Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« McGinn Reappoints More Nickels Staf… | The Only Poll That Matters »

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Boom State Invests in Low-Income Housing

Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 1:38 PM

The state's Department of Commerce announced today that it will loan $22.5 million to low-income housing projects around Washington, thereby exhausting its biennial (2009-'11) trust fund for multi-family housing. Of the seven counties where the money will be spent—building or repairing 706 apartments—King County is the leading recipient. Roughly $8 million will be spent here, managed by housing nonprofits, to help construct 318 units, of which 257 will be in Seattle, mostly to provide housing for the homeless. Clallam, Island, Pierce, Spokane, Snohomish, and Walla Walla counties also got some dough.

Obviously, helping homeless and poor folks is well and good, but it's also a smart investment. State officials estimate the loans will leverage $140 million in funds from other sources, including HUD and the USDA. The commerce department estimates that the urban projects will generate 499 jobs during construction, 131 permanent jobs, and $32 million in local revenue.

Most residents will make less than 50 percent of the average income of the county.

Comments (6) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Glad to see such an important housing issue getting some love on SLOG. The Housing Trust Fund is critical to our state's ability to help families through this recession--and it does have the added benefit of creating jobs. What's unfortunate is that this award exhausts the Fund for the rest of this biennium--through June 2011. Unless the legislature adds funding to in the next couple of months, there will be a lot more people left out in the cold, without a home.

Posted by rachael on December 30, 2009 at 2:21 PM

If it wasn't for the HTF Washington would be an afforadble housing disaster zone - and right now we won't have an HTF in 2010 and into 2011!!

The Seattle voters had the foresight to approve a Housing Levy renewal last month - without the HTF, new affordable housing is going to be difficult - if not impossible - to launch; we need both sources to continue producing affordable and sustainable housing that the market can't/won't produce.

Time to put the pressure on the Legislature to rebuild the HTF - $100 million will keep production at the current pace and get people off the streets and into safe and decent housing that stays affordable for 50 years or more.

Posted by Harry on December 30, 2009 at 2:36 PM

In this depressed real estate environment, projects supported by the Housing Trust Fund and Seattle housing levy were the rare bright spots. These projects kept architects, attorneys, construction laborers, and small businesses employed, but most importantly provided safe, quality, affordable housing options for low income families once completed. You saw evidence of that in Southeast Seattle this past year, as most commercial real estate activity dried up but low-income housing projects kept moving forward. That wouldn't have been possible without critical financing support from the Housing Trust Fund.

Posted by Hyeok

on December 30, 2009 at 3:42 PM

Families with children under 18 are the fastest-growing component of those homeless in America. Homelessness not only causes misery to those directly involved, it costs our society more in services needed to keep people alive while homeless than it would to provide a roof for them. We're not always successful in that; more than 35 people died while homeless in King County in 2009. Housing can mean the difference bewteen life and death. Tell your legislators: we can't afford to lose the HTF.

Posted by sarah68 on December 30, 2009 at 9:57 PM

I call bullshit! Low income housing does not accept people with recent criminal records, drug users, prostitutes, etc. So this is not for homeless people so don't claim your bullshit.
Officially the claim is that the wait is 2-3 years but many people get in immediately by falsely claiming domestic violence and other scams. I would say the actual wait is about six months. Lots of scams going on right now. Most staff does what they can but the scammers are from the same communities and talk to each other and know how to work the system. They don't need to build more housing they need tigthen up the restrictions on the current projects. Thing is about low income housing is that you have to make enough and have good credit to qualify but not make much money in order to qualify for low rent so many people are frauding the system by working under the table and are experts at scaming the system. The people that are legimately poor and are in need and just trying to make an honest meager living and reporting it. Iconically those are the people that get evicted and have their rent raised to full market rate. It's kind of sad if you think about.
So please don't get all happy thinking your doing the right thing for mankind. Your providing nice taxpayer paid sublet income for someone that can't even legally work in the U.S.

Posted by housing insider on December 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM

One would like to know more about the funded projects. Where? Who re the organizations receiving the money. It's called journalism.

Posted by howie in seattle on December 31, 2009 at 7:07 AM