Who is funding the Seattle social housing campaigns?

Last updated Jan. 24, 2025

This past Wednesday, King County Elections mailed out ballots for the upcoming Feb. 11 special election. On the top of the ballot is Proposition 1, which could determine the future of social housing in Seattle. 

If you aren’t familiar with the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD) and Prop 1, I have covered the initative in depth for Real Change.

But in short, advocates with the House Our Neighbors (HON) coalition successfully campaigned for the passage of I-135 in February 2023, which established the SSHD.

HON and the SSHD want to bring a different type of public housing to Seattle that is more common in places like Vienna, Austria or Singapore. It is based on four basic concepts that social housing should: 1) be owned by the public forever; 2) be permanently affordable and cost no more than 30% of one’s income; 3) be not used for private profits; and 4) incorporate a cross-class community of tenants from different backgrounds and income levels.

Because of Washington State election laws, HON was unable to include both the authorizing legislation that would establish SSHD as well as the funding source in I-135. That resulted in the group launching a second initiative to pass a new payroll tax to fund the social housing developer, now known on the ballot as Prop 1A. If passed, Prop 1A would apply a 5% tax to wealthy corporations on payrolls in excess of $1 million. The costs would be borne by employers and not affect anything under $1 million. 

The Seattle City Council did not support HON’s initiative, choosing to delay it to the February 2025 ballot and adding an alternative initiative known as Prop 1B. Instead of implementing a new tax, Prop 1B would divert $10 million from the city’s existing affordable housing funds and impose restrictions on the SSHD which could undermine its model of social housing. Naturally, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce endorsed the measure soon after.

So why create this post? In the past few weeks, a lot of corporate money has flooded the race. A new group called “People for Responsible Social Housing,” which backs Prop 1B, has received large donations including a $100,000 pledge from Microsoft and $25,000 from T-Mobile. Despite not even having a public-facing website, it is already sending out mailers to the public. I wanted to create a dashboard, which I will regularly update until the election, to better inform voters and the public about who is behind both of the campaigns. All data comes from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.