Developers Pay YWCA
The first units of affordable housing built with money from a new downtown condominium tower have been finished.
Since December 2003.
Using a clause in the city’s new high-rise bonus payments that allows developers to build high-rise residences in exchange for funding low-income housing that already exists, Seattle development company Tarragon LLC has signed a deal with the YWCA of Seattle-King County-Snohomish County.
In the deal, Tarragon builds 35 floors of high-rise condos at the corner of Third Avenue and Virginia St. in return for paying the YWCA an estimated $1.19 million. That money is for the construction of 145 units at Opportunity Place — even though those units have already been built.
The developers’ money, YWCA director Sue Sherbrooke says, will go into the YWCA’s capital fund.
“To get Opportunity Place accomplished, we used capital campaign money we were going to use for other purposes,” says Sherbrooke. “This enables us to replenish those funds and turn it around for the creation of more housing.”
No news as to when, or where, that housing would be built, she says.
The payment system was written into law last spring after citizens, city councilmembers, and housing advocates sparred with the mayor’s office over the social cost of high-rise development. Labor, environmental and housing activists fought to set so-called bonus payments — charged to developers to offset the social consequences of upmarket housing — at up to $30 a square foot. The mayor and City Council settled on a sliding scale of $10 to $25; generally, the payments will average $18.94 per square foot.
—Adam Hyla
Leave Those Posters Be
So much for Rule 42, the Seattle Housing Authority ban that prohibited public housing tenants from putting posters or signs on the front doors of their units: On Jan. 3, the Washington State Supreme Court threw the rule out, declaring it an overly broad limitation on First Amendment rights.
In a close 5-4 ruling, the majority sided with the attorney who brought the case on behalf of SHA’s elected Resident Action Council, agreeing that posters on a tenant’s front door constituted “residential signs” protected under a precedent set in a 1994 case, City of Ladue v. Gilleo.
The housing authority wanted the rule to stop a clutter of signs that SHA lead attorney James Fearn says are sometimes hateful or pornographic in nature. It originally instituted the rule in late 2005, but was stopped from enforcing it by a Superior Court ruling that SHA appealed.
“This is an important victory for the free speech rights of public housing tenants,” says Eric Dunn, the Northwest Justice Project attorney who fought SHA. But, “The greater significance of the ruling is that the court reaffirmed the principle that the government as a landlord is still the government and must respect the constitutional rights of its tenants.”
Maybe. According to Fearn, SHA interprets the ruling quite differently. “It’s a great ruling for us,” he says, because it provides a path to institute the ban. “We can revise our lease to say the doors are not included in the leased premises,” he says, “then we can proceed with Rule 42.”
“It hasn’t been decided we’re going to do that,” Fearn adds, but “it’s gratifying [the justices] don’t express a problem with limiting our ability under the First Amendment to adopt regulations of that kind.”
Given the court’s direction, Dunn says Fearn’s statement is completely inappropriate. “Mr. Fearn is undoubtedly disappointed with SHA’s failed appeal,” he says. “Given an opportunity to regain his composure, we trust Mr. Fearn will responsibly counsel [SHA] against attempting any such infantile defiance of the state’s highest court.”
Got a Smoke?
Some people just don’t like middlemen. Russ Fuller is one of them.
Fuller belongs to a three-member instrumental band called Heyokah, which is putting on a unique fundraiser for the homeless. On Jan. 13, rather than collect money or food for some organization to give to the homeless, band members want people to bring packs or singles of cigarettes for them to pass out to street people in the University District.
No matter how well intentioned, “every organization exists to sustain itself,” Fuller says of nonprofits and food banks. Given that most homeless people smoke but have no place to cook any food given to them, he says, “I felt it would be good opportunity to very directly make someone’s day.”
Heyokah’s cigarette-drive concert is set for Jan. 13, 2:30 p.m., at the Sure Shot Cafe, 4505 University Way N.E., Seattle. For information, call (206)604-4996.
—Cydney Gillis |
