Funding for an affordable housing project for domestic violence survivors moved forward with unanimous approval at Bellevue’s most recent city council meeting. The new facility, to be renovated and serviced by LifeWire, will provide 25 affordable housing units for women and children at risk of homelessness. Bellevue’s $1.6 million contribution, combined with King County’s $4.3 million award towards the project, will cover renovation costs before the facility’s expected opening later this year.
However, the city had made $6 million of its designated affordable housing funds available in this Request For Proposals (RFP) process, and this was the only project (out of three applicants) that received funding. Therefore, approximately $4.4 million of the city’s funds remain on the table for 2021 and will not be allocated for at least several months’ time.
Bellevue’s current funding for affordable housing is a result of a housing bill (HB 1590) passed in the 2020 state legislative session. The legislation provided King County and other local jurisdictions the authority to levy a 0.1% sales tax to fund affordable housing and supportive services for people making less than 60% area median income (AMI). Additional stipulations included:
- At least 60% of collected funds must be spent on the construction, acquisition, maintenance, or operation costs of an affordable housing facility.
- No more than 40% of funds may be spent on the operation of behavioral or housing-related services.
- Funded housing must serve particular at-risk populations (listed below).
The law also provided a mechanism for cities to preempt taxation from the county by voting to pass their own local tax instead. Back in October 2020, this proved to be quite the popular option – at least eight cities, including Bellevue, chose to preempt County action through the passage of their own 0.1% sales tax.
This gave these cities more control over how the collected funds could be used, but came at a cost: with cities going it alone, significant funds were made unavailable to King County, who intended on using collected revenues specifically for deeply affordable housing (less than 30% area median income) and bonding to speed up delivery via King County Executive Dow Constantine’s Health Through Housing initiative. At the time, city staff estimated that Bellevue’s tax would net approximately $8 million per year in funds that could stay in Bellevue, but King County Director of Community Services Leo Flor noted that this would deprive the county from implementing its full approach.
