Seattle Makes Historic Affordable Housing Investment

A post on the Capi­tol Hill Seat­tle Blog out­lines the city of Seat­tle’s ‘largest-ever invest­ment into afford­able hous­ing,’ which the city passed as part of its 2024 bud­get, which allo­cates $600 mil­lion over a peri­od of two years to hous­ing efforts. “The admin­is­tra­tion’s 2024 spend­ing plan also empha­sized afford­able hous­ing plus a boost for treat­ment and diver­sion to join a crack­down on pub­lic drug use while also includ­ing spend­ing for the city’s exist­ing first respon­ders at Seat­tle Police and the Seat­tle Fire Depart­ment to be main­tained at sta­tus quo lev­els.”

Much of the rev­enue comes from the city’s Jump­Start tax on the largest employ­ers. How­ev­er, the 2025 bud­get may be a hard­er fight as the gap between rev­enue and expen­di­tures is expect­ed to grow to over $247 mil­lion with no new fund­ing sources planned yet. Accord­ing to a report on the 2024 plan, “Our city val­ues do not align with a bud­get that assumes this lev­el of com­ing aus­ter­i­ty. The future of our city and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our com­mu­ni­ty is too impor­tant to gam­ble on.”