Seattle’s total narrowly edged out New York City, which produced 14,240 affordable apartments in the same time period from 2020 to 2024, and Austin, Texas, which produced 13,342. Minnesota’s Twin Cities metro came in fourth with 10,722 apartments produced, followed by Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, and the “Bay Area.”

Note: San Francisco (along with the North Bay) was broken out a separate category from the East and South Bay Area in this study. Combined, the two Bay Area listings accounted for 16,301 affordable apartments, a total which would have led the list.

RentCafe’s analysis included only apartments in 100% affordable buildings, which does leave out a small subset of the data from mixed-income buildings. The study only counted apartments, not affordable homeownership projects, which also represents a small fraction of overall production.

With the growth in production, affordable apartments are a growing share of overall apartment production. “Affordable housing for renters accounted for one-quarter of the [Seattle] metro’s total of 59,000 new apartment buildings during this time,” RentCafe’s Florin Petrut noted.

Affordable housing composed 31.7% of overall apartments in New York over the past five years, since the region produced fewer apartments than Seattle. New York’s share trailed only San Francisco, where over a third of apartments were affordable since 2020. San Francisco produced fewer total apartment units than any other top 20 city, while Seattle outpaced the vastly larger New York market by nearly one-third.

For some regions the uptick in affordable housing was dramatic, but less so for Seattle, where the five-year time period was up nearly 40% over the previous five years — one of the smallest increases in the dataset. That means Seattle’s affordable housing sector was also the leader over the entire decade, not just the last five years. Metro Seattle produced more than 24,000 affordable apartments over the decade.

Most metros have momentum in affordable sector

On the other hand, if trendlines continue for fast-building metros, Seattle could get its title stolen in the decade ahead. For example, San Antonio’s affordable housing production was up 222%, Phoenix’s was up 206%, and New York City was up 185%. Although, in Phoenix’s case, that still amounted to just 4,626 affordable apartments, which shows how anemic affordable construction had been previously.

“Notably, affordable housing is starting to make up a larger portion of all new apartment construction,” Petrut noted. “In 2024, nearly 14% of all new apartments were income-restricted — up from just under 9% ten years earlier — indicating a growing emphasis on affordability in new development.”

A few regions bucked that trend, and continue to emphasize market-rate apartment development to a large degree. For example, just 5% of the more than 107,000 apartments produced in the Dallas metro from 2020 to 2024 were income-restricted affordable units. The Chicagoland area also produced just over 107,000 apartments, and just 6.6% were affordable. Houston did not even crack the top 20, despite being the sixth-most populous metro in the country.

Nationwide, 2024 was a banner year, delivering 91,000 affordable units, the highest total in decades. “Nearly 310,000 affordable apartments have been built nationwide since 2020, accounting for 12.6% of all new apartment buildings,” Petrut wrote. “Affordable housing construction rose 73% compared to 2015–2019, outpacing overall apartment building growth.”

Part of the credit for the affordable housing surge goes to the pandemic response strategy engineered under President Joe Biden: “The American Rescue Plan has helped move things forward by directing billions of dollars into housing through State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds,” Petrut wrote. “On top of that, many states introduced or expanded their own tax credit programs. These efforts helped developers cover rising costs and move projects across the finish line faster while simultaneously keeping rents affordable for the long term.”

How Seattle invests in affordable housing

Seattle goes beyond many other American cities in directly funding affordable housing production. The City of Seattle is spending nearly $350 million per year on affordable housing, which comes from a variety of revenue sources.

Since the 1980s, the Seattle Housing Levy has augmented affordable housing creation. The 2023 renewal tripled the size of the levy to a $970 million seven-year package, and it passed by a wide margin. At its new level, the levy provides $139 million in annual funding.

In 2020, Seattle also passed the “JumpStart” payroll tax on the largest companies in the city. Initially the revenue stream provided Covid relief, but over the longer-term the tax was intended to focus a majority of investments on affordable housing — at least when mayors and councils aren’t raiding it to plug budget holes and fund pet projects. The payroll tax pulled in $360 million in 2024, but only $142 million of that ended up going to the Office of Housing, a figure which was further cut in 2025.

Seattle’s Mandatory Housing Affordability or MHA program — an inclusionary zoning regime that traded upzones allowing larger apartment buildings for new affordability requirements — also raises affordable housing funds via in-lieu payments from builders who opt out of providing income-restricted homes on-site. As a developer fee, MHA revenue is volatile and varies with the pace of construction activity, which has been slowing recently in Seattle, especially in the office sector. MHA topped out at $74 million in collections in 2021, but has declined since, settling out around $22 million in 2025 and in 2026 projections.

In 2025, Seattle voters approved another dedicated revenue source, this time focused on social housing. An “excess compensation” tax hitting high earners who make more than $1 million per year is expected to raise more than $50 million annually for the recently launched Seattle Social Housing Developer, which is pursuing a mixed-income model popularized in cities like Vienna.

Other jurisdictions in the region lag far behind Seattle in affordable housing investments, but most are taking strides to boost production. The Washington State Legislature has also steadily grown the size of the state Housing Trusting Fund, setting a new record with $400 million allocated in 2024, which has also helped get more affordable housing projects off the ground.

King County has flirted with a billion-dollar bond for workforce housing — although it’s not clear how soon such an initiative could materialize after a study found the County would need to back the bonds with a dedicated funding source or risk its general fund.

The region’s largest employers — including Amazon and Microsoft — have also made large pledges of housing grants and low-interest loans to aid nonprofit builders. Two top executives at Microsoft and Amazon shared a Seattle Times op-ed byline this week arguing the state “must make it easier to build our way out of the housing crisis” — and touting that “together, our two companies have committed $1.6 billion to preserve and build more than 26,000 affordable homes.”

Growth in affordable housing production has also brought its own problems. By 2025, vacancy rates at affordable apartments in King County had climbed above 10%, which is reportedly threatening to bankrupt some buildings and providers and has already led to bailouts. While demand remains high for low income housing, overproduction in the higher income segments (e.g., around 60% of area median income) has emerged an issue, at least in some parts of the region.

Still not enough

Leading the nation in affordable housing production is a feather in Seattle’s cap, but local housing advocates would be the first to admit it’s far from enough. In 2018, King County’s Affordable Housing Task Force projected that the county would need to add 244,000 net new affordable homes by 2040.

“According to our estimates, we need 156,000 more affordable homes today and another 88,000 affordable homes by 2040 to ensure that no low-income or working households are cost burdened,” the task force wrote. “That means we need to build, preserve or subsidize a total of 244,000 net new homes by 2040 if we are to ensure that all low-income families in King County have a safe and healthy home that costs less than 30 percent of their income.”

To meet the goal would have required a 11,000 affordable homes per year pace, which the region has not met thus far, even with its nation-leading production. To make up for its slow start out of the gates, King County would need to average 15,000 net new affordable homes annually from 2026 through 2040 to meet its target.

And state leaders are projecting that solving the housing crisis will also take robust market-rate production, setting a target of 1 million additional housing units over the next 20 years, or 50,000 per year. 

More work remains to hit housing targets, and simply outproducing peer cities may not be enough, if Seattle wants to solve its affordability crisis.

The post Seattle Leads Nation in Affordable Apartment Production first appeared on The Urbanist.

Takeaways: 

• Seattle renters are largely locked out of the cost-saving and comfort-improving clean energy appliances, like heat pumps, induction stoves, and solar panels.  

• Newly inaugurated Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a renter herself, could help change that, in part because the City she runs owns its electric utility, Seattle City Light. 

• New city programs could front the cost of heat pumps and explore new apartment-friendly versions; spread the word and benefits of induction cooktops; and legalize plug-in solar for balconies and patios. 

• These measures could allow renters to enjoy affordable, healthier, more efficient homes and would establish Seattle as a leader in welcoming more renters into the climate solutions fold.

Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson and I share more than a few things in common. We’re both parents to toddlers. Scandalously, our children’s grandmothers help cover a portion of sky-high Seattle daycare costs (though my daughter’s 2026 daycare cost hike just swallowed my in-laws’ contribution). We’re also among the roughly 50% of city residents who rent.

Seattle renters contribute less to climate-warming pollution, on average, than homeowners. Renters in the city are nearly twice as likely to heat their homes with clean electricity as homeowners, more than half of whom burn natural gas for warmth. Seattle renters occupy smaller homes than residents who own where they live, fitting more people in less space. Renters are six times more likely than homeowners to get around Seattle without a car.

(These data points are from the Census Bureau American Community Survey, 2024 estimates. I feel optimistic that Katie Wilson, with her transit background, will do everything she can to make the city safer and easier to navigate for bikers and walkers. This is one of the best climate bets she can make.)  

Ironically, though, Seattleites who rent are excluded from enjoying many of the upsides of the clean energy revolution.

Renters cannot lessen our rising electricity bills by adding solar panels to our rooftops. We cannot rip out our gas stoves in favor of healthier, better performing induction cooktops and ranges. We’d be laughed at, at best, if we asked our landlords to remove our baseboard heaters or gas furnaces and shell out tens of thousands of dollars for more efficient heat pumps.

At least, we can’t cash in yet. Mayor Wilson could change that.  

Mayor Wilson enjoys an unusual opportunity among her peers: the City she runs owns its electric utility. One of the largest municipal utilities in the United States, Seattle City Light could make or break the city’s climate goals. It could also create new ways for renters to participate in the clean energy economy.  

With Katie Wilson installed in City Hall, City Light could launch nation-leading heat pump, induction stove, and plug-in solar programs. For those of us forking over hefty rent checks every month, the mayor could let us in on cost-saving — and emissions-lowing — clean energy action.

Get City Light to front heat pump costs for renters

Converting homes from low-efficiency electric furnaces or baseboards (the most common heating sources for Seattle’s renters) to high-efficiency heat pumps would lower monthly heating bills by reducing electricity use by up to 75%. More efficient electric rentals would also free up space on City Light’s grid to connect the thousands of homes and businesses in Seattle currently burning fossil fuels, thereby reducing the likelihood that the utility will have to buy expensive, dirty energy in the event of an energy supply crunch.

Most of the United States’ electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, whereas roughly 90% of City Light’s power sources are carbon-free.

For the minority of renters who burn gas for heat (including your truly), upgrading to heat pumps would loosen our yoke to the fossil fuel price rollercoaster. Plus, heat pumps are cool; half of Seattle renters lack air conditioning, compared to just a quarter of the city’s homeowners, a figure with potentially deadly consequences as the region’s summers grow hotter.

Heat pumps are, however, basically impossible for Seattle’s renters to access. No renter will succeed in convincing their landlords to shell out the $15,000 to $20,000 the appliances cost. And renters are unlikely to afford the systems themselves even if a landlord consented to associated renovations. Seattle’s renting households earned less than half the median income of homeowning households in 2024.

Under Wilson’s leadership, Seattle City Light could launch an ambitious program to front the cost of heat pumps for renters. Renters would pay a monthly service fee to enjoy the equipment, but the electricity savings from the upgrade would offset the fee. In other words, electricity bills would go down while comfort would go up.

In these types of programs, known as “inclusive utility investment” or “pay as you save®,” participants don’t assume debt or need a credit check, unlike typical on-bill financing programs. The utility owns the heat pump until the renter pays their last service charge, at which point system ownership switches to the landlord. If the first renter moves, the next renter enjoys the savings on their monthly bill. Though the programs needn’t be limited to renters, the model resolves the so-called split incentive problem, in which landlords resist investing in energy efficiency upgrades because they do not pay the energy bills.  

Since the idea was developed in 1999, 20 utilities across 10 U.S. states, including Missouri, Kansas, and California, have active inclusive utility investment programs. If these places can do it, so can Seattle.  

Launch a window heat pump initiative for Seattle apartments 

Even if Seattle City Light fronts the bill, heat pumps are likely to remain out of reach to most renters at current prices. Plus, the dominant heat pump models, such as mini-splits, can be a poor fit for large apartment buildings and require a trained contractor and electrical panel upgrades to install. Nearly three-quarters of Seattle renters live in apartment buildings with 10 or more units, compared to just 13% of homeowners.

Window heat pumps (also known as saddle heat pumps or micro heat pumps) could solve that problem. These innovations plug into a standard 120-volt outlet, don’t require professional installation or renovation, and can cost 40% less than conventional heat pumps. Also a design challenge and successful pilot, the New York City Housing Authority plans to install 30,000 window heat pumps in public housing apartments. Boston recently announced it will follow suit.

But at more than $3,000 apiece, window heat pumps are still out of reach for most renters. Nor are they widely available for purchase. (I asked a representative from Gradient, one of the two window heat pump companies selling in the United States, if I could buy one as a renter. He said yes, but only because I am an “influencer.” News to me!) 

Plus, the models rolling out on the East Coast are designed for cold climates and therefore may be unnecessarily expensive for Seattle’s milder winters. Finally, they only fit in windows that slide open vertically, a more common window type on the East Coast than the West Coast.

Wilson could make Seattle the West Coast leader in apartment heat pumps. She could launch an initiative, co-led by Seattle City Light and the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, to develop Seattle-specific window heat pumps, at a price point renters could afford. The city might provide grant funding or guarantee bulk procurement to help bring down initial prices. The initiative could also ensure Seattle benefits from parallel efforts, such as California’s new market transformation plan for window heat pumps or future pilots led by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (of which City Light is a member).  

If successful, the initiative could open the door… er, window to Seattle apartment renters owning and controlling their heating and cooling.  

Spread the induction stove gospel

Induction stoves are now the best products on the market for performance, safety, ease of cleaning, health, and efficiency (just ask known climate radical, Wirecutter). But once again, they’re out of reach for most renters due to cost, wiring requirements, and that perennial difficulty of asking your landlord to upgrade anything.  

I have a gas stove, but I now almost exclusively use a $114 plug-in induction cooktop to protect my daughter’s lungs. Gas stoves emit a “cloud of chemicals” including cancer-causing benzene, asthma-causing nitrogen dioxide, and climate-warming methane and carbon dioxide. (Plus, it boils water twice as fast as my gas stove, helpful when I’m trying to outrun a macaroni-and-cheese-related tantrum.)

Wilson’s Seattle could give away these induction cooktops to low-income renters with children. The Mayor could also push Seattle City Light to educate its customers about the downsides of gas stoves and upsides of single-burner induction cooktops. Recent Seattle City Light newsletters offered ways for Seattle residents to stay cool during heat waves and lower their energy usage. Tips for healthier, safer cooking would be just another flavor of this kind of consumer guidance.

At the same time, under Wilson’s leadership, Seattle could participate in California’s new effort to bring more affordable, plug-in induction ranges to market, pushing so that the outcomes of that effort will benefit Seattle renters, too.  

And, Mayor Wilson is now a board member of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, the region’s air quality regulator. There, she could drive the adoption of clean air appliance standards to benefit all Seattleites.

Legalize plug-in solar  

In Germany, renters can go to a big-box store, buy a small solar panel for around $200, plug the system into their home outlet, and start harnessing the power of the sun later that same day — all without needing to hire a professional installer. Millions of these “plug-and-play” or balcony solar systems are now connected to homes in Germany, making it possible for renters to offset a portion of their energy use.  

In Seattle, plug-in solar systems are illegal. A City Light representative told Sightline that balcony or patio solar products are not eligible for the utility’s interconnection process that rooftop solar systems use and that they introduce potential safety concerns, such as accidentally energizing a downed power line by sending electricity back onto the grid. (Germany has not experienced any safety issues with its millions of systems.) The only way to get in on the solar action in Seattle is by owning a roof or by signing up for a community solar program, which City Light does not currently offer. 

Mayor Wilson’s Seattle City Light could legalize balcony solar, taking a page out of Utah’s playbook. That state’s legislature unanimously legalized the systems in 2025 by creating a new class of portable solar generation devices (maximum power output of 1.2 kilovolts) exempt from utility interconnection processes and fees, and introducing safety requirements. At least one company, EcoFlow, now sells a plug-and-play solar product in Utah that boasts “anti-islanding” safety features to turn off the system in case of a power outage.  

Seattle’s summer sun is one of the city’s best-kept secrets. With a free, simple, and safe City Light program for balcony solar, renters could start to enjoy it in more ways than one.  

Wilson can make Seattle a green city for renters  

In Katie Wilson, Seattle elected a renter Mayor for the first time in at least 15 years, and perhaps ever (I gave up searching for one). While the city has boasted about its green bona fides for decades, renters have been mostly worker bees for this green credential, not recipients of its benefits.  

By creating new ways for Seattle renters to enjoy efficient heating and cooling with heat pumps, easy and safe cooking with induction stoves, and cheaper electric bills with plug-in solar, Mayor Wilson can make Seattle the model for pro-renter clean energy policies. And she may even reap some of those rewards herself. 

The post Op-Ed: Katie Wilson Can Be Seattle’s Climate Mayor for Renters first appeared on The Urbanist.

In recent years, nonprofit housing providers in King County have confronted a variety of challenges, including climbing vacancy rates, widening wealth inequality, an uptick in the number of residents not paying rent, and steep cuts to federal programs that fund operating expenses. A recent King County report highlighted some of those challenges, as organizations move to adapt and head off what could be a perfect storm facing nonprofit housing providers.

The vacancy issue is connected to rising incomes in King County, which also causes rents in subsidized housing to climb, since those rents are typically capped at a set percentage of area median income or AMI.

“The increase in AMI has caused an increase in income-restricted rents to the point where a large chunk of income-restricted affordable housing actually rents higher than market rate housing,” said King County council member Claudia Balducci, who chairs the Affordable Housing Committee (ACH) of the Growth Management Advisory Council, a regional, multi-government advisory board. 

In September, the ACH released a report looking at trends in multifamily and affordable housing across King County, and found that increased production of studio and one-bedroom apartments over the past decade has caused rent increases for these smaller units to slow. Combined with a steeply rising median family income (which is now at $157,000 countywide), the report observed that “unrestricted studio, one-, and two-bedroom units in much of King County rent at rates affordable to households with incomes between 60 and 70 percent of AMI. This means that many income-restricted units at 60 percent AMI and higher are meeting the same needs as the private market.”

Sharon Lee, executive director of the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), a nonprofit which manages and builds affordable housing, said the lack of affordable two- and three-bedroom units is due in part to a focus on small units in both market-rate and subsidized housing development. 

“One of the failed policies that we have is that there’s been this really big push to produce as many units with the lowest amount of subsidies,” Lee said. “And so essentially, developers were incentivized to do as many studios and one-bedroom units as possible, and then it looks much better because the per-unit cost is less.”

The ACH report observed that between 2014 and 2023, when multifamily housing production increased to at least 7,500 new units each year, 59% of all apartments built in King County were studios and 32% were one-bedroom units. Because of low production of larger units, combined with the loss of some existing multi-bedroom units, units with three or more bedrooms currently account for only 18% of apartments in King County.

Organizations like LIHI and Southeast Effective Development (SEED) have begun to address that need with a handful of new developments that include more multi-bedroom units, but those developments are a fraction of what’s needed, especially for multi-generational households. 

Another trend the ACH report observed was a huge surge in AMI, led by the booming tech industry. Between 2017 and 2025, AMI rose 64% in King County — nearly double the rate of inflation. Relatedly, the income gap between homeowners and renters continued to widen over that time period. Households that own homes earned a median income of $156,765 while renters had a median income of nearly half that — $82,818, the report found.

Because AMI is used to determine eligibility for income-restricted housing, rising median incomes, combined with flattening rents for studios and one-bedroom apartments in King County have led to a situation where many market-rate apartments are actually less expensive than income-restricted affordable housing, especially units priced at 80% AMI.

The ACH report notes that in 2023, the median rent for a market-rate studio apartment in the Seattle metropolitan area was $1,646, below the maximum allowable rent for an 80% AMI rent-restricted studio. Moreover, the median market-rate rent for studio apartments in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties was $1,565 in 2025, which is competitive with the maximum rent for 50% AMI rent-restricted studios ($1,375).

Balducci said this has made rent-restricted affordable housing less competitive over the past two years. 

“If I’m applying for an apartment and I have 80% or 70% area median income, I can walk into a private apartment building, and if I can put together the first-and-last security deposit, I can sign a lease and then walk in,” she said. “Or, I’ve got to go through all these hoops it takes to qualify for and get placed in affordable housing, and then keep on qualifying for it, doing all the hassle of that. Who’s going to do that?”

The report notes this issue is particularly prevalent in South King County, where median rent for market-rate one-bedroom apartments in 2023 was 67% of AMI. This compares with 77% in Seattle, and 88% in Bellevue.

This lack of competitiveness has increased vacancies at various affordable housing buildings across the county. An analysis by the Seattle Times in August found that vacancy rates in Seattle’s income-restricted housing climbed fivefold from 2017, hitting 11% in 2024.

Susan Boyd, chief executive officer of Bellwether Housing, the largest nonprofit provider of affordable housing in the Puget Sound region, said that 2024 was especially challenging, though the situation has improved in 2025. “We definitely felt the challenges of adapting to the softening rental market that really hit in 2024, especially for our studio units with shallower subsidies,” Boyd said.

Bellwether responded by lowering some rents slightly and working to leverage as much rental assistance as it could for tenants. She said the average vacancy rate at all Bellwether properties is now at 6% and only about 1 in 10 buildings have a vacancy rate over 10%, noting that many of those properties are dealing with “overcoming broader neighborhood safety concerns.”

Nona Raybern, a spokesperson for the Seattle Office of Housing (OH), took issue with the Seattle Times’ claim that vacancy rates are currently rising in affordable housing buildings in Seattle. “Vacancy rates in affordable housing are not increasing and are operating very much in line with the overall citywide vacancy rates,” Raybern said.

Raybern provided OH data from the six largest income-restricted housing providers in Seattle over the first three quarters of 2025, and those figures show a mean average vacancy consistently hovering at just under 6%.

Most of those vacancies, Raybern observed, were in studio and one-bedroom units. “OH is responding to this changing market by emphasizing family-sized housing and extremely low-income housing below 50% AMI as priorities for applications received through the 2025 Rental Housing NOFA [notice of funding availability].” In this year’s funding cycle, OH has $170 million available to providers, supported by the 2023 housing levy and a portion of the JumpStart payroll tax.

In response to the issue of vacancies in affordable housing, Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, during the campaign, floated the idea of opening some workforce affordable housing (which generally ranges from 50% to 80% AMI) to “low-acuity” lower income people. In an article published at PubliCola, Wilson said the city should do more to serve people below 50% AMI who don’t require the full range of services that accompany permanent supportive housing. Mayor Bruce Harrell and several nonprofit housing providers criticized the proposal.

Lauren Fay, senior business manager at Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which focuses on permanent supportive housing, said making vacant workforce housing available to people earning below 50% AMI could work, but offered some caveats. 

“Anything that we can do to get people into homes urgently is a great idea,” Fay said. “I just think we need to do it with eyes wide open and not underestimate the full range of supports that folks will need beyond just the subsidy to afford the rent.”

She noted that someone coming out of homelessness into supportive housing often needs a wide range of services related to health, job skills, substance use, and mental health, and that can cost upwards of $35,000 per year for each person.

Sage Wilson, a spokesperson for Mayor-elect Wilson’s transition team, declined to comment on Wilson’s proposal to open workforce housing to lower income residents. 

“The transition team has a whole group working on housing affordability and community needs and is doing very broad outreach and consultation in that area, and that work is going to inform how the mayor-elect advances her vision. No specific details until that process is complete,” Sage Wilson said in an email.

Lee said that there are plenty of workers in the 30% to 50% AMI range – particularly young workers making minimum wage – that aren’t served by either supportive housing or workforce housing. Preventing displacement from historically diverse neighborhoods will require targeting the needs of these residents, she said.

“If you want to keep residents in the community, you need units that are 30% or 40% AMI. A full-time minimum wage worker in Seattle is at 40%,” Lee said. “When they try to apply for housing, and all the units are at 50 and 60, they’ll probably get denied for lack of income.”

Another problem facing affordable housing providers is the tricky issue of a small population of tenants who have exploited winter eviction moratorium rules to avoid paying rent, even if they may have the ability to pay. It’s a controversial issue – Lee and other housing providers have argued that the rules should be modified or provide some exceptions for income-limited housing. 

“We have people who could pay but won’t,” Lee said, “They’ll actually turn down a payment plan. We offer some very generous payment plans to help them catch up.”

Lee and Emily Thompson, an affordable housing developer, wrote an op-ed for the Seattle Times last November urging Mayor Harrell and the city council to revise the winter eviction moratorium, claiming that about 70% of Seattle’s affordable housing residents behind in rent were not cost-burdened, suggesting they may be able but are not willing to pay rent.

Seattle’s tenant protections prevent eviction of people with school-aged children or those who are employed by schools during the school year, from September to June. Seattle also limits evictions of people earning at or below 80% AMI during winter months, from December 1 to March 1.

Former city council member Cathy Moore proposed changing some of those tenant protection rules, but did not pass the legislation before resigning her seat in June.

Because evictions are a leading cause of homelessness, changing the protections has faced sharp criticism from advocates for unsheltered people.

Fay, at DESC, is happy the council didn’t change the eviction limits. 

“They really did stand to create more homelessness,” she said. “We are in a situation now where, between making evictions easier and all of the funding cuts that we are feeling from the federal government, we are creating a potentially nightmare scenario for ourselves. We don’t even have enough shelter space to handle these scenarios, let alone what this would do to our social service system.”

In Tacoma, affordable housing providers asked the city council for exemptions from school year and cold weather winter eviction bans, and last week the council passed several of those changes. The legislation exempts the Tacoma Housing Authority and other nonprofit affordable housing providers from the winter and school-year eviction moratorium in of the city’s Landlord Fairness Code Initiative, passed by voters in 2023.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of 2025 for housing organizations has been evisceration of federal funding for a range of health, childcare, and housing programs. In particular, proposed new rules for the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) Continuum of Care program, which funds permanent supportive housing, may be cut by more than half in 2026. PubliCola first reported last month that proposed federal cuts could reduce federal permanent supportive housing programs in Seattle from a current level of $60 million per year to around $20 million. 

“The federal issues are pretty dire at the moment, Fay said. “DESC stands to lose about $16 million in operating funds through these HUD cuts.”

“We have 1,776 tenants that we’re providing supportive services to currently, and it’s our responsibility to continue that work, regardless of what HUD does,” she said. “We’re going to need to figure out something as a community to make it possible to ensure that those folks don’t end up experiencing homelessness again.”

Raybern said the Office of Housing is scrambling to figure out ways to backfill some of those lost funds.

“The HUD CoC funding threats are significant, potentially impacting between $40 million and $60 million of ongoing annual service and operating costs for permanent supportive housing,” Raybern said.

After some delay, the Office of Housing is offering a second round of “urgent operating support” (UOS) to nonprofit affordable housing providers to help these organizations shore up operations. This year, $27.8 million is available to help housing providers in “managing rising operational costs and maintaining the financial well-being of their properties,” Raybern said. In 2024, the Office of Housing awarded $14.2 million in UOS grants to 24 organizations, which ranged from $177,000 to $900,000.

Fay said DESC is applying for the UOS grants, and was grateful for the support in 2024, which helped the organization balance its budget. 

“Last year, it was really helpful with starting a cool, innovative program within our housing portfolio, where we were able to help tenants who had fallen behind on rent get back up to speed by helping to essentially wipe out a portion of their past due rent.”

Though Lee said her organization is grateful for the support, she said it falls short of what organizations will need to weather the current crisis. 

“The city had some funds available last year, and a lot of nonprofits and for-profits applied, and the funds were spread really thin,” Lee said. “Then, for some reason, the Office of Housing didn’t have any funds available this year. It made no sense. Why would you skip a year?”

Without the boost of operating support, some nonprofits warned that they’d be forced to sell off some of their buildings or default on loans. The UOS grants helped them avoid that fate, but potentially only temporarily if their financial outlook does not improve. The federal government is likely to exacerbate the problem rather than help, in the near-term.

On the other hand, if the Office of Housing continues to dole out a high level of operational subsidies, it would eat into its ability to fund the construction of new affordable housing.

The post Housing Nonprofits Grapple with Fiscal Crisis and Federal Threats first appeared on The Urbanist.

In Seattle, most strongly agree that our ongoing housing crisis is an ‘all hands on deck’ scenario that means embracing a wide range of creative tools to help us build more housing at all income levels.

This line of thinking is the cornerstone of Ezra Klein’s Abundance philosophy. It’s consistent with the support voters overwhelmingly gave to creating a new Social Housing Public Development Authority earlier this year.

It’s also why voters have said yes to taxing themselves more than $1.6 billion over the course of six housing levies that have created 11,000 housing units over a 39-year period. It’s the thinking behind the City’s Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA program), which has built more than 4,700 low-income units and raised $300 million for new low-income housing.

But here’s the head-scratcher: There’s only one Seattle program that middle-income renters have traditionally benefited from — the Multifamily Tax Exemption Program (MFTE).

And yet some are advocating that this should become another lower-income tool, leaving middle-income renters with no options for finding below-market housing.

Originating in 1998, Seattle’s Multifamily Tax Exemption Program (MFTE) is a voluntary incentive program that developers can opt-into and has created more than 8,000 below-market units – nearly as many as the Seattle Housing Levy. The program has been a valuable tool in Seattle’s housing toolkit. To qualify for participation in Seattle’s 12-year MFTE program, buildings set aside at least 20% of the apartments for workforce housing. In exchange for this discount, the building receives property tax exemption for the year it participates.

The property tax exemption was not meant to be a 1:1 financial tradeoff in exchange for the workforce housing. Rather, it’s designed to be an incentive for the developer to build the whole project, with the goal of also building the workforce units, aiding in the feasibility for housing production as a whole. Because, as the theory of Abundance goes, and as Seattle’s own local experts have researched, one critical component to truly solving the housing crisis is to build more housing at all income levels.

MFTE’s Program 6, which spans 2018 to now, lowered rent limits (set as a percentage of area median income or AMI) to low-income levels and voluntary program participation by developers dropped by 50%.

This is why Program 7, which is currently before the City Council, aims to right-size this issue, bringing AMI rent limits back to middle-income housing levels, which is what the program was intended to create.

Some argue that increasing these AMIs equate to raising rent for new MFTE renters. I suppose that’s one way to look at it – but in reality, raising AMIs back to middle-income AMI levels means increasing program inclusiveness.

That’s the ah-ha moment.

Increased AMIs in the MFTE program translated to equitable access. It’s returning the opportunity for renters who earn between 65-90% AMI their one tool they had access to for a rent discount.

This is what the voluntary program was always meant to do. It was not meant to replicate subsidized housing, which the Housing Levy, MHA and nonprofit builders create, it was meant to complement it. In fact, our company has a building with both City-funded affordable units, and MFTE designated units at higher AMI’s, allowing the property to house a wider range of our renters at below-market rents.

For example, if an affordable unit is set at 60% AMI or below, that means that renter cannot make more than $66,000 annually.

What if you earn $70,000 annually? Instead of a discounted rent unit targeted at your middle-income bracket, you need to try and afford market-rate rent?

That’s a head-scratcher.

Middle-income renters are also extremely cost burdened and should not be left behind.

Perhaps most importantly, if P7 doesn’t work well, then the property owners who have 8,000 units in the program now won’t elect to renew at the end of the 12-year time horizon. That means an immediate rent increase for thousands of renters and a massive loss of middle-income housing for our city.

Keeping this safe harbor for renters should be a top priority for all of us on the frontlines battling for more affordability. Not voting to adopt P7 now, after almost a year of work has gone into this moment, in favor of yet more discussion, is putting process over progress.

Seattle is proudly one of the most progressive and inclusive cities in the nation and it’s why those of us who live here love to call it home.

We owe it to middle-income renters to fix MFTE. Let’s continue to focus on the big picture – we need housing at all income levels for our city – and our renters – to win. That’s the abundance we all should look forward to celebrating.

The post Op-Ed: Seattle’s MFTE Program 7 Widens Access and Participation first appeared on The Urbanist.

A final vote on the program modifications at the full council meeting at 2pm Tuesday, October 14, following a unanimous committee vote last month.

The vote and underlying policy update has been repeatedly delayed, causing a gap in the program. The current program expired on September 10, meaning builders opening new housing projects this fall do not have access to the tax exemption until the extension passes.

Across its six iterations, Seattle’s Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) program provides nearly 7,000 homes at below market rents. Landlords receive a property tax break in exchange for setting aside a share of units as affordable — typically 25% in Seattle’s current program. The program is voluntary and landlords can opt out of the program, forgoing the tax break and returning units to market-rate if they so choose. The mayor’s proposal is the seventh iteration and often referred to as MFTE Program 7 or P7.

Thanks to a new state law, P7 continues to double the length of time that buildings can participate in the program. MFTE has traditionally allowed buildings to receive the tax incentive for up to 12 years, before buildings return fully to market-rate. Landlords can now apply for an extension for another 12 years. The rent limits for those extended units are slightly lower, under the logic that older buildings typically do not command premium rents like brand new buildings do.

In a 3-to-1 vote, housing committee approved an amendment from chair Mark Solomon (District 2) that raised the rents on larger studio apartment (320 square feet or greater) in P7 properties extending past 12 years from 55% of area median income (AMI) to 60% AMI, which is currently $1,650. That’s an increase of $138 over the working P7 proposal and $443 over the P6 cap.

Councilmember Rob Saka (District 1) proposed an amendment that would have lowered rent limits on extended P7 properties. However, he could not get a second, dooming his proposal. This led him to chastise his colleagues over the perceived lack of courtesy and fairness.

Just now in the Housing committee, after Rob Saka failed to get a second on an amendment he had proposed for the multifamily tax exemption (MFTE) program, he got visibly upset and asserted that "principles of fairness and comity demand" that he receive a second on any amendment proposals.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) September 22, 2025 at 11:08 AM

Another successful amendment from Solomon allows developers that opened buildings in 2025 to opt into P7 program even if they certified into the P6 program. That would allow landlords to charge higher rents, though they would need to honor existing lease agreements on units that are already leased up.

The mayor’s P7 proposal had not included a sunset date, as past iterations have included, but Council amended the proposal to add a sunset clause in 2029 during the housing committee vote on September 22. Councilmembers Saka and Alexis Mercedes Rinck (Citywide Position 8) sponsored the amendment.

“The elimination of the sunset and the underlying legislation, I think, sends some mixed signals about the way in which we update MFTE,” Rinck said. “We need to continue to uphold the standard of updating MFTE on a regular basis to adjust to changes in development patterns, the market as a whole, which we know has certainly been in a [tough] place over the past year or so, but also to update in order to really reflect our need in different housing types for affordable housing.”

Permitting activity has plummeted in Seattle, and multifamily housing construction is down locally and nationwide. The industry has been weighed down by high interest rates and economic uncertainty tied to Trump tariffs and fears of a looming recession.

The P7 proposal appeared to have broad support on city council after Council’s housing committee advanced the program unanimously earlier this month. Council’s series of amendments made tweaks, but largely supported the mayor’s direction.

“We’re talking about three policy goals getting met here: more housing, workforce housing, and mixed income buildings all together in one program,” Council President Sara Nelson said. “And that is why I support so strongly the Multifamily Tax Exemption program, and I urge my colleagues support.”

Opponents criticize new MFTE program

However, P7 has also kicked up opponents, who have objected to higher rents and higher caps on rent hikes, among other program features. While the current ‘P6’ program caps rent increases at 4.5% for participating units, the P7 proposal would raise the cap to as high as 10%, depending on inflation. The less restrictive rent cap mirrors the state’s recently enacted rent stabilization policy — though that policy was aimed at blocking rent gouging rather than ensuring the long-term affordability of homes that were subsidized by tax incentives.

Under the P7 proposal, the maximum rent for a standard one-bedroom apartment in the MFTE program would increase from $1,810 to $2,209. The City contends this is about $400 less than the average market-rate rent for one-bedroom apartments in Seattle when including utility costs, which are included in MFTE rents. To tenants, $2,209 may not scream “affordable.” Proponents argue it’s one of the few programs providing workforce housing.

Among the opponents of the MFTE update is Katie Wilson, who is challenging Mayor Bruce Harrell from the left in the November election. Wilson won the primary, leading Harrell by nearly 10 points. The Urbanist’s elections committee (on which I serve along with 13 other members) endorsed Wilson.

“Instead of focusing city resources to build the affordable housing Seattle desperately needs, Bruce Harrell is championing changes to the MFTE program which would give developers millions of dollars of tax breaks to build housing that tenants can’t afford. Councilmembers should reject this proposal,” Wilson said in a September press release.

Wilson pledged to redesign the program with more input from tenants: “As Mayor, I will work with renters, housing providers, and private-market developers to improve the MFTE program so our city builds more of the kinds of apartments working families want, need, and can afford.”

Wilson’s campaign also made the case that Harrell favors landlords over tenants.

“Harrell notoriously said he ‘embraces the wealthy,’ and wealthy real estate interests have returned the embrace,” a Wilson campaign spokesperson said. “The major lobby group for the building industry has already contributed more than $100,000 to the pro-Harrell IE, and other developers, landlords, and real estate interests have invested tens of thousands more.”

A coalition of tenant groups and affordable housing advocates came out against the mayor’s P7 proposal as well. The coalition includes the Tenants Union of Washington, several affordable housing nonprofits, and the Transit Riders Union, which Wilson co-founded. The group sent a letter to the mayor and council on September 10.

“We, the undersigned, call on Seattle City Councilmembers and Mayor Harrell to reject this flawed and rushed proposal with no end date; to renew the current P6 MFTE for one year; and to develop a proposal that will actually make Seattle more affordable and create the types of apartments that our community needs. Decisionmakers must develop a new proposal in partnership with MFTE tenants and other crucial stakeholders.

The coalition noted that the tax incentive does not come cheaply.

“That tax exemption costs the city about $20 million per year in lost tax revenue, and increases property taxes for other taxpayers ($145 per year per median assessed value home),” they wrote. “The tax impacts continue to grow with the size of Seattle’s MFTE portfolio, which is almost $9 billion assessed value today (2024 Multifamily Tax Exemption Annual Report), and cumulative forgone revenue grows year over year.”

The Seattle Renters Commission also issued its own letter opposing the new program. In addition to objecting to the higher cap on rent hikes, the commission pointed out new units entering the program may not seem all that affordable to prospective tenants.

“There is no minimum size for one-bedroom apartments under P7, so developers will be able charge up to $2,209 for units that are smaller than 400 square feet,” the commission wrote.

The MFTE has also earned the ire of anti-growth activists and homeowner groups often critical “developer giveaways” that results in construction projects in their midst. As one prime example, long-time anti-housing activist Irene Wall wrote MFTE has “has outlived its usefulness” in an op-ed in the Seattle Times. She cited a 2024 University of Washington study, noting the foregone revenue for City offers and the higher property tax bills for homeowners.

In an action alert newsletter titled “Christmas comes early for apartment developers in Seattle,” Wall has been whipping up like-minded activists to attend the council vote on Tuesday.

In 2018, Wall also opposed Seattle’s Mandatory Housing Affordability rezone program, proclaiming that the city’s worst addiction problem was growth. For advocates like her, setting affordability requirements so high they discourage homebuilding would appear a desired feature, not a bug.

Finding the right balance

Advocates for homebuilders and landlords pushed back against an earlier proposal from the Seattle Office of Housing that would driven down rent limits, which they said would have curtailed participation in the program and killed housing projects. In fact, advocates pointed to a sharp drop in participation in the P6 program to argue the program had gotten out of whack with the realities in the industry right now. The Harrell Administration responded to this pushback and overhauled the rent limits proposed in P7.

Former Seattle Office of Housing director Miriam Roskin has argued the City went too far in other direction, favoring landlords.

“Some developers allege that without the proposed changes, they won’t participate in the MFTE program anymore. That’s OK, for if you reduce the program’s public benefit requirements to the extent that the tax incentive pays off for every developer, on every project, every time, you know you’re giving away the store,” Roskin wrote in a Seattle Times op-ed. “Policymakers should not take the bait.

Some housing advocates argue the biggest benefit of the MFTE program is as an added incentive for apartment development in the first place. Tax incentives take on extra importance as the housing industry is experiencing headwinds due to rising interest rates and climbing construction costs. The roughly 7,000 rent-restricted MFTE units come alongside more than 30,000 market-rate homes.

Getting the balance right between affordability for tenants and incentive for builders to is why the program is so complex and why the policy debate is so hard to untangle. So many variables go into housing development decisions that isolating the impact of the MFTE incentive is difficult, as studies have pointed out.

Given the discussions in committee last month, Council appears likely to approve the P7 program on Tuesday. If Katie Wilson wins election in November, she may be keen on revisiting the policy debate.

Update: This article was updated at 11:45pm Friday to add the chart of approved MFTE units and to note the decline in participation under P6.

The post Seattle Poised to Overhaul MFTE Housing Affordability Program, Despite Tenant Concerns first appeared on The Urbanist.

Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Rob Saka (District 1) declined to attend the meeting, staying in their offices, apparently. Acting Chair Mark Solomon appeared confounded by the move, and called a half-hour recess hoping in vain that his colleagues would materialize. Solomon is an interim appointed councilmember temporarily filling in as housing chair due to Moore’s resignation earlier this month.

The Seattle Renters Commission, tasked with being the official voice of tenants advising City government, has been shorthanded for 18 months, with only five of its 15 seats filled. Council had been set to refill the ranks with the 11 appointments and three reappointments on the docket, and many of the nominees took off work to be able to attend the meeting.

Neither Nelson or Saka has fully explained their reason for their boycotting the meeting. The Urbanist has reached out to their offices, but has yet to hear back. It does appear that Nelson objected to the commission appointments and tried to strongarm the chair ahead of time.

“I wasn’t going to be here, so they already knew,” Nelson told PubliCola’s Erica Barnett.

Barnett also reported that Nelson asked Solomon to remove the commission appointments from the agenda at the behest of Moore: “The previous day, Council President Sara Nelson, who reportedly got an email from Moore asking her not to allow the appointments to move forward earlier in the week, had reportedly asked Solomon to remove the appointments from the committee agenda.”

Update: On Thursday afternoon, Nelson issued an apologetic statement, saying that the housing committee agenda items would be taken up by full council at its next meeting on Tuesday, July 29: “I want to acknowledge the frustration my excused absence contributed to the lack of quorum at yesterday’s HHS committee meeting and apologize to the people who took the time to show up for the committee vote on their appointment to a board or commission, including the Renters’ Commission. I am grateful for their willingness to serve our city, and delays in the appointment process serve no one well.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was the only committee member other than the chair to attend, sharply criticized the delay tactic.

“This is so disrespectful,” Rinck said. “It’s hard for me to read this as anything other than intentional suppression of representation. Key representation Seattle is a majority renter city. I am the only member of this body that is a renter. We are the majority, and renters are much likely to displaced and experience homelessness, and working people are being displaced from this city every day, as we fail to address the affordability crisis. We’ve been in a state of emergency on homelessness for years.”

Dionne Foster, who is challenging Nelson for her seat in the upcoming election, echoed Rinck’s sentiment, saying the council president was acting irresponsibly. (Full disclosure: The Urbanist Elections Committee, on which I serve, endorsed Foster.)

“As a City Councilmember, your job is to show up and do the work. Councilmember Sara Nelson’s refusal to attend today’s Housing Committee meeting — despite being scheduled to vote on long-overdue appointments to the Renters’ Commission — is an insult to the people she was elected to serve,” Foster said in a statement. “In a city where most residents are renters, ignoring that responsibility is unacceptable. And when community members take time off work to come to City Hall, failing to show up is not only disrespectful — it undermines public trust in our leaders. Seattle deserves better.”

The housing committee had also been set to approve five appointments (or reappointments) to the Seattle Housing Authority Board, one to the Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority Governing Council, and one to the Seattle Disability Commission.

Stonewalling the renters commission appointments appears to have been part of Moore’s scheme to get landlord voices on the renters commission, effectively changing its charter. “Moore reportedly wanted to create a joint landlord-renter group of some kind,” PubliCola‘s Erica Barnett posted. Apparently, the idea had been to appoint seven landlords to the commission to counterbalance tenant voices — in practice, it may have deadlocked the group on many issues.

That may explain Moore’s delay tactic, along with Moore’s desire to reform eviction policy and repeal some of the tenant protections enacted by the previous council — a goal Nelson appeared to share. As constituted, the renters commission clearly would have objected to such a move. Although the renters commission lacks the power to block legislation, they could have raised a stink.

Barnett noted that most of the renters commission appointments were made by Mayor Bruce Harrell, but one of his nominees appears to be held up: “Allied Residential senior portfolio manager (landlord) Bruce Fischer, is not on the list of appointees anymore, but the agenda only included 14 (of 15) nominees.”

Risking federal grants with delay

The two committee members boycotting Wednesday’s meeting also delayed a vote on accepting $30.7 million in federal grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Much of this was housing awards. “Councilmembers were scheduled to vote on over $16 million in federal housing grants – jeopardizing essential HUD funding working families are relying on,” a Foster campaign spokesperson noted.

Rinck has led the charge to grapple with Trump Administration cuts and policy changes, chairing a new committee that was stood up earlier this year. She brought up the concern of losing yet more federal funding on Wednesday.

“We’re losing federal resources for housing and human services,” Rinck said. “I know we’re going to hear a presentation today on some of the federal resources coming in, but we can’t take action today. That was critical action that we needed. That is $30 million that we haven’t lost yet, that members of this body continue to state that they’re so concerned about losing federal funding. And now we’re the ones throwing this into some jeopardy.”

Ann Gorman, who is a senior policy adviser with the Seattle Human Services Department, told councilmembers that Seattle faces an August 16 deadline to approve the grant and file their paperwork. That approval no longer will be able to run through the housing committee, which isn’t scheduled to meet again until August 13, as normal. However, it appears councilmembers intend to vote to approve the grants directly in full council, skipping the committee step.

Renters feel slighted

Chair Solomon ended the committee meeting to convert it into a community meeting in order to still hear from the nominees in attendance and the City officials that were set to present without running afoul of council rules, which require quorum for official proceedings. The Seattle Channel continued to broadcast the meeting despite that change.

Seattle Renters Commission co-chair Kate Rubin was set to be reappointed at the meeting, and she expressed frustration at the delay.

“I am one of the interim co-chairs of the Seattle renters commission, one of five people who have been holding this commission down over the last 18 months,” Rubin said. “I’m also somebody who works with renters, and in my daily work at Be:Seattle we do renter education and organizing and empower renters to get more typically involved, because we are being systemically shut out of City Hall, which today feels like just such a perfect example of that — of how our voices really do not matter to those in power.”

Rinck agreed the maneuver connoted a sign of a disrespect.

“It is councilmembers’ chartered responsibility to be at these meetings,” Rinck said. “This is literally our job. So I find it deeply frustrating that people took time to leave their jobs in the middle of the day, yet not every member of this committee could show up to do theirs.”

Rubin argued the rest of council was undermining the District 2 councilmember, which she argued was a pattern after former D2 Councilmember Tammy Morales resigned in January, citing mistreatment by her colleagues.

“I live in District 2, and I’m a voter, and I’m actively engaged,” Rubin added. “And seeing my city councilmember yet again be disrespected and shut out of doing the work of a councilmember and not being able to move the things that their constituents value forward in a very intentional way… I’m sorry I’m feeling very angry.”

Carrying on the work at one-third strength was making the position particularly taxing for the few remaining commissioners, Rubin noted.

“I’m angry about all of this, because there’s so few of us,” Rubin said. “The renters commission has taken up way more of my time than any unpaid commission appointment ever should. But I do feel an obligation to Seattle renters to hold it down, I guess. And I was still looking forward to having a fully seated commission, where we could work together and try to move ideas forward, and really just get creative.”

Nominees noted that the commission needed broad representation across racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic barriers, and is currently without a Black member in its depleted state.

Echoing Rinck, Solomon apologized to the commissioners and nominees for have their appointment delayed at the last second.

“I apologize for you taking the time out of your day to come down here to be frustrated,” Solomon said. “And I want to echo that we need to do better. So I want to thank you being here. Thank you for willing to give up your time to do this work voluntarily. It says a lot about your character. You’re willing to give your time, your energy, your effort, to advocate for folks and not get paid for it. So thank you for that.”

Barring a committee assignment shakeup, Solomon will go back to being vice-chair once Moore’s replacement is appointed later this month. Early reports are that former D5 Councilmember Debora Juarez is the favorite for that appointment, and she would take over as housing committee chair, if appointed. Once the committee goes back to five members, it would take three rather two absences to block quorum.

This article was updated at 2:55pm Thursday with Nelson’s statement.

The post Nelson, Saka Boycott Housing Committee, Blocking Seattle Renters Commission Appointments first appeared on The Urbanist.

On April 1, tenants at Qualman Apartments on Capitol Hill were shocked when their utility bills were 5-8 times higher than the previous baseline. Tenants went from paying a $50 flat fee covering non-electric utilities to anywhere between $265 to $429 a month for the same services. 

Six months earlier, tenants received a notice from their property management company, Cornell & Associates, that their building was switching from flat rate utility billing to a ratio utility billing system (RUBS). Tenants were not told this would increase their monthly housing expenses by nearly 25%. 

Landlords implementing RUBS often describe it as based on tenant utility usage, but this is often inaccurate. RUBS is frequently used in multi-family buildings where units are not individually sub-metered, so landlords create a formula of estimated usage based on factors like the number of tenants per unit, the units’ square footage, and the number of bedrooms in a unit. Landlords use their formula to split a building’s master utility bill across each unit. The formulas aren’t always accurate in practice. 

After talking to their neighbors at Qualman, tenants discovered that people in the same-sized units with the same number of occupants were charged different amounts, and some people on one-year leases still paid the $50 flat rate. 

Cornell & Associates would not provide their calculations for how common areas, such as hallways and the laundry room, vacant units, and the units on one-year leases were deducted from the master bill. This makes determining how Cornell & Associates actually calculates utility bills quite difficult. 

The utility price hike is not the only problem tenants faced when their buildings switched to RUBS. Qualman tenants have no control over their heat usage because the building uses a central boiler connected to radiators in units and common areas. After talking to each other, they learned that they shared the experience of their units overheating in the winter. Tenants who complained about the problem to the building manager were told to “open a window.” 

Winter heat bills accounted for approximately 50% of the building’s annual utility costs. This means that under RUBS, Qualman tenants are paying more money for wasted utilities and there is less incentive for Cornell & Associates to improve the building’s energy efficiency systems. 

This RUBS experience is not isolated to Qualman. Tenants at the Porter, another Cornell & Associates building, also received a lease addendum explaining that, under RUBS, their building’s utility bills would be split evenly among units based on the number of tenants in each apartment, with common utilities like hallway lights and washing machines removed from the calculation. However, the final utility rates charged to each unit appeared to be arbitrarily calculated to hit a maximum, unspecified cap for each unit. The Porter, like Qualman, is heated by a central boiler, and many tenants cannot control their radiators. 

How RUBS figures into Washington State’s recently passed rent stabilization legislation is unclear. The new law limits annual rent increases for existing tenants to 7% plus inflation or 10%, whichever is lower. While the law is fuzzy when it comes to how utility billing interacts with this legislation, it is clear that RUBS financially burdens renters in a way that the state legislature was trying to curtail.

As a result of egregious RUBS bills, one Qualman tenant had to move out after living in the building for nine years. Two more tenants moved out after they received their second RUBS bill. 

RUBS’ negative impact on tenants is deeply and widely felt in other parts of the country, and multiple jurisdictions outside of Washington have already taken action against the practice. In California, San Jose and West Hollywood have both banned the system outright. In 2024, Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled that RUBS “mak[es] the tenant liable to the landlord for the costs of utilities that were not individually metered or that the tenant did not exclusively use” and ultimately banned RUBS throughout the state (Northland Inv. Corp. v. Pub. Utils. Regul. Auth. (SC 201769)). 

North Carolina banned RUBS as well, though only for water utilities. Santa Monica, Californa does not ban RUBS per se, but does have laws limiting utilities charges so that utilities plus rent cannot exceed predetermined limits. 

The City of Seattle needs to join these jurisdictions in banning RUBS, an unfair and predatory utility billing practice. Unfortunately, the immediate prospects for such a ban appear bleak in light of City Council’s reactionary turn over the last few years. 

That said, tenants are not powerless in the face of this abusive system.

In May 2025 tenants in Los Angeles’ Koreatown organized against RUBS when their property management company used similar tactics as Cornell & Associates. One month later, these LA tenants launched an ongoing “RUBS strike.” 

On June 20, tenants at the Qualman, with support from the Puget Sound Tenants Union (PSTU), delivered a letter to Cornell & Associates demanding an end to RUBS. Since the delivery of the Qualman demand letter, Qualman tenants received a response with promising concessions. 

On Wednesday, July 9, tenants from other Cornell & Associates buildings came together to deliver a petition with over 100 signatures across 42 buildings demanding an end to RUBS.

Want to join the fight against unfair utility hikes at Cornell & Associates and across Seattle? Sign the petition demanding an end to RUBS!

The post Op-Ed: It’s Time to Ban Ratio Utility Billing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Renters have a big victory to celebrate this Affordable Housing Week: the passage of a statewide anti-rent-gouging law. Henceforth, landlords will not be allowed to raise rents more than 7% plus inflation, up to a maximum of 10% annually. (New construction is exempted for the first 12 years.) 

Over the past five years, as I’ve been organizing to strengthen renter protections and raise minimum wages across King County, I’ve talked with plenty of people who arrived home to find notice of a 20%, 30%, or even 40% rent increase taped to their doors. That kind of rent hike is tantamount to economic eviction, and the new law will provide an important protection. 

At the same time, the law is not as strong as advocates hoped for. A 10% rent increase on a $2,000 apartment is still $200 a month — no small amount.

Luckily, there’s a lot Seattle can do to go further, tackling the problem of sky-high rents at multiple points — root, trunk, and branches. With city leadership willing to step up to the plate, here are five things we could do:

1. Zone for Abundant Housing

The affordable housing shortage tilts the playing field in favor of landlords, because where are you going to go? In a tight rental market, your landlord has a mini-monopoly over your housing options. They can jack up the rent and you’ll most likely stay put until you really, truly can’t pay.

Conversely, ample housing gives renters more bargaining power. Back in that extraordinary first year of the pandemic, there was a moment when vacancy rates were high and rents slackened. I was able to go to my landlord and say “Hey, we’re looking at a very similar apartment in Lower Queen Anne that’s a lot less expensive. We’d prefer to stay here, but…” The landlord agreed to bump our rent back down to what it had been a couple years earlier when we moved in.

While zoning for more housing won’t automatically make rents affordable for the lowest-income residents — we need other strategies for that — for those of us spending far too much of our income on market rate rents, it really does make a difference. And on this front, we can do a lot better than Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed One Seattle Comprehensive Plan.

2. Build Social Housing

Union built, publicly owned, permanently affordable housing for people at a range of incomes: Seattle’s new social housing developer has a big job to do, and if it does it well, renters will feel the difference. In these mixed-income buildings — open to households making up to 120% of the area median income, which this year is about $130,000 for a single individual — no one will pay more than 30% of their income in monthly rent.

But growing a large non-market housing sector isn’t just good for the people who live there. It has benefits for renters in market-rate housing, too. In cities like Paris and Vienna, where a significant portion of the city’s housing stock is publicly or community owned, private landlords have to compete with this “public option,” and that moderates rents across the board.

3. Ban Algorithmic Price Fixing

Companies like RealPage and Yardi pool data from their landlord clients, use artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to determine the optimal rents to maximize profits, and effectively coordinate rent increases across the rental housing sector. It’s a new twist on good old-fashioned price fixing, and it results in larger rent increases, more renters forced out, and more empty apartments.

According to one estimate, algorithmic price-fixing could be responsible for up to a quarter of rental inflation between 2020 and 2024. In Seattle, revenue management software may be used to set prices between half and three quarters of multifamily rental units. (Admittedly, these estimates are from parties advocating to limit this practice.)

Elected officials are taking note. Last month, the Washington Attorney General’s office filed suit against RealPage and nine landlords, adding to a parade of lawsuits that began in Seattle in 2022. In the recent legislative session, Senate Bill 5469 — which didn’t make it across the finish line — would have banned the use of software that churns through data from multiple landlords to recommend lease terms and rents.

But Seattle needn’t wait for state legislation, or for the lawsuits to play out. A growing number of cities, including Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Francisco, have already banned this practice. Seattle should join them.

4. Regulate Rental Junk Fees

Corporate landlords are finding more and more creative ways to nickel and dime their tenants: lease renewal fees, “admin” fees, “valet” garbage service fees, exorbitant month-to-month lease fees, and many more.

Seattle took a good first step toward addressing the problem of rental “junk fees” in 2023, when the council banned “notice delivery fees” as part of an ordinance capping late fees. This was important to close a loophole: limiting late fees to $10 a month doesn’t mean much if your landlord can also charge an arbitrary $50 or $75 for the act of taping the late fee notice to your door.

Shoreline has already gone a little further still, stipulating that a landlord may not charge a fee for a tenant’s access to common areas, or a pro-rated share of utilities for such areas, or a fee for the performance of any landlord duty required by the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act. But the boldest proposal in our state so far was introduced last year by Bellingham Councilmember Jace Cotton, a comprehensive ordinance regulating rental junk fees. Cotton’s legislation hasn’t yet passed, but it’s a great starting place for us here in Seattle.

5. Disincentivize Large Rent Hikes

In 2021, Seattle passed a law mandating landlord-paid relocation assistance when low-income renters move due to a rent increase of 10% or more. The Economic Displacement Relocation Assistance (EDRA) program could use some improvements, as I’ve written about before. But renters are benefitting from it — including many who aren’t even aware of the program. That’s because it’s changing landlord behavior.

In 2022, the Transit Riders Union surveyed renters and found that a surprising number of rent increases clustered around 9%, 9.5%, 9.8%. We concluded that many landlords, wishing to avoid triggering EDRA, were keeping their rent hikes just under the 10% threshold.

This is good news for renters, and it suggests a way to go further. Why not have EDRA kick in at a 5% rent increase, instead of 10%? This isn’t exactly a radical idea. In 2023, voters in Bellingham and Tacoma passed laws mandating relocation assistance for rent increases greater than 8% and 5%, respectively. Let’s do that here in Seattle.

In Seattle, 56% of households are renters, and far too many of us are paying 40%, 50%, or even more of our income in housing costs every month. That’s a recipe for stress, evictions, and rising homelessness. Oh yeah, and it’s making our pizza more expensive, too! City leaders have the power to ease the pain, all it takes is some political will.

The post Op-Ed: Five Ways to Lower Rents in Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

House Bill 1217 was initially introduced by Emily Alvarado (D-34th, West Seattle) with a flat 7% cap, but an amendment on the Senate floor — approved by just a single vote on April 10 — increased that cap to well beyond 10%. That move sapped support from within the House Democratic caucus and made its future uncertain.

However, a compromise measure, approved by a six-member conference committee of legislators from both chambers, produced an outcome everyone could live with: an inflation adjustment on top of the 7% cap, with a hard ceiling at 10%. The inflation adjustment will be set to the Seattle consumer price index, which is calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A 7-10% cap on rent hikes brings Washington in line with states like Oregon, which has had the same policy in place since 2023, and California, where the rent cap can be as low as 5%. Tenants in buildings newer than 12 years old are exempt from the cap, as well as tenants who share a residence with their landlord. Oregon first passed a version of statewide rent stabilization in 2019, before recalibrating in 2023.

This past Friday night, the bill’s future again looked bleak after a rule challenge by Senate Minority Leader John Braun (R-20th, Centralia) sent the bill back into a second conference committee. Braun’s challenge, under Senate Rule 25, concerned the bill’s 58-word title, which references a number of the bill’s elements including a “landlord resource center.” Included in the original version of the bill, that resource center had been stripped out of the bill by the time it passed the House floor, but remained in the title. Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck, presiding over the Senate, ruled in favor of Braun.

But after adding back a provision establishing an online landlord resource center on Saturday morning and waiting a required 24 hours, the bill was back on both the Senate and House floors Sunday morning and was approved relatively quickly. In the end, just seven Democrats across the two chambers voted against the bill. Democrats control 60% of the seats in each chamber, giving them the cushion to pass legislation even with a few defections within the caucus.

The bill now heads to Governor Bob Ferguson’s desk, with Ferguson publicly expressing support for the idea of a rent stabilization framework.

Through final passage, Republican lawmakers continued to argue that implementing rent caps will move Washington backwards when it comes to increasing the state’s housing supply, and incentivize landlords to increase rents annually as a cushion against future cost increases.

“It’s interesting to me that this year’s top priority, the number one bill of the session, the very first day of session in committee, was a bill that’s going to do more harm for supply and more harm for tenants than good. We didn’t do a lot of supply-side bills this year,” Representative Andy Barkis (R-2, Yelm) said Sunday. “It’s difficult when policy is developed steeped in ideology and devoid of data.”

Barkis’s remarks weren’t confirmed by the facts on the ground, with the legislature approving a laundry list of housing supply bills this session. Those included a parking reform bill, a sweeping transit-oriented development bill, a bill reforming historical landmark laws, condominium liability reform and building code reform. Even before the session kicked off, Democratic leaders had been adamant that rent stabilization had to move forward with supply reforms.

“We can stop price gouging. We can also build homes. We can do both at a time when young adults have few opportunities to afford to buy homes,” Senator Alvarado said Friday night. After introducing the bill in the House late last year, Alvarado was appointed to the Senate and shepherded the bill through the other chamber.

“They’re locked out of the benefits of home ownership that so many people in this chamber benefit from,” Alvarado continued. “They too, can get some predictability and stability as renters at a time when people worry whether they will lose their federal benefits, whether they will lose their federal housing choice vouchers or health care benefits, we can help assure them that here in Washington, you won’t face an excessive rent hike.”

Lieutenant Governor Heck, a major cheerleader on housing issues, declined to embrace the compromise that advanced across the finish line Sunday in an interview with TVW.

“I’m optimistic that it’s going to keep some people from being price gouged by that minority of landlords who would be inclined to engage in that practice. On the other hand, I’m concerned about what it might do to the flow of capital into the construction of additional housing,” Heck said, referencing the transition report he helped to craft for Governor Ferguson on housing issues.

“Our indication was that protection against price gouging had to be done in a balanced way, but in combination with a bunch of stuff to increase supply to reduce that shortage,” Heck said. “And they did do a bunch. Whether or not it was enough… [is] to be determined.”

The post Rent Stabilization Makes It Across the Finish Line at Last Minute first appeared on The Urbanist.

Under the compromise measure, annual rent hikes would be capped at 7% plus inflation, but with an overall ceiling of 10%. The Washington State Department of Commerce would publish an annual rent hike cap every summer, a practice similar to one that is already in place in the state of Oregon. For the following year, landlords would not be able to increase rent beyond that upper limit, somewhere in the range between 7% and 10%. Apartments in newer buildings (up to 12 years old) would be exempt, as well as tenants sharing a residence with their landlord.

The original version of House Bill 1217, which passed the House on March 10 on a 53-42 vote, included a 7% cap on annual rent increases. But it was amended on the Senate floor on April 10, raising the cap to 10% plus the annual rate of inflation, as defined by the national Consumer Price Index (CPI). If that cap had been in place in recent years, it would have meant a 18.9% cap for Washington renters in 2022 and 14.6% cap for 2023 — over twice as high as the original cap in the House version of the bill. The compromise version uses the Seattle metropolitan CPI rather than national CPI to measure inflation.

That Senate amendment, which was approved by a single vote margin, was a last-minute curveball that had the potential to doom the entire bill this year, with many House Democrats refusing to back a bill with a rent cap that high. Its sponsor, Senator Sharon Shewmake (D-42nd, Bellingham), cited concerns about the impact of rental price caps on the overall housing market and instead touted the potential for her amendment to protect against large, one-time rent increases.

The Senate also approved another floor amendment, from Marko Liias (D-21st, Edmonds) to exempt single-family homes owned by mom-and-pop landlords, but that provision has been stripped out of the compromise approved Thursday night. Critics argued that since the state lacks a registry of properties owned by corporate landlords it would have been difficult to limit the exemption to only small-time landlords.

Legislative leaders acknowledged the fact that the original 7% cap wasn’t able to be maintained, but framed the compromise as a concrete measure that will help renters now. The bill would take effect this summer.

“For a lot of folks, they’re going to be disappointed in the steps that we took today,” Senator Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia), chair of the conference committee that released the compromise, said ahead of the vote. “I do, however, believe that, on the whole, this bill will provide meaningful protections for Washingtonians and predictability, which for folks that are renting and don’t know what those rent increases will be, knowing and having that consistency and that predictability, I think is going to provide a lot of relief for people.”

The measure was opposed by the committee’s two Republican members, Rep. Sam Low (39th, Lake Stevens) and Sen. Keith Goehner (12th, Leavenworth). No GOP legislators had supported rent stabilization as it progressed through the House and Senate initially, citing concerns that rent hike caps would inhibit housing production and prompt smaller landlords to leave the housing market entirely.

“I do believe that the policy that’s before me tonight is going to be devastating for our housing providers, and we need housing providers to be a part of the solution in the housing crisis that we have, and I hope that we can find a way through this, to find some common ground so that we have a solution and that works for everybody, and not just one, one group over another,” Low said.

From the start of the session, Democratic legislators in both chambers have been touting rent stabilization as a policy with the significant potential to help tenants, but only if paired with additional measures that will help to increase the state’s housing supply. Ultimately, the legislature followed through, with significant housing policy bills also advancing to Governor Ferguson’s desk, including a transit-oriented development bill, parking reform, and condominium liability reform.

Ferguson has voiced support for rent stabilization and for housing supply bills that cut red tape.

The bill must now advance back through both the House and Senate ahead of the end of the legislative session at midnight on Sunday. With a significant attention over the weekend set to be devoted to finalizing the state’s three budgets, time will be a major issue that determines whether HB 1217 is able to make it across the finish line.

“I know that there will be many tenants around the state who will have wished for a stronger policy, but this bill brings important protections,” Representative Nicole Macri (D-43rd, Seattle) said ahead of the conference committee vote. “We know that housing costs continue to outpace income increases over time, and that families and individuals across our state are struggling to keep roofs over their head, to keep food on the table, to keep their children clothed and make sure they don’t go into medical debt, and this bill will make a tremendous improvement in the lives of our seniors, our families, our people living with disabilities who are struggling the most to be able to live in safe and stable housing.”

The post Lawmakers Reach Rent Stabilization Compromise first appeared on The Urbanist.