Housing

Seattle’s nonprofit affordable-housing providers are finding themselves in deep water. According to an Alex Fryer column in the Seattle Times, the City of Seattle has recently given $14 million in emergency funding to affordable housing nonprofits and developers in an attempt to stabilize them and mitigate their losses. The article reports the financial losses of several nonprofit housing providers due to non-payment of rent, costly evictions, vacancies, and behavioral challenges with tenants. However well-intentioned the efforts to finance nonprofit housing have been, the properties have been plagued by policies that strip tenants of accountability at the cost of landlords and a legal system that seemingly stonewalls attempts to remove non-paying or destructive tenants. But the problem isn’t isolated to urban Read More ›

The number of registered rental properties in Seattle has declined consistently since 2019.  This according to a December 2023 audit by the Seattle City Auditor titled Understanding Seattle’s Housing Market Shift from Small to Large Rental Properties. The audit was performed at the request of several councilmembers in hopes of explaining a decrease in rental properties registered with the city. The audit relied on data derived from the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance (RRIO) passed in 2012, which requires all rental properties to register with the city and undergo regular inspections to “ensure basic safety maintenance requirements are met.” Although the inspection goal evidently isn’t being met, RRIO provides useful data on rental market trends in Seattle. [1] Ironically, the Read More ›

The Washington State Affordable Housing Advisory Board recently released a “Housing Advisory Plan” to address what it describes as an “urgent crisis” of needed affordable housing options in the state. According to the plan, there is only one affordable housing unit available for every five households in need (for those at or below 50-percent of median family income (MFI)). To illustrate the scope of the problem, the plan notes that in 2023, there were 453,423 renter households in the 0-50% MFI bracket and a supply of only 155,214 subsidized units. Drawing on the additional need in higher MFI brackets and the expected population growth, the plan’s authors claim that Washington “needs to add more than a million new homes” in Read More ›

An eviction in Auburn, a city south of Seattle, turned deadly the other week. Six deputies with the King County Sheriff’s SWAT team approached an apartment home to “serve a high-risk civil eviction order” and were shot at, according to video. It appears that deputies returned fire in self-defense, killing the shooter inside the home. The circumstances surrounding this dangerous eviction are unknown for now, but the event brings to mind another eviction-turned-violent that occurred in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle last spring. In this case, a tenant named “Eucytus” fired at deputies while barricaded in the apartment and then died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Seattle detective David Easterly was critically injured by a gunshot wound during the incident. Read More ›