Washington state has a progressive reputation. On the surface, this image might seem plausible: after all Democrats have continuously controlled the state governorship since 1985 and currently control both houses of the state legislature by significant margins. Progressive activists in Seattle, the state’s largest city, cemented their city’s reputation as a bastion of left wing hellraisers during protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and against police brutality in 2020. From 2014 to 2024, Seattle even had a bellicose revolutionary socialist (Kshama Sawant) occupy one of its 9 city council seats, winning election multiple times until she decided not to run again. At $20.76 per hour, Seattle has the highest minimum wage of any city in the nation. The minimum wage for Washington state itself–$16.66 per hour–is the highest of the nation’s 50 states.  

However, beneath these pleasantly progressive features, the state is rife with all of the same social and economic inequities plaguing the rest of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the area of housing. The state’s high minimum wage is more than offset by its extremely high cost of living. Recently, the New York Times, citing the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, reported that “between 2001 and 2023, median residential rents in Washington state rose by 43 percent, adjusted for inflation,” while state renter income grew by only 26 percent during the same period. Nowhere in the state is the cost of housing more crushing for many working and middle class persons–with the possible exception of Seattle’s wealthy eastern suburbs–than in Seattle itself; in 2024, Seattle’s median asking rent (the rent price listed in advertisements by landlords) sat at $2,072, well above the national median asking rent of $1,648.  

In this article, I will concentrate mainly on the issue of affordable housing in Washington state–and solutions left wing activists are putting forth to address it–and will avoid the related issue of homelessness, one of the leading issues discussed in Washington state politics. It is not that homelessness in the state is not hugely important; it is. According to a 2024 report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington state ranks third among states in its number of homeless residents, behind only California and New York. The issue of homeless encampments in downtown Seattle and around the state has provided constant fodder for the state’s right wing activists, podcasters and talk radio demagogues to fan the flames of reactionary backlash amongst the state’s public. In the interests of space, I will devote space below to surveying the equally important issue of the political dynamic around the state’s increasingly diminishing supply of affordable housing. I will focus especially on the strategies of left wing activists to gain victories for working people in the area of housing, where, like in any policy area, the potential for progressive policy is highly constrained by the influence of big business and the wealthy (especially real estate interests in the case of housing). 

Wealth Redistribution

State activists seeking serious solutions to the state’s housing crisis have zeroed in on redistributionist policies. In 2018, the Seattle city council passed by a 9-0 vote a “head tax” proposal which would have imposed a special payroll tax on the highest paid employees among the city’s largest employers in order to fund the construction of affordable housing. The proposal’s most prominent public advocate was the revolutionary socialist city council member Kshama Sawant–along with activists in the local chapter of Socialist Alternative of which she was then a leader–who saw it as a partial solution to address the problem of extreme gentrification in the Central District, Seattle’s historically black neighborhood. However the threat of capital flight quickly spurred the city council to repeal the legislation it had just unanimously passed. With only Sawant and her colleague Teresa Mosqueda dissenting, the council voted to repeal the head tax after major corporations with headquarters in Seattle like Amazon, Starbucks and Vulcan Real Estate issued public denunciations of the tax and began funding a signature gathering campaign to establish a city-wide voter referendum to repeal it.

However in 2020, the political climate in Seattle was different: massive protests around racial justice and demands for government economic assistance in the wake of the Covid pandemic spurred the Seattle city council  to successfully implement a new version of the head tax, which like the old, was a tax on the salaries of the highest paid employees at the city’s largest companies. A majority of the Jumpstart payroll tax–as it became known–would be used to fund affordable housing, but the rest would be used for economic assistance to small business and Green New Deal style infrastructure projects. Since its passage into law, Jumpstart revenues have brought in much greater revenues than forecast. Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell and  the pro-business majority on the city council have tried to take credit for the modest yet tangible achievements of the Jumpstart tax while quietly working to limit its reach. They have worked successfully to divert Jumpstart revenue surpluses to plug existing deficits in the city’s general budget (instead of applying the funds for expansion of affordable housing or similar worthy goals–or creating new taxes on the wealthy to reduce the budget deficit). 

Meanwhile a grassroots coalition of community groups–including the Seattle chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)–formed in 2021, calling itself House Our Neighbors, to oppose a voter referendum pushed by a big business backed group called Compassion Seattle which–unsuccessfully in the end–sought to enshrine the city government’s “sweeps” of homeless encampments in the city charter. 

In 2023, House Our Neighbors successfully helped engineer Seattle voter approval of Initiative 135, which created the Seattle Social Housing Developer, a public authority charged with overseeing the creation in Seattle of “social housing”–a concept which is different from traditional public or affordable housing programs in the United States. The most developed example of social housing in world history is possibly that from the Red Vienna period of interwar Austria: when a socialist city government of Vienna built public housing which was constructed to enhance the democratic solidarity of residents as well as facilitate their access to health care, education, cultural events and other vital needs. The Viennese success in social housing has continued to the present day. 

It remains to be seen whether Seattle’s version of social housing will resemble that of Red Vienna. There is still a long way to go in terms of the development of community involvement and the political process which will ultimately shape its specific details. For now, it appears that resulting from Prop 1A’s passage, Seattle social housing will revolve around the following broad principles: that it be publicly owned; that no renter will pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent; that it consist of renters whose income from employment is anywhere from 0 to 120 percent of the Seattle area’s median income; that higher income renters subsidize the rents of lower income renters; and that social housing residents have democratic control over the social housing.

House Our Neighbors secured a major step toward the realization of its goals when Seattle voters approved Proposition 1A in February of this year to generate revenue for the Social Housing Developer, implementing a 5 percent tax on the incomes of persons employed within Seattle city limits making more than $1 million per year–the new payroll tax is expected to raise $50 million per year for social housing in Seattle. Seattle voters simultaneously decisively rejected Proposition 1B, an effort by the Seattle city council and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to co-opt the idea of social housing while substantially diluting its impact. Prop 1B would have utilized a mere $10 million annually for five years for social housing, appropriating it entirely from Seattle’s existing Jumpstart tax revenue for affordable housing while subjecting the Social Housing Developer to strict oversight by the pro-business Seattle city council. 

Solutions: Renter Legal Protections

In 2021,community  activists mobilized by Sawant–including members of the local Socialist Alternative chapter and Seattle union members– played a major role in the Seattle city council’s enactment of multiple pieces of legislation to protect renters in the city. The laws require landlords to give six months notice of future rent increases; to pay relocation expenses equivalent to three months rent if the rent increase is more than 10 percent and the tenant makes less than 80 percent of the area median income; a moratorium on eviction of tenants during winter months and families of schoolchildren during the school year; subsidies for legal defense for low income tenants threatened with eviction; an appeals process for tenants served with 3 day eviction notices for allegedly engaging in criminal or dangerous behavior; and to cap late fees on rent payments at $10. 

The Seattle renter protection laws have come under sustained criticism from local real estate landlords and nonprofit public housing developers. Responding to their concerns, Seattle city council member Cathy Moore is currently preparing legislation to repeal at least some of these protections, including the above listed eviction moratoriums. Given the strong pro-business orientation of the current council and of mayor Bruce Harrel, it is probable that any legislation Moore introduces will pass. 

A remarkably similar housing controversy exists 35 miles southeast of Seattle down Interstate 5 in the city of Tacoma, whose population is roughly 223,000. In November 2023, Tacoma voters narrowly approved Initiative 1, which led to the institution of the Landlord Fairness Code, whose components are similar (although not identical) to the above listed Seattle rental protections. 

Initiative 1 was launched by Tacoma For All, a grassroots organization created by the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367. Tacoma For All operates with democratic voting on organizational direction being taken by paid members at regular meetings. It has made regular efforts to canvas apartment buildings in Tacoma, to explain the new legal rights to ordinary renters and to convince such renters to become members of Tacoma For All. The organization has tried to popularize the title “Tenant Bill of Rights” for the officially titled Landlord Fairness Code. 

As is similarly the case in Seattle, local real estate interests have coalesced around the notion that Tacoma’s Landlord Fairness Code’s moratoriums against evictions during winter months and of families with children during the school year has allowed tenants to avoid paying rent even though, these critics say, they have more than enough money to pay it. They have put forth stories of freeloading renters using the moratoriums and other legal protections to stay in properties without paying rent and putting mom and pop middle class landlords through the most mentally anguishing and financially draining ordreals before finally being able to evict the scoundrels. One of the leading spokespersons for the effort to roll back Initiative 1, former Executive Director of the Tacoma Housing Authority, Michael Mirra, repeated the claim to the Tacoma News Tribune (TNT) in January, implying that the Landlord Fairness Code’s eviction moratoriums enabled renters perfectly capable of paying rent to shaft landlords. 

The problem with Mirra’s claim is that there is no evidence that  any significant number of renters with the ability to pay rent are exploiting the moratoriums to withhold rent. There are certainly other plausible explanations for people missing their rent payments. One is that worker wages are not keeping up with the exploding growth in housing costs (which the Tacoma Landlord Fairness Code does not address except, very modestly, in its requirement that landlords  provide relocation assistance to tenants equivalent to two months rent if they raise rents by more than 5 percent and the tenant does not accept the rent increase). The TNT reported that 77 percent of jobs located within the city of Tacoma “don’t pay enough for a single worker to be able to comfortably afford housing on their own.” It also noted that according to official figures for Pierce County (of which Tacoma is the county seat), “37% of all households are cost-burdened or extremely cost-burdened, meaning residents spend more than 30% of their income on housing.” 

Even Sean Flynn, Executive Director of the Rental Housing Association of Washington and a fierce opponent of Initiative 1, told the TNT that as far as he could tell, for the most part, renters were missing rent payments because they simply did not have the money to pay it. “Most people don’t pay their rent because they don’t have the money. It’s not rocket science. If you have the money, you pay the rent. “ Rather than make it harder for landlords to evict renters, Flynn argued for government policies to increase subsidies for renters and to encourage the building of more affordable housing. 

While Flynn’s call for more affordable housing is not objectionable by itself, the problem is that the private sector, even with governmental incentives, has little motivation to build anywhere near the amount required to meet the demand. Tyron Moore, interim director of Tacoma For All, made this point in a February opinion piece responding to Initiative 1’s critics in the TNT. Moore noted that with population growth, according to the city of Tacoma’s figures, “we must build 43,000 new homes by 2044, with 60% of those new homes affordable to those earning less than 80% of the area median income.” However, Moore observed:

“This requires 1,400 new affordable homes annually–five times the current rate of production. The city’s reliance on subsidizing private developers is clearly inadequate when building luxury apartments remains far more profitable. To make matters worse, city council stripped affordability requirements for developers from the Home in Tacoma zoning reform.” 

For their part, Moore and other Initiative 1 supporters point to successes: with the moratoriums many people have been kept sheltered who would otherwise have been evicted. The eviction rate, while rising in Tacoma during 2024, rose at a significantly slower rate than in other areas of the state lacking the renter protections provided by the Landlord Fairness Code. Lauren Romero, an attorney working with Tacoma For All’s tenant legal assistance program, told the TNT that in her experience, the eviction moratorium gave tenants with rent payment difficulties breathing space to approach landlords to secure alternative payment plans. 

A Statewide Rental Increase Cap

On May 7, Washington state’s Democratic governor Bob Ferguson signed into law legislation that will cap statewide rent increases at 10% annually or 7% plus inflation, whichever is lower. State progressives were pleasantly surprised that Ferguson attached his signature to the legislation–just as they were pleased that he backtracked to some extent on his loud proclamations upon assuming office in January that he was against new taxes on the wealthy and wanted draconian budget cuts across all state government departments in order to address the state’s estimated two year $16 billion dollar budget deficit. Upon signing the rent stabilization bill, Ferguson proclaimed that “too many folks are getting priced out” of the housing rental market “and we can’t have that, right? That’s not an option.” 

However, the legislation actually contains major loopholes that will likely allow the continuation of the “option” of “folks…getting priced out” of rental housing. As Tyron Moore noted in an email to Tacoma For All members, the legislation allows landlords to engage in “vacancy de-control,” meaning they can raise the rent above the new rent cap if a unit is vacant; this may lead to landlords to put pressure on existing tenants to vacate units or plot to evict them so they can raise the rate higher for new tenants. Also, the legislation exempts new housing from the rent cap for 12 years after the units are occupied. Moore wrote that “with cities pushing for a major expansion of construction over the next 25 years, this means hundreds of thousands of tenants will still face steep rent hikes.” 

The rental control law signed into law by Ferguson will undoubtedly provide very modest yet tangible assistance to some Washington renters. However, it can also be said to at best merely nibble around the edges of a deep structural problem within American capitalism: the free market in housing in the United States has failed at providing affordable housing for a large number of American workers and families. As ruling class politicians like Ferguson nibble around the edges of such problems (and often ignore them altogether), it will be up to grassroots organizations like House our Neighbors and Tacoma For All to continually fight for true housing justice for all Americans.  

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