Emails Reveal Last-Minute Lobbying Efforts to Keep Social Housing off the November Ballot

The election ends today, so get your ballots in by 8pm!

By Erica C. Barnett

House Our Neighbors, the social housing campaign, posted an email on Instagram Monday that Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce president Rachel Smith sent to Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Maritza Rivera on August 5. In the email, which HON obtained through a records request, Smith urged the two councilmembers to "take the time to consider alternatives before taking action to place I-137"—the social housing initiative—"on the ballot."'

The following day, the council decided to block Initiative 137 from last year's November ballot, giving themselves more time to come up with a competing alternative and relegating I-137 (now Prop. 1A) to the February special election that wraps up today.

The social housing measure would impose a 5 percent tax, paid by employers, on individual employee compensation above $1 million a year. The money would fund the construction and acquisition of mixed-income housing, with higher-income renters directly subsidizing the rents of their lower-income neighbors.

The timing of Smith's email shows that the Chamber was lobbying until the last minute to keep the social housing proposal off last year's high-turnout Presidential election ballot. In a separate email HON received in response to its records request, sent the Friday before the council voted to delay the measure, a council staffer told a King County Elections staffer they had just received "confirmation that Council will be approving this for the November ballot." By the following Tuesday, that was no longer true.

In her August 5 email, Smith proposed two possible alternatives to the social housing measure. The first, which would make social housing an eligible use of existing Seattle Housing Levy property taxes, would have little impact unless the Office of Housing decided to redirect funds from existing programs. The second would raise property taxes by 10 cents per $1,000 of a property's value, increasing city funding for traditional low-income housing.

"I appreciate the thought the Chamber has put into this," Nelson responded. "Given that both alternatives could impact the resources our affordable housing providers receive, I’d want to know what they think."

Records also show that left-leaning opponents of the social housing measure also reached out to the council in the days leading up to their decision to delay, and that a staffer for Councilmember Maritza Rivera made sure their objections were fast-tracked to the attention of both Rivera and Councilmember Cathy Moore. Rivera would go on to propose the alternative to social housing that became Proposition 1B, which would fund traditional low-income housing using existing JumpStart payroll tax revenues.

In the August 1 letter to the council, Seattle Displacement Coalition founder John Fox and 24 other advocates urged councilmembers to pass the tax but use it exclusively to house people who are currently homeless or very low-income. Fox, along with former reporter and editor George Howland, would end up leading the campaign urging a "no" vote on both the social housing measure and the Chamber-backed alternative.

If you're registered to vote in Seattle, you can still cast your ballot until 8:00 tonight by depositing it in any ballot drop box.