The View From Up Here: State Ignores Big Questions About the Housing Trust Fund

Posted by on Monday, August 27, 2018 · Leave a Comment 

The reason I posted the 5 part series on land use and housing week before last was because I felt like the conversation we’ve been having about housing has become needlessly confounded with a whole bunch of ideology and efforts to use people’s frustration about housing prices to gather political power and advantage. I also did it because I felt like my voice at that time was still optimistic, almost eloquent about the ways in which welcoming more people to the city is important on many levels. I was encouraged by that tone. 

That didn’t last long. After a refreshing trip out to the Olympic Peninsula I returned to find that same old stuff going on in the housing world. Not that I expected it to change. I thought maybe I would change. Maybe I’d finally find some sort of inner peace and acceptance about the completely incoherent and harmful way all levels of government are dealing with housing issues. Then I opened up an email from the Washington State Commerce Department announcing meetings over the next couple months of the Affordable Housing Advisory Board (AHAB), including of something called the “Needs Assessment Committee.” The AHAB Committee is the public face of the Housing Trust Fund which I’ve been calling to be reformed. 

The email just set me off. What in the world is the “Needs Assessment Committee?” Nobody I talked to had ever heard of it, and it made me think of the serious need to fix a number of problems. I started writing Commerce staff person Corina Grigoras with that question, and half an hour later I had written the email I am sharing below which I sent to as many people as I could think would care. I have not received a response. In the past, I’ve cast myself as Laocooon or Cassandra, a lofty comparison that I guess I find consoling. Instead, perhaps I’ll try to think of myself as the Statler and Waldorf of housing, ignored but at least having a sense of humor about the mess down below. Enjoy! 

Hello Corina,

What is the “Needs Assessment Committee?”
And I think there ought to be an item on the agenda at some point about how to address several issues with the Housing Trust Fund before the legislative session, including:
  1. Disparities in funding between rural and urban counties (Grays Harbor County got zero dollars over the last decade? Kititas with the lowest vacancy rate in the state got zero?);
  2. The conflicted nature of the members of the Affordable Housing Advisory Board (I think we need legislation to change to composition);
  3. The lack of resources going toward ownership programs in the state;
  4. Ideas and policies that would reduce the costs of production for non-profit housing funded by HTF;
  5. Lack of worker housing for both agricultural workers and aquacultural workers in the state (these sectors are our biggest economic engines, still);
  6. Communities of color don’t seem to be getting as many opportunities for funding their projects. Why and how do we fix that?; and
  7. Ideas for reforming the way Housing Trust Funds are allocated (this is a highly insider driven and politicized process. It isn’t fair).
I have found Commerce to resolute in resisting any effort to collaboratively or openly discuss or tackle any of these issues. The Department and the Board seem determined to carry on without taking any of these issues seriously or reaching back out with any offers of involvement to talk about them. Perhaps the JLARC review will provide us with some more clarity. But what are we going to do about these issues?
Finally, there has not been a coherent effort from the Department to consider the role that local regulation plays in constraining housing supply. There is growing frustration among producers of housing — both market rate and non-profit builders — who are finding those rules to be making their job of meeting housing demand more and more difficult.
In a recent survey of business, Washington State got a C+ for business friendliness. But look at the other aspects of that grade:
The answer this Governor and the Department seem to insist on is not more housing, but more taxes and rules. How much lower can we go on F? Ask the Democrats in the legislature.
We need more housing in all parts of this state, not more rules and taxes. And we simply must reform our system of providing subsides so that it is fair, transparent, and efficient.
Does the Governor and the Department have any answers?
I’ll leave you with pictures from the tent encampment called the River Camp in Aberdeen, a community that has received nothing for housing from the HTF and images of the Building 9 project in Seattle that a total project cost of $73,000,000, about $493,243.24 per unit. That project has $9,700,000 allocated from the Commerce Department and a special appropriation from the legislature for $2,500,000. Again, Grays Harbor County has received nothing. What are we doing here? 

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