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Seattle Has Voted to Build Social Housing [1]

['Tiffani Mccoy', 'Doug Henwood', 'Ramaa Vasudevan', 'David Calnitsky', 'John Tarleton', 'Sam Datlof', 'David Moscrop', 'Nicholas Boni', 'An Interview With']

Date: 2025-07

Tiffani McCoy

That’s exactly why I left my [previous job] and we created House Our Neighbors as an organization. Not because we need more nonprofits in the world, but because we want to make sure that social housing actually comes to fruition. If you do not have an org or a community group that has the time to make sure that the charter is being upheld, that the will of the people is being upheld, and that, as you said, the powers that be aren’t undermining this behind the scenes, social housing will fail.

We see that across the globe. When there are not mass movements and political alignment for social housing, that is when social housing developments, like in Germany, get sold off to the private market.

We were able to go up against the Chamber of Commerce and Amazon and Microsoft because of work with labor, with affordable housing developers, with nonprofits, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

We continue to have a steering committee with DSA as a key member of that to stay rooted in our principles and to stay rooted in what we’re fighting for. And that’s also why we will continue activating all of our volunteers for the next steps. It’s plugging people into the watchdogging, the advocating, and continuing to make sure that not just the developer but also city officials follow the will of the voters.

Because we expect a lawsuit. We very much expect the business community to fight this, because it was never about any concern [over the policy]; it was about business not paying a dollar more in taxes for our housing crisis. And the mayor and the city council are very opposed to social housing, so they may slow the rollout of the funding mechanism. We have to be completely on top of it.

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[1] Url: https://jacobin.com/2025/03/social-housing-seattle-vienna-dsa/

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