Missing: affordable housing

A few weeks ago I put up my first yard sign ever: Yes for Homes, advocating for passage of Proposition 1, the Seattle Housing Levy. The seven-year levy on property owners pays for affordable housing site acquisition, rehabilitation, operating, and a bit of rental and homebuyers' assistance, and it has been approved three times in the past by the city's voters. One of the properties developed with levy money is the Stone Way apartments, just a block and a half away from my home.

I feel strongly about housing as a right that a country and a city as wealthy as ours can afford to guarantee. It's one of our most powerful tools to guarantee people a minimum standard of living, to ensure that my neighbors at least live well enough that I don't need to be ashamed. That may be far too little, but it's at least a floor on what we should ask of ourselves.

The levy has been shown to leverage multiple federal and state dollars for every dollar contributed by Seattle homeowners. So I went out and canvassed at our local farmer's market last month for the levy last month, and I expect to participate in a phone bank next week.

A few days ago, someone defaced our yard sign, scrawling "Tax Me More" across it. I turned it around so the clean side faced the street. This morning, it was gone. Someone must have come up into my garden and pulled it out. I replaced it with the one I'd displayed at the farmer's market. But if Seattle voters uproot the levy itself, it will be much harder to fill the gap.