In an extended conversation, Seattle Social Housing Developer interim CEO Tiffani McCoy discussed the developer’s acquisition and construction plans, as well as unresolved financial and governance questions.
Apr. 14, 2026 — In recent years, it has become commonplace for American housing advocates and elected officials to make the pilgrimage to Vienna. They come to learn about the Austrian capital’s government housing, famous the world over for its modest rents, beautiful architecture, and popularity among rich and poor residents alike.
Despite all of the interest in Vienna’s social housing, there’s really only one American city that is seriously seeking to copy this model whole cloth.
In 2023, Seattle voters passed a ballot initiative creating a “social housing developer,” an independent public development authority that would acquire and develop housing available to residents across a wide spectrum of household income. Then, in 2025, voters passed a 5 percent payroll tax on every dollar over $1 million in salary paid out to an individual employee. Proceeds from the “excess compensation tax,” as it is colloquially known, flow directly to Seattle Social Housing.
The public development authority has experienced some growing pains since then. Its initial CEO, a former non-profit housing executive in California named Roberto Jimenez, was ousted by the authority’s board in January, following criticism about his leadership style and his decision not to move to Seattle for the job. The board immediately brought on Tiffani McCoy, the architect of the two successful ballot initiatives but a real estate development novice, as the authority’s interim CEO.
First steps and key challenges
With $133 million in funding from the excess compensation tax now on hand, and a supportive new mayor in Democratic Socialist Katie Wilson, Seattle Social Housing has some momentum. McCoy expects the agency will make its first property acquisition in June and will own about 300 units by the end of the year. It’s also looking to acquire multiple sites for future ground-up development projects.
Remapping Debate spoke with McCoy about where things currently stand with Seattle Social Housing and the challenges ahead. As McCoy readily admits, the authority is navigating uncharted territory, and many questions about how it will operate remain unanswered.
Though its governing bylaws grant Seattle Social Housing Developer a fairly large degree of flexibility, the authority is interested in remaining “conceptually rigid,” McCoy says. Full public ownership, democratic building management, and cross-subsidization are non-negotiable. The authority also hopes to build large, family-sized homes to the highest environmental standards using union labor. And it intends to do all of this while establishing a self-sustaining real estate enterprise that will ultimately own thousands of homes across every part of the city.
Another question is how much, or how quickly, Seattle Social Housing can make an impact on housing affordability. Seattle currently has a total of 411,000 homes, and has an estimated need of 156,000 additional income-restricted affordable homes by 2044. Even if Seattle Social Housing makes good on its goal of building or acquiring 380 homes per year for the next several years, it will still represent a small slice of the city’s housing stock.
Yet, if it is successful, Seattle Social Housing could represent a new template for affordable housing production and management in the U.S. that corrects for many of the deficiencies of affordable housing tax credits and public housing. For housing advocates and policymakers, it’s an experiment worth watching closely.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and condensed for brevity.
Remapping Debate: I’d love to hear a quick overview of the latest news from Seattle Social Housing.
Tiffani McCoy: It’s been quite a whirlwind. The board just moved in January to remove my predecessor, and then at the same meeting, also put me in as the interim CEO. I’ve been doing some cleanup and a lot of setting up of systems and staffing up. We received our very first amount of money from the social housing payroll tax that was passed by the voters last year. We estimated that it would bring in roughly $50 million but, whew, we have a lot of wealth in this country and this city, so it actually brought in $133 million.
Wow, that’s a lot of money.
Yeah, a lot more money than we thought. And with that money we can accelerate our pipeline. So right now, we are actually really close to closing on our first position. Hopefully by June 10, we will have our first building. We’re looking at another building this year, so about 300 units of acquired property. And then this year, too, we’re looking to secure two to four land sites for pre-development of new construction.
All of those new constructions are going to be really focusing on family-type units, two and three bedroom units, which is really needed in the city. And our acquisitions will kind of round out the portfolio, where we’re going to have more studios and one bedrooms, which is what the market is building. The market doesn’t build family sized units.
We are also going to bond this year again just to accelerate our production pipeline. We really — speaking from a political perspective — only have, like, a year to really prove this concept, to prove that we’re using these funds really well before the council could start dipping into the social housing tax. Because in the state of Washington, there’s only two-year protection on initiatives before they can be messed with. So, we just need to make it politically challenging for anyone who wants to siphon any of the money from social housing.
But I have full confidence that we will do that, especially given the turn where we now have a mayor who ran predominantly on social housing as a concept, and where council members can’t run for office in the city anymore without being asked multiple times where they stand on social housing. So we’re just kind of a new political era.
For your new construction developments in the pipeline, do you have a sense of how many units those sites could yield?
We have a real estate committee on our board. We’re actually going with them in a few weeks to do a tour of eight sites that we’re interested in. But we are looking at 40-plus unit buildings of two and three bedrooms. In our production plan that we put out a month after I came on was 50 new development units online at the end of 2028 and then going up to 160 units every year after. But again, if we could bond, which seems very, very positive that we will be able to bond on the future tax revenue, that could go up. But we also want to set a baseline and stick to that, as opposed to being really liberal with our assumptions and then not being able to deliver.
With the acquisition buildings, are they relatively new buildings? Can you tell me anything about the type of buildings that you’re looking at?
We’re only looking at Class A assets right now that are not going to require a lot of capital or renovations. Maybe one day in the future we could do something like buy an affordable housing building that needs to sell because its tax credits ran out. We talked about that in the campaign, but that’s just not what we’re going to do first. We’re going to be really low in our risk tolerance, bringing on high-quality assets right now, getting a good track record, and then trying to be a little bit more nimble. We had a building recently that actually reached out. The tenants were organizing. The landlord who was charging below market died and they wanted the social housing developer to take that over. It’s something I wish we could do, but we’re just not there yet. So, we’re trying to be honest about that with the public.
What’s the affordability or income distribution mix for those existing buildings that you’re targeting?
We are going to have an ideal unit mix — ideal, because it is not restricted in the charter. We purposely did not restrict it. So, there’s four priority income brackets by area median income: 0-30 percent, 31-50 percent, 51-80 percent, and then 81 percent and above. Our ideal unit mix across that is 10 percent below 30 percent AMI, and then 30 percent each for the three other income brackets. We won’t meet that all at once. We’re not going to kick anyone out just to meet this income mix. So, any new units that come online or vacant units right now, those will go towards the lower-income part of the spectrum.
Would you lower anyone’s rent who’s already there?
We are definitely entertaining that, yeah.
And is the idea that those buildings would themselves be financially self-sustaining on their own?
That is a big debate from the national lens: do we do revenue neutral or do we not do a revenue neutral or self-sustaining building? We are not looking for self-sustaining buildings because we want to be able to cross-subsidize across the portfolio.
So the idea is the buildings might actually generate a positive cash flow that you could use for other projects?
Yes.
And you think that the tenant income distribution mix you just described would facilitate that?
Yes.
There’s a growing number of revolving loan funds or housing accelerator funds that are using public money to jumpstart new construction. A lot of those programs are funding third-party private developments. So, they’re not actually the ones doing the construction and management of the properties. That seems like a major difference from what you’re doing.
Yeah, right now we will have an external property manager, but in three-ish years we’d love to bring that all in house. Again, we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew.
But as for developing new properties, is that going to be something that the Seattle Social Housing Developer will be doing all on its own? Will it partner with other developers to do that?
In our charter, it’s very clear that all of the housing must be owned by us. Also, the land very clearly needs to be owned by us. We are going to try to update our charter a bit for some really important purposes. One of those is we do want to be able to have a condo structure where the commercial space could be sold to like a community-based organization or healthcare clinic. So yes, there will be partnerships like that, but we’re not gonna be doing partnerships where there’s co-ownership of the housing. That’s exclusively owned by us. It’s really important that we keep it that way. Otherwise, we’re kind of replicating what’s already out there.
Any housing that’s mixed-income and is publicly owned at any level is great, but we really are really conceptually rigid. We want to be like Vienna and Singapore — Singapore’s housing, not their government. This is owned publicly forever. The idea of selling it is anathema. And that is just so fundamentally different from how we provide housing in this country. And that is a cultural thing we want to keep pushing back on. I want us to be forced to be creative about keeping these assets in public hands, because that is guarding against housing being a speculative asset.
It seems like a huge obstacle for other cities is the funding piece and finding tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
And not everyone has the tax base of Seattle.
But even in the places that do, like New York or San Francisco or LA, it’s also a huge political lift to try to make that happen. And I know Seattle’s case is very unique. But I’m wondering how you might advise another city in terms of raising that money and convincing voters that this is possible?
I think that overall, people have to be prepared that the traditional, low-income affordable housing space is probably going to be incredibly opposed or skeptical, and you have to be okay with that. There’s a lot of opportunity right now because of Trump just slashing and burning so many things that we depend on, like Section 8 vouchers and Project Based Vouchers, and overall Continuum of Care funding. This message that we pushed in 2023, that we’re over-reliant on the federal government, is being shown loud and clear, unfortunately. If we as local jurisdictions want to house our neighbors in an affordable way, we have to take that on on our own. We cannot rely on the federal government. We need to do levies at the local level, the county or state level, and just need to be bold.
I take your point about how the Trump administration has cut many programs connected to housing, but the administration did increase the LIHTC allowance, so there’s more money in that program. And I’m wondering if that’s part of your strategy. Are you able to tap into LIHTC money to amplify the funds you already have?
We’re not going to use LIHTC. LIHTC lasts 30 years. It’s still just baking in an affordability sunset. It’s important to build affordable housing right now, but I think that there has to be part of our housing continuum locally that also has a longer term strategy.
Couldn’t your covenants on your developments supersede that? Would using LIHTC make it impossible to keep homes affordable in perpetuity, for you?
It could be. However, LIHTC also comes with really onerous paperwork restrictions, and we don’t necessarily want to income verify every year. We might not even do annual leases — all of this is up for debate. We don’t want to have those restrictions. It’s also not fully clear to me if there’s an issue of undocumented folks being able to be in those buildings, and we want to make sure that all populations can access our housing.
And then the last thing I would say is that it’s also about solidarity. Even though there was this big infusion into LIHTC, it’s still not covering the need. And we want those funds to go towards the developers that need them the most. We don’t need those, and we don’t want to compete with others who do need them, because we have this funding model that’s a lot more flexible.
On this question of lease renewals and income testing, how are you planning to do that once you’re managing units and you’ve got tenants whose life circumstances are changing? Let’s say a tenant who is currently a very low-income person gets a really good job and moves into a more middle-class status. How would that affect their rent?
I’m gonna be really honest, we’re gonna live and learn. All of the board and all of the staff, we just have to be iterative. We’re gonna come up with a policy, and it might not work whatsoever, and we just have to be honest and transparent and bring people along. I think initially, because we will have a private property manager, we will do income certification at the get go to be able to support people that are in the 50 percent AMI, but they’re paying 80 percent AMI rents. So, we want to be able to do that with that income certification, but we don’t want to do that every year.
And then if there’s a situation where you lose a job, or you lose income, you can come in and prove that so we can recalibrate your rent. However, we also know that in some buildings we looked at, there’s people whose families pay their rent. We don’t want people who have really wealthy parents getting a lower rent because of that. So, this is just going to be a very educational process for us.
How does your model of social housing offer cost savings in terms of developing, owning, and managing housing as compared to the other models that are out there, whether that be the conventional affordable housing sector or private development?
Let me start with affordable housing, and let me preface this by saying this is not how affordable housing developers probably want to operate. They don’t want to operate with all these onerous restrictions and paperwork that the federal government places on them, or even maybe some local jurisdictions. Then, also, because we don’t have to, as a social housing developer, go out and get like eight or nine different financing mechanisms for a capital stack, that doesn’t take up staff time, that doesn’t take years and years of delay. Our capital stack very much mirrors more of a private market housing capital stack. And also affordable housing developers are really not able to produce those three- and four-bedroom apartments because the financing isn’t there.
Switching over to the private market: At the end of the day, whether or not you agree with this, it is just a fact that they are there to create a profit. They will not build that building if it is not going to be profitable enough for the investors in that building. So that’s why you have these boom-and-bust cycles of housing development in the United States. And if you look at Singapore, Vienna, and other really strong even community land trust model countries, you don’t have the same boom and bust cycles.
The other thing that I would say to stop on this is a unique aspect of what we created Seattle is all new buildings have to be built to Passive House standards, and while that may add a little bit of cost at the beginning, the cost in the long run is going to be significantly reduced as far as energy and also maintenance.
That gets to another thing I wanted to ask about, which is, being an owner of housing, things can and do go wrong, and maintenance does need to happen. I’m wondering if you’ve laid out a plan for being able to fund that maintenance over a long period of time, especially given that you are trying to limit rents as much as you can.
Yeah, so we are limiting rents, but also we have a broad income mix. So it’s not like just limiting rents with an income-restricted building where, you know, after those tax credits run out, or the operating funds from a city or a county run out, you’re kind of SOL. Because we are also going to be creating long term, stable residents, their income is going to go up over time. It’s going to be more social cohesion. There’s going to be more community connection. There’s going to be a desire to take care of the building, because it’s not just something you’re in for a couple of years.
And we will be building in the maintenance costs and putting that into a renovation fund. The model requires you to be thinking long term about these assets. Also, because we baked in the resident governance, residents aren’t going to allow the developer to defer maintenance that is required.
If it does get really bad, let’s say hypothetically, because things can and we should prepare, then we maybe stop production for a year, and all of the revenue from that year goes back into renovations and upgrades. Every year, because of the flexibility of our model, we can make those decisions. I want to be producing every year but say that there’s just a massive earthquake, and it’s like, no, we have to put all of our funding into upkeeping this asset.
I wanted to ask about the democratic governance aspect, because I was looking at the bylaws, and I see that that’s a really important part of how the developer is supposed to work and the board is supposed to work. That notion of community control of housing has kind of a mixed record in American history. I’m wondering how you would hope that you can avoid the biggest pitfalls of that model that we’ve seen in the past?
It’s such a good question and I think that the only answer I have is that we are going to set out to create the best structure that we can, and then we’re going to be iterative. And we’re going to be really honest with residents. When stuff isn’t working, we expect feedback. It is our duty to course correct, making sure that we have staff and board members that are going to be responsive to that.
Because of the examples that I assume you’re bringing up and just because of my own experience, when people who do not have a lot of power get any sort of power, it doesn’t always express itself in the most healthy, democratic ways. So that’s why we are trying to kick start this because when I took over, none of this work had started. I’ve actually brought on a consultant who’s a dear friend of mine to create this working group of people: lawyers, tenant advocates, community groups, to be part of the imagining. And then these infrastructures will go to the board for ultimate approval, just so that we have something strong, and we’re onboarding residents from the get go right away.
There’s going to be a lot of tension. We’re going to have to work together as the developer, the board and the resident governance council to kind of learn a new language. They’re tenant advocates, and there’s a rightly so adversarial interaction. It’s a dynamic that has to be openly debated and challenged, because it isn’t the same as a private developer that you are going up against. If you go up against it and this thing breaks, it breaks forever, for everyone.
I find it exciting. I’m not going to have a lot of stress over it. I think we should bring people in and also just be really transparent about where we see the tension.
Another thing I wanted to ask about is how the affordable units are going to be allocated. In particular, thinking about Seattle’s locational preference program for affordable housing, is that going to apply to the units in the social housing developer?
So you remember the ideal unit mix: 10, 30, 30, 30. We want to make sure that those units are spread throughout the building. It’s not like one floor will all be quote unquote affordable, and it’s not like all of the smaller units are quote unquote affordable.
I was specifically interested, too, in the program that Seattle has, an optional program for developers to provide preference for people from those neighborhoods where the buildings are being built.
I’m not sure I’ve heard of that program. We’re still figuring out how we will bring on new residents. We do have a lottery system that is in the “should” section of the charter, and we are trying to figure out what that looks like.
Is there a vision for the geographic distribution of your properties and your new developments? I’m curious about whether there’s priority for transit-accessible areas or denser housing in particular.
Of course, we’re going to be close to transit. Transit is really, really important. Proximity to schools and green space is really important. I don’t see us in some industrial areas that are more mixed-use.
Seattle is broken up into seven council districts. We want to be in every single council district. We particularly want to be building in the districts that have not taken on their share of affordable housing. And we want to make sure that there are those multifamily options in those areas that have better education systems. But it is really important for us to be all over the city.
I can tell you one area, in South Seattle, we’ve actually had multiple people reach out to us to try to be part of this neighborhood that’s around this light rail station that has not had a lot of investment. But we also don’t want to over-concentrate in one particular area, so it’s just kind of balancing the vision.
The last thing I wanted to ask is about the many “should haves” in the charter, including working with union labor, building highly energy efficient buildings, building lots of amenities and building larger units. I’m wondering how you can balance all those priorities with also the mandate to make economical housing that produces a positive cash flow. How are you thinking through those trade-offs?
For the project labor agreement, we are actively in conversation with the building trades about that. I will just say I know that that might add some cost, but I see this as a necessary, important strategic investment, because once you have the building trades on board with your model, they are going to be invested forever. If there’s a threat to the social housing tax in the future by the council, the building trades are going to lobby and organize to make sure that none of that money is dipped into. That money translates into their jobs. And the political power that comes with that, I think, will pay off forever. And also, union members don’t always qualify for affordable housing, but they also can’t afford to pay for private market housing, so this is also housing that they could live in.