King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay Proposes Legislation That Would Commit $1B to Workforce Housing

On Sept. 3, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay introduced legislation that, if passed, would allocate $1 billion in funding toward developing workforce housing. Zahilay’s Regional Workforce Housing Initiative would require King County Executive Dow Constantine to implement a plan that would allow for use of the County’s excess debt capacity to acquire loans for constructing rent-restricted housing for essential workers.

“The mission of the entire motion is that our essential workers deserve to live close to where their jobs are,” said Zahilay. “If our essential workers don’t live close to their jobs, that is very harmful for our society. It leads to longer commute times, more stress, less productivity, worse services, families spending more time apart, pollution in our environment — all those things become worse when workers don’t live close to their job.”

Homelessness in King County dates back over a century, and government systems have historically struggled to properly address the issue. In 1854, when Edward Moore, a sailor from Massachusetts, was found in a tent on the city’s waterfront, he became the first recorded homeless person in Seattle. Nearly two decades later in 1872, the City passed Ordinance 32, Seattle’s first legislation criminalizing homelessness.

Rental prices in Seattle are some of the highest in the nation.  As of September 2024, the average rent is $2,065, meaning the salary a single adult needs to support themselves is at least $82,236 according to Apartments.com. The median price of a house in Seattle is on the higher end compared to other cities nationwide at $835,000 as of August 2024.

If Zahilay’s legislation passes, funding for building and maintaining the housing units will come out of the County’s excess debt capacity.

“[Debt capacity] is the amount that we are able to borrow from banks based on our circumstances as a government — based on our credit rating, the money that we have in the bank, on our good standing,” explained Zahilay, who is King County Council budget chair. “[King County has] $9 billion of debt capacity, meaning we can borrow up to nine more billion dollars.”

Zahilay’s legislation would require Constantine to develop a plan that outlines options for utilizing the County’s excess debt capacity to partner with local housing agencies and developers to construct permanently rent-restricted housing.

In addition to being rent-restricted, the buildings would also be income-restricted. “It would be a mix of incomes living together. In total, I want the rents collectively to be enough to cover the monthly costs of constructing and maintaining these homes,” said Zahilay.

Zahilay’s legislation is also calling for the executive’s plan to include specific rental requirements for prospective tenants.

“I don't have those exact details now, and that's why my motion is calling for the executive to analyze this, create a feasibility study, [and implement a] plan to really make the numbers work,” said Zahilay. “I imagine that to make this a self-sustaining model, at least some of the tenants would be at 100% AMI or 120% AMI, and the rents that they charge could offset the rents collected by people who also live there at the 50% AMI or the 80% AMI.”

Zahilay is the son of a retired essential worker. His mother worked double shifts as a nursing assistant for nearly 15 years at the former Keiro Rehabilitation Center in the Central District, now ACLT’s Benu Community Home.

Zahilay’s family settled in the Rainier Valley after moving between public housing complexes in various neighborhoods in South Seattle where he grew up watching his mother commute halfway across the city to get to work.

Zahilay hopes the passage of his legislation will help create a higher quality of life for people like his mother. “I want [essential workers] to be able to live in the core of our cities so that they can continue to be the support of our society, be the backbone of our society, and also live a healthy life themselves,” he said.

Lauryn Bray is a writer and reporter for the South Seattle Emerald. She has a degree in English with a concentration in creative writing from CUNY Hunter College. She is from Sacramento, California, and has been living in King County since June 2022.