I-135 would create new renter-governed housing developments

Initiative 135, the Seattle Social Housing Initiative, will appear on the ballot, according to King County Elections. The agency confirmed on August 29 that activists had gotten enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The measure will not be on the November ballot, however. Instead, it will be voted on in a special election early in 2023.

On August 29, the measure had 27,220 verified signatures, 700 more than what was needed to go on the ballot, King County Elections said.

Initiative organizers submitted 29,000 signatures in June, hoping to qualify for the November ballot. However, King County Elections staff ultimately tossed several thousand signatures of people not registered to vote or not Seattle residents, leaving the initiative short 5,033 names.

Under Seattle's charter, the initiative was allotted an additional 20 days for signature collection. Within that time, organizers were able to turn in more than 9,500 to get the initiative on the ballot. By that time, however, it was too late to go on the November ballot.

Before it goes to the voters, the initiative will go before the Seattle City Council. Councilmembers could decide to skip the public vote altogether and pass the initiative, making it a city ordinance. But if that doesn't happen, then it will advance to a special election.

If the measure passes — in the City Council or in an election — it will establish a public development authority (PDA), that would be authorized to use public and private funding to build new housing or buy existing property.

Once developed, the properties would be governed by boards of renters rather than property managers hired by developers, and they would seek to maintain affordable rents by taking the units out of the commercial rental market.

This social housing model is popular in Europe and Asia, and is being tried in some parts of the US, including California and Hawaii.

"We need to implement [social housing] here if we are truly serious about having this be a city that is affordable to everyone, not just folks that have generational wealth, or middle-to-high-six-figure incomes," said Tiffani McCoy, who is advocacy director at Seattle's street newspaper Real Change, and one of the organizers of I-135.

According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, a worker in the Seattle-Bellevue area would need to make about $39 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

Oddly enough, the initiative is opposed by the Housing Development Consortium, a lobbying group whose members include King County's major nonprofit housing developers, local housing authorities, and financial institutions. They argue that the new PDA would compete with them for already insufficient resources.