A downtown Seattle apartment building will soon be the city’s first test site of a novel approach to affordable housing. Modeled on similar efforts in Europe, social housing is publicly owned rental housing with the goal of integrating renters across the economic spectrum and shifting more housing away from private-market ownership.
Unlike some other forms of affordable housing, social housing does not rely on federal tax credits and remains affordable in perpetuity. To buy this building and others — and to eventually start building new housing — the developer taps revenues from a voter-approved city tax on companies with individual employees who earn more than $1 million a year.