The city is poised to roll out $75 million to build and preserve over 1,400 affordable homes in Seattle, and Crown Hill’s Booth Gardens apartment (9722 8th Avenue NW) is on the list to receive funding.
Mayor Jenny Durkan announced the plan earlier this week, which detailed new builds slated for several different neighborhoods, and a sizable budget for the preservation of existing affordable housing — including $660,000 for Booth Gardens.
Booth Gardens has 16 one- and two-bedroom units for disabled residents, many of which are designed for people with mobility needs, with roll-in showers, wider doorways, and lower counters. The apartment is managed by the Providence Supportive Housing Ministry, who bought it from Volunteers of America last year. According to Providence, the apartment will undergo a “substantial renovation” in early 2019.
The apartment was built back in 1991 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the City of Seattle.
With the announced funding, the city plans to construct 10 new buildings, adding up to 1,197 new apartments in Seattle. The funding will also preserve 238 existing affordable homes, which includes Booth Gardens.
“Too many long-time Seattle residents are getting priced out and pushed out of Seattle,” Mayor Durkan said in a statement. “We need to urgently increase the amount of affordable housing to stop the huge displacement of people and provide permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness.”
We need sooooo many more units of affordabke housing but this is movement in the right direction. Three things I would be happy to pay more taxes for: affordable housing, mental health care, good cops.
They will happily continue to take all of your money and provide no solutions to the ongoing crisis. PT Barnum should run for mayor, then again, he’d need to go trans but you get the idea.
I’d like to know the history of such properties. It was built with taxpayer dollars, but then sold from owner to another? And now we’re putting more taxpayer dollars into it? What sort of person lives here? If they are local workers with mobility issue, then great. If they are people who don’t work in the area, then we could provide housing for them in a cheaper part of the state.
The Providence Supportive Housing Ministry is a Catholic charity. I’m of two minds about religious organizations getting public funding. (Volunteers of America is also a faith-based organization.) Does the Catholic church not have $660,000 to spare? I thought the reason churches got tax exemptions was to enable them to run their own charities. No objection to my tax dollars going to affordable housing, and it’s entirely possible that funneling funding to existing outfits is the most efficient way to do that, but ideally I would like there to be greater financial separation.
Feminism/Social Justice is the new Christianity. New boss same as the old boss.