Social Housing
—Seattle’s Social Housing Vanguard Spreads the Good News—
—Election of Officers—
Report on April 17, 2025 Seattle Social Housing board meeting. By Jesse A. James (May 7, 2025)
MEETING HIGHLIGHTS: Seattle Social Housing (SSH) has a project in the works, which is currently shrouded in mystery due to the nature of private financial transactions. The SSH board approved their values statement and nominated candidates for next month’s election of officers. Never mind there is no social housing yet in Seattle, the SSH are spreading the good news, far and wide, about social housing's fantastic promise.
Ben Furlow of House Our Neighbors gave public testimony about his group contacting the city regarding upholding Sec. 13 of the I-135 Charter. This is regarding the Use of surplus city land for housing. The city responded that, “they were going to discuss this with the PDA at its next meeting.”
Furlow then read Sec. 12 of the Charter obligating the city to pay 18 months of tax money to SSH for startup support. Furlow says the city owes the final 6 months payment. CEO Roberto Jiménez said the final funds are not coming because they were “time specific” and the SSH attorney confirmed this. The 18 months elapsed and the final $400k of city funds will not be going into SSH.
Jiménez spoke with the mayor's office regarding the surplus land issue and said things were positive.
The board meeting then went into a 20 minute closed executive session regarding SSH’s first real estate transaction.
Due to confidentiality and NDAs, the board has to refer to a current real estate negotiation as, Resolution on Real Estate Development Project X. After the executive meeting, Chair Wylie Duffy moved to adopt the resolution and it was seconded. Project X was promptly voted on and passed unanimously — as the discussion was held in the secret executive session.
Two new board members were added; Christiana ObeySumner and Cliff Cawthon. Kay Zimmerman was reaffirmed for another term by the Seattle Renters Commission.
Chair Duffy moved to amend the executive committee charter to add a member to the executive committee — for a 5th new officer. This new officer will act as a liaison to the rest of the board and specific committees. Chair Duffy then moved to approve to add the 5th officer to the committee and this position will be elected next month. The Chair’s motion passed unanimously.
Officer elections are coming in May. Chair Duffy said nominations for that election were to be made at the current April meeting.
Chair Duffy needs more experience running a meeting; and it showed with how they handled the nomination process. For example, after asking for any questions about the voting process, and hearing none, presiding officer Duffy, who makes almost all of the motions on board issues, then promptly nominated themself; immediately accepting their own self-nomination. They self nominated without first calling for any nominations! They then said a mouthful, “What other nominations do I have?” Duffy had to have meant that as a call for other nominations for the Chair position, but this is the way it was phrased. The board reacted with silence and this set the pace for the mostly pro forma nominations of officers.
Barring any changes, next month’s elections will be mostly unopposed, retaining Vice Chair Kaileah Baldwin, and Secretary Katie LeBret.
Duffy informed the board that Kay Zimmerman will not be running for Treasurer; then promptly nominated Cliff Cawthon, who accepted. Here we go again with the Chair picking a candidate before asking the body for other nominations!
Not hearing any other nominations for treasurer, the Chair immediately nominated the new Committee and Member Liaison executive position, picking Kay Zimmerman for this spot. Kay was not present, and her acceptance is needed to be confirmed before the May election. Establishing their preference for the position first, the Chair then got around to asking for any other nominations. Baldwin nominated Tom Barnard, who accepted. Julie Howe, who is the City Council appointee, was also nominated for this position by another member. Howe declined the nomination. There could be a contested election if Kay accepts her nomination.
Nominations will be open at the May meeting.
The City has paid the SSH $445,500. Cash on hand is $453,351. A projected “spend-down” is 75 percent of funds between September or October of 2025, before billing the city. $186,294 were spend on payroll, services and board stipends for the first two months of the year. At this point, the board members are compensated $300 per month.
Here is a link to the full annual financial report.
Vice Chair Baldwin reminded the board that this budget is currently “hyper lean”, because more understanding is needed of what monies are to be committed to the SSH. While she specifically did not mention any figures, Baldwin’s statement implied the hyper-money — payroll tax dollars currently projected at $52 million a year — are not in yet. She added more expenditures will eventually be needed to hire staff as things need to get done.
Jiménez added that SSH funds will be spent down by August or September due to consultant and legal fees regarding “the transaction”. Jiménez was referring to costs associated with the mysterious and intriguing Project X.
Duffy motioned to approve the current report and it was duly seconded and unanimously passed. The monthly transaction report was also approved with the same process, as was annual fiscal report (linked to above).
Baldwin said they’re testing the strategic plan. (See last month's meeting report for details.) The plan seeks to demonstrate organizational values. She gave a history of the process of developing this value statement. It’s about, “Solidarity, putting people first, sustainability, fostering transparency and sharing our journey.” Baldwin says the statement is about, “people power” and to, “build power across the country for other folks trying to do people-centric housing solutions.” She mentioned the statement’s tenants of housing, “permanently affordable and cross-class with different levels of mixed income units, climate conscious and publicly owned in perpetuity.”
Board member Tom Barnard made a statement about the importance of fiscal responsibility. He reminded the group, “we are going to be handed $50 million in the near future, and that’s a big deal.” (Indeed!) Barnard said there is not a single mention in the document of fiscal responsibility; saying he was not demanding any changes to the document, but felt this needed to be said because, “we owe it to the voters of Seattle.”
Baldwin replied that fiscal responsibility was initially included, but removed for readability. She stressed that fostering transparency covers Barnard’s concerns. Chair Duffy then spoke, promising responsibility and transparency for everything.
After Baldwin dealt with a couple of spelling errors, she moved to adopt the amended report and Duffy seconded leading to unanimous approval.
Board member Mike Eliason, who is an architect, said Project X is moving forward. In addition, the committee is speaking with developers and consultants, learning the Seattle construction and real estate ecosystem. He said CEO Jiménez was in California spreading the word about Social Housing. Eliason also talked about documents for educating the board towards a “development path”. Duffy mentioned Project X and the possibility of a special meeting for it. However, consensus held this special meeting for the secret project was not needed at the moment. The committee will be meeting with city council members soon.
The communications committee lead with Duffy saying the board will hire a social media consultant. Licenses for IT will be needed from Microsoft.
CEO Jiménez recently spoke at UC Berkeley and will appear in Los Angeles in early May, evangelizing Social Housing. There are other events with panels, including an upcoming international social housing festival in Dublin, Ireland.
Jiménez said the Portland Housing Bureau wants social housing. Housing Oregon is also interested. “10 places” are launching social housing. He described UC Berkeley researchers and advocates as “serious about social housing.” Jiménez said the post-graduate student audience in Berkeley were fired up by Seattle’s House Our Neighbors efforts and the initiative process. He also stated California is reorganizing its entire housing system because of the “social housing movement”. Finally, the meeting was informed that Seattle CM Alexis Rinke told Jiménez to, “Keep doing the interviews and speeches because this is much bigger than us, it’s a movement”.
After some closing remarks, the meeting was adjourned.
See you with next month's meeting report.
Jesse A. James lives in Seattle. He serves on Cascade Party board of directors in position 7/9. He has run for US House in the 7th CD. James is also a Rock musician.
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