♪♪
-Seattle voters, listen up.
This February, the future of social housing is at stake
as you consider whether to support Proposition 1A or 1B
in a special election.
-One of the biggest questions people have is
how will social housing be paid for?
-After voting to create a social housing developer in 2023,
Seattleites must now decide on a funding plan --
Proposition 1A or 1B.
-Let's tax wealthy businesses to fund social housing.
-Proposition 1A would create a new payroll tax
on workers making more than a million dollars a year.
-We need to see results first. -Last year,
the Seattle City Council created a competing plan,
Proposition 1B,
that would use the city's
existing JumpStart payroll tax instead.
-This alternative robs Peter to pay Paul.
-And in case you like neither,
voters can also reject both proposals
and send the developer back to the drawing board.
-Let's hold off on the money for now
and come back and look at it later.
-To help keep social housing alive,
which funding plan should you support?
Hear from both sides.
-We want to go big, and we want to go bold.
-Okay.
-We are saying yes on 1B
because we think it is the more responsible way.
-Building the case for a sustainable
social housing future, next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
Welcome to this edition of "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Seattleites have a complex choice to make this February
when it comes to the future of a new type of affordable housing.
It's called social housing,
and city voters approved it two years ago
to build units for people of mixed incomes
so that those paying higher rents
help subsidize units for those paying lower rents.
But funding the social housing developer
has turned into a political battle,
leading to a multi-part question
for voters to consider with Prop 1A and 1B.
Two years ago,
57% of Seattle voters said yes to I-135
to establish a social housing developer.
State law forbids having two subjects in the same initiative,
so the measure did not include a choice on
how to pay for the affordable housing program.
So social housing advocates successfully gathered signatures
last year to put a funding measure I-137 on the ballot.
137 would create an excess payroll compensation tax
so employers would pay 5% on any income given to a worker
that's above $1 million a year.
For a worker making 1.2 million,
an employer would be taxed $10,000.
But after reviewing 137,
the Seattle City Council drafted a competing funding plan.
A majority of the council wants to pay for social housing
using money from Seattle's
existing payroll expense tax or JumpStart
administered by the Office of Housing.
Council sponsors say they don't want to give
a blank check to a new public agency,
but opponents say the alternate proposal takes away
from housing providers
who currently depend on the payroll tax.
Opponents also say the council's plan would generate
only 1/5 the revenue of the compensation tax model
and would sunset after five years.
So here's what's on your ballot.
Question 1 asks, should either of these measures
be enacted into law?
A majority no vote will send the social housing developer
back to the drawing board for a funding plan.
Question 2 asks, regardless of your first vote,
which plan do you prefer?
1A, the new excess compensation tax proposed
by social housing advocates,
or 1B, the council's proposal to use existing payroll taxes?
It's a two-part proposition with some major consequences,
and ballots are due February 11.
Thanks again, everyone, for joining us on "City Inside/Out."
I'm Brian Callanan, and I'm glad to be with you
and break down what's on your ballot here with social housing.
We have with us to explain this Tiffany McCoy,
co-executive director of policy and advocacy
for the group House Our Neighbors.
She is speaking in favor of Prop 1A.
Tiffany, good to see you again.
-Thanks for having me.
-We also have with us Rachel Smith,
president and CEO
of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce,
supporting Prop 1B.
Rachel, thank you for being here.
-Thanks for having me.
-We also have with us Roger Valdez,
director of Seattle for Growth,
who opposes both of these measures.
Roger, good to have you back.
-Thank you. -All right, let's jump in.
If I could, opening statements, let's do this thing.
Keep them to about a minute.
Tiffany, why should voters support Prop 1A?
-Yeah, and thanks for having us again.
Brian, good to see you.
Yeah, we're back as promised from Initiative 135,
which voters passed by a 14-point margin
with the funding mechanism that we were unable to do with I-135.
We are super grateful
that the social housing developer has hired a CEO,
Roberto Jimenez,
who comes with a wealth of experience from California.
And the Seattle Social Housing Developer is now
also a member of the Housing Development Consortium
and meeting with a lot of our low-income housing providers.
So we see tremendous support within them,
and I'll say too,
at a state level and a local legislative level,
we're really thankful to have the support
of Representative Chopp, Representative Macri,
Representative Reed, and Farrah Varren Scott,
and Senators Saldaña and Hasegawa.
So while my opponents will talk about
how there's not a concrete plan,
what we can see is that there's tremendous support.
There's belief in the model.
This model is not something
that is unique to only Montgomery County, Maryland,
or to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
It's something that can happen here
and something that voters want to have happen.
So we're grateful to be here,
looking forward to diving in on why we need a new revenue source
to address our housing crisis.
-Thank you very much for that.
Rachel, why should people support Prop 1B?
-Well, thanks again for having us.
And I want to say, for starters,
quickly why the Seattle Metro Chamber is here today.
We are champions of building more housing.
We advocate for pro-housing policy.
We worked on the campaign to pass the Seattle Housing Levy,
and we sit in a coalition,
actually, with House our Neighbors,
to get the right outcomes in the comprehensive plan.
And we're here today not to debate the merits
of social housing,
but to advocate for why 1B is the right way
to invest in this new approach.
Now, we're all here today because we are all advocates
and have strong opinions,
but I'm going to focus on the facts,
what we know for certain today, which is, one,
the social housing PDA is not ready for prime time.
They have one single staff person,
a lack of transparency with the public,
and 1B provides accountability.
-Is the Public Development Authority.
Keep going. -Thank you.
Two, 1B will focus the use of public money
towards lower-income people, where it should go.
And, three, there's absolutely no plan for the PDA
and what they would actually deliver.
And what the proponents for 1A
are saying is at best hopeful in what they will be
able to accomplish,
but there's really no guarantee,
and 1B ensures that they will deliver
before we give them hundreds of millions,
even billions of dollars.
-Okay, thanks for that.
Roger, tell us why you think voters should oppose
both of these measures.
-Well, to solve Seattle's housing affordability problem,
we don't need more money.
We need more housing.
And Seattle City Council has spent about a billion dollars
over the last 10 years trying to solve this problem
with no effect, and that's
why we're still debating another ballot measure with more money.
But it's ironic to hear the chamber
and the council calling their group unprofessional
when it was the chamber and the council
that created mandatory housing affordability,
which is a tax on all new housing.
They told us in 2015 we'd have 20,000 units of housing by 2025.
Where are those units?
They've done about 1,000 for about $300 million.
And so it's just funny to hear Rachel talking about
how expert the council is
when they have spent billions of dollars
and hundreds of millions of dollars
with absolutely no effect on this problem.
And then they came back and said,
well, spend another billion on a housing levy collected
over seven years.
So the council has not --
doesn't have a track record of being professional
or effective in doing anything on housing.
So I say vote no. Vote once. Vote no.
Don't vote on the other two,
and let's hold these folks accountable at the council
and the chamber for the mess they've made of this problem.
-Okay, I want to engage with that if I can.
And, Rachel, it feels like there might be some interaction
to have here, if I could.
I know that the chamber has been critical of social housing,
but supports 1B, and I wanted to go down this path, especially
if voters say no with that first question here, what happens?
That's an important part of this.
-Yeah. So one thing I didn't --
I don't think I said some of that, Roger.
But, two, we are not opposing social housing.
-Okay. -We are saying yes on 1B
because we think it is the more responsible way.
You know, I've been a part of doing a lot of big things
in this region,
whether it's Sound Transit 2 or 3, the Waterfront,
Health through Housing.
And, you know, I think we can and should try new things,
but I think we want to do that in a way that is responsible,
accountable to the public, and in a way
that will ensure that the agency in charge is delivering.
-Okay, is there anything else you wanted to respond to?
I know, Roger, that's another --
-It's not what you said is.
It's when we talk about accountability,
there hasn't been for 10 years.
The chamber has supported all these council measures...
-Okay.
-...that have spent a billion dollars,
and we still -- the problem is getting worse.
-Okay, all right, I'm going to keep it at that for a minute,
just so I can cover some ground here,
because, Tiffany, I do want to help voters get through this.
It's this double shot of questions here
that can get a little confusing.
If voters say no to both of these measures,
which is this option in that first question,
will social housing be able to survive?
What goes on there?
-I do.
I have full faith that social housing will survive,
not just because voters have overwhelmingly supported it,
not also the fact that we've gathered over 38,000 signatures
and are in the midst of like the height of our GOTV campaign
to talk to voters about this.
Voters are desperate for solutions.
They're desperate for bold solutions.
Also, I have full faith in the CEO, Roberto Jimenez,
to deliver, to find private funds
while we work on another ballot initiative,
because, like, let's be clear.
Like, we are committed.
House our Neighbors, as an organization,
is committed to this model,
and while the chamber says
that we're not here to debate the merits of social housing
or that they totally agree with social housing,
I question that when they only want to direct
capital investments to the lowest income
when that is antithetical to the model of social housing.
So a vote for 1B is actually a vote against social housing,
and if people want to see the mandate
that voters asked for in I-135, they'll vote yes on 1 and on 1A.
-Okay, please.
-I was going to say that is certainly not true.
Using public dollars for the people
who need it the most is the way
that we should spend public dollars,
and we fully support that.
And the PDA when during 135 --
or excuse me, not the PDA, House Our Neighbors,
during 135 said there were a lot of tools
that the organization would use to generate revenue and capital,
but a new tax was not one of them.
In fact they said there would be no government subsidy necessary.
So while that is a little bit
of a bait and switch, from my opinion,
I think the biggest problem here is that the PDA is not ready.
They have a single staff person.
They barely just got a recently -- got a website up.
They have not complied with Open Public Meetings Act
and the Public Records Act.
This is not an organization that is going to be ready in 365 days
to spend $50 million a year every single year forever.
-Yeah, Tiffany,
this is the criticism I've heard about 1A and social housing,
I guess, in general,
this idea of handing over a blank check to a new agency
that doesn't have a lot of experience.
-No. -Can you talk a little bit about
what Rachel brought up there? -Definitely.
And I also encourage viewers and voters
to like go back and read all of the media coverage around I-135.
It was incredibly clear and explicit.
We talked about it here, Brian, when I was here for I-135
that we were going to come back with the funding mechanism.
So just encourage voters to do that reading and
research on their own.
And then, as for the criticism of a blank check,
I guess it's a question of whether or not you trust
that a startup organization with an incredibly trustworthy CEO
is able to launch effectively. I mean, Sharon Lee, yesterday,
when we were talking to the Seattle Times ed board,
talked about how LIHI started as a one-person agency.
-Low Income Housing. -Sorry, yes, thank you.
The Low Income Housing Institute started with just her
and a donated Apple laptop and a volunteer.
All agencies need to start from somewhere.
And then, as for the Open Public Meetings Act,
I'll just say you can go to the website today.
All of the -- all of the meeting minutes
from their first meeting in May in 2023 are available there.
-Okay. I want to make sure I bring Roger into the mix
because there was one piece here
that you brought up with regard to this measure
and how it's going to go forward, Tiffany,
and it looks like this, Roger.
I want to make sure that I bring to the fore
the voters did approve social housing two years ago here
in Seattle, 57% of the vote, but at the time,
they could not choose a funding source
because there's the state's single subject rule
on ballot measures.
So just to be clear,
are you opposed to social housing
or just these funding options in 1A and 1B?
-Well, I have a lot of respect for what the PDA did.
I mean, the council and the chamber
and the mayor have been a clown car when it comes to housing
over the last decade.
They've utterly failed.
And I think that what your group did was
out of frustration, saying these people don't know
what they're doing, and they don't.
So I respect the fact that they got it on the ballot,
they got approval, they went out and made their case,
and the people said yes.
I think the problem is, no more money right now
until we go back and look at the mess that we've made
and all the money that's been set on fire.
You know, the chamber came out and said,
let's support another billion dollars,
and now we're doing $52 million. So let's stop.
The voters should say enough is enough.
Let's go back and look at what we've done.
And then, you know,
I have no problem with the idea of subsidizing
lower-rent people with higher-rent people,
but we have a program, the Multi-Family Tax Exemption,
which created 6,600 units that way.
So, you know, I would -- and I said this the last time.
I would like to work with the PDA
to figure out what's the right strategy
to use bonding capacity, city-owned land to develop.
I wanted to work with Councilmember Sawant on that.
-Yeah.
-So there's ways that we can do this
and end run the bottleneck at the council
and at the chamber and the DSA --
all groups that have utterly failed.
So I respect that part of it,
but let's hold off on the money for now
and come back and look at it later.
-Okay, I want to make sure
that I engage some of the differences between 1A and 1B.
Thank you for those different points there.
And, Rachel, let me jump in with you here
because one criticism of the 1B option
is that it doesn't do enough.
It only provides 1/5 of the funding for housing
that the 1A option would provide,
and it also puts social housing in a position
it never wanted to be in,
taking money away from other providers,
potentially, by using the city's
existing JumpStart payroll tax dollars.
I want to make sure you respond to that, please.
-Yeah, well, I don't exactly agree with that characterization
because the money under 1B still goes to low-income housing.
-Okay.
-It's capped at 80% AMI, which, of course,
under 1A it is not. -Right.
-It can be used for any housing,
including people making 120% of area meeting income.
-Yup.
-So that is one of the reasons we're supporting 1B is to,
you know, again, use the money for those who need it most.
And, you know,
because the PDA is not in a state of readiness to --
and has no plan for delivering housing,
we think that using an approach
that gives them the opportunity to pilot this project,
but also pilot this kind of housing,
but also comes with a lot of accountability
through the Office of Housing
and through other kinds of requirements.
Like, for example, having a CFO
is a requirement and also a good idea.
And so, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't preclude them
from getting money in the future.
And again, if no government subsidies were necessary,
which is what was said originally, this is, I think,
the responsible way to pilot this project.
-Okay, I feel like there's a few different points there, Tiffany.
Would you like to respond to what Rachel said?
-Yeah, I'll say like we just --
we do not need another low-income housing provider.
1B is duplicating efforts,
which is like what Roger and others
from the anti-I-135 effort said from the beginning.
This is just duplicative,
and 1B is duplicating low-income housing providers.
We don't need any more.
We have tremendous low-income housing providers
doing what they need. They need the money for that.
And I also want to say
that I take issue with this money of public money
not going to all Seattleites.
I make over 80% of the area median income.
So when my house is on fire,
am I not allowed to call the fire department
because I don't pass the means testing?
I make too much for those public services?
Or should my kid not be able to go to
kindergarten in West Seattle?
Or should we not be able to drive on the road
or be able to call the police department if needed?
This idea that like only public dollars
should go to those in most need I disagree with wholeheartedly,
and I also say that we should be using housing --
we should be viewing housing more as a public good,
as opposed to a commodity,
which is part of the crux of the problem
for why we're in the housing crisis we're in.
-Let me push back a little bit, though,
because with the social housing model, as you know...
-Yeah.
-...and you talked about me with --
talked about this with me,
it's helping people at a number of different ranges
when it comes to area median income, AMI, there,
all the way up to potentially 120%,
which is well over $100,000 for a one-person family,
if you want to look at it that way.
Why does that person need social housing?
Can you break down that piece with me?
Because I think some people have questions about that.
-Yeah, I think that's really important.
And I would say I would point to like the mass displacement
of people in Seattle who make Seattle great --
artists, architects, educators.
One of -- the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools
said at a school board meeting recently one of the reasons
that they're seeing a decline in enrollment --
there's still a good birth rate in Seattle,
but once kids start entering kindergarten,
there's a drop in enrollment,
there's a drop in that population.
And the superintendent said that's due to like --
one of the reasons, and I don't want to make this an absolute,
is the housing crisis.
People can't afford to live here.
They can't afford to like grow their family
and live in the city of Seattle.
So if we care about making sure that bus drivers,
that educators, that nurses,
that doctors even can afford to live in the city
in which they help operate, social housing is critical.
And I will also say, to make this abundantly clear,
the investment that prop 1A would invest in is the capital,
is buying the building for the use of the public good.
Those people who make 120% will be subsidizing with their rent
those at the lower income,
and the investment that goes into that building,
they will help to pay that off.
-Please.
-After they've been subsidized by the government.
And I simply disagree
that Seattle's government should be subsidizing housing
for people making over $100,000
when there are a lot of people making less than that
that really, really need it.
-And I think that was an important part of 1B,
setting this AMI level at 80%.
Can you talk about some of the reasons behind that,
why it was structured in that way?
-I think it's because every single housing study
in our region has said
that we need to focus our public dollars, our public subsidies,
to people who need it most.
I mean, that is the housing
that we need in this region and people who can afford it should.
-I see some head shaking over there, Roger.
-Every time I come on and do this thing,
I just hate so much what the council
and the chamber have done... -Okay.
-...that I find myself -- like, in these conversations,
I end up advocating for the PDA. -Okay.
-Even though I don't think we needed it
because we already have PDAs.
You know, there's a number of PDAs,
but, you know, this idea of what we're subsidizing it,
you know, the chamber and the council
have supported massive spending on LIHTC,
low-income housing tax credits.
These units cost like $600,000 a unit, and therefore, guess what?
60% to 80% of people at area median income.
These are disastrous uses of resources.
At Magnuson,
Frank Chopp supported this renovation
of this historic project... -Former House speaker, yeah.
-...at like, yeah, $600,000 a unit.
And so the idea that,
oh, we're worried about who we're subsidizing is baloney.
The fact is, is that they already are subsidizing
a tremendous amount of waste.
And so what we need to do is maybe repurpose the PDA
for something like cooperative housing ownership,
looking at community land trusts.
I mean, these are things we're doing in New Mexico
right now in another project I'm working on,
where we're trying to break the back of that tax credit monster
and the garbage that comes out of local government
that subsidizes things with very little effect,
you know, produces 60 or 80-unit projects.
-Okay.
-And no one can get into those
because it's for people that are -- that have jobs.
You know, we're not talking about 120 or 130.
We're talking at 60 or 80,
where the market should be able to produce it
if we didn't have things like MHA.
-Okay.
-You know, taxes on housing that weigh production down.
-Thank you, I want to make sure we bring it back.
-I will just say one thing. -Yeah.
-I mean, I'm really proud of our work
on the Affordable Housing Levy.
I'm really proud that we support helping people get into housing
and of policies like MFTE and the Missing Middle Bill,
and so, you know, Roger, I appreciate your criticisms,
but I just want to make sure
that everybody knows we're really proud of that work.
-Okay.
-Well, are you going to stand up to the council's efforts
to ruin the MFTE by messing with income levels?
I mean, this is what --
-I don't think that's what we're here for today.
-Well, but, I mean, it's relevant.
-Okay.
-Simply because there's other tools out there
that are being ruined by council action, and, you know,
we need to look at those other options and save those.
-Thank you.
I want to make sure we bring it back to what's on the ballot
here, if I could.
Tiffany, maybe I can try this with you.
If 1A passes, what happens? If 1B passes, what happens?
Can you go down that path with me?
-Well, I have full faith in the model of social housing
and the fact that it serves incomes
across the income spectrum,
again, seeing housing as a public good,
not as a -- not as a commodity.
While the chamber continues to say
that they support social housing,
they don't support the model of social housing
if they only think social housing should serve those
that are 80% and below,
which is duplicating what we're already doing.
So I think that the social housing developer
will survive regardless.
I guess the question for voters is,
do we want to keep doing the Seattle process
with all new big ideas?
I can only think of what we do with like RV safe lots,
where we invest in enough for like one lot,
and it serves like 12 people.
And then after a couple years,
it's like, oh, this doesn't work.
And it's like, well, right,
it doesn't work because you're serving
like a drop in the bucket of the entire population.
So we want to go big, and we want to go bold.
We're in the middle of a housing crisis,
and sometimes in conversations like this,
it's kind of like we're forgetting what's happening
out there in our streets,
the fact that small businesses are closing,
union workers are having to go further and further,
we're losing staff in our schools,
we're losing people coming to the UW
for learning how to be a nurse or a doctor.
So that's what we want to address in Prop 1A.
It also funds public use of social housing, and 1B does not.
-Okay.
-So that's why we want to have 1A go forward.
-Okay, can I take you down this path, too, Rachel?
If 1A passes, if 1B passes, what do you got?
-Yeah, I mean, I do want to say that, again,
House Our Neighbors told the voters they would use bonding,
capital, grants, loans,
and other means to pay for social housing.
So if they -- if there's a need for money,
they should try one of the ones
that they told the voters to fund housing
for people making over 80% AMI.
And, you know, again, I actually agree with Roger on one point,
which is that we need to do a combination of things
to get more housing.
We need zoning changes, regulatory reform,
and public subsidy.
And I think, you know,
the reality is 1B is the more responsible choice,
and that is because the PDA has no plan.
Saying that the PDA will, with certainty,
do anything specific is not based on anything
the organization has produced.
They could buy existing housing.
They could build new housing or both.
They could build lots of units of affordable housing.
They could build some. They could build none.
And these hypothetical examples are --
they're great hypothetical examples,
but they've changed over time.
They're confusing voters.
And I think 1B is the more responsible way to go.
-Got it, and we're going down the path I'd like to go,
which is a closing statement here.
And, Tiffany, if you could,
closing statement to voters out there
about Prop 1A. What do you want them to know?
-Yeah, I'll say it's a question of
whether or not we think that the status quo is working.
Because what I hear from the opposition
is let's just stick with what we're doing,
and hopefully, I don't know,
something from the federal government will down --
come down and bless us,
but we know that Trump is about to take office.
It is likely that
the Housing and Urban Development Department
will face significant cuts.
We can't keep depending on the federal government
to serve the lowest income.
What we see with the social housing model
in Montgomery County,
Maryland is that it is able to produce more low-income units
with the cross subsidy model that we are advocating for
than they would if they just relied
on the federal government.
So why are we arguing against the ability
to add more low-income units in addition
to our affordable housing partners,
and just stick with the status quo?
So I would ask people be bold, be a visionary.
Support something that is not unique to Seattle
that works,
and make sure that we're actually addressing
this housing crisis at scale.
-Thank you.
Rachel, some final thoughts on 1B, please?
-Yeah, I would just say on Montgomery County,
it actually uses their version of SHA, not a new PDA.
It requires at least a 1/4 of the units be 50% AMI or below,
not the proposals that we've seen from House Our Neighbors,
and this PDA has a bunch of well-intentioned
but very costly requirements around it.
So bottom line, if you really support social housing,
really want it to succeed, then you should vote for 1B.
It provides a reasonable amount of money
that they can actually get out the door,
the support and the accountability
of the Office of Housing,
and it makes sure that affordable units,
the affordable units, get funded.
-Thank you very much.
Roger, some final thoughts here
on how voters should approach this issue?
-So we know how to solve housing affordability.
We need to reduce red tape and regulation,
allow people to build all kinds of housing for all --
in all neighborhoods for people of every level of income.
Do we need publicly-funded affordable housing?
Absolutely, we do, but let's be smart about it,
allowing private builders to build as much as they can
and then provide cash subsidies for people
that are struggling to pay the rent
and then supported built solutions for people
that are really the hardest hit.
It's okay, voters, to vote no on a --
you're not anti-progressive or pro-Trump if you vote this down.
What it will send a message to everyone
is we're tired of seeing money set on fire
and not seeing a solution to the problem,
so that's why we're saying, you know, we've got plenty of money.
Let's use it wisely.
Vote once, vote no,
and let's hold these folks accountable
and start over again.
-Okay, thank you all for your input,
and we will be right back.
What are people saying online about Prop 1A and 1B?
One person writes...
Another person writes...
We'd like to know what you think.
Email us at contact@seattlechannel.org
or find us on social media.
Good to have that input,
and thank you all for your input as well.
We will see you next time on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪