New tax to fund social housing likely headed to Seattle ballots

Seattle voters will likely get a chance to decide whether to impose a new tax on high-earning businesses to pay for the work of the newly created Seattle Social Housing Developer.

On Monday afternoon, House Our Neighbors, a nonprofit social housing advocacy group, submitted 37,819 signatures to Seattle’s Office of the City Clerk to get Initiative 137 on the ballot. That’s well over the 26,521 valid signatures they need to qualify. Initiative campaigns typically collect more than the minimum number to provide a margin of safety for invalid signatures.

If successful, the measure would levy a 5% “excess compensation” tax on employer payroll expenses for each Seattle-based employee paid over $1 million annually. In other words, an employer would pay a 5% tax on any dollar over $1 million in total employee compensation. Total compensation includes base salary, stock and bonuses.

That money would be used by Seattle’s Social Housing Developer, the voter-approved public development authority, to build, acquire, manage and maintain permanently subsidized, mixed-income affordable housing. House Our Neighbors, which also spearheaded last year’s ballot measure to create the Social Housing Developer, expects the proposed tax to raise about $53 million annually.

https://crosscut.com/politics/2024/06/new-tax-fund-social-housing-likely-headed-seattle-ballots