Building Belonging.
Providing homes for the people who power our economy
Seattle Social Housing Developer aims to provide housing to low and middle income households who are rent-burdened, can’t afford market-rate housing, but earn too much to qualify for affordable housing.
These are the people who power our economy: teachers, firefighters, service workers, and many others who are rent-burdened and increasingly displaced from Seattle.
Permanently Affordable
Cross-Class Communities
Climate Forward
Publicly Owned
Working together toward a more affordable city
Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD) is a new, innovative public development authority created through the passage of I-135 in 2023.
Our mission is to develop, own, lease, and maintain mixed-income housing that is permanently affordable, owned as a public asset forever, and designed for people priced out of market-rate housing.
What is Social Housing?
Social housing exists in various forms throughout the world to provide secure and affordable housing for people who can’t afford market-rate rents. In our Seattle model, housing will be publicly owned in perpetuity and offer the long-term affordability that creates stable living environments, promotes social equity, and prevents displacement.
News & Updates from SSHD
Can Social Housing Deliver? Los Angeles and Seattle Pursue Two Distinct Paths
In recent years, the phrase “social housing” has gone from an obscure academic phrase to a policy vision that is being pursued in multiple cities across the United States.
In a 2021 webinar, sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi, who authored a white paper with H. Jacob Carlson on social housing the year before, explained that the phrase, “invites us to think about housing as something other than just an economic good . . . to begin to think of housing as closer to something like education or health.
“One of the lies we’ve been sold on in this country is that housing is a private good primarily to be bought and sold,” Baiocchi said.
At the time, the phrase “social housing” was somewhat obscure in the United States. Academics like Baiocchi, inspired by the success in European cities (notably in Vienna, Austria) of policies by that name that supported universal access to housing, helped popularize the term.
Take a tour of Seattle’s first ever social housing building
In 2023, Seattle voters were presented with a new approach to housing:
Mixed income public housing where rent from higher earning tenants would offset the rent of people making below the area median income. It was dubbed social housing by its supporters.
Seattle voters approved the idea and then, a couple years later, chose to give it a lot of money through a new tax on employers who pay individual salaries over $1 million dollars.
Now, the rubber is hitting the road, Seattle’s Social Housing Developer purchased its first property in June. Soundside recently went to see the apartment building in Belltown and met with Tiffani McCoy, the interim CEO of the social housing developer.