Maple Valley has agreed to partner with other cities on a joint effort to bring more affordable housing to southeast King County.
At its Feb. 27 meeting, the City Council authorized City Manager David Johnston to enter the city into the South End Area Regional Coalition for Housing (SEARCH).
According to the Feb. 21 meeting agenda, SEARCH is designed to “foster efforts to provide affordable housing by combining public funding with private-sector resources.”
Other cities in the agreement include Algona, Auburn, Black Diamond, Covington and Enumclaw.
Additionally, SEARCH would work directly with private developers, nonprofit organizations and financial institutions to implement affordable housing projects. Their assistance would include technical advice and making surplus sites available for affordable housing. SEARCH will also provide recommendations to the cities regarding public funding for affordable housing on both a regional and local level.
Johnston stated in a phone interview that the interlocal agreement will allow the cities to act as a single entity.
“Right now it’s going to serve as a forum for cities to discuss affordable housing and addressing those needs demanded by the public,” Johnston said.
Johnston stated that Eastside cities have similar interlocal agreements but SEARCH will be tailored to fit the specific needs of southeast King County cities.
“The services there (on the Eastside) are a heck of a lot different than it is here,” he said. “The dynamic on the south end is totally different. Historically housing has been a lot more affordable…so we don’t have that same dynamic.”
Auburn Community Service Manager Michael Hurst expressed similar views in a telephone interview.
“By joining together cities in an interlocal agreements, we are able to address a variety of topics from development to transpiration to growth management expectations as a larger and boarder community,” Hurst said. “We are not able to merely be a small community of a limited number of people, but eight cities with hundreds of thousands of people where we can sit at a table where money is dispersed and make a broader application and provide a consistency in the development of affordable housing.”
Hurst also said that the cities have similar situations when it comes to growth and development.
“In a number of instances, south and southeast King County have had what is now termed ‘affordable housing’ for 40-50 years,” he said. “We have a very different animal down here than, say, what the Eastside is working on and what Seattle is responsible for developing. We have existing housing and our issue is really more preservation.”
Although Hurst said SEARCH will use the King County Housing Authority’s definition of affordable housing, the definition is not included in the interlocal agreement, something which Johnston said will need to be resolved when deciding what qualifies as affordable housing.
“That’s one of the issues we need to talk about,” he stated. “It’s one of those things where we have to have an understanding of what affordable housing is. There are some people who argue that the recent recession took care of that problem.”
SEARCH will be comprised of a quarterly executive board and a citizen advisory council. The executive board will consist of one member from each city and presided over by a chair. The citizen advisory board will provide advice to the executive board on land or money resource allocation for these projects. It will have at least 12 members who are nominated and chosen by the executive board.
According to its website, King County’s definition of affordable housing “assumes that no more than 25 percent of a homeowner’s income goes to mortgage payments (exclusive of tax and insurance costs), and that no more than 30 percent of a renter’s income goes to rent payments.”
