[Editors Note: Jacob Schear is a renter in Wallingford, and an organizer for Real Change News and the House Our Neighbors! Yes on Initiative 135 for social housing in Seattle.
His co-author is Meera Lee Sethi is a Ph.D ecologist, Seattleite of 9 years, and a Wallingford homeowner.
Interested neighbors are encouraged to comment on this article or to inquire (at [email protected]) about submitting rebuttals.]
Do you shop at the Wallingford QFC? Drop your kids off at school at Hamilton Middle School or Lincoln High School? Get takeout from restaurants on 45th street? If you live in Wallingford, you experience the impacts of Seattle’s housing and affordability crisis everyday. Those of us who are securely and comfortably housed are witness to how our fellow Seattleites are forced to live outside due to our city’s failure to ensure housing as a human right, and how our unhoused neighbors continue to be destabilized and isolated through ineffective and inhumane campaigns of displacement known as sweeps.
Yet there are less obvious signs of our housing crisis, as well: A QFC grocery worker might be living in their car and planning to move where the weather is warmer (1 in 7 Kroger employees experienced homelessness in 2021) Teachers at our local public schools are being displaced by rent hikes at their apartments, and may have to commute from outside Seattle to their jobs. The folks who own and work at our beloved restaurants on 45th Street may be one unexpected expense away from housing instability or being unable to pay rent. Perhaps you yourself worry whether your child will be able to afford to live in Seattle once they are out of the house. To comprehensively address our housing crisis, we must look all around us, and acknowledge and respond to all of the ways the housing crisis impacts all of us who live, work, or enjoy spending time in Wallingford—and the unique vulnerability we each face as Seattle continues to become more and more unaffordable. We are writing this from our perspective as Wallingford residents: Jacob is a renter and organizer for Real Change and the House Our Neighbors! Yes on I-135 for social housing campaign, and Meera, who works in education and conservation, has owned a home in Wallingford since 2015. We strongly believe that voting Yes on Initiative 135 is Wallingford’s best chance to address the root causes and the pipeline into homelessness–the cost of housing—and to move towards a more equitable, safe, and vibrant Wallingford for all.
In the past week, you should have received your ballot for Initiative 135. This initiative (which you will want to vote Yes for by February 14th) would create the Seattle Social Housing Developer, a Public Development Authority (PDA) with the ability to build, acquire and maintain permanently affordable, mixed income social housing throughout Seattle funded through municipal bonding and cross-subsidization. Social housing is an internationally successful model of affordable housing seen throughout the world, with a proven track record of reducing housing unaffordability, homelessness, and rent burden. In countries such as Austria, Singapore (where Meera grew up), France, Uruguay, and yes, here in the United States, social housing plays a major part in housing people from all walks of life.
Initiative 135 would create affordable housing available to folks making 0-120% of the Area Median Income, with no one paying more than, at most, a third of their income in rent—the point at which people are defined as “rent- burdened”. At the 0-30% scale of the income threshold, this includes clients of Solid Ground (an early endorser of I-135 headquartered in Wallingford), our neighbors coming in from living outside and low income seniors who live on social security. From 30-50% of the income threshold, this means housing for childcare workers at our local daycares, grocery store workers at QFC, or the people who drive our kids’ school buses. The 51-80% range will serve USPS mail carriers, the librarians and library workers at Wallingford Public Library, the bus driver who drives the 44, and early career public school teachers. And by including Seattleites making 80-120% of the area median income, we can create affordable housing for folks like UW social workers, dental hygienists at our local dentist’s office, and mid to late career public school teachers who work at Lincoln and Hamilton.
Initiative 135 gives Wallingford, and all of Seattle, the opportunity to move towards housing as a human right, and lead the way in creating groundbreaking legislation to address our affordability and homelessness crisis head on. By voting yes on Initiative 135, you can play a crucial part in creating a more equitable neighborhood, and city—where all of our neighbors are housed in a collective effort, and where we act in solidarity with each other to ensure livability and true community safety and health. Vote yes on Initiative 135 by February 14th.
Initiative 135 seems to be a request for a tax-payer-funded blank check with no performance metrics, accountability or goals. How is it even possible to put something like this on a ballot? Why not expand the department we already have, instead of creating more bureaucracy? Furthermore, about half the people offered housing last year DECLINED the offer. We need to stop reverting the the silo conversations about this and start mandating drug treatment. It’s completely unreasonable and cruel to ask someone in the throes of addiction to make a rational choice that goes against the addictive pull.
Drug treatment is much more attainable when someone has stability and safety in their life. Stable housing with services has been shown to be an effective supporting treatment for addiction in many cases. While some people do reject offers of temporary shelter in restrictive settings, many do accept offers of permanent housing. This initiative could be the solution to what you’re looking for. Here’s some research on housing’s impact on addiction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2881444/
I am very happy to see something so well-suited to Seattle (and King County, should that come to pass too). While housing prices are indeed too high, we are in fact a very high wage area, so households with 80% – 120% of median income (and even 60%) have real money to contribute toward the cost of building and operating housing within the bounds of what’s considered affordable (30% of income).
And the real home run would be further progress on progressive revenue – since for the foreseeable future we will have a big bulge of very high income and wealth at the top…if some of it can be deployed to create non-market housing, it’s essentially like a natural resource most cities simply don’t have.
What responsibilities do the homeless individuals have in assisting with overcoming their own plight? I ask because all of the focus seems to be around what housed people “should” be doing to help these less fortunate people.
I’m in agreement with this sentiment and voted yes on Initiative 135, but am genuinely sick of this broad brush approach that glosses over the critical issue of personal responsibility.
In Seattle I’ve noticed that all it takes is one unstable/violent/drug addicted person to ruin a lot of lives due to the city’s lack of police and general conflict avoidant vibes, amongst other things. This being the case I tend to take a more utilitarian view in these situations and advocate heavily in favor of getting rid of people (or groups of people) whose toxic lifestyles inordinately impact the general population negatively.
I hope they build the new housing and I hope that each new dwelling comes with a zero tolerance policy for anything that adversely impacts the quality of life of neighbors and the general public.
You never answered my question regarding personal agency. What are the responsibilities of the unhoused when we offer them housing? Are they helpless infants who have zero power over their own lives or should we expect them to act as autonomous individuals who need to own their past choices and make better ones moving forward?
That’s one of the most disingenuous replies I’ve ever read. You are adopting the classic toxic woke mentality that has continually failed Seattle in its recovery from the pandemic as evidenced in recent elections. Until you can answer the question you and your opinions are officially useless.
I said *toxic* woke meaning woke gone to far. Seattlites are rejecting these politics and rightfully so. Our city is nasty and unsafe compared to just a few years ago. To pretend that the homeless are helpless children with no autonomy or role to play in all of this is a disservice to everyone involved, including them! Treat people like helpless children and guess what, they might continue to act like that. Your unwillingness to even include them in the conversation is astonishing.
IMO, nothing: if you’re human, you get food and shelter. (We provide imprisoned convicted murderers food and shelter after all.)
But if you hassle or harm anybody else, then you suffer sanctions. Applies to housed people, unhoused people, criminals, the rich, the poor etc equally.
So what do these “sanctions” look like? Tell me if any of the following behaviors should be sanctioned:
1. Shooting someone a block from a school
2. Doing drugs a block from a school
3. Creating a public health hazard by shitting and/or leaving needles on the street
4. Human trafficking
I ask because all of these things are currently occurring IN WALLINGFORD!
And as someone else here remarked a large percentage of the unhoused DON’T WANT HOUSING!
I don’t really get what you are going on about.
Anything that falls under the umbrella of hassling or harming others should indeed be sanctioned. We have a whole civil and criminal infrastructure for that.
But that has nothing to do with providing people food and shelter.
“I-135 about providing needed housing for people at many income levels, not just homeless people.”
So you’re claiming it will house at least some of our homeless? That’s a lie. The initiative language says it won’t.
The full section says otherwise:
“City Council Authority. This ordinance does not concern homelessness housing and nothing in this ordinance may be interpreted to interfere with or exercise the City Council’s powers under RCW Chapter 43.185(C) or other state laws. Should a court determine that any provision of this measure does so, the voters intend for such provision to be null and void and severable, and for the remainder of this ordinance to continue in full force.”
How else should we interpret that?
You want to know why I dont support I-135? It wont work. If you want to believe that this initiative will take some people out of their tents and into real housing, answer me this.
Your whole funding premise is that it will be kept afloat by people making 100% to 120% of the median income, somewhere around $140K a year. Youre assuming they are going to happily pay market rate to to subsidize their neighbor who might be a homeless junkie? They could just as easily pay market rate to live in a nice building where they don’t have to put up with unstable people screaming at all hours, threatening them, and trashing the place. The rules have made very clear that it’s going to be all but impossible to evict people when they cause problems.
This is simply another pipe dream. A brand new bureaucracy that’s going to be set up to give their favorite people grift. They’re going to keep coming after the taxpayers for more and more money to grow it and to bail out the program. And it won’t do a damn thing about housing affordability or the homeless problem.
“to subsidize their neighbor who might be a homeless junkie?”
If someone is their neighbor, they won’t he homeless, obviously.
Oh right. Because now that the formerly homeless junkie got a free apartment that he did nothing to earn for himself, he’ll suddenly be a fine upstanding citizen. I’m sure he’ll get along marvelously with neighbors holding down six figure jobs.
Google “famous people who were once homeless.”
No, sorry, it is inconceivable that anyone earning six figures could possibly believe anything other than living next door to a line cook or a landscaper or home health aide or daycare worker is The Worst Thing Ever. [Sarcasm]
“The initiative will work because it will build badly needed rental accommodation for people at both low and middle incomes.”
Wow that is some brilliant logic right there. “It will work because I say it will, and people need it!”
So instead of addressing a single one of my points, you call me names and just tell us, “Trust me this thing will work.” That doesn’t exactly inspire people with confidence. But thanks for playing
The full section says otherwise:
“City Council Authority. This ordinance does not concern homelessness housing and nothing in this ordinance may be interpreted to interfere with or exercise the City Council’s powers under RCW Chapter 43.185(C) or other state laws. Should a court determine that any provision of this measure does so, the voters intend for such provision to be null and void and severable, and for the remainder of this ordinance to continue in full force.”
How else should we interpret that?
You want to know why I dont support I-135? It wont work. If you want to believe that this initiative will take some people out of their tents and into real housing, answer me this.
Your whole funding premise is that it will be kept afloat by people making 100% to 120% of the median income, somewhere around $140K a year. Youre assuming they are going to happily pay market rate to to subsidize their neighbor who might be a homeless junkie? They could just as easily pay market rate to live in a nice building where they don’t have to put up with unstable people scream at all hours, threatening them, and trashing the place. The rules have made very clear that it’s going to be all but impossible to evict people when they cause problems.
This is simply another pipe dream. A brand new bureaucracy that’s going to be set up to give their favorite people grift. They’re going to keep coming after the taxpayers to focus for more and more money to grow it and to bail out the program. And it won’t do a damn thing about housing affordability.
To me, the debate over I-135 is less about whether to provide more for the homeless and more about whether to approach the problem by creating a new government agency instead of supporting the existing non-profits that are working hard to provide housing in our city. For example, some believe that I-135 would divert funding away from agencies like Plymouth Housing, which has decades of experience providing services to the homeless.
Because social housing would be self-funded through rents in the long-term, it seems that this is only a concern in regards to start-up funding. The city would be able to issue bonds to cover funding for new buildings, so this project doesn’t necessarily impact funding for other housing agencies at all. As we create more housing, we’ll actually have more funding per person for these agencies to use for people remaining unhoused. It depends on how the city implements it, which we all have influence over through Pedersen, Nelson, and Mosqueda.
Wallingford had the dubious distinction of being called out in the Seattle Times’ big article about lack of postal workers and associated disruptions. But I found this bit interesting in light of I-135:
“The Postal Service has already begun hiring more Seattle recruits into part-time “career” carrier jobs that pay $23 an hour, versus assistant carrier jobs that pay $19, he noted. Higher pay is the obvious solution, agreed Yao, the union rep for clerks and sorters.
“We’re competing with the QFC down the street,” Goze said. “They’re hiring at the same wages, but the workload that’s expected is completely different.””
$23 / hour full time means that affordable rent at the “30% of income” standard for 1 person is $1,173/month, and $2,346 for two.
So our local postal & QFC workers as a single earner would at best be vying for market rate micro apartments; it looks better for two earners who could afford some market rate 1 beds.
But the former would need a bit of a hand to afford a 1 bed, and the latter to afford a 2 bed.
Hence the perfect fit for social housing here, IMO…they’ve actually got a decent amount of money to spend that could contribute to subsidizing the housing if they are in smaller units, or they benefit from a rent-capped non market home in larger units. And social housing would put some competitive pressure on market-rate rentals, especially at the mid to lower end of the market.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/ive-never-seen-it-this-bad-usps-staffing-woes-hit-seattle-area/
No more ineffective government programs please. Ignore the very vocal minority and use your common sense when voting. Thank you.
Amen.
I found this article to be highly enlightening and voted no on I-135.
https://www.postalley.org/2023/02/05/initiative-135-for-social-housing-voters-beware/
The latest. https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-homeless-crisis-ship-canal-interstate-5-encampment-violence-crime-shooting-king-county-regional-homelessness-authority-rha-parents-wallingford-feedback-five-year-plan-billion-dollars-frustrated-camp