Not There: Why Affordable Housing in Seattle is Busting
Trouble continues in the City of Seattle’s program of subsidized apartments, according to a page-one report in the August 31 Sunday Seattle Times. A 2,000-word story by reporter Greg Kim reports “an explosion of vacancy” as tenants move out of “affordable” units into ordinary housing that these days rents for about the same price.
This is not about housing for the poor. That’s provided by the Seattle Housing Authority, which owns buildings that house people with incomes below 30 percent of the area median. The city’s program of subsidized private apartments serves renters with incomes just under 60 percent of the area median. This is often called “workforce housing” for people earning well above the minimum wage.
The Times story is about this sort of housing in general, but focuses on one example, the 249-unit Thai Binh Apartments in Little Saigon. Built using state and city subsidies, the Thai Binh was opened in 2019 with modern air-conditioned units, big kitchens, a common-area exercise room and other amenities. To live there, tenants had to prove that they earned less than a threshold amount. Currently, these amounts are $66,000 a year for one person, $75,420 a year for two, and $84,820 for three.
Rents in subsidized apartments are supposed to be affordable. (In the housing industry, “affordable” is a code word for “subsidized.”) But in today’s market, rents in many subsidized and unsubsidized buildings are about the same. Rent for a studio apartment at Thai Binh was quoted in June at $1,546. This compares to average rents citywide for a studio of $1,562 (Rents.com) and $1,525 (Apartments.com). “Publicly funded affordable housing isn’t always that good of a deal these days,” says Kim’s piece in the Times.
https://www.postalley.org/2025/09/09/not-there-why-affordable-housing-in-seattle-is-busting/