How to Get Housing for Firefighters and Nurses

A Great Explainer Video

In the US, we don’t build nearly enough middle income housing.

We are really lousy about building the kind of homes affordable for the people who teach our children, care for us in the hospital, or rescue us from burning buildings. 

We basically just don’t bother. 

Fortunately, some smart people thought to look around the world at other places that do deliver good middle income housing, and put together a plan to do something similar here in Seattle. 

Last year, Seattle voters passed a law creating a public developer and now this year I-137 aims to fund housing for firefighters and other working people with a small surcharge on incomes over one million dollars (just a nickel on the dollar, with nothing for your first million). 

While Seattle’s  plan is not identical to the Viennese model, it takes its cues from Vienna. If you want details about it, I wrote it up in February, and in another post I addressed the chamber’s rigid opposition to taxing very rich people a little bit in order to house people like firefighters and nurses. 

Like Vienna’s approach, the cost to the city is relatively low, because middle-income earners can pay a reasonable rental rate when they live in these publicly owned homes. It provides homes for the people who make Seattle a place worth living, and it prevents the excessive commutes that erode their quality of life and gum up our roads. It also makes the city more attractive to families, which you may have noticed is an issue when it comes to our schools.

Last, it gives a broader swathe of the public a stake in ensuring high quality public investments in housing, which is a great way to avoid the mistakes of the past and ensure better maintenance going forward. 

It should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, with people in leadership in this city who oppose the most basic Democratic party policy when it comes to taxes and social services, democracy, labor protections housing, affordable housing, police accountability and climate–it isn’t. 

So we have to take matters into our own hands. 

Please volunteer, or donate, and at the very least make sure you show up and sign the petition to get it on the ballot.