September 2020

Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs
City Council Members
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd
Spokane, WA 99201


City Council President and Members of the City Council:


Spokane is in the midst of a housing crisis. Decades of disinvestment have created a shortage of affordable housing, placing even basic shelter out of reach for Spokane’s elders, working poor, low-income population, and those living on the margins in temporary homeless shelters. For our most vulnerable community members, the affordable housing crisis has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Black Lives Matter protests have resurfaced Spokane’s racist history of real estate redlining, a shameful legacy that continues to harm our neighbors of color.

City Council President and Members, you have before you a unique and historic opportunity reverse these trends. Over the past 30 years, state and federal funding for low-income housing has steadily declined, and Spokane has only had rare, short-term chances to dedicate local funds for affordable housing. But, in 2020, the State legislature passed HB1590, opening the door for cities and counties to raise local sales taxes and create a durable funding source dedicated for affordable housing.

We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, urge the Spokane City Council to walk through this open door. We are writing to express our support for legislation that would raise the local sales tax by .1% to fund new low-income housing units with onsite social services. The City of Spokane was a leader in lobbying the State legislature to pass HB1590. Now, we are asking you to be the leader in implementing it: Take advantage of this bill and fund housing for Spokane’s most vulnerable community members.

Housing is one of the most important avenues to stability in life. A home empowers people to find work, access physical and mental health care, get an education and build skills, and engage in civic life. By passing this legislation, the Spokane City Council would address three key barriers to affordable housing by 1) creating a reliable funding source, 2) slashing long wait lists, and 3) stimulating flexible, local housing models that meet Spokane’s needs.

• HB1590 would raise between $5 and $6 million annually for affordable housing. This dedicated pool of funding would allow Spokane to build its first housing units in years for aging residents and the working poor. Today, these types of apartments and homes are needed the most, but the funding to build them is non-existent. We expect that passage of HB1590 by the Spokane City Council will result in 100 new units per year. If you act now, you will create homes for hundreds of people in the coming years.

Your legislation will create a funding pool that will boost the economic recovery. Funding from this bill will pencil out costs for developers by closing the donut hole of $50,000-$60,000 per affordable apartment or home. Construction employs community members, and housing empowers our residents to become more productive members of our community. You can create economic growth in the depths of a historic recession.

• Through this legislation, the Spokane City Council can slash housing wait times for low-income apartments in Spokane. Waitlists often run longer than 3 years. As a result, people experiencing homelessness can do everything right—complete all the paperwork, search hard for housing—and still wait 36 months for a home. You can reward hard work for people striving to move up the economic ladder.

• Through this legislation, the Spokane City Council can create flexible housing dollars, spurring new models for affordable housing that address Spokane’s specific housing needs. Spokane’s housing crisis reflects national trends, but we have our own particular racist history of redlining that has led, in part, to the disproportionate representation of the BIPOC community among Spokane renters. For Spokane’s working poor who were already teetering on the financial brink, the pandemic is pushing them over, threatening a landslide of evictions. You can create local dollars that will begin to solve our local problems and address the systemic racism and inequities in housing.

City Council President and Members, we recognize that housing is a complex issue and that this legislation is not a silver bullet. There will be more work to do, including creating protections for renters and enacting regulatory and zoning changes to allow more housing density and diversity across our city. The work will require collaboration with Mayor Woodward’s Housing Task Force and coordination with the city’s housing action plan.

But these changes to housing policy will be meaningless if there is no money to build the actual housing. If you act on this legislation in October, there will be revenue for affordable housing in 2021, enabling our city to take the next critical steps to address our housing crisis.

We, the undersigned, urge you to pass HB1590 and create a durable source of funding for affordable housing. Your votes will address our housing crisis by helping reverse the trend of housing disinvestment, prioritizing our vulnerable working poor and aging populations, and moving Spokane toward a more racially and socioeconomically equitable future.

Sincerely,