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Monday, December 15, 2008

City Council Expands Affordable Housing Program Citywide

Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 4:01 PM

By a six-to-three margin, the city council just passed a controversial bill that will require private developers to subsidize affordable housing in taller buildings around the city. It is based on similar legislation for downtown passed in 2006. A companion resolution, calling for the council to study the bill's implementation, passed unanimously.

As the city council allows taller buildings in neighborhoods—such raising height limits around light-rail stations—developers would be required to include 15 to 17.5 percent of the added floor area as housing affordable to residents making 80 percent of the Seattle-area median income. In some cases, developers could pay into an affordable-housing fund managed by the city instead of including it in the new building. If developers don't take advantage of the extra height, there will be no affordable housing requirement. (More about the bill here.)

In a protracted debate over the last year, developers insisted that the requirement to include housing at discounted rates negated the incentive to construct a taller building. Nothing would be built under those rules, they argued. But affordable housing advocates and nonprofit developers said the net profits of additional units in a taller building would more than offset the cost of providing affordable housing. Even with the affordable housing requirement, the advocates said, there was still an incentive to build.

A protest op-ed by Vulcan in today's Seattle Times and an obtuse editorial by the Times' editorial board appear to have made no impact.

Comments (11) RSS

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As if anyone cared what a suburban paper like the Times said about Seattle ...

Cool news, but the devil's in the details.

Posted by Will in Seattle on December 15, 2008 at 4:05 PM

Sweet! Another affordable housing guideline that can be winked and nodded under the rug by the mayor to developers like Dick Hedreen.

I saw somebody using a plastic bag earlier today. Quick!! Somebody call the city council! Let's get these folks back to work on real problems!

Posted by clint on December 15, 2008 at 4:11 PM

Who voted against it?

Posted by missing important detail on December 15, 2008 at 4:20 PM

Um, Will - the details are not good. With the passage of this nonsense we (as in we taxpayers) are now going to subsidize apartments for people who make $43,000 per year, in "affordable" units with rental rates that the market is already producing without any subsidy whatsoever.

So yeah, this is yet another developer giveaway - and the provision allowing the units to occur offsite will likely displace people from those neighborhoods in Seattle that still actually are affordable to people who live in the real world rather than City Hall (ie - older buildings in SE, SW, and North Seattle).

Thanks to those 6 members of the City Council for taking yet another step to make Seattle a less affordable place.

If you had a clue about the actual lives of actual working people in this city, you'd be ashamed of yourselves.

Posted by Mr. X on December 15, 2008 at 4:27 PM

PASS AS AMENDED
(Clark, Burgess, Conlin,
Godden, Rasmussen)
ABSTAIN
(Licata)

Posted by C.B. 116358 on December 15, 2008 at 4:29 PM

No: Drago, Harrell, Licata

Posted by fyi on December 15, 2008 at 4:33 PM

In the absence of real political courage on this over the last ten years or so, I suppose we might as well regulate now, when developers are shut down. Were electeds to wait until the next development boom--assuming we'll ever get another--there'd be no passing even this weak bill if landgrabbing were to renew with any of its late vigor.

Posted by tomasyalba on December 15, 2008 at 4:44 PM

@4 - see.

Sigh.

Look, until working class people (hint: 25 percent or less median income in this richy-rich city) can afford to live here, we're doing it wrong.

And not in ghettos, but in mixed-income buildings, so that we all are in it together.

Posted by Will in Seattle on December 15, 2008 at 4:55 PM

Um, Will, somebody making less than $15K a year (which is a little more than 25% of Seattle's median, and significantly less than what minimum wage would pull in at $16,785/annum) is not "working class." That is a broke-ass grad student or somebody who should be on some form of disability/assistance.

There is no way to build and maintain decent, private, affordable housing--housing that rents for less than $400/mo. for a single person in this off-base example of Will's--around here without shoving people into slummy rooming houses. That's why Section 8 exists to subsidise rent.

Posted by lily on December 15, 2008 at 6:04 PM

To grace that crap by calling 80 percent media "affordable housing" adds insult to injury. Could you at least call it workforce, so we don't water that much-abused word down any more?

Posted by Trevor on December 15, 2008 at 6:30 PM

"Affordable housing" is a big fucking lie. And by the way, Sally Clarke is the biggest fucking liar!

Posted by Justa Guy on December 16, 2008 at 6:24 AM