Activists want to transform Tacoma housing policy. Here’s what they’re fighting for
In many ways, it was reminiscent of a meeting I attended seven years ago. Back then, and in a back room at the First United Methodist Church on Tacoma Avenue, I sat with a group of five people of varied backgrounds, all of them unified by a single goal: raising Tacoma’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
On message alone, the group was generally viewed at the time as a fringe element. Sure, there was a real, live socialist with long hair, but there was also a retired Boeing software analyst. The nuance hardly mattered. To many, these were radicals, pushing radical ideas.
You might recall what happened next. By the following year, Tacoma was implementing a staggered minimum wage increase — hashed out between the mayor, business interests and local labor advocates — that would push the city’s minimum wage higher than some previously thought possible. It wasn’t everything the “radicals” wanted — and, to be clear, plenty of them were unsatisfied — but it wasn’t nothing. In fact, it was a tremendous shift of policy and public perception in a remarkably short period of time, due in large part to the pressure and effective politics the group employed.
Now, that’s precisely what a new group of Tacoma-based activists — who many would likely describe in the same dismissive tone that minimum-wage advocates received — are hoping to accomplish through the city’s ambitious and ongoing housing density and rezoning process.
Under the banner of “Home in Tacoma for All,” and using the organizing oomph of Tacoma’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (gasp!), the campaign — which borrows its name from the city’s Home in Tacoma project — is bonded by purpose as well as a shared frustration that likely resonates across the city.
According to campaign members like Ty Moore, Tacoma’s current effort to increase density, prevent economic displacement and increase the city’s stock of affordable housing simply isn’t enough.
With developers hoisting cranes across the city, the market-rate units being built can be viewed as good news under the generic argument that all housing is good, but for the majority of Tacoma residents — and certainly any households living anywhere near the city’s annual median income of roughly $50,000 — they’re almost entirely unattainable, Moore says.
It’s a problem the Home in Tacoma for All campaign wants to attack straight on, Moore said — advocating for City Council to adopt a host of sweeping changes that could redefine the Tacoma’s approach to the creation of affordable housing, the protections afforded to renters and the regulations we place on carbon emissions.
“If (the city) is going to live up to its promises of increasing equity, increasing affordability and increasing sustainability, it needs to have a set of policies connected to it that is on the scale the crisis demands,” Moore said late last month, prior to a Home in Tacoma for All event held at the Evergreen State College Tacoma campus.
The campaign platform has three major elements, according to Nathan Schumer, another member of the Home in Tacoma for All movement.
First, advocates are championing a policy that, if enacted, would require developers to either make 25% of units in larger new developments permanently affordable or pay into a fund that would then be used toward the construction of affordable housing. They also want leaders to create what’s known as a “social housing developer.” Using money from the city’s budget and Tacoma’s bonding capacity, they say increased public development of housing could help construct thousands of publicly owned mixed-income units in the coming years. A similar initiative effort is underway in Seattle.
Simultaneously, the campaign is fighting for the passage of an expansive “Renters Bill of Rights” — which would do things like require landlords to pay relocation assistance after significant rent increases and mandate that six months of notice be given when a rent increase happens — while also banning the use of natural gas in all new residential construction.
It’s bold, ambitious and, politically speaking, probably a little impossible.
While social housing developers and inclusionary zoning efforts aren’t completely newfangled or untested ideas, they would be a significant departure from current city policy, and both would no doubt face heavy push back.
But we’ve heard that before, haven’t we, before watching the conversation and the needle of public opinion shift?
That’s the long game and the goal, according to Ann Dorn, a volunteer with the Tacoma Tenants Union who’s also part of the Home in Tacoma for All campaign.
“I think we are facing some pretty unprecedented conditions in terms of housing. It’s not going to get better on its own,” Dorn said. “This is the time to act. We want this council to adopt some very progressive actions, and that comes from advocacy.”
Tacoma state Sen. Yasmin Trudeau attended the Home in Tacoma for All community forum on April 23. The Democrat said that while some of the specific elements of the campaign’s platform are contentious and politically complicated — rent control, for instance — she believes the group represents residents who deserve to be a part of the conversation about what Tacoma’s future will be.
Too often, Trudeau said, those who bear the brunt of bad policy — like people experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness — are left out.
Trudeau also said that while she believes Tacoma’s City Council is up to the challenge and committed to addressing the problem, people aren’t wrong when they look around a changing city and question whether the city’s current growth trajectory has a place for them.
“I think when you look at social change, you can’t determine something is unrealistic until you’re ready to consider it, and that’s why I appreciate this conversation,” Trudeau said. “I’m all about figuring out, ‘Where do we want to be?’ And if folks are organizing around that, as a policy maker … I’m down to be pushed. I think all of us should be.”
Rest assured, the Home in Tacoma for All campaign plans to keep the pressure on.
Dismiss their ideas at your own risk and don’t be surprised to see many of them seep into the mainstream the longer the housing crisis persists.
This story was originally published May 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
