News

HDC’s Annual Celebration is about recognizing the progress of the affordable housing movement, and the strength and depth of the commitment and compassion of the affordable housing community. The incredible achievements that have led us to the current moment where we are energized to continue to do this work wouldn’t be possible without visionary leaders who have been instrumental to the success of HDC and the work of achieving a King County where everyone lives with dignity in safe, healthy, and affordable homes. 

This year we our honored to award Steve Clagett, Linda Hall, and Tom Jacobi with the Board of Directors award, and Maureen Kostyack with the Carla Okigwe Award.

Steve Clagett:

In 1980, county planner Steve Clagett and other housing activists founded Common Ground (which merged with Bellwether in 2013) in response to a growing housing crisis in the downtown core. The organization began by helping local social service agencies and churches preserve and transform historic buildings into affordable housing, saving many downtown Seattle landmarks. Steve and Common Ground were also founding members of HDC in 1988, and Steve served on the board from 1988 – 1992. From Common Ground, Steve went on to take executive and leadership roles with 1000 Friends of Washington (now Futurewise), King County Housing Authority, and ONE/Northwest (now Groundwire). Steve has an affinity for coalition building and leading through both reflection and forward thinking, serving as the co-leader of Faith Action Network’s Economic Justice Working Group and recently served on HDC’s 30^th Anniversary Committee, helping to create the banners documenting our sector’s growth and progress.

“Get someone into a home, and change happens in their life…That’s been our philosophy from the start.”– Steve Clagett

Linda Hall:

A leader within the area’s human services community, Linda Hall has spent the past 15 years in executive-level positions at many local nonprofits. Linda was previously the Executive Director of St. Andrew’s Housing Group (now Imagine Housing), Director of Real Estate with the Seattle Housing Authority, and Director of Housing Development with the YWCA Seattle – King – Snohomish. Now at Loveall Price and Associates working as a Project Manager for Congregations for the Homeless, Linda continues to lead as an advocate for affordable housing on the Eastside. She was a co-leader on the Issaquah Zero Energy Village and recognized by ARCH “as a passionate voice for affordable housing”  Linda served on the HDC board from 2001 – 2009, and served as board president from 2004-2005. Linda is a long-time partner of HDC and continues to help lead projects and committees within the association. She was instrumental in the creation of the 30th Anniversary banners.

“Every now and then you get an incredible opportunity…This has been a project of a lifetime for me.”
-Linda Hall

Tom Jacobi:

With 35+ years of experience in financial management, mortgage lending, and loan servicing, Tom Jacobi plays an important role at HomeSight, and has occupied almost every job at the organization – from project manager to finance manager, to lender, to loan servicer, building maintenance, and capital procurement and compliance.After 25 years with HomeSight, he seen as the institutional memory of the power of affordable homeownership advocacy. In his current role as Chief Portfolio Officer, Tom is a CDFI application veteran with the wins to back it up, and has played an integral role in representing the important voice of homeownership within HDC, serving on the Board of Directors from 1997 – 2002. We were also told that in his youth, Tom hopped trains for a while, and is the resident Nordic Ski patroller and cross-country expeditioner for HomeSight.

“Affordability has always been an issue. HomeSight is still learning, still growing but now as a national leader in non-profit lending. We need to keep evolving our tools and resources to help working families purchase their first home.”-Tom Jacobi

Carla Okigwe Award Winner: Maureen Kostyack

Maureen has played a major role in shaping the housing priorities in Olympia and King County since the early 1990’s. One of her great successes was the creation of the Washington Families Fund by the Washington Legislature. She was the visionary who saw the need for a fund to support social services connected to affordable housing. In her role with the Seattle Office of Housing, Maureen educated policy makers and elected officials about the ins and outs of housing needs and navigated political landscapes to keep affordable housing on the forefront of people’s minds. Her incredible leadership in spearheading two renewals of the Seattle Housing levy, serving on the boards of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance and HDC, and more has made her a pivotal player in all facets of the affordable housing conversation: housing finance, land use, and a passionate advocate at every table. We are honored to award her with the Carla Okigwe award named after HDC’s founder. Maureen has played a pivotal role in the region’s affordable housing progress, and her impact can be seen in the affordable homes built throughout the county!

Tired, empty, hating what I carry
But afraid to lay it down, stingy,
Angry, doing violence to others
By the sheer freight of my gloom
Halfway home, wanting to stop, to quit
But keeping going mostly out of spite.
– from “Charity” by Tracy K. Smith

Her thoughts on “the cost of compassion” were what first grabbed me and pulled me into the work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. Equity, justice, hope, and humanity—and the forces that work for and against them—are at the core of her work, just like they’re at the core of the work of all members of HDC.

Ms. Smith compels me to think deeply about how I process today’s starkly divergent perspectives about society’s failure to grant everyone housing security. Poems like “Charity” remind me that any discomfort I’m experiencing from these intense and polarizing tensions still pales in comparison to the pain endured by those living each day on the periphery.

I do wonder some days if we can let go of our certainties just long enough to agree to seek common ground. And then just long enough to respectfully hold opposing perspectives. And then just long enough to discover what might happen when we combine rather than collide.
Years ago when I worked in global development, colleagues shared “Two Ears of Corn” by Roland Bunch. One line jumped out and has stayed with me since: “the problem with charity is that you need a recipient.”

Ms. Smith’s “Charity” recalls that quote. It reminds me that doing this work well means rising above ourselves to get to a place of surrender and receptiveness. A place where we understand that it’s not really about us. Where we admit we don’t come with the answers and that we need to be quiet and learn from the people we’re seeking to serve (and, yes, from those we disagree with).

HDC’s annual celebration is always about standing in awe of the power this movement derives from its incredible diversity of life experiences and perspectives. Our 2019 celebration is on April 23, and Tracy K. Smith will be right there with us. Reserve your seat now, and feel free to include any others in your orbit who could use a boost of joy and optimism.

Marty Kooistra

Until I can understand why you
Fled, why you are willing to bleed,
Why you deserve what I must be
Willing to cede, let me imagine
You are my mother in Montgomery…

– from “Refuge” by Tracy K. Smith

HDC’s members unite as a movement around a common vision: all people living with dignity in safe, healthy, and affordable homes within communities of opportunity. We all know realizing that vision means realizing how intertwined it is with equity and justice. And getting there means comprehending the realness of the lives of those who are housing insecure.

In her 2018 collection Wade in the Water, Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K.  Smith examines equity and justice both in the broad context of our nation’s history and in the tight space of individual lives.

Throughout, as in her poem “Refuge” (which she wrote after attending a seminar on forced migration), she underscores the power and the elusiveness of empathy.

As a sector, we’re pretty great at generating messaging that we hope compels everyone to care. Certainly, housing security and homelessness have captured the attention of the media and the general public as never before. But nothing has a chance of making the necessary impact without a climate of “systemic empathy.”

Front-line staff of HDC member organizations know this. They facilitate extraordinary changes in the lives of the people and communities they serve—and work tirelessly at it, without regard for the hour, the day of the week, or the boundaries of job descriptions—because they’re equipped with professional skills fueled by empathy.

If we really want just, equitable, scalable, and sustainable solutions to the housing crisis, each of us, regardless of our role or affiliation in the sector, needs to emulate them.

Speaking of honoring HDC member staff: we all come together once a year to do just that. If you’ve been to one of HDC’s annual member celebrations, you know they’re all about creating a space to lift up the work, honor each of you, and enrich our shared experience.

Our 2019 celebration is on April 23, and we’re tremendously honored to have Tracy K. Smith as keynote speaker. Please take a minute now to reserve your organization’s tables. Also, maybe think about bringing someone who’s not part of our sector on a daily basis: I hear empathy’s really contagious.

–Marty Kooistra, Executive Director

Seattle is finally moving forward to pass Citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA), which would require all new development, no matter where it is built in Seattle, to contribute to affordable housing. This is long overdue. Non-profit developers stand ready to expand access to affordable housing with an infusion of MHA resources.

There is a broad sentiment in our community for changing the status quo on housing. In its recent

newsobserver.com

announcement, Microsoft boldly supported policy changes including increased density and reduced parking and other land use changes consistent with the MHA approach.  They put up $500 million of corporate dollars to demonstrate that all parts of our community need to advance solutions.

The Mandatory Housing Affordability program requires private developers to contribute to affordable housing by either including affordable units on site or making a payment to support the creation of affordable housing. Unfortunately the Seattle Times Editorial titled “Engage to save Seattle neighborhoods” misrepresents and undervalues the beneficial impact of the financial resources and production of housing that will result from MHA.

Both of MHA’s housing production methods have positives.  When for profit developers include

Seattle.gov HALA

affordable apartments on-site, they provide mixed-income buildings in the areas of greatest growth.  When they make a payment in lieu of on-site performance, the City uses those contributions to address priorities not being met by the market, such as producing 2 or 3-bedroom, family-size apartments, and supporting projects serving seniors, homeless or special needs.

The City has a strong track record of deploying resources from the Seattle Housing Levy, Incentive Zoning payments – and now – MHA payments, into affordable housing. Mayor Durkan recently announced funding awards of $75 million dedicated to build and preserve 1400 affordable rental homes. Although this was the City’s biggest annual commitment ever, it necessitated a great triage of resources as the total applications received by the City were over $240 million dollars. Many proposals, with land and plans in hand, are on hold until more MHA payments flow.

Mercy Housing Northwest alone has a pipeline of housing that will serve nearly 500 households, including at transit sites in Mt. Baker and Roosevelt and at Magnuson Park. These would simply not be possible without City financial support.

The Seattle Times has had excellent reporting on the numbers and the human impact of our area

AIA Seattle

housing crisis in their Project Homeless series, in the FYI Guy columns and in their real estate reporting.  It is puzzling that the editorial board can read their own reporting and rather than feel a sense of urgency, simply suggest more delay on what has been 3-years of process, study and fair time for appeals.

Delaying MHA won’t stop growth or contribute to affordable housing. During this long boom, developers have built with lesser affordability requirements. The delays in adopting MHA due to a protracted appeal are conservatively estimated to have cost $87 million in developer contributions or over 700 affordable homes that would have been built if the program were in place.

MHA is the product of years of analysis and community engagement.  It is time to move beyond a static view of neighborhoods and embrace this requirement to harness the capacity and resources of the private sector, as well as to provide leverage to nonprofit developers, to improve housing options for everyone.

Take Action:

• Select Committee on Citywide MHA meeting on Feb 8th
• MHA Public Hearing on Feb 21st

Author-Bill Rumpf is President of Mercy Housing Northwest. Mercy Housing is one of the nation’s largest affordable housing organizations and is a member of the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County.

Seattle’s crippling housing crisis has made it harder for people of all income levels to live in our city. One major factor behind our skyrocketing cost of living is that our housing policies are stuck in the past. It is illegal to build even a duplex on 75 percent of the land zoned for housing in Seattle. If we’re serious about affordability, then it’s time for a change.

Seattle is considering a suite of innovative strategies to unlock ways to create more housing options across the income spectrum, developed after nearly four years of community engagement with tens of thousands of residents. Unfortunately, the Seattle Times editorial titled “Engage to save Seattle neighborhoods” is an alarming misrepresentation of two key legislative proposals in this effort – Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) and the modest legislation to encourage single family homeowners to build more granny flats and backyard cottages (generally called accessory dwelling units or ADUs).

MHA is simple in concept: to gain more development capacity, developers must provide affordable housing units within new buildings or contribute to a city fund to build affordable housing. The result in either case is more affordable housing. MHA is already in place in Downtown, South Lake Union and four other neighborhoods throughout the city and raised more than $13 million last year to create affordable housing. Putting it in place citywide will provide even more desperately needed affordable units in our city. Consider that had MHA been in place last year, we could have raised another $87 million worth of affordable housing – $100 million total, without needing to raise taxes.

The Times Editorial Board’s alarmist contention that “Upzones are happening not just in urban villages, where high-density growth should occur, but also in single-family neighborhoods,” is misleading. An important distinction is that “citywide” does not mean that every block of every neighborhood would be expected to have a high-rise on it. In fact, only 6% of all single-family neighborhoods, which already comprise three-quarters of land for housing, would be affected by MHA.

We also take issue with the Times characterizing legislation for granny flats and backyard cottages as another “punch” to homeowners. Instead of hurting homeowners, it offers them greater flexibility by allowing them to build two granny flats or a granny flat and a backyard cottage – currently only one or the other is allowed—in addition to making modest changes to off-street parking requirements, adjusting size guidelines for backyard cottages, and reducing the requirement that the homeowner live in one of the units. Both Portland and Vancouver, BC passed virtually identical legislation– and the result is more units were built with no adverse impact to parking or neighborhood character.  In fact, a study in both cities demonstrated that the majority of ADUs are rented at below market rates, making granny flats and backyard cottages yet another form of affordable housing provided at no expense to the public.

It’s time to move past divisive rhetoric that paints proponents of these changes as developers and “special interest groups” pitted against “dozens of neighborhood and community groups.” Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, both policies have broad support from neighborhood groups, grassroots coalitions and concerned homeowners and renters alike who recognize that to address the severity of our housing crisis, we need changes to the status quo. After more than two years of Seattle process, it’s time to move forward.

Take Action:

• Select Committee on Citywide MHA meeting on Feb 8th
• MHA Public Hearing on Feb 21st

Authors:

Marilyn Strickland is the President and CEO of Seattle Chamber and former Mayor of Tacoma

Nicole Grant is Executive Secretary-Treasurer of MLK Labor, the central body of labor organizations in King County.

Faith Li Pettis served as co-chair of the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Advisory Committee.

This year for some reason I’m drawn to the lunar eclipse, the so called “super blood wolf moon”.  This is occurring on the eve of our country’s 2019 annual commemoration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Junior holiday. Not surprisingly, it’s cloudy here in the Pacific Northwest and the ability to see the spectacle is periodically obscured. I guess there’s something intriguing about bearing witness to these uncommon moments.

Growing up in the 60’s I was aware of uncommon times. The country was amidst an awakening that brought hope that it might become all that our founding documents stated it was. These were the days of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his team of leaders who decided it was long past time for racial injustice to be faced head on.

Today, we are amidst more uncertain and disturbing times. These days give us pause as it seems that while much has changed so rapidly, the most important things have not changed at all.

In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King shares this perspective:

“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”

As HDC begins this 31^st year of work to collectively ensure access to quality and affordable housing accessible for everyone in Martin Luther King, Jr. County, we must evolve, not just in how we approach scaling our work, but how we confront the institutional and structural racism the perpetuates the inequities of our time.

–Marty Kooistra, Executive Director