No metro area builds more affordable housing than Seattle, analysis shows

Feb 2, 2026, 5:00 AM | Updated: 3:05 pm

An apartment building in Seattle. (Photo: @SounderBruce via Flickr Creative Commons)

(Photo: @SounderBruce via Flickr Creative Commons)

MyNorthwest Content Editor

The Seattle metro area is the nation’s leading builder of affordable housing, a new analysis by RentCafe showed.

Greater Seattle saw more than 14,200 fully affordable apartments go up between 2020 and 2024, meaning nearly one in four apartments built in the area in the past five years were affordable, according to RentCafe.

Income-restricted rentals accounted for 24.2% of all new apartment construction in Seattle.

Affordable housing surged nearly 40% post-pandemic.

“The metro is building about the same number of apartments as before the pandemic — but far more of them are affordable,” RentCafe spokesperson Maurie Irimia stated in an email to MyNorthwest.

The number of completed apartments remained steady at around 59,000 units before and after the pandemic. But the share of income-restricted housing jumped from under 17% a decade ago to 24% in 2024 — rising from 10,229 units to 14,290.

Everett development helped extend affordable housing

RentCafe highlighted Four Corners, a 430-unit development in Everett.

“Backed by a $1 million grant from the Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program (CHIP), the project stands out not only for its scale, but for extending affordable housing beyond Seattle’s limits into Snohomish County,” RentCafe stated in the analysis.

Other cities that saw a rise in affordable housing were New York City, New York; Austin, Texas; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; and Atlanta, Georgia.

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