Affordable-housing sales tax helped create 680 units in two years. What’s next?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Pierce County generated $22M via sales tax to build 680 affordable units
- Housing Act exceeded 2025 goal for 60% AMI units but fell short for 30% AMI
- Council reviewing 646-unit proposal seeking $12M from housing tax fund
Nearly two years since the Pierce County Council passed the Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act, the sales tax has generated roughly $22 million in affordable-housing investments.
According to the county, the Maureen Howard Affordable Housing fund has helped develop more than 680 units of affordable housing — with hundreds more in the pipeline.
The Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act — named after a prominent advocate for the homeless in Tacoma who died in January 2023 was — passed in March 2023. The ordinance implemented a one-tenth of 1% sales tax to fund affordable housing and related services.
The Maureen Howard Housing Sales Tax was anticipated to generate more than $18 million in revenue, tripling the amount of affordable-housing funding the county had the year prior to its passage.
According to the county’s Housing Action Strategy Needs Assessment, over 56,000 new units are needed by 2044 to meet the needs of households with income below 50% of Area Median Income (AMI). Pierce County’s AMI is roughly $98,000 per household according to an estimation from the most recent U.S. Census Bureau survey data.
One-third of all households in Pierce County were spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to data reported by the county.
Between 2010 and 2021, median home values in Pierce County increased by 96% compared to a 31% increase in the median income, according to the county’s assessment. Average rents increased by 67% during the same period.
“To fully meet the housing needs of current and future residents, the county needs to produce, on average, over 2,300 units per year of housing affordable at or below 50% of area median income (AMI) through the year 2044,” the county’s Housing Action Strategy of 2022 found. “Over half of these units are needed for households at 30% of AMI or below.”
During the Pierce County Council’s Health and Human Services Committee meeting on Aug. 5, Bryan Schmid, affordable housing supervisor for Pierce County, gave a progress report on investments the county has made or is planning with the sales tax revenue.
Schmid reported the county had exceeded its goal of using Maureen Howard Sales Tax revenue to create 530 by the end of 2025 by developing 682 units to date. While the county nearly doubled its goal of creating 330 units at 60% AMI, it created 79 units at 30% AMI when its goal was to add 200.
He said current numbers do not include projects with funding awards pending consideration from the County Council.
At the end of March, the county opened an application for Maureen Howard funding for affordable housing developments outside the City of Tacoma.
“We did restrict the [Notice of Funding Availability] for projects outside the City of Tacoma to balance geographic equity,” Schmid told the committee. “2024 we had an imbalance of projects located in the City of Tacoma, and the desire was to balance that and get some equity to the rest of Pierce County.”
Schmid said 10 different applications were submitted by affordable-housing developers accounting for 801 potential units. More than $33 million was requested.
“We had a strong demand this year,” he said. “Even when we restricted this to projects outside the City of Tacoma, there was still a strong ask from the county for these capital dollars.”
Pierce County’s Human Services department finalized its recommendations for projects to receive Maureen Howard funding in July. Those recommendations were approved by the Pierce County Community Development Corporation and the County Executive and now await council approval.
The recommended projects would account for 646 affordable housing units at an investment of over $12 million. They include 276 units at 60% AMI at a project in the South Hill/Frederickson area, 248 units at 30% and 60% AMI at a project in Fife, and 113 units at 60% AMI at a project in DuPont.
