News
The Fight for Affordable Housing
Advocates are stepping up efforts and eyeing new approaches
By Seattle Mag May 27, 2025
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Seattle magazine.
Doug Cox’s journey from inmate to entrepreneur was, to say the least, littered with challenges.
Cox, a resident of Aspen Terrace — an affordable housing complex in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood — is in advanced patent discussions for an interactive toy he invented that mimics the sounds of dinosaurs, military devices, superheroes, and more.
The 68-year-old says it wouldn’t have been possible without Pioneer Human Services, the nonprofit that manages the seven-story, 89-unit complex. Pioneer provided him with classes and resources he needed to pursue his entrepreneurial journey.
Most important, it gave him an affordable place to live. He pays just $1,300 per month, an amount he can easily afford on Social Security and other small sources of income. He’s even able to save a little money.
“I was blessed to get this,” says Cox, who was shot in the face during a 2008 bank robbery attempt and spent more than a decade in a medium-security federal correctional institution in Sheridan, Oregon. “It relieves the stress, the anxiety. I don’t have to worry about anything here. I feel safe.”
About 77,000 people lived in subsidized housing in King County in 2023, according to USAFacts. Most, Cox included, would find themselves in dire circumstances without the numerous affordable housing options throughout the region. Policy group Up For Growth, however, says the state needs 138,000 more housing units to meet demand.
The question remains: With all the billions of dollars dedicated to eradicating homelessness and poverty, why does housing affordability remain such a pressing problem?
Lots of activity
It’s something Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith asks himself often, particularly as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and looks forward to the next 50. Microsoft alone has dedicated about $675 million toward affordable housing as part of a $750 million commitment it made in 2019. The software giant has created more than 12,000 housing units.
“I think we should be frustrated,” Smith says, noting that affordable housing has become a priority only in the past decade or so (prior to that, the focus revolved around education and transportation). “If you look at the supply of housing that is genuinely affordable for someone on a median income, Washington is dead last. And Oregon is just one notch above us. We have a huge problem that I think is imperative for our region to do more to solve now.”
“I’m grateful that people with long histories of drug, alcohol, and mental health issues can be housed. That means so much to me.”
— Searetha Simons, resident at Sylvia Odom’s Place
Amazon has also committed enormous resources, pledging more than $780 million toward affordable housing across the Puget Sound region since 2021, much of it through its Housing Equity Fund. It most recently contributed $22 million to help fund Bridge Housing’s 234-unit affordable development in Bellevue’s Spring District, a project that recently broke ground.
The company said at the time that it was pledging $100 million toward affordable housing in Bellevue alone. To date, Amazon has helped create or preserve more than 1,400 homes in the city, increasing the supply of affordable housing stock by 31%.
Besides Microsoft and Amazon, there’s a lot happening on the affordable housing front. A few examples:
- The Evergreen Impact Housing Fund, in partnership with several credit unions, the Inland Group, and the Horizon Housing Alliance, opened a 256-unit affordable housing project in Spanaway last fall.
- The YWCA | King | Snohomish recently completed a major rehabilitation at YWCA Seneca in downtown Seattle that includes 114 units of permanent affordable housing for low-income and formerly homeless residents.
- The city of Seattle earlier this year announced a $108 million investment in affordable housing that will create 655 new affordable rental homes, including 204 new permanent supportive homes.
- The African Community & Housing Development and Habitat SKKC are developing 65 permanently affordable homes across three sites in Seattle’s Rainier Valley.
- Seattle voters in February overwhelmingly approved a proposal to use payroll tax revenue to fund and maintain social housing for lower-income residents.
- The state Legislature has taken several steps in recent sessions to promote affordable housing, including addressing housing supply and permitting processes.
- Pierce County Human Services recently announced more than $17 million in funding to support affordable housing initiatives across the county for first-time homeowners and renters.
New approaches
Sage Investment Group CEO Ryan Sudeck is among those exploring new ideas to combat the housing shortage. Seattle-based Sage is working to repurpose underperforming and dilapidated hotels into market-rate workforce housing.
The company did its first hotel conversion in 2019 and is involved in several projects across the state, including in Bellevue, Centralia, Fife, Olympia, and Tacoma. It is also active in a handful of other states including Arizona, Texas, and South Carolina. The company often works with nonprofits to help identify people seeking stable housing.
Sudeck’s motivation stems, in part, from his childhood. His dad, an airline pilot, lost his pension and was forced to take a 60% pay cut when the company he worked for went bankrupt. It was, Sudeck recalls, a “dire situation” for his family.
“That was a very formative experience for me,” says Sudeck, a former executive at Seattle online real estate company Redfin. “And at Redfin, I was working with housing data every single day, and it was very clear the dire straits that most folks were in, and how challenging it was becoming to own a house. And that’s when interest rates were much lower.”
Smith is increasingly focused on regional solutions. He is actively involved with the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, a group of leaders from British Columbia to Portland seeking solutions on a variety of issues, including transportation congestion,climate change, and affordable housing. He is also working with Challenge Seattle, an organization founded by former Gov. Christine Gregoire.
A major focus now, he adds, is identifying underutilized and underperforming strip malls as potential redevelopment options for housing.
“We have this extraordinary coincidence where a lot of commercially zoned real estate is not being used, especially since the pandemic,” he says. “These strip malls are oftentimes now sitting empty, and if we can rezone those, speed up the permitting process, and add financial incentives, there might be an opportunity to inject public funds in a very focused and effective way. I think that has to be our future.”
“We’re still hopeful. There’s no reason why we should not be able to figure this out and make progress.”
— Jane Broom Davidson, Senior Director, Microsoft Philanthropies
Challenge Seattle, in a report released last November called “Build, Baby Build: Unlocking 1.4 Million New Homes in Cascadia,” notes that the Cascadia region will grow by up to 4 million people in the next 25 years. The region will need 3 million new housing units, but is on track to build only two-thirds of that. The report calls for comprehensive zoning changes across municipal jurisdictions; standardized permitting processes; and incentives for developers to create workforce housing.
Jane Broom Davidson, senior director of Microsoft Philanthropies, calls the “bureaucratic tangle” a major disincentive for developers.
“The cost to build housing, construction, labor, all of those things, certainly have increased,” she notes. “But one of the biggest cost drivers is time. The longer things wait and get stalled, costs just continue to stack up and grow. If you can reduce that time to produce, you save money.”
Above all else, she adds, there’s a human element to all of this.
“We’re still hopeful,” she says. “There’s no reason why we should not be able to figure this out and make progress.”
The human impact
Searetha Simons has lived at Sylvia Odom’s Place — an affordable housing complex in downtown Seattle owned and operated by Seattle nonprofit Plymouth Housing — since it opened almost nine years ago.
Simons, who was born and raised in Seattle, has endured a lot. A romantic partner once tried to kill her, resulting in a five-hour standoff with police. Her oldest son was murdered near Northgate. She was arrested for selling drugs in Belltown.
She first moved into a Plymouth-operated complex back in 2013 — July 30, to be exact. She had just gotten out of jail.
Today, Simons considers Sylvia Odom her forever home. It’s a place she can host her five children and six grandkids. Nearby downtown merchants know her by name.
“If there’s one thing that I want people to really know and understand is that supportive housing is really important,” says Simons, who has served on Plymouth’s board of directors and is an active volunteer. “I’m grateful that people with long histories of drug, alcohol, and mental health issues can be housed. That means so much to me.”
Cox admits he’d be living much closer to the edge without his apartment, a small, well-decorated studio with a southeastern view. He hopes to use any proceeds from his toy invention to take care of his brother and sister, both of whom are in assisted-living facilities.
“I just so very much appreciate what I have here.”