News

Honoring exemplary leadership in the affordable housing sector in 2024

December 11, 2024 in Blog post

At our 2024 Annual Member Meeting this week, we had the distinct honor of presenting our Board of Directors Award to two incredible individuals. These awards recognize those who have been outstanding champions of HDC’s mission and have made an important impact in the community and the affordable housing sector.

Sondra Nielsen (she/her), Director of Facilities & Asset Management, DESC

Sondra has been with DESC since 2013 and directs the organization’s development, asset management, and facilities management. She is an incredible advocate for her staff and the population that DESC serves especially in times of tough operational issues, and continuously pushed DESC to be on the cutting edge of building innovation and sustainability.

Sondra has been a great supporter and early adopter of HDC’s Exemplary Buildings Program and pushed the EBP-supported Hobson Place beyond the program standards to Passive House certification. She is always ready, eager, and willing to share lessons learned and steps into mentorship positions whenever possible.

Sondra previously co-chaired HDC’s Facilities Management Peer Group and has participated in numerous panels explaining and extolling HDC’s sustainability programs. Sondra has also previously acted in advisory capacities for HDC programs, representing the development/asset management, and Housing First voices.

We are so grateful for Sondra’s ongoing leadership and for being a champion for innovation and sustainability in the affordable housing sector.

Sabrina Smith (she/her), Community Lending Manager, Umpqua Bank

Sabrina Smith is currently the Community Lending Manager at Umpqua Bank, and first came to become a home loan officer because she wanted to help first time and low-income buyers feel more confident in their ability to purchase a home.

Sabrina views her role as that of an educator, helping connect Umpqua with non-profit organizations, diverse real estate agencies and state-run organizations that specialize in helping low-income and minority communities increase levels of home ownership.

Recently, Sabrina has taken on active roles in HDC’s Affordable Homeownership Affinity Group, HDC’s Equity and Community Work Group, and has championed the Black Home Initiative.

Drawing on her experience, she collaborates with industry stakeholders to expand homeownership and real estate investment opportunities for disenfranchised communities across Washington State. With the successful rollout of the Covenant Homeownership Program and Umpqua’s forthcoming special purpose credit program, Sabrina continues to be a dedicated leader in advancing equitable homeownership.

Recognizing and thanking Heather Bunn

November 14, 2024 in Blog post

HDC is honored to recognize Heather Bunn, Vice President of Business Development at Rafn, for her many years of service to HDC and the affordable housing sector. Heather will be closing out her 34 years at Rafn at the end of 2024.

Heather’s construction management career began in 1984— working primarily on the construction of affordable housing projects for non-profit clients. Heather joined Rafn in 1990, becoming a partner responsible for client relations and overall direction. Over the course of her career, she has been an advocate of sustainable goals, high-quality standards, and sector collaboration.

Heather served on HDC’s Board of Directors from 2008 to 2016 (including two years as Board President) and has been a consistent leader among HDC’s members—relied upon for her steady vision and clear understanding of the association. Heather received the HDC Board of Directors Award in 2021 in recognition of her impact.

Heather has been involved across every aspect of the sector. She currently sits on NAIOP’s Sustainable Development committee, ULI’s Workforce Housing Product Council, and co-chaired the PDS Affinity Group (currently on hiatus). She was also responsible for starting the Exemplary Buildings Task Force, the Offsite Construction Task Force, the Cost Containment Work Group, and spearheaded the “Biggest Bang for your Buck” series that ran for many years at Housing WA. Beyond that, Heather has also previously served as a volunteer on the Seattle Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda task force (HALA) and served as an instructor in the University of Washington’s Real Estate Development Certificate program.

During her time in the sector, Heather has approached her work from a place of servant leadership, a willingness to challenge tradition, and a drive to transform conversations into action. She has truly done more to increase access to affordable housing than can be cataloged.

Thank you, Heather, for all that you’ve done for HDC and the entire affordable housing sector. We can’t wait to see where this next leg of your journey takes you.

– The entire team at HDC

Guiding HDC’s critical work in racial equity

October 3, 2024 in Racial Equity Initiative

HDC member racial equity next steps:

  1. Fill out the Racial Equity Commitment Member Survey
  2. Attend a Racial Equity General Overview Learn at Lunch (November 8)
  3. Attend a Racial Equity Commitment Draft Review Learn at Lunch (October 25 or November 15)

At HDC, we often speak of our collective as a movement. We know that solving the problems that our region faces isn’t done by a single person or organization but is the result of countless individual steps that, when taken together, make a tremendous difference. We know this from the housing work we do every day—building, together, thousands of affordable homes throughout Seattle and King County for over the past 35 years. We also know that movements require momentum to thrive—when we become stagnant or complacent, we can no longer call our work a movement.

Racial equity is one of the critical movements at HDC. Advancing racial equity requires all of us working together for the long-term. It requires dedication—a collective willingness to keep trying, even when it’s not perfect and especially when it’s uncomfortable, taking steps to keep the needle moving.

As we approach the end of the year, we want to take a moment to check in on our movement and our shared commitment to dismantle racism and, in its place, build equitable, inclusive communities.

Some of the steps we’ve taken as a movement to move the needle on creating equitable communities include:

At the individual level, our Housing Development Internship Program gives racially and socio-economically diverse students an opportunity to get nine months of paid hands-on experience in affordable housing development, while also receiving mentorship and other support. We’re also working to diversify our sector through our Leadership Development Survey Course, which has had 275 graduates to date and has been a cornerstone of HDC programming since 2008. We’ve become more intentional in how we recruit and select participants for this program, and our latest cohorts have had over 50% BIPOC participants.

At the member level, we’ve launched the Community-Based Organization (CBO) Affinity Group, which was formed as a space to identify and address barriers to community-driven development. We’ve also launched two race-based caucusing cohorts for members who have been through racial equity trainings and are looking to broaden their impact within their own organizations.

We continue to lead advocacy work with the Black Home Initiative, and with the passage of the Covenant Homeownership Account bill. HDC has been a critical partner in creating this first in the nation Special Purpose Credit Program, which aims to address housing discrimination.

Finally, within our own board and staff, we’ve completed a series of Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion trainings together, and we have partnered with organizations like The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and Courageous Conversation to offer trainings to members.

Our Next Step

We’ve built incredible momentum over the last four years, and now we’re gearing up to take our next step.

At our summer quarterly member meeting, we shared that HDC is working on a Racial Equity Commitment that we will roll out in 2025. This commitment is intended to provide a framework for member organizations to commit to taking meaningful and actionable change by selecting goals and actions, specific to their organization to move the needle on dismantling racism and increasing equity. No matter where you and your organization are on your journey, we hope to help you commit to doing what you can do. HDC is committed to supporting your success in this critically necessary work.

As we prepare to launch the Commitment, we want to hear from our members. Please fill out our short, four question, Racial Equity Commitment Member Survey from the perspective of you as an individual.

Over the next two months, HDC is offering informational webinars and opportunities to share your thoughts and feedback, as we go through the process of finalizing and launching the Racial Equity Commitment, the times and dates of which you can find below. Please register today!

Additionally, in Spring 2025, members may be invited to join a cohort of early adopters, prior to the wider launch of the Racial Equity Commitment in mid-2025. This early adopter cohort is designed to support organizations through their goal-setting processes, and the lessons we learn from this cohort will inform HDC’s work when the Commitment released broadly for all of HDC membership.

We are so excited to be creating this framework to help us all keep moving the needle and creating a more just world. Thank you to all of our members who have taken the journey with us so far.

Celebrating the streamlining of design review in downtown Seattle

October 1, 2024 in Announcements

HDC commends the City of Seattle for taking another positive step to improve the way that we permit and approve new housing in the city by passing CB 120824 and streamlining development in downtown Seattle.

We recognize the link between Design Review and added soft costs and delays to housing. CB 120824 builds on the recent success of other bills that temporarily exempt affordable housing from Design Review in Seattle, reducing the barriers and costs of development. Our partners—representing a broad group of stakeholders across the affordable housing sector who interact directly and indirectly with the design review process—can attest to the clear benefits that this temporary exemption has created in a short period of time.

Now, with CB 120824, we thank the City for encouraging development overall while accelerating and increasing Mandatory Housing Affordability participation for areas in and near Downtown Seattle. We express our sincere gratitude to the Office of the Mayor for proposing this bill and to City Council for your support and vote. We look forward to partnering with the City and other stakeholders to implement permanent improvements to Seattle’s Design Review program across all neighborhoods, affordability levels, and types of housing during upcoming HB 1293 implementation.

HDC opposes I-2066 and I-2117

September 17, 2024 in Policy & Advocacy

The Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County is firmly committed to energy efficiency and sustainability within the affordable housing ecosystem. Our HDC Board of Directors voted to oppose two initiatives and HDC has established a Climate Defense effort to provide information related to two environmentally critical initiatives impacting the built environment; both slated for the November 2024 Statewide ballot. As a 501c3 nonprofit, HDC can engage with, endorse, or oppose ballot measures (not candidates), and to share information with potential voters both about the content of the ballot measure, and why HDC has taken its position on that measure.

We believe that both initiatives would be antithetical to the building and maintenance of thriving communities that provide stability through equitable sustainability. Both initiatives have been funded by wealthy polluters that are seeking rollbacks in energy policy to prioritize their profits at the cost of our clean air, improved transportation options, climate mitigation efforts and vitally supportive clean energy investments already underway statewide.

Initiative 2066 would strip the process that the legislature has established for large public utilities to develop a transition plan to meet reduced emissions targets. Instead of building a clear path towards decarbonization, in alignment with Washington’s reduced emissions targets, this initiative would require utilities to invest in their capacity for the long-term delivery of natural gas.

Initiative 2066 is in direct opposition to the efforts that our membership has been engaged in through our work with state, local and utility administrators, alongside our community of Affordable Housing participants.

Initiative 2117 would eliminate an important revenue source to mitigate climate change. This could worsen the impacts of climate change, including more frequent severe weather and dangerous air quality that disproportionately impacts people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and disability. By removing the “cap-and-trade” component of the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), polluters would no longer be financially motivated to reduce their carbon emissions, resulting in greater risks of wildfires, extreme weather, and continued climate inequities for historically overburdened communities.

CCA funding collected to date is already supporting improved access to mass transit and major transportation initiatives, facilitating public and private building retrofits, and creating wildfire mitigation strategies, to name just a few. Crucially, at least 35% of revenue from the CCA is directly spent in overburdened communities and 10% to tribes.

HDC is proud of our memberships’ ongoing efforts to provide illustrative demonstration projects through our Exemplary Buildings and Decarbonize Affordable Housing Now programs that support reasonable transitions to sustainable building and retrofitting. Our collaborative efforts are building roadmaps to high-efficiency buildings for greater cost stability and lower emissions.  

We enthusiastically support the clean energy vision set forth through negotiated legislative deliberation. These initiatives are misguided rollbacks that would unfairly benefit the wealthy and harm those that are already at the greatest risk.  

2024 Housing Development Internship Program Graduation

June 18, 2024 in Blog post, Leadership Development

Earlier this month, our HDC team and guests gathered at El Centro de la Raza to honor and celebrate eleven students on their completion of the Housing Development Internship Program. This year’s graduation ceremony marks five program years of HDIP, a nine-month internship for BIPOC students interested in careers in the affordable housing sector.

HDIP is now accepting student and host agency applications for the 2024-25 program year. You can find more information and application materials by visiting our Housing Development Internship Program page.

Read on to learn more about these eleven future leaders.

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HDC Member Highlight: Tiscareno

June 6, 2024 in Member Highlight

Tiscareno is a mid-sized architecture firm with highly skilled and approachable professionals who create exceptional spaces where people want to work, live, and gather. Through a deep dedication to collaboration and affordability, Tiscareno produces beautiful, functional results that enrich communities for generations. Among their portfolio of work is a large mixed-use affordable housing project, Solera, developed by DevCo. Solera is a 590-unit project in Renton featuring 30,000 square feet of commercial space, an indoor basketball court, and work-from-home space.

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HDC Member Highlight: Imagine Housing

April 26, 2024 in Member Highlight

Over the last 35 years, Imagine Housing has developed apartment communities across the Eastside, providing an affordable home and supportive services to over 1,400 people with low-and-moderate incomes. As the only Eastside-based non-profit provider of affordable housing, Imagine Housing’s vision is an Eastside with interconnected and welcoming communities where all people can live, learn, work and play. 

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2024 Legislative Session Overview

January 9, 2024 in Blog post, Policy & Advocacy

Happy 2024, members, community stakeholders, and tireless affordable housing advocates!

The Housing Development Consortium is excited to announce the opening of the 2024 Washington State legislative session, on January 8, 2024. This 60-day short session is a valuable opportunity for transformative policy to create equitable, sustainable, and affordable housing.

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Celebrating and highlighting an extraordinary year

January 5, 2024 in Blog post

2023 was an exceptional year for HDC. We took the lead in spearheading a series of incredible victories for housing affordability and supportive services in King County, we played a pivotal role in addressing the legacy of housing discrimination, we laid the groundwork for this year’s round of comprehensive plan updates, and we continued our work in developing the future leadership of the sector.

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