The city of Seattle has a stated goal of creating 30,000 new market rate housing units and 20,000 new or newly rent-restricted units in the city in the next 10 years. How to do so is the question currently before local officials.
Daniel Beekman reports on Seattle's efforts to find ways to lower the costs of housing in the infamously expensive city.
According to Beekman, the recent proposals to finance affordable housing follows the policy innovation of the city's minimum wage hike, adopted last year and since emulated by cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. "But the housing-cost problem is more complex, and there are divergent views on how to achieve affordability — from rent control to ramped-up construction aided by deregulation," writes Beekman.
Currently, the most politically promising proposal appears to be a proposal for linkage fees, as proposed by Councilmember Mike O'Brien, which would "charge builders of new construction in Seattle’s densest neighborhoods and then use the money to create or preserve affordable housing."
The city, at the prompting of Mayor Ed Murray, has created the Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee to work on policy proposals to address the affordable housing challenge.
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