♪♪
-Join the campaign and vote yes.
-Seattle voters will decide on a social-housing measure
this February that would create a new public development
authority to build permanently affordable units.
-This is something that's important
and should be important to everyone in our community.
-But does Seattle need another public developer
with hundreds of millions already spent every year
locally on affordable housing?
-What's being proposed is sort of redundant.
-And how will a measure designed to help
not just low-income residents
but people making above the area median
income affect our affordable-housing crisis?
-We need to add more options.
-We hear from both sides.
-This will actually create more homelessness.
-A riveting discussion about Initiative 135
for social housing, next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
Welcome to this edition of "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Seattle voters will soon decide the fate of Initiative 135,
which would establish a new public development authority
to build what's called social housing.
Supporters say this type of housing,
which is publicly owned and permanently affordable,
could help people of many socioeconomic levels,
even those making up to 120% of the area median income.
But opponents have raised questions
about how this measure would be funded.
And they say people of low income or no income
should be the top priority
in trying to solve our housing crisis.
This week, it's time to get social
with the concept of social housing,
as we look into a special election on I-135 this February.
-You probably already know that housing prices and rents
have blown through the roof.
-It's not a new problem that supporters of I-135
are talking about,
but they do say a yes vote from Seattle city voters
could provide some new answers.
-I would say that everybody benefits from this initiative.
-Shalimar Gonzales is C.E.O. of Solid Ground,
a non-profit that provides support, services, and shelter
and runs about 180 units of permanent
supportive housing in Sand Point for those in need.
-But how do we get from here to there?
-Initiative 135 would create
a new public development authority, or PDA,
that would develop, own, and maintain social housing.
That's publicly owned and managed housing that,
Gonzales says provides a stable future
in a volatile real-estate market.
-With this initiative, this is about keeping it affordable
for the life of those units, and that's important.
-Unlike federally funded programs,
geared only for people of lower incomes,
social housing would be available to people from
zero to 120% of the area median income,
with rents of those earning more
subsidizing those who make less,
a mixed-income community that Gonzales says
allows for growth and financial flexibility.
-So, we have to be able to create
this pathway that's sustainable for us.
So if you're 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 100%, 120%,
you can continue to live in that same community
if that is your choice.
-If I-135 passes, the city of Seattle would be required
to provide 18 months
of in-kind support to establish the PDA.
And whenever the city considers a sale or gift of public lands,
it would have to consider
if the PDA should get that property first.
-Think it can't happen here?
-This idea might be new to Seattle,
but Gonzales says social housing
is already happening around the globe.
-We need more housing and we need more opportunities
for folks, and this is one way that we can do it.
And it's been a proven model, you know, worldwide
and within the United States that this actually does work.
-But there's a big problem, says Roger Valdez.
-What's being proposed is sort of redundant.
-Valdez runs the group Seattle For Growth,
which advocates for market solutions
to our local housing problems,
not what he sees in I-135 as more bureaucracy in a region
that spends hundreds of millions each year
on subsidized housing already.
-Right now, I think we've got to go back
and look at, where did all the money go?
-There's no formal opposition to I-135,
though the King County Housing Development Consortium
published a letter last April
with what Valdez says is a real concern.
Social housing could take away funding from existing
affordability programs that are working
and could distract attention away from people
who need help the most.
-You got to focus on those people that have no
income, zero income, or very small fixed income,
disabled people, you know,
people who are never going to earn enough
to pay rent in the market.
-And Valdez wonders, if it passes,
when I-135 would even have an impact up against a problem
with housing that doesn't have any quick answers.
-You need a lot of land,
it costs a lot of money, and it takes a lot of time
to get through the permitting structure.
There's already a market that produces a lot of housing.
Let's pull back, let that do its job,
and then subsidize what it can't solve.
-Can Seattle work out of a housing crisis
with the tools it has or does it need another solution?
It's time to nail down your choice
on a social-housing initiative
that's building towards an important vote February 14th.
-Social housing --
this initiative really is about helping everyone.
-I think the problem is, we need more accountability.
-And joining us to break down Initiative 135,
we have with us Tiffani McCoy.
She is co-chair of the coalition behind this measure,
House Our Neighbors, and also advocacy director
at Seattle's Street newspaper Real Change.
Tiffani, good to have you. -Thanks for having me.
-We also have with us John Fox,
who is director of the Seattle Displacement Coalition,
the group that wrote the opposition statement
you'll see in the King County Voters' Guide.
John, good to see you, too. -Yes, thanks.
Glad to be here. -And here we go.
Yeah, we had a coin flip before the show.
Tiffani, I'd like for you to start us off.
Why do you support this measure?
-So, while we're making really important investments
in affordable housing here in the city of Seattle,
we need to be honest with ourselves and the public
that we are never going to be able to dig ourselves
out of our scale of need with current financing models
that overwhelmingly depend on the federal government.
There is another model of affordable housing
called social housing that works all around the world
that we want to implement here at home
so that we're just -- we have another tool
to address the affordability crisis
and to prevent displacement and folks entering homelessness.
-Great. John, your thoughts here,
the big picture on why you oppose 135.
-Yes. I, by the way, co-wrote
the position statement in the voters' material
with David Bloom, and Alice Woldt.
We are all longtime housing and homeless advocates.
The Displacement Coalition is 43 years old,
with a focus on low-income housing and the homeless.
That's why and we were surprised
when we read the text of this initiative.
It is contrary to the term social housing.
There's really nothing particularly new about this.
It's a proposal to create
an entity that will build mixed-income housing,
including housing all the way up to 120% of median.
Right now, there is a housing crisis at the bottom
of the income scale.
We need to focus on
serving the homeless with housing development
that largely serves those populations
and very low income, with little or no income,
not people with incomes all the way up to 120%.
We should be shifting our emphasis away from mixed income
to more effectively serving and allocating our resources,
serving those at the bottom.
-Thank you for that, and I'm going to definitely pull apart
that issue later in the show.
But, Tiffani, I want to go back to you and talk about
how this measure would be paid for.
I know you've heard a few concerns about this.
I want to start by asking how much
this will cost the city of Seattle,
because if this passes, the city would be required
to pay for startup fees, basically, to establish the PDA,
the Public Development Authority,
including office space, staffing, hiring a C.E.O.,
legal services for at least 18 months.
What's that cost estimate for the city?
Can we start there?
-Yeah. It sounds like the central staff
of City Council ran numbers, and it looks like $750,000
for those operation resources.
-Okay.
-I do want to just say, like, more globally,
we went into this initiative intending to couple it
with a progressive revenue source,
but then learned that under Washington state law,
public developers are not able to tax.
They don't have that authority.
That would have made the initiative illegal
and potentially thrown out.
So we wanted to make sure, on day one,
that there were some resources for the developers,
so that's why we wrote in that in-kind support.
Representative Frank Chopp is actually going to be
sponsoring a budget proviso in session this year
to cover those costs for the first year
while we continue
working on identifying other revenue sources.
But just to be clear, from day one,
just like other public developers,
the Seattle social-housing developer has the ability
to apply for grants at all level of governments
and even foundations that want to invest in this model.
-Got it. John, just some reaction to this,
what Tiffani's saying about this investment from the city
into this measure.
Looks like roughly $750,000.
I know you had some concerns about this.
Please. -We do.
There are, right now, quite literally over
two dozen existing
non-profit agencies, housing authorities,
as well as three public development authorities
doing housing in Seattle.
That's what Initiative 135 would create,
i.e., a public development authority.
They're all competing for the same limited source of revenue.
Why give special allocations of funds to another group
who's literally going to duplicate what dozens of groups
are already doing and have done for over decades,
instead of focusing, reaching down,
and building housing for low income and the homeless?
That's -- 40% of the city's resources right now
go to higher-income groups.
They would have been better served, the sponsors of this,
to require the city to dedicate more of its resources downward,
not to a mixed-income model that also serves people
all the way up to 120% of median,
which, in this town, is $130,000 per year or more.
-Got it. I feel like we need to engage this issue.
Tiffani, let's talk about this whole idea
of AMI, area median income,
and the housing that you're talking about here
would potentially serve people from zero all the way up to 120.
Why is that a good idea?
You heard some of the critiques that John had.
-First off, it's really important to have that
across-class, mixed-income component,
because this model of housing
isn't relying on rental subsidies
the way that John outlined
all the other affordable housing developers --
they are dependent on that Section 8, Section 9
project-based vouchers
and the low-income housing tax credit,
which I also hope we get into.
All of these programs, while important,
have incredible restrictions over a city.
You can't serve certain populations,
like undocumented individuals, in them.
So the mixed-income component is incredibly important
to cross-subsidization overall,
making sure that buildings are close to revenue neutral.
I'll say that we do not actually do mixed-income
housing the way that other cities and nations do globally.
What we currently do in the city of Seattle,
we call it mixed income, we say we're doing that,
but if you look at the examples of mixed-income units,
it's actually kind of a separate but equal.
There are actually separate buildings for folks
that are low income and separate buildings
or entrances for those that pay market rate.
There's also a discrepancy -- excuse me --
a disparity between the quality
of the housing between those two.
We think that everyone deserves access to safe,
healthy, affordable buildings,
and high quality construction of buildings.
So that's why that's incredibly important.
And then I think it's really important to frame this idea
of social housing and that we already do it.
I strongly disagree with that notion.
Social housing, if we had to boil it down in one sentence,
is publicly owned in perpetuity.
We do not do any publicly-owned-in-perpetuity
housing in the city of Seattle or the nation.
We have restrictions on that.
You either have to keep it affordable
and in public hands for 30 to 50 years.
After that, it can be sold off
as if we're not going to need that housing.
-John, you had a point you wanted to make.
-A quick response. -Yeah.
-Go to the King County Housing Consortium website,
identify the over two dozen non-profit housing developers,
and then take a look at each of their websites
and the projects they build.
Many of them -- most of them are mixed income
in the same building that are offering a range of incomes,
just like this new entity would be doing.
And many of them,
because of the covenants tied to the funding they receive,
they remain in perpetuity 50 or 99 years as very low income.
They also do land trusts, co-ops, tenant ownership,
a fraction of them do.
Again, we would be better served
if the sponsors of this initiative had said --
required the city to shift more of its resources
to those forms of truly social housing.
Simply calling mixed-income housing social
does not make it so.
-Thank you. I do want to make sure
we go down this path of permanently affordable,
because I think that's the big difference here.
Tiffani, can you break this down?
I want to engage with this, please.
-Yeah, I'd say, like, social housing --
And, again, let's look globally, because we don't do it outside
of Montgomery County, Maryland, in this nation.
There are many bills in many states that are being pushed
because people know that we need to address
our affordability crisis in a different way.
So we don't do social housing in the city of Seattle.
Social housing in places like Toronto, Britain, Singapore,
Uruguay, Vienna, those are owned in the public forever.
They're not sold off.
I'm curious what the 99-year covenant is.
Seattle does have a higher threshold.
At 50 years, you have to remain
in public hands if you get public money.
But the low-income housing tax credit, that's 30 years.
And then we're selling off these assets.
A lot of these non-profits are getting public land,
and then they sell it off because they have to make sure
that their balance sheet works at the end of it.
That's not their problem.
But then that public land is leaving public hands forever.
Look at the Mercer Mega Block, for instance.
-The Low Income Housing Institute --
talk to Sharon Lee, one of your supporters --
projects they provide,
and they are sure to include covenants that require
these to remain receiving public support trust-fund monies.
Low-income housing tax credits have long terms --
not that long, but a long term.
And, again, they're common projects.
The only thing that's particularly unique
about going the route they did
that was creating a public development authority
that gives it some additional bonding capacity,
whereas some of the other non-profits don't.
But you cannot make a project work with just bonds
and by raising rents on a large portion of the units
to subsidize a fraction which are low income.
It's not adequate.
And what it means -- as a funding source,
it means they will join this new entity,
all the other non-profits every year for funding to sustain it.
It's not just for operation.
They're going to need money for every project they do.
It's a shame they're not reaching down
and pushing to create more units
serving those at the bottom rather than units all the way
up to 120% of median.
-Thank you. Tiffani, can we engage two topics there?
I want to talk about this idea of this PDA,
if this measure passes, competing with other
housing providers here, and also this idea
that you need to be focusing on the lowest of the low
rather than up 120%. Let's talk about it.
-Yeah, I want to focus on the second one first, if I may.
This idea that we need to get away from mixed-income housing
actually makes me a bit nervous
because if we look at the history of public housing
in this country, we didn't have mixed income.
We segregated out Black, brown and working class
and poor communities into buildings
that were never going to be bringing in enough revenue
to keep up with maintenance and operations.
And we're creating ghettos through public housing,
and social housing is the antithesis of that.
It's also important for us to not segregate income levels
into housing and communities.
So this is a community that's only serving low income.
This is a community that's only serving software engineers.
That's not the kind of Seattle that I want to live in.
And then I'll say as well that this idea
that we're just replicating what's already done,
none of these providers are giving housing to those
that make between 81% to 120% of the area median income.
And these people are also really deeply struggling.
I have, like, two examples,
one with Seattle Education Association, who endorses us.
They're having issues like actually attracting teachers
to Seattle because of the rent prices.
I just got off the phone with the Resident
and Fellow Physician Union at UDub.
Their number-one issue with their members --
These are doctors -- is housing and they have to live
15 to 20 minutes from the hospital
in order to be on call.
And these are some of the most expensive rental areas.
These individuals should have access
to affordable housing as well.
-Can I talk to you about that competition issue, though?
Would the PDA, if indeed this measure passes,
would it be competing with other housing providers
in our area for resources?
-So we would not be --
So first off, I want to say, in the initiative,
we were very aware of this.
We wrote very explicitly in the initiative that money
for the developer cannot come
from current affordable housing anything.
Like, we wrote that in there 'cause we don't want to be --
I work at real change. I see every budget year
how homelessness is pitted against housing,
which is pitted against, you know, other community needs.
We wanted to make sure not to do that.
"A" and "B," we're coming with a progressive revenue source
for this one way or another.
We are not going to be going
after the low-income housing tax credit,
Section 8 or any of these.
So I understand why the Housing Development Consortium
and other groups are worried about this, the scarcity,
because if you are looking at financing based on
what the federal government gives us every year,
yeah, that's a very scarce pot of money,
but we're not going to be utilizing
any of those mechanisms.
-John, a quick response to that,
and then I want to move past this topic.
-We worked with a Black, brown and Asian community
for over a decade at High Point and Holly Park,
at Roxbury Village, and also at Yesler Terrace.
These were beautiful neighborhoods and communities
that served principally
those public housing at or below 30% of median.
The housing authority used a similar argument
that I just heard from Tiffani to legitimize wiping out
of 2,000 units of very low income housing
to create a mixed-income housing model,
arguing that somehow, for some reason,
Black and brown communities, if they mixed --
if they didn't have rich people interacting with them,
that somehow that was not a good approach.
And one other provision in this,
which I find particularly troubling,
it allows this entity to acquire existing unsubsidized buildings.
Many of them are all low-income units,
and over time, as the low-income tenants move out,
they can convert it to market or above-market rate
to fulfill their mixed-income model.
This will actually create more homelessness and a shortage,
a greater shortage of low-income housing
in our community.
They would prioritize the use of surplus city land
for their mixed-income housing model
over what the city prefers now, which is low-income housing.
These are the wrong -- 180-degree wrong approach
to addressing the crisis at the bottom
for low-income people and the homeless.
-I guess we should touch on this one last time,
so I can give you a response to that, Tiffani --
this idea of trying to focus on the lowest of the low here.
-Yeah, I mean, we have Black, brown, indigenous communities
that are endorsing this initiative.
We have El Centro de la Raza, for instance.
We have Puget Sound Sage.
We have Solid Ground, the Low Income Housing Institute,
they all are service providers and they know that we need
another model in order to meet affordability.
I remember talking to the leadership team
at El Centro de la Raza during our endorsement process
and they just wanted to make sure
that this wasn't going to compete with LIHTC
and other money for them to endorse it
because it is a scarce resource.
They also, in one of their most recent projects,
wanted to serve up to 80% AMI
because that's what their community needs.
But they were not able to do that in order
to leverage the low-income housing tax credits.
So we're just like missing opportunities
to also create a Seattle
where working people are able to afford to live here as well.
And we should be spending a lot more money on the lowest income.
Like, absolutely agree.
But we have another option to add to the table,
to add to the mix, like other countries around the world do,
and we should not be leaving any option off the table.
-Thank you. I want to make sure
I ask you another question, though.
When we talk about competition here,
I know some critics have brought up
this is something that could potentially distract people
from the Housing Levy, which the city of Seattle
is talking about renewing this year.
Can you respond to that, that this would distract
from that in some way and the work
that it does to help these people of lower income?
-That's important work,
but that alone is not going to meet our needs.
That alone is not going to reverse displacement
or stop homelessness.
That alone is not going to make sure
that Black and brown communities are not displaced from the city.
That is not going to be make us any -- get us anywhere closer
to vendors at Real Change
who are on long wait lists for housing get that quicker.
We need to add more options
because otherwise this population
that doesn't qualify for this housing,
we're basically, as a city, telling them, "That's too bad.
It's up to the private market for you."
And that's not good enough for the coalition that I represent.
-John.
-The supporters of this proposal,
they're also calling for dramatic upzones
in all of our neighborhoods.
Upzones, particularly in lower-density areas,
those areas are full of existing low-income housing,
particularly larger families and people of color.
Wholesale upzoning of our city is a blueprint
for more displacement and gentrification,
and it dovetails directly with the proponents
mixed-income strategy again to promote market rate
even above market rate solutions
at the expense of low-income housing.
It is a 180-degree wrong direction
that we should be taking.
-Tiffani, I'd like for you to respond to that
if you'd like and just talk about the people
who do support your campaign here,
because it is a campaign
that's raised more than $211,000 as of mid-January,
but half of that coming from Group Health Foundation,
a nonprofit committed to health and racial justice.
Can you describe this coalition supporting you
and what they're saying potentially about
some of these concerns John has about gentrification?
-Yeah. So, I mean, I went into
a couple of the service providers that already endorse.
I mean, we also have MLK Labor who's endorsing.
We have King County NAACP that endorses.
Just go to the houseourneighbors.org/ endorsements.
We just also received Got Green's endorsement.
They're really excited about the fact
that this not only pairs tenant interests and tenant leadership,
but also the green aspects,
which we actually haven't talked about here,
the Passive House necessity for new development,
because we are not meeting our climate goals as a city.
We're nowhere near close.
We wanted to couple that with housing
because housing is a climate issue.
Housing is a homelessness issue, it's a racial issue.
So we put all of those things together.
But I just really want to question John
on where this information is coming out
that we're going to charge more than market rate.
That's not how social housing works at all.
I'm just curious where that comes from,
because I haven't seen that in the media.
Then as for upzones -- absolutely we support that
because if you look at the racial equity analysis
of the urban village strategy,
it is causing displacement, it is causing homelessness,
and the history of redlining is still alive and well in Seattle.
And I hope we change that in the current comprehensive plan.
-I'll let you respond briefly,
and then we need to wrap up, John.
-By the way, we were one of the organizations
that vigorously fought redlining in the central area
in southeast Seattle. -Okay.
-The --
It's just incorrect to suggest that
by increasing density,
somehow that's going to relieve our housing crisis.
Surplus land --
making that available for higher income --
And by the way, WMBE, labor requirements accompany all
the housing that is already being done,
green requirements.
Talk to the nonprofits.
Dozens of agencies have been doing this for years,
meeting those guidelines.
There's nothing new about it.
This simply duplicates what organizations --
They've overlooked in looking to Europe
completely what existing nonprofits and existing
public development authorities are doing.
-Okay, thank you. We need to wrap up.
Some final thoughts, if you wouldn't mind, Tiffani.
If you can keep it 30 seconds, that'd be great.
-Yeah, I would just tell folks to go look at our endorsers,
to talk more with us about this being duplicative.
We do not have high green-energy standards
on any of our buildings.
We have massive public health issues with black mold, etc.
We have service providers that endorse us.
I basically am saying to the audience,
"Do you think what we're doing is enough
on housing and homelessness?"
I think that the answer may point you towards looking at 135
and I hope that they vote "yes" in February.
-Thank you. John, last word to you.
-It would have been --
These folks could have gone out
with volunteers and created a nonprofit entity
and then lined up with all the other nonprofits every year
to try to secure funding.
Instead, they want special privilege
by creating this authority under city aegis
that gives them better access to surplus land
to convert units to higher income.
And in the two thirds of the rental housing stock in Seattle
is priced between 80% and 100%.
120% of median is well above what most rental housing
is out there.
That is high-income housing.
We, as a city, shouldn't be focusing on that kind of model.
We need to require the city to reach down
with more of its resources
and to expand our supply with things like housing levies
and tapping and holding corporations
and businesses accountable to replace housing
they tear down and higher development fees.
Too bad they didn't do those kinds of things.
-Okay. Thank you very much for this.
A great discussion here. And we will be right back.
♪♪
What are people saying on social media
about the upcoming vote on I-135?
One person writes, "Preservation of affordable housing
is a great opportunity for the new social housing developer,
much better and faster than ground up."
Another group says, "We...believe that Seattle
needs to reimagine itself as an affordable,
livable city for people of all incomes in every community."
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an e-mail at Contact at seattlechannel.org,
or find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Coming up next week is a plan to give state residents
a guaranteed monthly income.
A path out of poverty or simply a waste of tax dollars?
We're guaranteeing a healthy debate on this topic
on the next "City Inside Out."
I hope you join us.
♪♪