On May 30, the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), a nonprofit affordable housing developer, acquired its latest property: a 68-unit apartment complex in downtown Bellevue called the Aventine Apartments. This marks the second Bellevue property for LIHI, which owns and manages dozens of buildings and tiny house villages throughout the greater Seattle area.
According to the city of Bellevue’s demographic data, the median household income as of 2022 was $153,779, a 41.5% increase from 2010. In comparison, Seattle’s median household income in 2022 was $115,409. Three of the city’s top four employers are Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. In recent years, the city of Bellevue has increased its emphasis on creating affordable housing, adopting an Affordable Housing Strategy in 2017. According to city officials, Bellevue has already surpassed its goal to create 2,500 units over 10 years.
“Affordable housing, we recognize, is a national issue, and it certainly is very apparent in Bellevue as we’ve seen our median housing prices increase so dramatically,” said Thara Johnson, planning director for Bellevue. “We have a fairly higher income group of population here but despite that, there’s also this burgeoning need for affordable housing.”
LIHI purchased the property against bids from private developers, investors and speculators. The nonprofit’s executive director Sharon Lee believes it acquired the Aventine Apartments partly due to its mission to preserve affordable housing.
“We know the market. We know that there [are] a lot of people — low-wage workers, people making minimum wage, double minimum wage — that really need a place to live,” Lee said.
Yi Zhao, a long-time Bellevue resident and executive director of nonprofit affordable housing developer Imagine Housing, outlined the increasing financial burden that lower-income folks in Bellevue are experiencing.
“Wages have not kept up to the way that the housing prices have gone. Especially in Bellevue, that [gap] has gotten even bigger. … Bellevue is becoming harder and harder to access unless you’re up in the very high income bands,” Zhao said.
According to Zhao and Johnson, the increasing financial burden of living in Bellevue has resulted in decreased school enrollment, forcing some schools in Bellevue School District — such as Wilburton and Eastgate elementary schools — to close their doors permanently. Rising rents also mean that small businesses struggle to remain in Bellevue, ultimately getting replaced by their corporate and chain counterparts. Local cashiers, artists and teachers are being priced out — all of which Zhao believes have a homogenizing impact on the community.
“Bellevue is becoming harder and harder to access unless you’re up in the very high income bands.”
— Yi Zhao, executive director of imagine housing
“I think there’s more people who would love to live in the city and who could contribute wonderful things to this city if they had access,” Zhao said. “I think that’s really where we’re seeing this divide of those who do have access versus those who don’t because the barrier to entry is so high. … So you end up with only a certain group of people who make X amount of money and that’s in very certain industries, [who] can afford to live here.”
To secure the assets for the purchase, LIHI enlisted help from multiple investors including the city of Bellevue and Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund. LIHI executive director Sharon Lee explained this is the second loan that the organization has received from Amazon’s fund, with the hope that future housing projects will also access the aid.
“I think Amazon has a commitment because of its impact [on perpetuating the housing crisis] to also reinvest and produce housing, and preserve housing in its footprint,” Lee said.
The purchase of the Aventine Apartments comes after LIHI has faced increased scrutiny from Seattle community members for the organization’s purported mismanagement of its tiny house villages, which provide transitional housing to homeless people. In January, June and October of 2023, several mutual aid groups, including North Seattle Neighbors, co-signed three consecutive open letters urging municipal and Washington state officials to recognize the alleged mismanagement.
In the letters, the groups brought forward testimonies from residents and LIHI employees that claimed mismanagement of finances, lack of proper care for residents and staff, inconsistent regulations and unfair evictions, among others — all of which LIHI has denied. In their final letter, released in October, these organizations put forth demands including that officials mandate an outside audit of LIHI, establish third-party oversight, protect informants from potential retaliation from LIHI and take steps toward eliminating what they call LIHI’s “monopoly” over the tiny home community model in Seattle.
“So the overall picture that emerges from the stuff we’ve tried to document in our letters is an organization that would like to acquire more and more buildings and properties and units but doesn’t care what happens in those buildings,” said a volunteer with North Seattle Neighbors who wished to remain unnamed.
Currently, LIHI manages 14 tiny house villages and 75 low-income housing properties throughout King, Pierce, Thurston, Snohomish, Island and Kitsap counties. However, some, such as the North Seattle Neighbors volunteer, think that’s too many.
“More expansion is going to harm their ability even further to keep their promises; to deliver the level of services that they keep promising to people … mental health services, substance management and substance therapy services,” the volunteer said. “These things are already not happening; the physical resources of buildings and camps are not kept up well. So once again, LIHI is demonstrating the habit of acquiring new properties instead of focusing resources on delivering care to their tenants.”
As LIHI continues acquiring and developing new properties, some people, including Darrell Wrenn, a Real Change vendor (badge number 13604), wonder what this means for the unhoused community in Seattle.
“They’re gonna house people, that’s great. But there’s still a lot of people here in Seattle that need housing too. I’d like to know from them, what are they doing about the people here in Seattle,” Wrenn said.
While Wrenn expressed his skepticism of LIHI’s expansion, he also emphasized the importance of access to affordable housing.
“People want stability,” Wrenn said. “When people have stability, they can think. It affects their overall being … and that way they can focus on other areas of their life that need to be resolved. … This is all about compassion for somebody else. It helps the whole community.”
Lee explained that LIHI will not evict current tenants of the Aventine Apartments, nor will they be encouraged to leave. Rather, as natural turnovers occurs, LIHI will usher in new tenants.
Read more of the July 17–23, 2024 issue.