Pierce County has an affordable housing crisis. A new sales tax can help solve it

The Puget Sound region is struggling with an affordable housing and homelessness crisis that requires us to embrace effective, scalable and cost-efficient solutions. Local governments throughout our region need to be all-in as we tackle this challenge. Soon, the Pierce County Council will vote on a revenue proposal to make the county a significant partner in this fight. We urge the council to approve this measure.

In Pierce County, more than 43,000 households spend over half of their income on housing. That’s the downside of the region’s strong, sustained economic growth, which has made our limited housing stock far less affordable for lower-wage workers. Add other factors — pandemic impacts, barriers to accessing mental health and drug treatment services, and significant hurdles in creating new affordable housing projects — and we have a steep hill to climb.

Despite these challenges, we refuse to be discouraged. Drawing on lessons learned from around Washington state and the western United States, we are building an experienced coalition that is focused on creating better housing options for Pierce County residents, along with services that lift families up and promote economic and social mobility.

We believe Pierce County can be a leader in effectively addressing housing affordability if it embeds the following lessons learned in its approach.

First, understand the strengths of different members of the affordable housing community — private and non-profit developers and long-term owners of affordable housing, housing authorities, service providers and public agencies. Encourage them to do what they do best and find partners when they need other skills. Empowering people is a team effort, and lower-income residents and taxpayers are better off when we each excel at our own skill position.

Second, foster healthy competition and reward the strongest permanent supportive housing and workforce housing proposals. It takes a lot of upfront investment to build affordable housing, and we should ensure those dollars produce the greatest possible value in the near- and long-term.

Third, use limited local dollars to maximize funding from outside Pierce County. It’s important to know that the federal low-income housing tax credit program provides the vast majority of funding for permanent supportive housing and workforce housing projects. To compete for a tax credit allocation in our state, a project sponsor effectively needs financial support from a local source or the state housing trust fund (although many key developers are ineligible to apply for these state dollars). As a result, Pierce County should ensure it has the funding and policies in place to help project sponsors secure tax credit allocations.

To highlight this point, right now the Inland Group is partnering on a project with the Metropolitan Development Council, a nonprofit organization based in Pierce County. The Copper Way Apartments in Spanaway will provide 256 units of income-restricted housing to families earning 60% or below of area median income. Importantly, this new housing will be adjacent to a future Pierce Transit bus rapid transit line. Tax credit financing is secured, and the sponsors are pursuing limited grant funding for the project. In the current policy and economic climate, projects like Copper Way simply won’t happen without local support, so it will be important for Pierce County to employ new strategies and resources.

Fortunately, the Pierce County Council is moving in that direction. The council recently adopted its Housing Action Strategy to address the future housing needs of residents of all income levels. The best way to begin implementing that strategy is for the Council to join nine other counties and five cities in Washington, including Tacoma, which have enacted a 1/10 of one percent sales tax for housing.

This local revenue option will cost the average Pierce County resident $16 per year while raising approximately $20 million for housing and supportive services. This funding can be used to leverage many times more dollars from outside Pierce County.

We thank the council for considering this important step and ask you to join us in urging its adoption.

Amanda DeShazo is Executive Director of the Tacoma Pierce County Affordable Housing Consortium, a non-profit organization working to ensure that all residents of Tacoma-Pierce County have access to decent, safe and high-quality affordable housing.

Darin Davidson is president of the Inland Group, a Spokane-based developer, general contractor, and owner/operator of affordable workforce housing and market-rate senior housing in Washington and the western United States.

This story was originally published December 12, 2022 at 5:00 AM.