More BS on Social Housing, Big Bucks from Amazon

Sorry to keep writing, but the lies keeps coming!

I had a piece out in the Urbanist a few days ago, pulling apart the deceptions in the first mailer about social housing. The Urbanist also kindly linked to my video on the topic (which I have shared with you, and which is embedded again, below, if you’d consider watching it and sharing it.)

I have three additional quick items for you:

1. Amazon has now dumped $100,000 into the campaign against Proposition 1A. Just like in 2019, Amazon is trying to buy itself lower taxes in Seattle.
   

2. One of the new mailers from Amazon and the chamber makes more deceptive claims. For instance, it says the Social Housing Developer has never built housing before.
   
   If by “the social housing developer” they mean the legal entity (agency) that was created last by law year through an overwhelming vote of Seattle voters, which literally cannot build housing until we fund it, sure.
   
   But that is not what this supposed to make you think. They are using this to try to make “the developer” sound inexperienced.

   
   But they skip over the fact that this agency has hired a CEO who is quite experienced. We all know that “the developer” evokes a picture of a person or people, not a legal entity. Roberto Jimenez has built and or managed over half a billion dollars in affordable housing. Their claim is, in other words, extremely misleading.

3. The Amazon-funded mailer also points out that the social housing developer plans to build more units (12%) for people earning a bit above our local median income than they plan (3%) to build for very, very poor people.
   
   Of course, that was never the focus. That is what the housing levy and regular city funds from JumpStart are supposed to be for. (They have actively fought to cut those back too). It is worth noting that the people whose main mission is to develop housing for the very poor also endorse this measure.
   
   The Bezos mailer conveniently fails to mention that there are way, way, way more units for working class people who earn less than our local median income. All of these units (53%) of the total built meet the federal definition of affordable housing.
   
   They also leave out that the 12% of units that are higher income provide the subsidy that makes all these low income units not need future tax dollars for continuous rent subsidies.

   
   Of course, with Amazon paying bribes to Trump, and its owner squelching journalistic independence at the Washington Post, it’s not surprising that they would stoop to this crap.

I’m sad to report that once again our Mayor, Bruce Harrell, was all over these mailers. After fighting for years against the majority of city voters on housing supply, recently defunding deeply affordable housing be rerouting taxes to his favorite projects—he is now actively campaigning against this mixed income affordable housing.

Here is that video again.

Vote Proposition 1A.