Going in reverse order, Bellevue is moving forward with discussions on how to implement its new 0.1% sales tax from HB1590 for affordable housing & corresponding services. Staff checks in with Council on this every 4-6 weeks. More info on the tax here:
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At the last check-in, Council approved staff's high-level strategy plan. CMs also reminded the public why affordable housing in Bellevue is needed - among other sobering stats, over half of renters in Bellevue are cost-burdened.
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The motion to approve the Interest Statement passes unanimously, and the meeting is adjourned.
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Tomorrow's meeting will summarize the first stage of outreach that the city has conducted with chosen partners, pictured below. In particular, staff were reaching about 4 topics, also pictured below.
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On mental & behavioral health, partners noted the importance of on-site facilities, the current lack of housing options that are serving people facing mental & behavioral health problems, and wanted such facilities to respect the diversity of those seeking services.
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On housing-related services, partners noted the importance of flexible financial assistance to cover the different types of expenses associated with housing and culturally specific services targeted to the diverse communities being served. Examples pictured below.
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Finally, regarding affordable housing itself, partners again noted the importance of options with mental & behavioral services present, as well as having diverse housing options available at different affordability levels.
All sounds like pretty reasonable, standard stuff.
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All this is just an update and no action's being taken, but it'll provide an opportunity for CMs to opine and make their respective talking points - all of which I'll unfortunately miss.
But still happy to see progress being made on this front and for staff to continue outreach!
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Now moving onto the more interesting item, the semiannual update on the city's Affordable Housing Implementation Strategy! Adopted in 2017, the plan set a target of preserving or building 2500 affordable units in 10 years. Still not enough though.
So how are we doing?
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Bellevue's calculations see the city at 1,223 funded affordable units since plan implementation - that's counting 100 shelter beds, which remain the main source of <30% AMI units in their tabulations.
Much of the additions have come in 2020, which saw 729 units added.
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The AMI split of projects in the pipeline is very similar - over 50% of the planned units are for incomes >60% AMI
Note that the tax from HB 1590 is specifically to go to units at <60% AMI, so once allocations for those funds have been decided, that should hopefully help.
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Staff also coming in hot with the detailed breakdown of which strategies are working and which aren't.
Of particular note is MFTE - the plan foresaw the addition of 65 units per year, but only *39* have been added in the last 3.5 years.
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Also note the low numbers of ADU additions - in large part because until recently, homeowners had to endure a 3 year waiting period before building one, but this has since been removed as part of a LUCA in February.
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You want to build an ADU in Bellevue? Great! Just take into account all these restrictions.
Note that the LUCA as written only removes *one* of these provisions.
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Related to MFTE, staff have published a handy table talking about AMI for different household sizes.
If you're a single person at 30% AMI and paying more than $570 a month in rent + utilities, you're cost-burdened.
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Lots of good tables and graphs in this document.
20% of Bellevue households were <50% AMI in 2017 (I suspect that's gone up).
1/3 of Bellevue households were cost-burdened from 2013-2017 (again, I suspect that's gone up).
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That seems to be all of the useful materials available, so I'll end my thread here.
The moral of these materials - and what I hope is a key discussion point tomorrow - is that based on existing plans, we're making strides.
But we need to be doing even more.
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