Seattle Nice Debate: Should The City Go All-In on Social Housing?

As ballots for the February special election land in mailboxes, the two sides make their case for and against proposal to fund the city's social housing developer.

By Erica C. Barnett

This week on Seattle Nice, we asked the questions and proponents for two dueling social housing ballot measures answered them, in a debate that we hope will our listeners (including all of you PubliCola readers who vote in Seattle) decide whether to fund the social-housing developer voters approved at this time last year. Because of a state law limiting initiatives to a single subject, House Our Neighbors—the group that backed last year's Initiative 135— had to bring forward a separate initiative to actually fund it.

As PubliCola readers know, HON wanted to put their measure, Proposition 1, on the ballot last November, during the high-turnout Presidential election, but the Seattle City Council prevented that from happening, citing unspecified legal concerns. The delay gave the council time to draft an alternative proposal that amounts to a "no" vote on the original social housing measure. Voters will also have the option of saying no to both measures, now known as Proposition 1A and IB.

Proposition 1A, the original proposal to fund social housing, would impose new a 5% payroll tax, to be paid by employers, on employee compensation above $1 million a year. If someone made $1,200,000 a year, for example, their employer would have to pay $10,000 business tax on the $200,000 in compensation above $1 million. The campaign estimates that the tax, which would be ongoing, would raise around $50 million a year to build or purchase housing affordable to people at a wide range of income level, all the way up to 120 percent of Seattle's area median income. Residents who earn more would pay higher rents, subsidizing the rents of people who make less.

Proposition 1B, in contrast, would not raise taxes or fund the kind of mixed-income social housing as Prop1A. Instead, it would take $10 million a year, for five years, out of existing revenues from the JumpStart business tax—nearly two-thirds of which were originally earmarked for affordable housing—and spend it on low-income housing for people making less than 80 percent of the Seattle median income. The housing Proposition 1B would build wouldn't be "social housing" in the same sense as Prop. 1A, because it wouldn't include people paying market-rate rents; in this housing, the highest-income residents would still qualify as low-income and be eligible for publicly funded rent subsidies.

Tiffani McCoy of House Our Neighbors made the case for Proposition 1A, and Jessica Clawson, a land-use attorney at McCullough Hill, argued in favor of Proposition B. There's also a "no on both" campaign, but in the interest of equal time, we limited our debate to the two main propositions.

If you're on the fence about social housing or just want to understand more about what can be a really confusing issue, I highly encourage you to listen to this lively but very substantive debate about taxes and housing, with a brief discussion about neoliberalism for those of you who are still mad at Bill Clinton.

Listen now—ballots drop next week!