Why Are We Building Non-Profit Housing Units in Seattle?
We should be paying people’s rent. Based on my analysis of Housing Trust Fund data for 8 years, here’s some shocking numbers.
- Seattle received $61,398,506 in HTF between 2008 and 2016
- That’s $7,674,813.25 HTF per year, or $639,567.77 per month
- Over that time 2316 units were built or 290 units per year
- If HTF offered $2000 per month to 290 households for 8 years, it would have cost $55,680,000
- The total cost of building those units was $599,496,832, including the use of HTF resources
- If the balance of those funds, $538,098,336, was used in the same way, it could have paid down another 2803 households $2,000 a month toward rent for the same period.
- Operating costs on 2316 units at $6,000 per door is $111,168,000 per unit
- Those operating costs could help with $2,000 in rental assistance for another 579 households for 8 years.
Why are we building units in Seattle? Why aren’t we just buying down household cost burden? The answer is: politics. There’s no way, even with all the cash in the world, that Seattle non-profits could create units fast enough to offset cost burdened households. Putting money into people’s bank accounts would solve the problem fairly and efficiently.
