The SEIU6 Executive Board endorsed Initiative 135 to create publicly-financed mixed-income housing. This housing model ensures public ownership so housing costs can remain stable and permanently affordable. Social housing is one of many responses we urgently need to fix the housing affordability crisis.
“Housing affordability is an issue that our members feel every time rent is due, each time we have to move further out because the last place we were living becomes too expensive. Our members are Black, brown, immigrant, and working class. We are the folks who keep Seattle clean and safe—why should we be the ones paying half our income on housing? Why should we be spending all this money on gas and missing precious time with our families because we’re stuck with these long commutes?
“The cost of living is brutal on an $18/hour paycheck. It’s time for working people to take control. Initiative 1-35 would pave the way for affordable housing to be held by working people in perpetuity, protected from housing market speculation and profiteers who only seek to make more and more money off our backs.” ——Zenia Javalera, SEIU6 President