19-02-2025
Tacoma's housing crisis demands solutions: Exploring social housing as a key strategy
Last week, Seattle voters overwhelmingly voted to fund their social housing developer with an 'excessive income payroll tax' on companies paying employees over $1 million. This will significantly expand Seattle's affordable housing supply and adds to the rising wave of long-overdue, popular policies confronting the root causes of the housing crisis. Tacoma's groundbreaking Landlord Fairness Code, municipal wins throughout the West Coast, and the push for statewide rent stabilization in Washington all underscore growing appetites for bold solutions.
We must expand upon these victories to address our housing crisis, which has reached a breaking point in Tacoma and beyond. City estimates suggest Tacoma needs 43,000 new housing units by 2044, with over 60% of those affordable to Tacomans earning less than 80% of AMI. Meanwhile, rent increases outpace income, and post-COVID eviction rates in Pierce County and statewide have rebounded dramatically. Even worse, the TNT reports Pierce County witnessed at least a 7% in homelessness during 2024 and is dramatically undercounting deaths.
Yet big landlords, developers and lobbyists consistently resist innovation and defend the decades-old, failed reliance on private developers 'building ourselves out' of the affordability crisis. Tax incentives haven't created enough market-rate development at 80% of AMI and above -much less affordable housing — forcing growing reliance on rental subsidies to landlords. At best, these approaches yield well-intentioned zoning reform like Home In Tacoma, which adds density, but ignores the underlying problems with commodified, speculative housing. At worst, they drive inequality, displacement and distrust in housing policies.
Tacoma must break with business-as-usual mindsets. Instead, we need bold innovations such as social housing. A Tacoma social housing developer could dramatically expand both market-rate housing and deeply, permanently affordable housing, using income from market-based units to subsidize affordable ones. The benefits would be quicker, stronger and longer than tax giveaways for overwhelmingly market-rate development. Social housing addresses the supply-side problem landlords and developers always lament, without neglecting vulnerable tenants.
Social housing would prevent displacement, increase integration, and stabilize neighborhoods. A developer could even convert owner-occupied, single-family homes into multi-family in exchange for affordability. This would allow homeowners to age in place, add density and address legitimate concerns with for-profit development destroying neighborhood character. Independent bonding and progressive revenue taxing wealthy elites or large businesses could make development sustainable with minimal impacts on working and middle-class residents.
Opponents of tenant protections relentlessly blame them for depressing housing supply, despite lacking any local data backing this up. The Rental Housing Association led the campaign against the Landlord Fairness Code, organizing outside groups of landlords, developers, and real estate lobbyists into outspending us three-to-one. Their new political action committee, BuildUp Washington, pledged $350k to fight state rent stabilization this legislative session and is spreading outright lies that it causes crime.
You would hope, then, that landlords and industry would embrace social housing as an innovative tool to expand affordable housing. Yet some of Seattle's most powerful corporations backed the $500,000, disingenuous, failed campaign against social housing. Tacoma should expect similar well-funded, hypocritical attacks in the coming year, both attempting to reverse tenant rights and to undermine social housing.
The crisis continues because prices, evictions and homelessness aren't market failures, but political ones. We invite elected officials to join us in rejecting the failed policies of the past, and pushing for bold solutions. Anyone interested in changing course is invited to Tacoma for All's conversation with Tiffani McCoy, the executive director of House Our Neighbors, who led Seattle's successful social housing and revenue campaigns.
Join us 6 p.m. March 18 at Common Good Tacoma, 621 Tacoma Ave S.
Ann Dorn is a law clerk with Nexus Legal Counsel and a steering committee member with Tacoma For All. Devin Rydel Kelly is a community leader, recent state legislative candidate, and steering committee member with Tacoma For All.
