Dear Yeti,
You say all housing is needed. But that is simply a slogan that belies sound public policy and the wishes of the people whose pockets are being picked to pay for the taxes the developer won’t be paying.
Under your logic, all the other taxpayers and renters should be happy to pay the taxes on behalf of a new Trump Tower if built in Olympia. What an unfair and inefficient way of spending public dollars!
Support for your claim that without the incentives market rate housing won’t be built is manifestly not in evidence.
The multi-family housing market in Olympia, Tumwater and Lacey and nationwide is a booming. Currently, there are over 1,700 market rate multifamily houses in the pipeline for Olympia, most of which are currently ineligible for the MFTE.
In Olympia, 82% of the housing is multi-family. Lacey is growing even faster than Olympia and has only used the MFTE program one time compared to Olympia’s 11. Tumwater has been building projects as well and as of 2023, never given a market rate MFTE.
“Spreading the tax burden among as many people as possible eases that burden” is bad policy when we know the benefit is going directly to wealthy developers who are already profiting wildly without the need for the exemption (see example in the article). Meanwhile, their tax bill is being paid by all others who include those barely able to afford their homes and renters in non-MFTE buildings. Not a well-crafted example of fair and equitable program design.
We can do better than that. Inclusionary zoning can be the well targeted tool to get the housing that lower income people who can’t afford market rate housing need.
Thought exercise: If this policy was brought to a vote of the people, by what margin do you think it would pass or fail?
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