Some things have been festering. Tacoma’s new City Council needs to address them — now
For months now, Tacoma’s candidates for City Council — including newcomers Kristina Walker and John Hines — have been working to convince voters they’re up to the job.
On front porches and in candidate forums, they’ve talked about the many issues Tacoma faces, largely face-to-face.
Affordable housing. Homelessness. Gentrification and displacement. Transportation. The future of the Port of Tacoma and fixing roads and sidewalks.
Rest assured, all of them have come up.
Talking, however, is the easy part.
Come January, the next iteration of the City Council will have a host of important decisions to make.
What should the focus be in 2020? What should voters expect and hold elected leaders accountable for?
I’m glad you asked.
Here are some starting points:
Find cash for affordable housing
Last spring, the Tacoma City Council created an affordable housing trust fund.
What the council didn’t do, at least at the time, was find a sustainable source of money for it. A one-time general fund deposit of $1.2 million went into it, but that was it.
Needless to say, as Tacoma continues to grapple with a growing housing affordability crisis, it’s going to take a lot more than that.
The good news is, House Bill 1406 — which the city and county smartly took advantage of — will deliver millions of dollars for affordable housing in Tacoma over the next two decades, but even that is small change compared to the need.
What’s the ultimate answer? Finding another sizable and consistent dedicated source of money for the affordable housing trust fund, and fast — like next year.
Certainly, the fund alone — even if an additional source of money is found — won’t solve all of Tacoma’s affordable housing problems, but it would go a long way. The fund can be leveraged with state, federal and private dollars, for example, to ensure that Tacoma starts addressing its affordable housing shortage with the urgency the crisis requires.
So what’s it going to take? Though the taxing options are far less than ideal, and other needs are likely to emerge, taking an initiative to voters must be something the council strongly considers.
Increased affordable housing — to slow displacement, prevent homelessness and to keep up with the growing need — is the city’s top issue for a reason, and things are getting worse not better.
Voters have said as much. Our elected leaders, new and old, know as much.
Now it’s time to find a way to pay for it.
Breaking the bottleneck
It’s been more than two years since Tacoma’ officially declared homelessness an emergency.
The biggest lesson learned since is simple: Without more permanent supportive housing, progress in solving the emergency will be minimal, at best.
Tacoma’s multi-million dollar Dome District stability site stands as a testament to this.
Since opening, the emergency shelter facility has operated at capacity, on a nearly nightly basis, largely serving individuals with significant barriers to being housed. Often, people have stayed for a very long time because there’s nowhere better for them to go.
What we need is a next step to move people through the system, opening up needed shelter space and breaking the bottleneck that helps keep folks living in our parks and parking strips.
That requires permanent supportive housing — which means offering the chronically homeless housing and the personalized support services they need, all in one.
Certainly, homelessness is a regional crisis, and it’s both unfair and unrealistic to expect Tacoma to shoulder it alone (looking at you, Puyallup).
But at the same time, the reality is that opening more tent cities and scrounging up shelter spaces in church gymnasiums is insufficient.
Paying for the permanent supportive housing, of course, is where things get tricky.
There are options, however.
Obviously, state and regional partnerships should be heavily pursued.
Tacoma’s elected leaders also would be wise to think long and hard about other possibilities, like leveraging at least some of the estimated $17 million in sales tax revenue the city will receive over the next 20 years through HB 1406.
It would be a bold move, considering the crisis-level need for affordable housing across the spectrum, but sometimes bold moves are what’s required.
About those multifamily tax breaks ...
To be blunt, the tax credits Tacoma offers developers looking to build multiple-family housing are outdated.
Currently, the city’s 8-year property tax exemption includes no affordable housing requirement.
The city’s 12-year property tax exemption, meanwhile, has an affordable housing requirement — but it’s an insufficient one. To qualify, developers agree to offer 20 percent of housing units created to individuals earning 80 percent of Pierce County area median income or less.
As The News Tribune’s Allison Needles has reported, that puts the cut off at roughly $60,000 for a family of four and pencils out to an approximate rent of $1,600 per month.
In this housing and economic climate, that’s far too high.
Already conversations have begun at City Hall to consider changing the multifamily tax exemption program. Those talks have included the possibility of adding an affordable housing requirement to the 8-year program and lowering the AMI threshold for the 12-year program.
Both steps should be taken in 2020.
Prioritizing safety, with unique approaches
When it comes to curtailing violence in a city like Tacoma, much of the work can feel vague and amorphous.
Sure, cops can be hired and talk can be tough.
That’s the easy part.
But what about the historical inequities that contribute to the problem? What about the broken relationships and squandered trust? What about the complicated contributing factors, like poverty, redlining, a lack of opportunity and blatant discrimination?
Getting to the root of those issues is far trickier and less precise. It’s also just as important, if not more important, and requires unique approaches,
It calls for a level of respect, engagement and understanding that hasn’t always been extended from the city’s power structure to all of its under-served neighborhoods.
In 2020, it’s nearly certain that reducing crime — and particularly violence — will be on the minds of elected officials and rightfully so.
As these conversations emerge at City Hall — in concert with efforts like the ongoing Project Peace and community-driven efforts to reduce gun violence — it will be imperative that our elected leaders don’t settle for easy answers.
What will the Tideflats look like?
We shouldn’t still be talking about this.
Interim land-use regulations at the Port of Tacoma — which originally went into place in 2017 and have been extended, every six months, since then — were designed to be, well, interim.
The idea was to give the city and its partners time to fully map out a Tidelfats subarea plan, clearly defining what the future of the port will be and what kind of industrial uses will be allowed.
Most pointedly, what role fossil fuels will play in the future of the Port is a question that deserved an answer long ago.
For the City Council, the can has been kicked down the road many times already.
Unfortunately, an ultimate resolution hasn’t gotten any easier.
In 2020, it’s time for Tacoma — along with the other vested interests involved with the subarea plan process — to stop dragging its feet.
Tacoma must make a decision, difficult as it will be.
The hanging fossil fuel debate must be settled.
It’s time.
