The Housing Development Consortium (HDC), a prominent player in affordable housing creation in the Seattle region, has come out against proposed ballot Initiative 135, which seeks to create a public development authority to build and maintain social housing in Seattle. In a statement published on April 27th on its website, HDC cites concerns that Initiative 135 would “[distract] funds and energy away from what our community should be focusing on – scaling up affordable housing for low-income people.”
“We do not need another government entity to build housing when there are already insufficient resources to fund existing entities,” HDC wrote, addressing its member organizations.
Initiative 135 was filed by the House Our Neighbors (HON) coalition, which initially formed in opposition to the proposed “Compassion Seattle” city charter amendment in 2021. As The Urbanist outlined in a previous article and podcast episode, according to the language of initiative, the social housing created by the new public developer would be available for both low and moderate income households, utilizing a different model than current affordable housing efforts in the region.
“We see Initiative 135, and the public developer it would create, as an opportunity to build out a deeply affordable housing mechanism that is not commodifiable; ensures that anyone earning between 0-120% area median income (AMI) have access to quality, permanently affordable housing; ensures that renters finally have voice in the housing they live in; and is not restricted by federal financing mechanisms,” Tiffani McCoy said in an email.
HON supporters expressed frustration on social media that HDC was opposing their social housing effort. Among them was former Seattle Mayor candidate Cary Moon, whom The Urbanist Elections Committee endorsed in her 2017 run against Jenny Durkan.
“This is bad politics and short sighted, HDC! You and your members do good work at huge effort. But we all know: we are not building anywhere near enough affordable housing,” Moon said in a tweet. “The initiative tasks City Council with establishing a viable new funding source. That is good AND NECESSARY. Please don’t claim you’re for innovation but then block a grassroots effort to identify new funding and better process to build permanently affordable social housing. This initiative is our chance to figure it out together.”
