Everything Is Political … in South Seattle: Funding Social Housing, Spotting a Public Nuisance

Mayor Proposes $2 Million Handout to Social Housing

On June 16, Mayor Bruce Harrell put forth legislation that would give the city's newly formed Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD) a $2 million "bridge" loan. The money will allow the developer to fund operations (i.e., pay staff) and potentially begin acquiring land or property to develop while it awaits money from the recently passed Proposition 1A to roll in. That money, raised via an increase to the Payroll Expense Tax, will start arriving in 2026.

As part of his announcement of the $2 million bridge loan, Harrell also announced the appointment of Brian Abeel, an "experienced finance executive with extensive non-profit board experience."

In a press release, Harrell said while there were "different strategies" to fund SSHD, he and the developer both envisioned an increase in housing, adding, "This loan will provide critical support during this interim period for planning and capacity-building so that the developer is set up for success and can achieve its goal of operating publicly owned, mixed-income housing."

Harrell's allusion to "different strategies" is a pretty clear nod to his vocal support of the dueling Proposition 1B, a spoiler option proposed by the pro-business City Council majority to avoid levying new taxes on business and instead fund SSHD by taking from existing affordable housing dollars.

While everyone agrees the $2 million is necessary, people aren't exactly lining up to pat Harrell on the back.

"We are grateful to Roberto Jiménez, the Seattle Social Housing CEO, for working to negotiate this bridge loan for the Prop 1A funds. Thanks to the Mayor and City Council for securing this loan," House Our Neighbors! co-Executive Director Tiffani McCoy told The Urbanist. "We hope the Mayor and City Council will show similar support to the social housing developer in the City's Comprehensive Plan update."

Under the mayor's current Comprehensive Plan, affordable housing units qualify for a key density bonus only if 50% or more of their units are affordable to households making 60% of area median income (AMI) or less. The social housing model is intentionally designed to be "cross-class," which means it has a broader mix of incomes, with higher earners subsidizing the cost of providing the same high-quality units to their lower-income neighbors. The social housing model wouldn't hit the comprehensive plan's AMI target, meaning SSHD projects would be allowed less density.

In response to the mayor's announcement, Transit Riders Union general secretary Katie Wilson, a staunch social housing supporter and Harrell's strongest challenger in this year's mayoral race, took to Twitter to take him to task for, well, everything.

In a thread asking "what supporting Social Housing really means," she accused Harrell of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" over his support of Proposition 1B, dragging his feet on providing full startup funding to the SSHD, and being "long overdue" on appointing a finance expert to the SSHD's board.

Focusing in on the density bonus issue, Wilson wrote that "if Harrell really wants to support the new developer, he should work to ensure that social housing is fully eligible for the Comprehensive Plan's Affordable Housing Bonus, which allows added height and unit capacity for affordable housing projects near frequent transit."

In response to an emailed request for comment, Callie Craighead, the mayor's press secretary, reiterated the existing bonus requirements: "[T]he affordable housing bonus included in the Comprehensive Plan is available to any developer, including the Social Housing PDA, just as long as 50% of the units built are affordable (defined as no more than 60% AMI for rental and 80% AMI for homeownership)."

New Ways to Be a Nuisance

This one slipped under my radar, but on June 9, Harrell proposed an expansion to the city's existing Chronic Nuisance Properties Ordinance. You might be wondering what this ordinance even does and why it matters. As noted in a press release from the mayor's office, the nuisance property designation has only been applied 17 times since the original bill passed. Unless you owned or occupied one of those 17 properties, you've probably never heard of the thing. Still, it's worth a look.

What the nuisance ordinance does is set up a system by which the city can designate a property to be a chronic nuisance property, subjecting its owner to fines of $500 per day and/or a one-time penalty of $25,000 if the conditions creating a nuisance are not addressed. This most recent bill would expand the definition of activity constituting a nuisance from things that occur at an actual property to behaviors occurring off-site but determined to be caused by people associated with the property. It would also add alcohol-related offenses to the list of nuisance property criteria, which the mayor claims would allow better regulation of after-hours nightlife activity.

That all sounds great, right? In theory, yes. A nuisance is, by definition, something inconvenient or annoying. No one likes that. But I'm not so sure about nuisance ordinances. What they deem to be inconvenient or annoying is open to interpretation. Historically, leaving that interpretation up to angry neighbors or police officers almost always introduces a boatload of bias.

To wit, the mayor's press release touted the nuisance ordinance's most recent use, against a Rainier Beach hookah lounge/nightclub called Bar Capri, as a success story. The lounge, which, to be fair, was the site of numerous shootings, closed permanently after being named a nuisance.

The original debate about regulating hookah lounges was rife with accusations — well-founded ones, in my opinion — of racial bias. There's been a lot of research on implicit bias in policing, but not as much in relation to the enforcement of regulation.

Now, it should be noted that Shon Barnes, Seattle's chief of police, and therefore the person who ultimately decides what is and isn't a nuisance property, is Black. Statistically, this makes him much, much less susceptible to implicit bias. That said, the real issue here is discretion. The nuisance ordinance already contains a great deal of room for discretion on the part of the police; it leaves decisions about who or what constitutes a nuisance largely up to their interpretation. The proposed changes only expand these gray areas.

Sure, shutting down a business that is the locus of gun violence isn't exactly controversial, but we should be wary of anything that involves trading away our freedoms for a crumb of "public safety."

Got something *political* I should know? Tell me about it: Tobias.CB@SeattleEmerald.org.

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Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.