City announces $100 million in affordable housing funding

The Seattle Office of Housing announced $100 million in affordable housing investments on Monday, including both long-term rental houses and affordable homeownership opportunities. That’s about double the Office of Housing’s investment last year.

The funds will go toward 896 new rental homes in nine buildings, plus 25 affordable homeownership opportunities in two different projects. 535 existing apartments in four buildings will be upgraded and preserved.

Mayor Jenny Durkan and newly elected city councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, and Office of Housing director Steve Walker announced the funding outside the community center run by Filipino Community of Seattle in the Rainier Valley, one of the funding recipients.

Filipino Community of Seattle will be building Filipino Community Village, 94 apartments for low-income seniors at 30, 50, and 60 percent area median income. Project co-chair and former state legislator Velma Veloria called the funding the “best Christmas gift in our 83 years of history.”

The largest rental project to receive funding is a transit-oriented development near the upcoming Roosevelt light rail station built by Mercy Housing Northwest and Bellwether Housing with 245 apartments, plus retail space and a daycare below. Those homes will range from one to three bedrooms and be affordable to people from 30 to 60 percent area median income.

Other projects include wraparound services, like 85 units of permanent supportive housing run by Downtown Emergency Service Center in the Rainier Valley, a re-entry facility run by Pioneer Human Services on Belmont Avenue, and Plymouth Housing Group’s upcoming supportive housing project in Little Saigon at the former site of Linc’s Tackle.

Two homeownership projects will also be funded, aimed at first-time, low-income buyers. One, a Habitat for Humanity project in Lake City, will build 16 homes for people making around 60 percent area median income. The other, a Homestead Community Land Trust nine-townhouse complex in the Central Area, will serve those making 80 percent area median income.

The Office of Housing funding came from the first year of the 2016 housing levy, incentive zoning payments from developers, sale of surplus properties, and $29 million in bonds approved last year by the Seattle City Council.

“I think at this moment in time we have to look at every [funding] tool we have,” said Durkan at the announcement.

“[Bonding] has its own complications and we can’t go to that well too many times,” she added, because we need to have revenue to pay off the bonds. But Durkan said we need to “look at all resources the city has to make sure we are moving as quickly as we can.”

“This is absolutely the wisest investment that the city of Seattle can do,” said Mosqueda, who wasn’t in office when the bonds were approved but will head the city council’s new Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Committee. “We save lives, we save money, and we are investing in the future.”

The full list of investments, courtesy of the City of Seattle, is below.