Photograph Source: Raydann – CC BY-SA 4.0

Six cities and a county have initiated social housing programs to provide permanently affordable, publicly owned, and controlled housing for lower and middle-income working families.

Seattle, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Montgomery County, Maryland, are the most prominent ones in North America to have passed social housing laws that are being implemented or are in development. All five U.S. cities started their programs in the last four years.

Local Progress, a national network of progressive municipal officials, has released a detailed report on the status of social housing programs in these cities and Montgomery County, not including Toronto.

Some city governments are reluctant to promote social housing because they have limited revenues and little or no surplus to fund it. However, North America’s oldest and most successful entities building mixed-income affordable housing, Montgomery’s Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), have survived. They are even able to expand because of supportive local governments.

Below are descriptions of how a social housing approach requires time and cooperation from the local government.

Seattle is the most recent city to see a populist movement get behind social housing.

Two competing housing plans, which voters must choose from a February 11 vote, illustrate how establishing one can challenge the marketplace and established public institutions.

The grassroots organization House Our Neighbors (HON) is presenting Proposition 1A (a.k.a. Initiative 137) to the voters. Previously, they put Initiative 135 up for a vote in 2023, which passed with a yes margin of 14% over a no vote.

It established the new public developer, the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD), to create and own social housing in Seattle. The housing would be available to the working class, which includes those earning from zero to 120% of Seattle’s area median income (AMI).

Proposition 1A introduces a progressive tax derived from levying a 5% payroll tax. Employers pay it on the amount each employee earns over $1 million a year in compensation. The tax is projected to deliver $50 million a year to SSHD.

With the mayor’s support, the city council rejected implementing Initiative 137’s funding plan and instead placed an alternative plan on the ballot, Proposition 1B. It requires no new taxes; instead, it withdraws $10 million yearly from the JumpStart business tax.

Most of that tax already goes to low-income housing, plus some funding for sheltering people experiencing homelessness. The net gain in housing units would be around 10% of what 1A could deliver. The plan would end after seven years unless renewed.

Also, unlike social housing plans, the 1B plan would not include a mix of low-cost and market-rate housing. Such a mix provides an additional revenue stream to continue building affordable housing. Instead, with 1B, every resident must be eligible for publicly funded rent subsidies. As a result, it does not provide a consistent revenue stream to keep its plan operational, produces less housing over a shorter time, and has no plan to continue operating.

If the public wants a long-term approach to providing more affordable housing in........

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