tripled the size of FHDC’s affordable housing portfolio, developed or rehabbed 330 units of diverse multifamily housing, and managed a variety of resident services programs.
What’s Next
For over a year, the governing board has been operating under bad-faith constraints imposed on them by the City. Initiative 135 required the City to provide 18 months of financial support to the SSHD. We were glad that the Mayor included $850,000 for the first 12 months of these start-up costs during last year’s budget deliberations. However, as of a few days ago, these funds have not been released to the SSHD. If the council genuinely cared about good governance, they would be pressing the City to hand over that legally mandated funding rather than artificially creating a problem to use as a political tool against a popular housing policy.
We need I-137 to pass, as is. At 2 pm today, we will be at a special meeting, the first and only public comment period dedicated to this alternative that the city council proposed Monday. If you can’t join us, consider calling in to provide public comment. Tell the council to place I-137 on the ballot without an alternative. Tell them to protect the JumpStart spending plan. Tell them why we–why you–need social housing. And then, help us win at the ballot in February 2025.
Tiffani McCoy is the Co-Executive Director of House Our Neighbors, the organization responsible for Initiative 135 and Initiative 137. Prior to HON, she worked for over six years at Real Change as the Advocacy Director.
