Battle lines are drawn over ballot measures in Seattle on whether to pay for workforce public housing by taxing $1 million salaries or taxing corporate payroll revenue.
Two years after the city created a development authority to build publicly owned social housing, voters will head to the ballot box on Feb. 11 to decide between two propositions on how to pay for it, the Seattle Times and Puget Sound Business Journal reported.
Proposition 1A would levy a new employer tax on salaries of more than $1 million a year. Backers hope the 5 percent tax would raise $52 million a year to create 2,000 cost-controlled homes over 10 years, owned by taxpayers.
Proposition 1B, supported by businesses such as Microsoft, would fund the Seattle Social Housing Developer with $10 million a year in city funding, through a JumpStart tax on large corporations.
The social housing properties would be permanently owned by the public, with rents capped at 30 percent renter’s income.
“Fifty million dollars would leverage a lot more money to build a lot more desperately needed rental housing in Seattle,” Roberto Jiménez, CEO of Seattle Social Housing Developer, told the Business Journal. “The ($10 million) is not nothing, but it’s not going to be terribly impactful.”
The battle pits backers of both funding options, and those who prefer none at all.
A group called House Our Neighbors, whose main backer is the Inatai Foundation led by Nichole June Maher, supports Prop. 1A, the millionaire tax, saying people with higher incomes should subsidize those with lower incomes.
Operations and maintenance, through 1A, would be covered by rents from a wider range of incomes, including people who earn up to 120 percent of area median income.
“If we really believe that housing is a public good and we want to address the pipeline into homelessness, we should be investing boldly now,” Tiffani McCoy, who runs the House Our Neighbors campaign, told the Times.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, as well as a Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce campaign backed by Microsoft, Vulcan Real Estate, T-Mobile and others, support Prop. 1B, the corporate tax.
They say it’s risky to give a new, untested public development authority $52 million a year — forever. Microsoft has pledged $100,000 to a political action committee in support of 1B.
“Prop. 1B will allow the city to address housing needs without raising taxes that would jeopardize jobs or the revitalization of Downtown Seattle,” Microsoft spokeswoman Meg O’Conor told the Business Times.
Others see the mission of the developer as flawed and call for voting against any funding.
“Over two dozen nonprofits have a decades-long, proven track record of building housing for the poor in Seattle,” argue Alice Woldt, Roger Valdez, George Howland and John Fox, the group urging a no vote in a pamphlet. “That’s where these millions need to go.”
A lodestar for the social housing model is Vienna, where 80 percent of the population qualifies for public housing. While social housing is rare in the U.S., it’s gaining traction.
“It’s happening in Atlanta. It’s happening in Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s happening at the state level in Massachusetts. … The list goes on, and it’s being done,” Jiménez told the Business Journal. “They don’t call it social housing everywhere, but it is the same model.”
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