information from District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold

On Monday, the Full Council approved the Administrative & Funding Plan for how the Office of Housing (OH) awards and distributes funding for affordable housing in the City. Seattle has a large network of nonprofit affordable housing developers and providers who are experts in building housing to serve the diverse needs and experiences of housing instability and homelessness.

I sponsored several amendments that were incorporated into the final Plan:

• A "Housing First" definition, so that providers applying for funding understand the City’s expectations of Housing First principles
• Requiring written Mutual Termination Agreement policies and their evaluation to prevent misuse in accordance with recommendations of the Losing Home Report
• Require providers’ policies to align with City law in screening tenant applications
• Requiring that Seattle Housing Authority projects receiving $5 million or more in City funding include a goal that 1 out of 5 apprentices hired for the project come from a pre-apprenticeship program
• Increasing the maximum funding available for homeownership projects that are three bedrooms allowing loan funding to build rent restricted detached- and attached accessory dwelling units

Councilmember Mosqueda led this effort. I was proud to partner with her to include an amendment requesting OH and the Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) department to advance labor equity outcomes in affordable housing construction projects such as apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship utilization, and hiring workers from targeted zip codes, components of tracking our workforce that we already require for public works projects under the City’s Priority Hire program. The City’s role as a funder for affordable housing development can help ensure your housing levy tax dollars are—in addition to building affordable housing—promoting wealth and career pathways for communities historically marginalized or excluded from construction trades, specifically people of color and women.

Turning to the nature of our affordable housing and homelessness crisis in Seattle and the County; the McKinsey Report shows that rising homelessness has tracked with rent increases in our region. The report states that since 2011, the available supply of units for households at 80 percent of the Average Median Income (or almost $80,000 for a household of 3) has more than doubled, and “…those affordable to households earning 50 percent or less of the AMI have almost halved.” This situation prices people out of our housing market and drives people with lowest incomes out of the City or into homelessness.

It’s the Office of Housing’s mission to fund affordable housing projects for people with the severest housing need.  As mentioned earlier, our partners who build affordable housing are ready to build more. OH’s 2019 Intent to Apply generated interest for housing providers to develop over 2,300 units across the City projected to cost over $190 million. OH has indicated that despite providers being ready to build $190 million in housing in 2019, the City only has about $50 million to spend.

To put this spending into perspective, the McKinsey report also projects that King County would need to invest between $360- 410 million annually to adequately fund interventions like rapid rehousing and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for people with the severest housing need. To do our part in meeting this regional need, I propose that the City—as one King County jurisdiction—double its annual housing investments in each of the remaining years of the levy so that we meet this threshold. In 2017 I championed legislation to allow the City to issue limited tax general obligation bonds for infrastructure projects, and I am excited by new bonding authority granted by the state that could allow Seattle to retain a portion of the sales tax that would otherwise go the State to enhance our bonding capacity for affordable housing.

This state law requires a restructure of the sales tax starting with a resolution stating the intent to use the new bonding authority within 6 months of the July 2019 date that the law goes into effect—I will keep you updated on my efforts to do so!