Sound Transit Lots to Become Affordable Housing in Three Seattle Neighborhoods

Coming to a Light Rail station near you: affordable housing! ORAN VIRIYINCY VIA CREATIVE COMMONS

Some good news for affordable housing in Seattle! (If you’re looking for bad news, read how the GOP’s heinous tax plan will affect the region, or how housing prices are skyrocketing with no end in sight, or just scan Craigslist for apartments. Or, simply walk a few blocks in any direction—most likely there will be luxury condos going up).

Anyway…the good news!

Last Thursday the Sound Transit Board approved developing a lot near the corner of Madison Street and Boylston Avenue into an apartment building with 308 subsidized units (nearly a third of which will be for seniors). The project would be a joint venture between Bellwether Housing, an affordable housing developer, and Plymouth Housing Group, which works to provide stable living situations for the homeless.

The land itself is worth about $8.6 million, according to Seattle Transit Blog. But the price for Bellwether and Plymouth to buy the parcel was set at a cool ZERO dollars.

Capitol Hill Housing is also set to work with Sound Transit to build about 80 affordable units on Broadway and Pike where the old Eldridge Tire Company building is (which, since it received landmark status last March, will be preserved). Those units will be available for those whose income is 60 percent of the area median income, which gets higher every year.

Finally, when the light rail comes to the neighborhood of Roosevelt in North Seattle, so will affordable housing: including 245 affordable units, built in partnership with Mercy Housing and Bellwether.