After a few snags, Seattle’s plan to provide publicly owned, permanently affordable social housing is starting to come to fruition.
The voter-approved initiative hit the ground running this year after the Seattle City Council signed off on $115 million for the plan in February.
Seattle Social Housing Developer, the entity created to carry out the vision, announced May 22 it had zeroed in on its first building, a downtown 150-unit apartment complex purchased for around $60 million. It expects the purchase to be finalized this month.
Seattle residents voted to approve a social housing authority in the city in February 2023. Seattle voters last year approved a plan to fund the initiative with a new 5% tax on employers making more than $1 million annually. The city has around 170 such employers, including Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks.
SSHD will offer the first 15 units that become available in the building to households at or below 30% of the area median income, or $34,530 for an individual and $39,480 for a two-person household, via a lottery system. That lottery closed June 5 with more than 10,200 applications, The Seattle Times reported.
SSHD is also incentivizing current residents of the luxury building to remain by freezing existing rents for two years, removing fees for pest control and bike storage, and offering public transit passes for all building residents. “The developer aims to provide high quality housing that fosters community, is inclusive, permanently affordable, and climate forward,” SSHD said in a news release.
The next 45 units that become available in the building will be given to households making 30% to 50% of the area median income, according to SSHD.
The city’s social housing plan has hit a few obstacles along the way, including opposition from major tech corporations, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and former Mayor Bruce Harrell, The Urbanist reported. SSHD leadership also faced a shakeup earlier this year, according to the report.
“Housing is far too expensive in this city,” Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said in a February news release announcing the first wave of SSHD funding. “We need more housing of all types and all sizes, and social housing is part of the solution.”
