Seattle is the first city in the U.S. to implement social housing – a public, not-for-profit housing development strategy that aims to provide high quality housing for residents across a wide spectrum of household incomes, namely everyday working people. After first being approved by voters in 2023, the initiative is finally coming to fruition thanks to many years of hard work by a broad Coalition of affordable housing advocates – including Labor and PROTEC17.
Social housing is common in Europe, most notably in Vienna, where successful housing communities are built around inclusivity, affordability, and environmental sustainability. Seattle aims to emulate this model with the creation of the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD). It is a new agency funded by a five percent payroll tax on employers – approved by voters in 2025 – for every individual salary that is over one million dollars.
In May, the SSHD announced the acquisition of their first building – a 150-unit complex called Elara at the Market that is in the Belltown neighborhood of downtown Seattle, across the street from the Pike Place Market. The building was purchased for $60 million — well below the market rate of similar apartment buildings.
In Elara, SSHD will offer studios, one-, and two-bedroom units ranging from $600 to $1400 per month in rent, with a portion of the units dedicated to households at or below 30 percent of median income, and another portion for households between 30 and 50 percent of median income.
When applications for housing in Elara opened for one week in early June, ten thousand people applied. The selection will be made on a lottery basis.
SSHD plans to offer residents free transit (ORCA) passes for a year, which are subsidized, in part, by King County Metro. They will review and remove hidden fees for amenities, such as those for bike storage or pest control. In addition, residents who lived in Elara prior to the conversion to social housing will also have their rents frozen for two years.
“This is a game changer for housing in Seattle, where most working people have been priced out of the city for years as costs have skyrocketed,” said PROTEC17 Executive Director Karen Estevenin, who also serves on the Board of SSHD.
“If this program becomes as successful as I know it can be, working people can actually afford to live in the city where they work again,” she concluded.