Seattle Social Housing is up and operating — or stumbling, extra prefer it.
Beset by solely predictable inner struggles, the fledgling group is investigating its newly-hired CEO to evaluate his competency and “allegations of anti-Black racism and demeaning board members …” in accordance with board minutes.
The social housing developer has a flowery PR agency to tout its accomplishments whereas nonetheless attempting to draft a long-delayed strategic plan. It not too long ago voted to extend the stipend paid to board members, nearly all of that are appointed by the Seattle Renters’ Fee and haven’t any improvement expertise.
Seattle voters accepted Seattle Social Housing as a public improvement authority in 2023. A proposal to fund it with about $50 million yearly from a brand new payroll expense tax gained overwhelmingly earlier this yr.
First-time candidate Katie Wilson says these victories on the polls impressed her to problem incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell. But when social housing is the imaginative and prescient Wilson desires to pursue, Seattle should be very involved.
Social housing sounds good. In actuality, it’s like creating an enormous pile of progressive revenues and burning it.
For starters, the guarantees of social housing advanced and altered. At first, it was supposed to construct housing that might cost greater rents for wealthier tenants to subsidize decrease rents for others. However such a mannequin might by no means pencil out with out everlasting taxpayer subsidies, warned actual property specialists. Growth and working prices would make rents for some tenants prohibitively excessive.
Now, the social housing developer proudly declares that it’s solely depending on a single supply of public {dollars} — the payroll expense tax. “Conventional inexpensive housing initiatives are usually financed by way of a mixture of tax credit, grants, and low-interest loans,” its web site intones.
However it’s exactly that form of mixed financing that permits town to construct essentially the most models of inexpensive housing for the {dollars} invested.
“Town’s housing funds work with different funds to take a position and open new properties all through town,” stated Maiko Winkler-Chin, director of the Workplace of Housing, at a latest metropolis council briefing. “By bringing different {dollars} along with metropolis {dollars} we stretch our native investments additional to construct as many properties as potential.”
The true price of Seattle Social Housing should be the variety of inexpensive models that $50 million of public cash might construct yearly with conventional financing.
Its constitution states: “Residents MUST be afforded alternatives for restorative justice battle decision earlier than being topic to eviction procedures.”
However nonprofit housing operators throughout town say they’re experiencing financial difficulties partly as a result of strict tenant safety legal guidelines make it troublesome to evict individuals who don’t pay their hire. In impact, future monetary instability is written into the social housing developer’s DNA.
Wilson says Harrell’s largest errors weren’t tapping extra tax sources to extend the scale of what are already the largest budgets in Seattle historical past.
Voters beware.
If social housing displays how Wilson intends to spend all that cash, Seattleites ought to brace themselves for companies decamping for different locales and feel-good applications that whither in the true world.
