Will Seattle Fund Social Housing?

With the historic November election still visible in our rear view mirrors, Seattle voters will be taking to their ballots again in just a few weeks’ time for the February 11, 2025, special election. Among their bubbles will be a voter initiative regarding social housing—this time to fund it. The initiative will appear on the ballot as Prop 1A, but will compete against a City Council alternative called Prop 1B, currently being backed by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

The proposal raises an estimated $53 million in revenue for the Seattle Social Housing Developer by levying a 5% payroll tax on incomes above one million dollars. A payroll tax is distinct from an income tax in that it taxes the employer instead of the employee directly.

The developer is tasked with creating social housing units which aim to address housing affordability via three important features. First, units will be managed by tenant-majority governance boards in contrast to the traditional landlord-tenant relationship. Second, units are mixed-income with the intent to create healthier communities than the de facto class-segregated communities that come as a result of the gulf between luxury condo units and low-income subsidized public housing. Third, rents are required not to exceed 30% of a tenant’s income.

I-137 was driven by a grassroots effort led by House Our Neighbors, a 501(c)4 political nonprofit which branched off of Real Change News and submitted nearly 38,000 signatures to the King County Elections Office—well over the 26,520 verified signatures required to make the ballot.

According to Calvin Jones, social media director of House Our Neighbors / Yes On Prop 1A, “40% of renters in Seattle are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on rent. Everyone knows we have a homelessness crisis…Social housing gives us a new tool to address our housing crisis.”

Volunteers table at a Prop 1A Get Out the Vote event in January 2025 / The Evergreen Echo

Though the signatures were submitted in late June 2024, Seattle City Council opted to place the initiative on the low-turnout February special election ballot. While some, including former City Councilmember Tammy Morales, have suggested this decision may violate the city charter which reads, “Consideration of such initiative petition shall take precedence over all other business before the City Council, except appropriation bills and emergency measures”—the die is cast, placing I-137 on the generally low-turnout February ballot.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. It was only two years ago that House Our Neighbors successfully brought I-135 to ballot and won with a definitive 14-point margin, thus creating the Seattle Social Housing Developer. The City Council of 2022 also opted to place that initiative in the February election in which only about a third of registered voters would turn in a ballot. The reason for two separate initiatives is a means of staying clear of the “single subject rule” in Washington’s Constitution, which requires bills and initiatives to address only one issue at a time.

But unlike with I-135, I-137 will also face a competing initiative placed on the ballot by the City Council itself. Prop 1B does not propose new revenue to fund social housing and instead diverts approximately $10 million (significantly less than Prop 1A’s $53 million) from Seattle’s JumpStart tax which currently funds a variety of other programs, including existing affordable housing projects, economic development, emergency readiness, and mental health services in public schools.

In a letter co-written by John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition and published on CascadePBS.org, “The council’s alternative is a ‘pilot project,’ not a cookie jar always open regardless of performance—something far more appropriate for a start-up housing developer.” The letter additionally argues that I-137 provides too little housing to the poorest of the poor, but also acknowledges that 1B’s failure to raise new revenue is a drawback.

Together, the decision to place 1A on the February ballot as well as run a competing initiative that raises no new revenue for housing are seen by housing advocates as the City Council being less than supportive of the effort to create new social housing units in Seattle. City Council has the authority to simply pass voter initiatives into law as written rather than have them go to ballot.

Additionally, after the passage of I-135 the Council could have opted to to use its powers of legislation to support the fledgling Social Housing Developer by appropriating the necessary startup funds. Instead they have left it so far without the funding to do its work and are now fussing over the proposal that housing advocates have sent to their desk—it seems they only got their funding idea together after receiving a big stack of signatures from their constituents.

Homes in Ballard / Doctor Tinieblas on Unsplash

But to some extent, this debate only shifts around the details. The Seattle Social Housing Developer already exists, and even a successful “No” campaign will not change that. And while the developer is highly limited in its ability to actually build the units it is chartered to build, its mission will continue regardless of how the election goes. While the housing advocates behind Prop 1A hope that they will secure the funding and see units open to the public as soon as 2026, the search for revenue will simply continue if they are defeated on the ballot.

Speaking to what drives him and others to be a part of a housing movement, Jones says, “Getting involved with Prop 1A and House Our Neighbors is a profoundly hopeful act. It’s a lot of wonderful people trying to fight for a better future…These are very dark times in a lot of ways, but you can join the fight to push back against some of that bleakness and fight for some good in the world.”

Seattle’s homeless population is estimated to have reached an all-time high of over 16,000 people in 2024.