Seattle Makes Historic Affordable Housing Investment

A post on the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog outlines the city of Seattle’s ‘largest-ever investment into affordable housing,’ which the city passed as part of its 2024 budget, which allocates $600 million over a period of two years to housing efforts. “The administration’s 2024 spending plan also emphasized affordable housing plus a boost for treatment and diversion to join a crackdown on public drug use while also including spending for the city’s existing first responders at Seattle Police and the Seattle Fire Department to be maintained at status quo levels.”

Much of the revenue comes from the city’s JumpStart tax on the largest employers. However, the 2025 budget may be a harder fight as the gap between revenue and expenditures is expected to grow to over $247 million with no new funding sources planned yet. According to a report on the 2024 plan, “Our city values do not align with a budget that assumes this level of coming austerity. The future of our city and the sustainability of our community is too important to gamble on.”