SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Affordable housing a euphemism for developers, insiders bilking us
Sep 9, 2019, 1:22 PM
A vacant lot owned by Seattle City Light in North Seattle was turned over to non-profits to construct affordable housing. (Seattle Channel)
(Seattle Channel)
The City of Seattle is donating three parcels of Seattle City Light land for a total of 27 units of affordable housing in Phinney Ridge and Loyal Heights.
The city also plans to throw in $2.2 million of our tax dollars for development costs. Apparently, just the Phinney Ridge town homes will cost $6.4 million to build, according to the developer.
That’s a lot of money. Without any land acquisition costs — because the city is giving them the land — that works out to $350,000 per condo.
I’m betting the parcels are worth about $1 million each. The city has got to be lying when it says the total value is $1.6 million. You cannot buy a lot big enough for 19 condos in Seattle for $500,000 these days. Come on.
Dori: Politicians create affordable housing crisis, get rich off homelessness
Does anybody recognize that this is why we have a homelessness crisis? It’s because of scams like this. Developers get wealthy. “Nonprofits” like the Low-Income Housing Institute and the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort get wealthy. And then what happens when these condos get built?
Remember the KING 5 story last year about the political power couple who got the affordable housing condos in Bellevue? These political insiders, who owned a waterfront house near Olympia, were able to buy this condo as a second home and scam the taxpayers who were subsidizing those condos.
Seattle could sell these lots at market value and pay for some other things we need, like hiring more cops. But you’ve got developers, builders, and six-figure people working in the homeless-industrial complex who get wealthy off of homelessness and drug vagrancy.
There are a lot of connected people who get stinking rich off of all of this. As for you and me? We just have to keep dealing with the drugs and crime.
Sound Transit did the same thing. It told developers in advance where their lines would go. People with political connections were then able to start buying property that they knew would explode in value.
This is not about changing lives. It’s about government insiders scamming taxpayers so they can get rich. It’s about developers and builders getting rich. It’s about Low-Income Housing Institute employees getting six-figure jobs. It’s all a big bilk.
Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
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