News Feb 14, 2023 at 8:14 pm

Initial Results Show the Initiative With a Six-Point Lead

May Housey always vanquish their foes. HK

Comments

1

Grats!

2

Well, Way to GO
SEATTLE! maybe
Cali and HI also!

"The renters themselves and experts [hmmm] would govern the buildings, which would stay in public hands until the end of time."

in 'the Grapes of Wrath'
the self-policed Camps were
socialism personified ! humans
acting Humanely which we're so
Famous for ~ a sharing economy. will
there be outdoor gathering spaces as well?

housing as commodity
is Capitalism personified
and inhumane definitionally

finally
we begin
to re-Think it!

Hoo-RAY!

3

=D

4

And the funding is left of the Seattle City Council somehow to figure out, which Peter to pay which Paul.

5

@4: Only a little. I-135 requires the city to fork over initial startup funds, $750,000, for the housing bureaucracy it creates. Beyond that, Seattle has absolutely no requirement of any kind to fund this bureaucracy, let alone someday pay toward starting the long and involved process which might possibly result in building any actual housing.

6

@5 -- in other words, this is I-41 (the first monorail vote) all over again. Which ironically enough also passed 53-47! And we all know how that turned out in the end -- millions of $ wasted with nothing to show for it.

7

@6: And, to follow up on statements you’ve made on these topics, the Stranger has already anointed “social housing” as the next bright shiny object / figure of cult worship it needs to replace the disappearing CM Sawant, right down to reallocating her “fighting movement” rhetoric to this Real Change retread. Real Change can continue their awesomely effective record of housing the homeless, the Stranger will supply the same skeptical, tough reporting it always applied to CM Sawant, and the end result will likely be exactly as you predicted: “…millions of $ wasted with nothing to show for it.”

8

@7: Would it get funding you think from Dow's billion dollar proposed property tax levy?

9

@8: Who knows? The total lack of long-term funding source(s) was sold by Real Change and the Stranger as a great new feature, not a fatal flaw. (They’ll be scrounging under seat cushions in government offices statewide for all anyone knows.) What we do know so far is, if elected officials don’t dip into revenue streams they’ve already established for completely different purposes, then “…HON co-chair Tiffani McCoy and her cohort will likely launch a campaign to fund the authority with a progressive tax.” Yes, that progressive tax: the one that is always proposed, but somehow never, ever enacted. That tax.

Wow am I gonna need more popcorn…

11

@10: “…Austria, a very homogeneous population, as a great example.”

Homelessness in Seattle didn’t become a crisis due to rising rents; then-Mayor Murray declared a Homelessness Crisis in November of 2015, after Seattle had seen over five consecutive years of rising minimum wages, rising salaries, and little to no inflation, including very small increases in housing costs. Seattle’s Homelessness Crisis happened because large numbers of persons with mental disorders and/or drug addictions arrived in Seattle already homeless. Austria (and other supposed paragons of Social Housing) have national health-care services, which keep citizens from falling into addiction and homelessness; the United States does not. Housing by itself (social or otherwise) can’t help most of the homeless in Seattle.

12

@7/8 I don't think you have to look too far as to where the funding will go from. It will be one of two sources. If the SC allows the capital gains tax to remain in place and/or reverses their ruling on a progressive income tax you will immediately see a new ballot measure from this group to institute such a tax in Seattle to support the funding for this initiative. If the SC upholds their previous rulings and prohibits a progressive income tax you'll see a property tax levy on the ballot. This will be on top of Dow's $1.25B mental health measure in April and in the face of 20% spikes in property tax bills I'm hearing about from many people now that the 2023 bills have been released.

13

How long before the Mayor steals the funding to finance some friend's pet project we never voted for?

WE SAID BUILD MORE HOUSING.

14

@13: No, a vote for I-135 was a vote to create a new housing bureaucracy. Full stop. Not even to maintain that bureaucracy; just to create it.

By contrast, the Mayor was elected, and can pursue whatever discretionary authority the (elected) Council wrote into legislation. So your comparison fails miserably even there.

YOU SAID BUILD MORE BUREAUCRACY.

15

Huzzah!

16

I’d like to live in a high rise in Manhattan. It doesn’t mean I should or deserve to. Not everyone works a job that will allow them to afford living within the city. Many seem to think they deserve it regardless of the cost or the effort they put into getting a job that will pay for it.

17

A new bureaucracy with currently no funding. What could possibly go wrong? Way to go Seattle voters, with the absolute best of intentions, you screw the city and yourselves once again.

18

@13 - if this initiative had indicated in some way HOW it was going to led to more housing being built, I'd be a lot happier about it.

19

@2: “in 'the Grapes of Wrath'
the self-policed Camps were
socialism personified !”

Is that what we see in Seattle today? Does Seattle have “self-policed camps” which are “socialism personified”? Will Real Change now use whatever money it can scrounge to erect housing akin to this model? Have we already seen the future of social housing in Seattle?


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