There aren’t many apartments like Tyrone Porter’s. His single room is big enough only for a bed, a stereo and a kitchenette. Set apart from the rest of Bellwether Housing’s Olive Tower affordable housing complex, it dangles on the edge of Interstate 5. The noise of the traffic below — almost directly below — roars through his window at all hours.

He likes it. The white noise of rush hour, the isolated space, the plants that line his window give him a deep sense of privacy. His grandniece — whom he calls his “girl” — visits on weekends.

“I have a roof over my head and that’s enough for me,” he said.

But after three years at Olive Tower, following years in shelters, his stability is tenuous.

Porter, 63, made his exit from homelessness with the help of the state’s Housing and Essential Needs program. It covered all of his subsidized $805 rent, plus about $200 extra per month. With food stamps, Porter, who walks with a cane after suffering a stroke a few years back, made it work.

But in October, Porter’s long-winding application for federal disability was approved. He qualified for $803 in Supplemental Security Income and Social Security disability insurance. As a result, he lost his state housing benefit. With no breathing room between his income and his rent, he’s struggling to keep up.

He has meager savings and some back pay from Social Security. But Porter figures he can afford only another two months. The life he thought he’d left behind is breathing down his neck.

“I don’t want to be back on the street,” he said. “It’s a stupid life and if you can get out of it, you do it. I don’t want to be out there like that. I have a family. I have a wonderful little girl. And what would she look like if she saw me like that?”

The stories of tenants falling off a benefits cliff has become a relatively common anecdote among affordable housing providers, especially in King County. But last year, Rep. Macri wanted a closer look at the scope of the problem.

With the Department of Commerce, Macri sent surveys to all 39 Washington counties with a list of questions about how they’re administering the state housing benefit.

In the Washington counties where both market-rate and affordable housing are cheaper, the benefit remains lower than federal disability income. But in Western Washington — especially near Puget Sound — that’s not the case.

In June of last year, 704 people were living in apartments via the state housing benefit in King County. More than 60% of those people were in apartments in which the rent exceeds monthly SSI. That’s 433 people possibly facing some sort of cliff if and when their applications for federal disability payments are approved.

In Snohomish County, that number was 37.9%. In Pierce County, it was 32.5%. And in Clark County, 13.8%.

Not all are at risk of falling into homelessness. Some will return to work or qualify for a higher monthly disability income based on past employment. Dan Wise of Catholic Community Services, which administers the state benefit in King County, said it’s impossible to know how many will be hung out to dry.

But the Department of Commerce data shows how the premise on which the state housing program was first created after the Great Recession is no longer guaranteed. Rents have increased and federal disability has not. Moving from one to the other is no promise of an improvement.

"The rent is too damn high, that is the problem," Macri said. "There are multiple things we need to do to address that."

Housing providers have the closest view of the issue, with little power to act. Elliot Swanson of Bellwether Housing said the amount the organization charges in rent is dictated by financing.

“This misconception that a lot of people have is that [the housing] is highly subsidized,” said Swanson. “But we still have obligations.”

Swanson said they are not legally allowed to lower the rent just for one person, in this case Porter.

To keep Porter and other Bellwether tenants from falling into homelessness, Swanson and others are forced to lean on the already-scarce housing resources in the county.

They thought they’d found a housing voucher for Porter through the Seattle Housing Authority, but he turned out to be too old. The next option is to get him on the King County Housing Authority’s recently opened waiting list for Section 8 vouchers. But applicants can spend years on the waiting list.

The benefit of a pot of money, say advocates, is that it’s an easy solution; a few hundred dollars can go a long way in closing the gap for people in need of housing.

At the same time, the specific benefits cliff that lawmakers are struggling with is a symptom of something larger — that the cost of housing in Washington is straining systems born in a time when rents were lower.

“We’ve been watching the [disability income] trends and the rent trends for quite a while,” said Thomas. “I think the need has been really getting more exposed and more urgent over the last couple years because even nonprofit affordable housing is out of reach in this region.”