In The News - 5/2/2024
The Spokesman Review
Washington’s neverending housing crisis
By Laurel Demkovich WASHINGTON STATE STANDARD
Washington is on track to hit some of its housing goals, but homeownership remains expensive, homelessness is growing, and the supply of affordable homes is still running short.
That’s according to a new state report. The Department of Commerce Housing Advisory Plan outlines how Washington has fared with housing since 2015 and what must be done in the next five years to meet the growing need.
While the report recognizes progress in closing racial and ethnic disparities and getting more housing built, it adds: “That progress is uneven and much more work needs to be done.”
Homeownership
Homeownership remains out of reach for many Washington residents as prices have climbed faster than incomes. This gap is getting worse, according to the report.
Since 2015, home prices have increased dramatically in nearly every county.
People of color are still much less likely to be homeowners than white households, but the disparity between the two groups declined slightly since 2015.
Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, said high rents make it difficult for many families to afford purchasing a home. When a family spends a significant amount of their income on rent, there’s little left to save for a down payment.
“Even middle-income renters are telling us that the dreams their parents had of prosperity, of having stability, of owning their own home feels like a bygone era,” Thomas said.
Renters
Although affordable rental homes are more widely available than a decade ago, the number of subsidized units is still not meeting demand.
Washington has 155,214 units for low- or moderate-income households, but as of 2019, the state had more than 700,000 households at this income level, according to the report.
That means there’s about one affordable home for every five households who need one.
Hundreds of asylum-seekers again sleep outside in Seattle
Private donations to support hotels, rentals run out
Hundreds of asylum-seekers are back living outside after running out of private donations to cover their stay in hotels and short-term rentals across King County.
They are sleeping in a largescale homeless encampment in a Seattle park even after King County awarded $2 million this month to local nonprofits to support asylum-seekers in need of shelter as they wait to receive their work permits.
The two organizations that received $750,000 each from the county to fund housing for asylum-seekers say their money is intended to establish longer-term, more sustainable housing, not to cover hotel stays temporarily. Despite that, one of the groups has helped two families from the Quality Inn move into housing.
City and county leadership say that no other funding exists to support this group.
A spokesperson for King County Executive Dow Constantine said the $2 million in grant funding was all they had left to help asylum-seekers, many of whom are living at a church in Tukwila or spread among hotels in South King County.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office also claimed to have exhausted its funding for shelter and services for migrants.
The group of close to 300 people, including dozens of children, set up tents Monday afternoon in the grassy area of the Central District’s Powell Barnett Park as the rain fell.
The Center Square
Seattle City Council rejects land use exception to address affordable housing
The Seattle City Council has rejected a bill intended to offer zoning incentives for up to 35 redevelopments that partner with local nonprofits to boost housing in displaced neighborhoods.
Council Bill 120750 would have established a term-limited, pilot program that would have given community-led affordable housing developments the ability to build larger or denser residential projects than the city’s land use code would otherwise allow. The bill was rejected with only two councilmembers voting yes on the housing incentive package.
Councilmember Tammy Morales, who sponsored the bill, said the bill focused on helping community-based organizations develop and create cultural services, housing, and affordable commercial space in neighborhoods that previously had restrictive covenants.
Phoenix New Times
(sent in by Jerry LeClaire)
Arizona sues apartment landlords for ‘immoral’ rent price-fixing scheme
Attorney General Kris Mayes accuses RealPage, nine landlords of acting like a cartel to gouge renters.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit Wednesday against software company RealPage and nine residential landlords, alleging they engaged in a massive conspiracy to price gouge at least 100,000 renters in Phoenix and Tucson.
RealPage sets prices for apartment units based on an algorithm that maximizes profit, according to the lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. Some 70% of multifamily apartment units listed in the Valley are owned, operated or managed by companies that have contracted with RealPage. In Tucson, it's about 50% of units.
“Renters are not dealing with a competitive market,” Mayes told Phoenix New Times at a press conference on Wednesday. “They are dealing with a monopoly that is engaged in anti-competitive price fixing.”
With the use of RealPage software becoming widespread, the free market ceases to be free, fair or transparent, and landlords can effectively conspire to raise prices through the software’s algorithm, the lawsuit argues.