Who wants to crush a big business tax in Seattle? Turns out, it’s not Seattleites. 

Next Tuesday, Seattle voters will finish voting on Proposition 1, our first shot at a social housing model. The original proposition—1A on your ballot—proposes a tax on businesses whose employees take home more than $1 million a year. That tax would fund the Seattle Social Housing Developer, which would acquire and build housing that would reliably serve Seattleites who make anywhere from 0 to 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), while guaranteeing that everyone’s rent is 30 percent of their income. (We like this idea and think you should vote for it.)

Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce isn’t stoked on a new tax on businesses and raised a campaign against it—1B on your ballot—which would attempt to pull from Jumpstart funds (which are already earmarked for entirely different types of low-income housing) and undermines the funding model that makes this social housing so unique. 

The campaign for 1B has been very visible, especially in our mailboxes, with oversized mailers covered in claims that it’s “for the rich,” or quotes alongside Mayor Bruce Harrell’s face. But who’s funding that campaign? According to The Stranger’s analysis of the campaign donations, almost two-thirds of their funding isn’t even coming from Seattle. It should be obvious that 1B isn’t a people’s initiative, but it’s not a Seattleites’ initiative, either. Let’s dig into it. 

By the Numbers

Okay, let’s start with the big picture. The campaign for 1A, run by House Our Neighbors, has raised $584,740 in itemized campaign contributions, with an average contribution size of $2,367. The campaign for 1B, run by People for Responsible Social Housing (read: the Seattle Chamber of Commerce), raised $425,150, with an average contribution size of $13,286. (I hope we’re all reading that in Bernie Sanders’s voice.)

The average campaign size gives us a sense of who’s funding the proposition: 1A has 182 donors who gave less than a thousand dollars; 1B has four. 

Long Distance Campaigning

Most remarkable, though, is how little of 1B’s funding is coming from inside Seattle: 61 percent of their funding comes from Bellevue, Redmond, Mercer Island, Fort Worth, Texas, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. 

Proposition 1 is a City of Seattle initiative, so other cities shouldn’t have a horse in this race. But looking at where they’re coming from, the $261k in donations is all about protecting big business. Businesses like Amazon, Microsoft, and T-Mobile (totaling $220k in non-Seattle donations) hope to avoid the new tax; And those out-of-state donations? $21k of them represent the real estate industry. 

Meanwhile, 1A is overwhelmingly funded by Seattleites: 83 percent of their funding has come from inside the city. That, and the fact that they’re funded largely by small-dollar donations, tells us what your gut is probably already telling you: Proposition 1A is a Seattle-grown solution, funded and supported by the people who actually live here. The opposition? A corporate-backed effort bankrolled by big business and out-of-town interests who would very much prefer not to pay their fair share.

Voting ends next Tuesday, February 11. See our voter guide here.  

Hannah is The Stranger's Editor-in-Chief. 

4 replies on “The Call Is Coming from Outside the House”

  1. “Amazon, Microsoft, and T-Mobile (totaling $220k in non-Seattle donations)” are all companies who employ folks in Seattle city limits – not sure why we are branding them as some outside carpetbaggers. My assumption is most of the 1a funding will be paid by these companies (at least until their accountants do their voodoo).

    My issue is I don’t trust an organization that pimps out homeless people (versus actually paying their sellers minimum wage) – these folks are morally no different than the shitty gig economy scams.

    I suspect this is monorail 2.0 – good concept ran by a fringe / unelected board (we have enough of these – if we’re talking tax payer money, then taxpayers need to have direct control). I foresee a bunch of wasted money (that could have been spent on our most vulnerable).

  2. “The original proposition—1A on your ballot—”

    That was not the original proposition. Social housing was advertised as “self financing”, i.e. they’d sell bonds to raise cash and use the higher rents from the mixed income units to pay off the bonds. The fact that it wouldn’t cost the city anything was a large part of its appeal.

    From The Stranger’s endorsement of I-135:

    “This developer would scoop up old hotels or else build new, green housing, all financed with bonds against expected revenue from rents.”

    From the supporting statement in the voter guide:

    “These homes would be financed through municipal bonding and wouldn’t take resources away from existing affordable housing.”

    Now, not only is it not self financing as was promised, but they want $50 million/year basically forever, with “oversight” provided by a board stacked with the “lived experience” crowd that already ran the Regional Homeless Authority into the ground. I’ll be voting 1B. Let them show they know what they’re doing before giving them a blank check.

  3. Thank God for the out-of-towners trying to kill this social housing boondoggle. The Government should limit itself to ensuring housing is safe and non-discriminatory and otherwise let the private market figure it out.

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