The Sept. 8 op-ed, “Here’s how WA could allow more affordable housing to be built,” makes vital factors about streamlining allowing and eradicating obstacles to center housing development. As somebody who has labored in inexpensive housing improvement for over a decade, I share the urgency about our housing disaster and agree that we’d like “equal components braveness, brains and coronary heart” to unravel it.
Nonetheless, I respectfully disagree with the characterization of Seattle’s Obligatory Housing Affordability program as merely a “development tax” that reduces housing manufacturing. The fact is extra nuanced, and the answer requires us to suppose systemically about how we create housing for everybody, not simply those that can afford market-rate houses.
The Grasp Builders Affiliation report cited within the op-ed focuses narrowly on city dwelling permits whereas lacking important context. A complete evaluation by BERK Consulting, commissioned by the city of Seattle, discovered that MHA is just not the first driver of declining city dwelling development. As a substitute, the report recognized broader market components, together with rising development prices, labor shortages, provide chain disruptions and altering rates of interest, as the primary culprits behind diminished housing manufacturing throughout the area.
The BERK research additionally discovered that cities with out MHA-style packages skilled related declines in housing manufacturing throughout the identical interval, suggesting that blaming affordability necessities oversimplifies a fancy market dynamic affecting all the Puget Sound area.
What is commonly ignored on this dialog is MHA’s success in producing inexpensive housing. Based on the BERK Consulting evaluation, this system has produced over $300 million for inexpensive housing since 2017, funding 1000’s of inexpensive houses throughout the town — houses that wouldn’t exist in any other case.
At Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties, we’ve seen this firsthand. Because of MHA and the Seattle Housing Levy, Seattle is now probably the greatest locations for us to construct inexpensive houses throughout King County. We presently have 204 completely inexpensive homeownership models in our five-year pipeline simply within the metropolis of Seattle itself — that’s practically 75% of our whole manufacturing regionwide. These houses serve educators, well being care employees, social employees and different important professionals who hold our communities working.
We have to handle obstacles to center housing manufacturing, however the answer isn’t to eradicate affordability necessities primarily based on incomplete knowledge. The answer is to make tasks financially possible whereas sustaining our dedication to financial variety.
As an example, when Washington handed House Bill 1110, legalizing center housing statewide, the Legislature handled this as a flooring, not a ceiling. Cities like Seattle can and will go additional by permitting extra peak and density for inexpensive housing tasks, making extra developments financially viable whereas creating houses for working households.
We want each streamlined allowing and affordability necessities. Each market-rate and inexpensive housing. Each center housing and deeply inexpensive houses. The households we serve — bus drivers, academics, nurses, grocery retailer employees — shouldn’t have to decide on between residing in Seattle and attaining homeownership.
As a substitute of inserting undue emphasis on MHA for broader market challenges, let’s see it as one instrument in a complete instrument package. We will assist the Grasp Builders Affiliation’s vital work on allowing reform whereas additionally making certain that progress advantages everybody, together with the 60% of our householders who’re folks of coloration going through the best obstacles to homeownership.
Seattle’s housing disaster calls for options at each revenue stage and sincere evaluation of what’s truly driving our challenges. Sure, let’s repair allowing delays and water hookup prices. Sure, let’s absolutely implement center housing legal guidelines. And sure, let’s preserve insurance policies that guarantee inexpensive housing stays a part of the equation as our metropolis grows.
The wizard behind the scenes isn’t magic; it’s the political will to make use of each instrument obtainable and depend on complete knowledge to create full communities the place everybody has a protected, first rate and inexpensive place to name dwelling.
