Hey, slacker, the housing levy needs you!
A current poll by the levy campaign shows support among the most reliable voters—so-called four-of-fours, meaning they voted in each of the last four elections—is running dead even. That’s no good, because the $86 million property-tax levy is the most important subsidy in Seattle for poor people’s housing. And with thousands of people already homeless in our city, we don’t need more. Besides the average Seattle homeowner, whose house is worth $310,000, only has to pony up 49 bucks a year in order to build or preserve 2044 units of affordable housing over the next seven years.
But you already know all this instinctively; the problem is getting you to the polls.
This year, for the first time, the levy will be on the September primary election ballot. During the previous three levy elections, the housing tax was on the November general election ballot. There’s a big difference.
Only about 30 percent of registered voters turn out for off-year primary elections. They tend to be homeowners, older, more conservative, and more tax sensitive. The people who will put the levy over the top are the younger, poorer, more liberal people who live in rental housing. The problem with these voters is they don’t show up for primaries. In November 1995, when plenty of these voters turned out, precincts on Capitol Hill voted 80 percent in favor of the levy.
So who had the bright idea of sticking something this important on the primary ballot?
The thinking went like this: November’s ballot is chock full of taxes—$7.7 billion for state transportation projects and $1.7 billion for the monorail, so the housing levy might get lost among all those big ticket items. Or people might start picking and choosing. The decision was made by the Seattle City Council to put the housing tax on September’s ballot by itself.
Stupid placement aside, it’s really important. I’ll spell it out for you.
Seattle, and the United States, did not always have a large homeless population. Mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, the decline of real wages, cutbacks in federal housing assistance, and the shredding of the social safety net all play their part in homelessness, but don’t overlook the loss of cheap housing.
In 1977, according to the city’s own figures, there were between 14,000 and 15,000 low-income-housing units downtown. They were not splendid, but the free market provided flophouses, fleabag hotels, and scummy SROs in abundance. For $2 a night, you had a roof over your head.
By 1983, the number of downtown, low-income units had fallen to 7,311—as the first wave of gentrification swept through the central city. The city and housing activists have been fighting ever since over keeping that number stable. Meanwhile all over the city, similar forces, although not so well documented, have been at work. Cheap housing is disappearing faster than we can replace it. And it’s all kinds of people from the destitute to the working poor who are hurting because of it.
The levy is the major source of funding for very-low-income people’s housing in Seattle. Ninety-one percent of the levy goes to renters. Over half of it is for people making 30 percent of the median income, $23,350 for a family of four, or less. Each local tax dollar leverages three more from foundations, banks, and other funders. While the levy is not going to solve homelessness, it will help.
So get off your butt and vote.
CHASING MARALYN
Last week Seattle Weekly endorsed Rep. Maralyn Chase, D-Edmonds, for 32nd District representative. The same day, The Seattle Times reported that Chase was trying to evade campaign-finance limits by asking a deep-pocketed supporter to contribute to the 32nd District Democrats who would, in turn, send the money back to her. So did we endorse a crooked pol trying to launder money? Or did we recommend a fool who thought her proposal was legal?
She claims she made a stupid mistake. “I know it sounds so lame,” she says.
Her evidence? She refutes the crook charge by pointing out she did the whole thing in public, through a group e-mail (she provided us with a copy). Moreover she sent the e-mail to the entire executive committee of the 32nd Dems, knowing full well that some of them sit on the campaign committee of her primary opponent, Kevin Grossman. It doesn’t seem like the work of someone trying to launder money.
She doesn’t feign ignorance either. She’s been a campaign junkie since 1960. “I know campaign law,” she says. “That’s what no one can figure out. Why didn’t I think that one through?”
So what’s her explanation? “I made a mistake.” She adds jokingly, “Maybe I was out doorbelling too much.”
Just don’t do it again.
