Our Homes - Ending the Housing Crisis: How Seattle Passed Social Housing
Our Homes: Ending the Housing CrisisShow Notes
Initiative 135 (I-135), is a Seattle initiative that creates a new social housing developer to build, acquire and manage public, affordable housing in the city. Tiffany McCoy and Camille Gix believe that the key strategies that helped pass the initiative were centering the initiative around a positive vision, humanizing higher income renters (teachers/healthcare workers who may need affordable housing), highlighting the beneficial differences between this model compared to others, and using international/national examples for proof of concept.
Tiffani McCoy is the advocacy director at Real Change and serves as the co-chair for the House Our Neighbors coalition. McCoy acted as the campaign manager for I-135, overseeing all campaign communications and field efforts from the start of the campaign through the victory. Camille Gix is a graduate student at the University of Washington and policy intern at Real Change. She was also on the steering committee for I-135, helping draft the initiative. This episode of Our Homes is hosted by Ian Ross.
More from Our Homes: Ending the Housing Crisis
Senator Chang hosted Professors Justin Tyndall and Limin Fang from UHERO for a data-driven discussion on Hawaiʻi’s housing supply challenges and policy solutions.
More than just housing, Arbor 515 gives Salt Lake City residents the opportunity to build a future. The new development, a conversion of a former office building financed by Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), provides housing for residents earning between 25% and 55% of the area median income while also offering a unique opportunity to build equity.
In this episode of Our Homes, Ellen Carson and Keith Webster (advocates for Faith Action for Community Equity, a nonprofit focusing on housing and homelessness solutions) speak about an empty homes tax under consideration by the Honolulu City Council. Modeled after Vancouver, Canada’s tax, Honolulu’s proposal would be levied on an empty home’s assessed value, on a graduated rate with a 3 year phase. Faith Action for Community Equity believes this would disincentivize non-resident buyers and create a funding mechanism to support more housing construction and homeless services.
In this episode of Our Homes, Dr. Cameron Murray, Australian economist and author of “The Great Housing Hijack,” speaks about the myths surrounding housing markets in Australia and elsewhere. Murray believes that high housing cost jurisdictions suffer from inequitable distribution of housing, not mere supply shortage. These housing shortages have been observed over the centuries, meaning that regulation alone cannot explain them. An alternative to the free market is required to aid those who cannot access a home. Jurisdictions need to implement a low-price alternative to rent or buy homes, like the Singapore model, which is already available to certain groups in Australia, like military servicemembers. This episode of Our Homes was hosted by Senator Stanley Chang.
In this episode of Our Homes, Kenzie Bok, the Administrator for the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), shares BHA’s plan to end the City’s housing shortage in part by building 3,000 mixed-income Faircloth units. This decision was spurred by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to almost triple the subsidy amount available for Faircloth units. The authority has currently identified two sites, and Bok speaks on the current obstacles and the importance of their mixed-income, mixed-use, and revenue neutral building plans. Bok further speaks on the necessity of government’s role as provider of safe and affordable housing. This episode of Our Homes was hosted by Senator Stanley Chang.