Street roots., May 15, 2009, Page 13, Image 13

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street roots
Education ♦ Dialogue ♦ Independence
Seattle housing levy puts people into housing
The city is set to put $145 million dollar lowlncome housing levy on the ballot - and polls show it should pass
CYDNY GILLIS
The proposal, which the council could
change or scale back, as it did with the 2002
levy, would raise the average Seattle
homeowner’s property tax $30 a year. The
Donna Steensland never imagined she
money would go to build or buy 1,670 low-
would end up homeless. It’s just not
income rental units, provide emergency rent
something she thought could happen to a
payments to about 4,000 households and
working person, she says.
make down-payment loans to 180 first-time
For many years, Steensland, 55, was a
home buyers.
postal carrier in Monroe and lived what she
In a first among the four housing
calls a wonderful life with her husband and a
measures
that Seattleites have passed since
home on six acres. But while delivering the
1981, a new acquisition loan fund would also
mail one day in 2004, she got hit by a car,
let affordable housing developers borrow
requiring two back surgeries and two years
money for the first three years of the levy in
of therapy just to .walk.
order to buy unsold condos, apartment
Despite the on-the-job accident, the
buildings or land while the market is still
federal government cut off her workers’
low.
compensation - and the income she relied
Except for the acquisition fund, the
on for her end of the mortgage. In May
housing
numbers are roughly the same as in
2007, the couple lost their home, then got
the current levy, Nickels says, but, given
divorced. Six months later, Steensland says,
inflation, it will cost $145 million — a figure,
she moved into Seattle’s Salvation Army
he says, that he reduced from his levy
shelter and out of the stability she had
advisory committee’s recommendation of
always known.
$167 million. Office of Housing Director
“I thought, ‘Oh, my god, what’s
Adrienne
Quinn says the larger amount
happened?’ and cried myself to sleep,” she
would have included $9 million more rental
says.
units and more funding in each category
If it hadn’t been for Seattle voters, she
overall.
might still be on the streets, she says. But
In a telephone survey conducted with 800
with the help of the YWCA, Steensland
Seattleites in March, Quinn told
moved into Capitol Hill’s Jubilee Women’s
councilmembers in a housing levy briefing
Center, a transitional housing program that
last week, a wide margin of respondents —
received funding from the $86 million
73 percent — said a bad economy is the
Seattle Housing Levy passed in 2002.
right time to fund low-income housing,
On April 29,
Steensland and others compared with 24 percent who said it
wasn’t
who
have gotten
In a telephone survey
Sixty-four percent of those questioned
housing through the
conducted with 800
expressed support for the levy before
levy stood with Mayor
knowing its details, she said, and more than
Seattleites in March...
Greg Nickels as he
half also picked $167 million as the
announced a proposal
councilmembers (were
preferred levy option, compared with 20 <
for a new seven-year-
percent support for a $144 million levy.
told) in a housing levy
measure of $145
But Seattle’s Building Owners and
briefing, .a wide margin of
million that, if the
Maintenance Association, the Downtown
City Council approves
repondents -73 percent
Seattle Association and the Greater Seattle
it, would go on the
Chamber of Commerce say that, in tough
said a bad economy is the
November ballot. But
economic times, both are too much.
right time fund low-
it’s already facing
In letters sent to the mayor, the Building
income housing.
resistance from
Owners, DSA and the chamber have called
downtown businesses
for scaling back the levy to $86 million,
over the amount and
perhaps reducing it to three or four years or
questions from
having no levy at all.
housing advocates about the mix of who the
In response, Nickels said at his news
conference, he reduced his proposal to $145
levy will serve - people like Steensland who
million. But Rod Kauffman, president of
are homeless with little or no income, or
wage earners at $45,000 a year who can
Building Owners’ Seattle-King County
afford to rent or even buy housing on the
chapter, says he’d prefer the number be
$107 million. “We very much support
market
STREET NEWS SERVICE (REAL CHANGE,
SEATTLE, WASH.)
|
renewal of the existing housing levy,” he
says, but “the $86 million passed back in
2002 would equate to a levy of $107 million
now” - without reaching “too aggressively”
in this economic climate, he says.
“I’m shocked that the Downtown Seattle
Association and the chamber and BOMA are
having problems with the levy. It’s
outrageous,” says Sharon Lee, director of
the Low Income Housing Institute, a
nonprofit Seattle developer. “It’s absolutely
to their benefit because the housing that
will be produced will benefit [low-wage]
service workers” in downtown buildings.
Lee is a member of
a coalition of housing
advocates who are
"I'm shocked that the
calling on the council
Downtown Seattle
to stick with $145
Association and the
million — and keep
chamber are having
the mayor from
raising the income
problems with the levy.
levels served. In the
It's absolutely to their
current levy, 59
benefit because the
percent of the rental
housing money was
housing that will be
set aside for those at
produced will benefit
or below 30 percent
(low-wage) service
of area median
workers.
income (AMI), or
rr
$17,700. The new
proposal would reduce
— SHARON LEE
that to 55 percent and
LOW-INCOME HOUSING INSTITUTE
raise the income cap
on how the remainder
could be spent from
today’s 60 percent of AMI ($34,500) to 80
percent of AMI ($44,800) — an income
level, Lee says, that doesn’t need housing
assistance.
“I’m very concerned that the levy may
very well not serve a larger percentage of
those under 30 percent of AMI than the last
levy did and we have a very different world
out there,” says housing activist Sally
Kinney, who says she’s seeing an increase in
the hungry and homeless in her Lake City
neighborhood.
“Without the levy and the housing, I truly
don’t know what would have happened to
me/ says Steensland, who now lives in a
subsidized apartment in Belltown. Getting
into Jubilee Women’s Center “was the
beginning of a new life for me, she says.
“They gave me hope, they gave me^strength
and I felt like a human being again.”
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