Social Housing Initiatives Face Off in Seattle Special Election

House Our Neighbors

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

Welcome to today's Hacks & Wonks show, where we'll explore the social housing initiative appearing on Seattle ballots that you received in the mail and that need to be returned by this Tuesday, February 11th. Social housing is a public option for housing that is designed to be permanently affordable, community-controlled, and exist outside the speculative real estate market. It's designed to be self-sustaining, with an initial public investment covering development costs, while operating expenses are maintained through rental income. Unlike programs like more traditional public housing programs in the US that many folks are familiar with like Section 8, which provide assistance to renters to pay private landlords, social housing focuses on providing affordable housing directly to residents, removing the profit motive and ensuring long-term affordability. This model works alongside existing affordable housing programs, offering an additional approach to address housing needs.

On the ballot, you'll encounter two propositions: Proposition 1A and Proposition 1B. Proposition 1A was initiated by a majority of Seattle residents voting to approve the creation of a Social Housing Developer in 2023, and it proposes to fund social housing by taxing excess compensation. Specifically, it targets companies that pay individual employees over $1 million annually. So if a business in Seattle has nine employees who each make $300,000 in total compensation per year, and one employee who makes $1.1 million per year, the tax they would pay would only be for that one employee, and only on the amount of compensation that is over $1,000,000. This tax is expected to generate approximately $53 million dollars per year, dedicated to developing mixed-income social housing. Proposition 1B is an alternative measure referred to the ballot by the Seattle City Council. It is funded through existing payroll expense tax revenues to fund the Social Housing Developer, with oversight from the Office of Housing. So this doesn't raise any new tax revenue, but reallocates existing payroll tax funds paid by all Seattle businesses from the city budget. This tax would allocate $10 million per year for five years.

It's important to know that this will appear differently than most races you're used to on your ballot. Instead of being a simple yes or no question, this is a two-part question. In the first part, you'll decide whether to fund social housing at all. Your ballot asks, "Should either of these measures be enacted into law?" with a yes or no choice. A 'Yes' vote indicates support for implementing one of the funding measures for social housing. A 'No' vote opposes both measures. The second part of this ballot question asks: "Regardless of whether you voted yes or no above, if one of these measures is enacted, which one should it be?" So if you want to support the citizen initiative funding model, vote 'Yes' on Question 1 and then select Proposition 1A in Question 2. If you prefer the City Council's alternative, you'll vote 'Yes' on Question 1 and then select Proposition 1B in Question 2. You may vote on Question 2 regardless of your response to Question 1. When these votes are tallied by King County Elections, they'll tally the first part of the question. If the 'Yes' vote receives a majority of the votes, then whichever option for Question 2 - Proposition 1A or 1B - receives a majority of the votes will win. If a majority of voters vote 'No' on the first question, neither option 1A or 1B will be implemented. Now, we'll dive into our conversation to discuss all of this in more detail.

Well today, I'm very excited to be joined by Rian Watt, fellow Urbanist board member and local housing advocate. And Tiffani McCoy, the co-ED of House Our Neighbors, the group that passed the social housing initiative on Seattle's ballot in 2023 - that was passed by Seattle voters - and is now campaigning for Proposition 1A, which is one of two propositions that Seattle voters will see on the ballots that you should now have in your hands and that are due by Tuesday, February 11th. Welcome to you both.

[00:05:04] Rian Watt: Glad to be here.

[00:05:05] Tiffani McCoy: Thanks for having us.

[00:05:06] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you. So just starting out - as we're talking about this initiative, as people are seeing this on their ballot, can you start by explaining what social housing is and how it differs from other forms of housing?

[00:05:20] Tiffani McCoy: Yeah, so thanks for having us again, Crystal. As promised to voters in 2023, House Our Neighbors is back with a revenue measure to fund the social housing developer that they created by a 14-point margin. And yeah, as a refresher and an important educational note, social housing is different from what we currently do in multiple ways. But I'll say that the most important part is that it actually expands how we currently approach affordable housing while simultaneously taking away all of the restrictions that the federal government imposes upon jurisdictions. I don't think people really understand how much the federal government limits our ability to build affordable housing and also how much we are reliant on the federal government to build affordable housing. And for those who are paying attention - know that the federal government is pretty chaotic and in disarray, and we should not be depending on them to fund affordable housing or any of our programs in the near future - so social housing is a way to kind of Trump-proof Seattle. And social housing is permanently affordable, it is publicly-owned in perpetuity, and it is free from market speculation. So what that means is, unlike the private market, which dominates our housing supply system, social housing is not there to make a profit. It's there to make sure that housing is provided as a public good, and it's something that we desperately need in our city that only has about 5% to 6% of our housing stock as affordable.

[00:06:41] Crystal Fincher: Now, Rian, you have been an advocate for social housing throughout this process. As you're talking to people in the community, how are you explaining this to them? And what's their general reception when they hear about it?

[00:06:55] Rian Watt: I think it's really important to start the conversation about social housing with the conversation about housing in general. I think everyone in this city understands that we're in a housing crisis, but I think very few people understand the depth of that crisis and how difficult it's going to be to fight our way out of it. We have, over the last 20 years, grown faster than almost every city in the entire country. And although we've built a lot of housing over those 20 years, we haven't built nearly enough to keep up with demand. And so we're in a position where a much larger number of people are chasing an ever smaller amount of housing. And it's no surprise, therefore, that rents have climbed and that the people with the least ability to pay have been left out. So we are in the middle of a housing crisis - and that is why I am supportive of almost anything that will put more housing into this market. I'm supportive of more market rate housing and more density across the city. I'm supportive of more traditional affordable housing. And I'm supportive of social housing as a tool to make real a government commitment to solving this problem. I think social housing is a really important part of the mix because it lets the City of Seattle put a line in the sand that says this is a problem that we have an obligation to solve, that we have the ambition to solve, and that we're going to do everything we can to put some housing permanently within reach of people least able to pay in this city.

[00:08:16] Crystal Fincher: Now that's really interesting. And continuing on that, you talked about the different forms of housing subsidies and affordable housing that we have - a lot of people think about public housing, they think about Section 8. They think about a variety of programs that we have - a number of them from the federal level, from the county level - to help make housing more affordable. Does this replace those? Does it work alongside of those? And why do we need a different form of affordable housing if we already have it?

[00:08:46] Rian Watt: I think we need more housing of all kinds because we are so far behind in housing production. But even if we spent three or four times what we're spending now on deeply affordable housing, we A] wouldn't have enough of that, and B] wouldn't have enough housing available for the people who are not quite at the 30% of Area Median Income level, which is a level that a lot of traditional affordable housing providers are working towards. But people who are maybe at 100% or 120% of Area Median Income - so they're doing reasonably well by the standards of a traditional affordable housing provider, but they are still tremendously cost burdened and unable to pay a reasonable amount for rent in the city - social housing, I think, can be a tool to help get those folks a place that they can live affordably in perpetuity.

[00:09:30] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Now, housing has been expensive, as you said, and getting more expensive for the past 10, 20 years. Is this initiative something that can really fix that? Because we've had a lot of affordable housing developments - or I don't know about a lot, but some - and they haven't quite bent that cost curve. What makes social housing different, Tiffani?

[00:09:58] Tiffani McCoy: Yeah, so I would say that a lot of people don't understand like one really important thing about affordable housing - and that is that all affordable housing that is in production now, or that has just opened, or is already open, actually has a time limit on it. When the federal government is funding through Section 8 or project-based vouchers or the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, those are like 15, 30, maybe 50-year affordability timelines. And then after that, you often see a lot of these developers putting this housing onto the private market because they can't make it pencil anymore - because those rental subsidies have been eliminated by the federal government, have run out. And we also see affordable housing developers - when those tax credits run out - putting them on the market. So these are developments that public money has gone into, often publicly, and has been granted to, and then we're losing that public dollar and that public investment by having to be sold to the private market. So social housing is a way to remedy that by it being required to be owned in the public in perpetuity. And unlike traditional affordable housing, it does not rely on those federal subsidies - the rental subsidies, Section 8, or project-based vouchers - in order to pencil because of a key component. And that is called cross-subsidization. So that's where you have the income mix - you have those in the middle-income area paying 30% of their [income as] rent into the building, which will cross-subsidize those at the lower end of the income spectrum. This also gets away from the inherent segregation of our public housing system - where poor people live over here because they're in a certain AMI bracket, and then rich and wealthier people live over here - which also has a really negative ripple effect on our schools, on our education system. And social housing could also make sure that we're not losing our families and all of the talent that makes Seattle so great.

[00:11:44] Rian Watt: The question was - Will social housing solve all of our housing problems? And the answer, of course, is no. But that's no reason not to do it. If you get a 5% off coupon at the grocery store, you don't throw it out because it's not 100% off - you take the 5% and you move forward and try to buy your groceries. Social housing is an important part of what we're trying to do in this city, it's not the only part. There's lots of other things we need to do to make this a really affordable, abundant city for everyone. But it's a critical thing to do, and the fact that it won't solve every problem is no reason to overlook the problems it does solve, which I think Tiffani laid out really nicely.

[00:12:16] Crystal Fincher: I want to talk about the funding mechanism for this because this is one of a two-part ballot question, Proposition 1A and Proposition 1B. The funding mechanism for them both are different. What is the funding mechanism for Proposition 1A? How does it differ from 1B? And why did you choose to go the route that you did?

[00:12:38] Tiffani McCoy: Yes, important question. And unfortunately, there are three choices on the ballot, because people could vote 'No' overall. But we're here to talk about why we need social housing and why folks should vote 'Yes' on 1A. 1A creates an excess compensation payroll tax. Any company that has workers in the city of Seattle that make over $1 million in total compensation - that's including bonuses, deferred compensation, stock options, etc - they would pay 5% on all income over $1 million to the social housing payroll tax.

[00:13:12] Crystal Fincher: And that's $1 million in one year?

[00:13:14] Tiffani McCoy: That's $1 million in one year, so-

[00:13:16] Crystal Fincher: So I'm not falling in that bracket is what we're saying.

[00:13:19] Tiffani McCoy: Correct. It is the wealthiest among us that would be paying this. And it is the employer, it is not the employee that would pay this. 1B, which is sponsored by Amazon, Microsoft, the Chamber of Commerce, would actually take money from affordable housing providers who are providing that deeply necessary affordable housing and siphon that money away to social housing. Which also, the money from 1B would not actually stand up the model of social housing, but I know we'll get into that later.

[00:13:46] Rian Watt: I want to add a few things here. First, I think it's really important to emphasize that the Proposition 1A would tax businesses on compensation to individual employees of over a million dollars. So if you're a small business owner listening to this right now, and your total payroll is over a million dollars, you don't have to worry - unless you're paying any one person over a million dollars. And even if you're paying any one person over a million dollars, that first million is totally tax-free - under this proposed tax. And if you're paying them a million dollars and one dollar in addition, you're paying five cents into this tax. It is such a comically small amount of money for a business that is operating at that scale, that is hiring employees that they're compensating at that level. And the potential social benefit is so incredibly high.

I also want to add on to a little bit of what Tiffani talked about with Proposition 1B. Because I think given that Microsoft, Amazon, the Chamber of Commerce are supporting it, it's worth talking about why they're supporting it. All three of those organizations understand that we're in a housing crisis. And in fact, they're leading on a lot of local advocacy to solve our housing crisis. They are, for example, working to support a really strong Comprehensive Plan to allow us to build more housing all over the city. It's not that they don't understand that housing is a problem, it's that they don't want to pay for the solution. They like housing, but they like not being taxed more. And so they have put together a proposal that would require them to pay nothing in addition. And would, as Tiffani said, cut money that is already being directed to affordable housing production in the city in an effort to mislead voters about what is really at stake here. And I think that's a real shame. And I think that a more forward-thinking, a more ambitious City Council, and a more forward-thinking set of local corporations would have understood that this is an opportunity to really invest in the place that they call home, invest in the people who live here, invest in the workers who live here - and pay a very small share of the tremendous wealth that they've accrued to do so.

[00:15:45] Crystal Fincher: I want to talk a little bit more about the supporters of Proposition 1B and what they're saying and how they're comparing 1B to 1A. One of the things that we've seen them say is that Proposition 1B provides more oversight and accountability because it puts this funding under the city's Office of Housing who has experience in managing these funds. And the public developer does not yet. How do you address that? Do you feel that there's a difference in accountability, a lack of accountability? How do you size that up?

[00:16:22] Rian Watt: Well, the point to make here is that this city has got to stop thinking so small. When Seattle was growing in the early part of the 20th century, we literally demolished whole hills in order to make this a city where lots of people should grow. Now, I don't support demolishing whole hills necessarily, but I love the ambition of saying - if we're going to be the kind of city we want to be, we are going to need to do big things together. And this Council, despite saying that they understand the magnitude of the housing crisis we're in, this council has not been willing to do the kind of truly bold thinking that the city needs. And I think that it is very fair to say that we need to make sure that public money is well-spent and well-safeguarded, that it needs to be run by professionals who know what they're doing. The Social Housing Developer should absolutely work to be staffed with folks who are really technically expert in how to stand up really good, high-quality programs and services around housing. And the public has every right to expect that. And the way to do that is to give them the resources to do the job right. And I think that's what 1A does. The amount of money that is directed to the Social Housing Developer by 1B - which is about $10 million a year - is not going to be adequate to do the kind of work that the Social Housing Developer is commanded by the people of the city of Seattle to do. They voted to stand this thing up in 2023. They said this is what they want. The Social Housing Developer has figured out what they need in order to execute on that vision that the city of Seattle has signed up for. And this is an opportunity to do it.

[00:17:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, one of the other things that they've brought up is that 1A doesn't mandate that this social housing that people will have access to goes to the people who can least afford it - the people with the lowest incomes - that this is something that even people with middle incomes can take advantage of with lower housing costs. Is this an advantage, a disadvantage? How do you address saying that this isn't limited to people who can least afford it?

[00:18:29] Tiffani McCoy: I would go back to what Rian has previously reiterated, and that's that the city of Seattle voters have already voted on the mandate of social housing. They voted for a mixed-income housing developer that serves populations that make between 0% to 120% of the Area Median Income. Voters have said that they don't want to keep funding income cliffs and benefits cliffs for residents that live in affordable housing. And when they get a bonus or they get a wage increase - where workers have to put off that wage increase because they're going to lose their housing voucher or they're going to lose access to their MFTE [Multi-Family Tax Exemption] apartment. So I think that voters have already said very clearly what they want to fund. And then second, what I find really disturbing about the Chamber and this Council's opposition to 1A and what they say that they support through 1B is what they're wanting to fund is another low-income housing developer. They are inherently saying they do not support social housing. If you ask the Chamber of Commerce, do you want voters to vote 'Yes' on 1, which is required to fund social housing, they will tell you that they're neutral. So they are actually neutral - read into that - they're opposed to the funding of the Social Housing Developer. So they are putting this forward to confuse voters, they're putting this forward to reach to those voters who think that only the lowest-income individuals should be getting public dollars. What we are saying with 1A, is that all Seattleites deserve access to the public goods. Housing should be viewed as a public good. I take my kid to my local public school. I make over 80% of the Area Median Income. Am I supposed to not be able to take her to my public school? Or I go to the library every day with her, or every week - let's say every week. And that is something that is a public good. We need to be getting away from this idea that housing is a commodity, that it's an asset on a balance sheet. And 1A is the only funding proposal before people that raises new taxes and funds the mixed-income model. 1B is actually a vote against social housing.

[00:20:24] Rian Watt: As you and I have spoken about before, Crystal, on this show - I think the nature of housing policy is that people have really poor assumptions about what is needed. They understand that housing is unaffordable. And so they think to themselves - Well, what we need to do is build housing that is from-the-start affordable to people at very low incomes. And that's not wrong in the sense that we need lots of housing that is affordable for folks with low income. But it is counterproductive in the sense that if we continue to operate in a place where housing supply is incredibly scarce in this city, rents are only going to go up and the amount of subsidy that we are going to need to invest to make housing affordable to people with very low incomes is going to keep going up as well. So we need to build housing for folks with low income. We need to build housing for folks with middle income. And we need to build housing for folks with high income. We need to build housing across the entire spectrum so that the total cost of housing can go down for everyone.

[00:21:21] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I want to talk a little bit more about that, especially the scale and the scope. One of the things that proponents of 1B have said is that their more incremental approach gives the developer time to work with smaller amounts, get more experience, have more accountability attached to that before getting additional funds. Whereas 1A has a lot more money to do a lot more upfront. Do you think having more money, more resources for the developer is a good thing? Or does it kind of lead to a lack of accountability or, you know, get exposed potentially with a lack of experience?

[00:22:06] Rian Watt: I think very often concerns about process get used as a cover for concerns about substance. As Tiffani said, I think that a majority of our current city council is opposed to the idea of social housing in general. And so when they talk about concerns about public mismanagement of funds - which I think almost everyone shares, no one wants public's money to be wasted - they are using that to cover for opposition to the idea of doing social housing. I think it is highly unlikely that we would enter an environment where 1B passes, $10 million a year is given to the Social Housing Developer, they absolutely kill it, and this Council majority says - You know what this means? We should give the Social Housing Developer more money. I would love it if that was the case, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. We do not have time to practice. We need to start building housing as fast as possible. We should do it well - the Social Housing Developer should work to make sure that its board and staff are filled with people who are experienced at managing public money and are experienced at developing housing, I think that's really important. And we should give them as much resource as possible in order to do their work as quickly and at the scale that's needed.

[00:23:13] Tiffani McCoy: The only thing I would add is that Seattle should be at the forefront. We have a mayor who continues to talk about One Seattle and we should have Space Needle thinking. But what we see around the country is more jurisdictions latching onto social housing as a proven model and as a proven solution today. And what our Mayor and our City Council are saying, which Rian has alluded to, is that we should just take it slow. We should pilot this. We should see if it works. But we know from Montgomery County, Maryland, that this model works. We know from Atlanta, who just created a mixed-income social housing model, that they are breaking ground on their first development. Chattanooga, Tennessee, Boston, Hawaii, California, Denver - these places are all looking at social housing because 1], they don't want to rely on the federal government forever. B] they know that their constituents are in crisis, that the housing crisis is accelerating quicker than the federal government can keep up with. And C] because they want to create housing as a public good and they want to make sure that the communities that make their cities great don't continue to be displaced.

[00:24:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it certainly does seem like this, as much as any time that we can remember, seems like a risky time to depend on the federal government for continued funding for a number of things, including public housing. We'll see how that turns out in time. But it certainly makes sense that people are looking at alternative funding sources. Now, let's talk about who supports and who opposes each of these initiatives, and the coalitions for each. I want to talk about 1B - we kind of touched on that a little bit before where we've seen the Chamber of Commerce, Amazon, some of the larger corporations and more wealthy people here in the area supporting it and putting a lot of money behind the campaign. How do you see that and why do you think that they're supporting 1B and not 1A?

[00:25:10] Rian Watt: I touched on this before, but I know that these corporations see that we have a housing crisis. And I know that with some exceptions, which we're about to get to, they want to do work to contribute to ending the housing crisis. The Chamber of Commerce has worked really closely with The Urbanist and with House Our Neighbors in coalition on a great Comprehensive Plan that will build more housing across the city. They want more housing. But what they want even more than that is to not be taxed. And that - those two priorities have come into conflict for them, and I think we've seen that the higher priority for them than building more housing in the city is to not be taxed. That's their incentive. You know, they're private companies, and the Chamber of Commerce represents private companies that, you know, are going to always do what's in the interest of their corporations. I think it's time for the voters of Seattle to do what's in their interest, which is to build as much housing as possible, and I think the Social Housing Developer is a great opportunity to do that.

[00:26:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is really a question about who's going to pay the cost here, who's going to foot this bill? Is it corporations? Who foots the bill with 1A and who foots the bill with 1B - in your estimation, Tiffani?

[00:26:18] Tiffani McCoy: 1A would be the wealthiest businesses in our region would foot the bill. 1B would be regular Seattleites, everyday Seattleites. We had something called the JumpStart Payroll Tax, and that was supposed to fund overwhelmingly affordable housing, so those who are in the most need - 0% to 80% of the Area Median Income. The Chamber was unfortunately behind the effort, alongside the City Council, to eviscerate that spending plan which mandated hundreds of millions of dollars to go to affordable housing. So now our affordable housing developers have to go to the City Council every year and beg again for scraps to serve our most-in-need. Whereas 1A is saying, We have tremendous wealth in this city, we should be taxing that, we should be diverting those funds over to serving the public good. And making sure that the workers of Amazon, the workers of Microsoft, the workers at the Chamber of Commerce that make these places run are actually able to afford the city in which they make great.

[00:27:14] Crystal Fincher: That makes a big difference. I want to talk again just kind of about the scale of what we're facing, and how 1A and 1B each stack up in their ability to meet the scale of the problem. We're seeing really expensive housing from apartments to homes - everything has skyrocketed over the past decade. How will 1A impact that and how will 1B impact that?

[00:27:41] Tiffani McCoy: Yeah, I think it is important - and I know if I had a political consultant managing this campaign, they'd tell me not to say this, but House Our Neighbors - we are not politicians. We try to be really honest with the public. We are not promising an overnight solution. We're not promising a silver bullet. We're not saying that in five years, everyone will be able to move into a social housing building. But we are so, so far behind in housing production in this state - we have to try everything we can, as Rian has laid out. That's why we need to end exclusionary zoning. We need to make sure that we improve transit-oriented development. That we need social housing, we need more affordable housing, we need - we need everything. We need this big bucket of ideas and we need to invest in them all completely so that we don't continue to see homelessness rise. So with 1A, we're actually saying - and very out loud - that the government doesn't have a plan to solve the housing affordability crisis. The state doesn't, the city, the county, the federal government sure doesn't. And while some people might be like - Oh, my God, don't say that out loud. We see it as an opportunity to look at what other jurisdictions in our nation are doing, what other countries are doing internationally to provide housing as a public good. We are so woefully behind, as I said at the top - only 5% or 6% of our housing stock is affordable. Right now, what we are saying to citizens of Seattle and anyone who wants to move here is - You are going to have to duke it out on the private market. You are going to have to pay for someone's yacht, for someone's retirement account, for their investment in the housing market in order to meet one of your most basic human needs. 1A is saying we don't have to have that future. 1A is saying we can invest boldly, we can reach for the moon and invest in housing as a public good here at the local level. 1B is, I would say, status quo. I would say it's mildly paternalistic, as we talked about previously. And I would say as well that it's actually a vote against social housing as it doesn't fund social housing. It's just a way to confuse voters and to divert attention away from the crisis at hand.

[00:29:42] Rian Watt: In my last job, I worked with communities in six different countries around the world to try to build systems capable of ending homelessness. I worked in this country, I worked in Canada, I worked in Australia, in Denmark, in France, and in the UK. And although the systems have a lot of commonalities, one thing that was very different in Denmark, in Australia, in France, and in Canada from this country was that in all of those places, the government has made a commitment that there is a certain amount of housing that they have a responsibility to build to house those who are least able to support themselves in their societies. Which is a little bit different than the social housing model that House Our Neighbors is advocating for here, but nonetheless represents the same commitment to solving the housing crisis through the public good that social housing is trying to achieve here. And let me tell you, it just made for such a different conversation. Because the conversation wasn't - Should the government step in to do something to solve this crisis? It was, How can we build this housing faster? How can we build this housing better? How can we make sure it's serving people as well as possible? And that was, I think, the right conversation to be having. One of the things that makes me so excited about the idea of standing up this Social Housing Developer and then giving it the resources to do what it needs to do is it gives the public some direct control over solving the housing crisis. We will have a place where we can go and say - We have a problem, the city has an obligation to do something about it, this is a tool that they have at their disposal to do something about it. That really is bold thinking. That's the public taking matters into their own hands and saying - We see the scale of the problem, we want to solve it, you're not moving fast enough. And I think, again, if we had a more ambitious Council they would be leaning into this and saying - Yes, we hear you that we really need to take this on. Here's how we're going to make the Social Housing Developer successful. Here's how we're going to do this really well. Here's how we're going to lean into Seattle's long legacy of leading on progressive governance. It's really unfortunate that they haven't done that. I want to, again, be really clear that I don't think social housing is the only answer here - we need lots more market rate housing, we need lots more private development, we need lots more traditional affordable housing development and lots more statewide money to go into those systems. But social housing is a really important lever as well, and we should be doing everything we can to make it successful.

[00:32:00] Crystal Fincher: So who is supporting social housing? What does the coalition trying to pass this and in support of this look like?

[00:32:07] Tiffani McCoy: Yeah, we actually made a comparison chart of endorsers for 1A versus 1B. And I think 1A has over 100 endorsers - that is labor, that is community groups, that is faith communities, small businesses in our area. And when you look at who has officially endorsed 1B, it's only the Chamber of Commerce. We know that Amazon, Microsoft, and these others support it based on, you know, they have to disclose the contributions to 1B. But yeah, we have the Building Trades, we have MLK Labor, we have the Education Association. And like I said, a bunch of really amazing small businesses in this part of town, all over town, who know that housing costs are like really wrecking their workers, wrecking their customers - their ability to just go and buy coffee, go and buy a meal. So we're really proud of the coalition we've built. We're proud of this movement that we've built. We're proud of the state also starting to take up the discussion of social housing with us. We're just really excited that social housing is taking off here. So yeah, I would say it's like a hundred to one.

[00:33:07] Crystal Fincher: Now we've talked about, Rian, the motivations that may be behind the Chamber of Commerce and the people who are funding the 1B campaign. Why, in your opinion, are the wide variety of people who are supporting and endorsing 1A, social housing, in support of it? What difference does it make to them?

[00:33:32] Rian Watt: I think they're in support of it because they know that we're all in this together. Our housing crisis affects all of us. The most visible and the most dangerous form of the housing crisis is homelessness, which I've spent most of my career trying to end - people living and dying in our streets as the direct result of our inaction on the housing crisis. But it's not just people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness that suffer. It's people who want to live and raise families here and can't find any family-sized housing that's within their budget. It's seniors who want to stay in their neighborhoods. It's people who grew up here who want to move back to the neighborhood that they grew up in. It's people who want to move into our city and take advantage of all that it has to offer but can't afford to do it. It's people who need to move farther and farther away from the center of our social life in order to afford something. Our housing crisis affects all of us. It affects where we - obviously - live, but it affects the people that we get to spend time with and the communities that we're a part of. And I think all of these groups understand that. And they understand that we need to be ambitious in how we solve it. They understand that although social housing hasn't been tested in this city, it's been tested in this country, and it's been tested around the world. And we deserve to think big about how we should live together - and this gives us an opportunity to do that.

[00:34:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you very much. Appreciate you both taking the time to share more with us about Propositions 1A and your thoughts on 1B. And to the listeners who are following along, please make sure to turn in your ballot, to tell everyone else in the city of Seattle that you know to return their ballots by this Tuesday, February 11th. Thank you so much - talk to you soon.

[00:35:17] Tiffani McCoy: Thank you.

[00:35:18] Rian Watt: Thanks for having us.

[00:35:20] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.

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