(The Center Square) – King County council members are grappling with housing challenges that put larger households at risk of overcrowding.
On Monday, the King County Council discussed a recent housing report highlighting a $3.96 billion annual funding gap needed to meet the county’s affordable housing goals.
Despite voter-approved funding, King County is on track to reach just one-third of its 178,000-unit affordable housing target by 2044. The total cost to develop and achieve that goal is $114.5 billion in 2025 dollars.
Morgan Shook, Director of ECOnorthwest – the firm that conducted the study – flagged a shortage of larger rental units in the region, especially three to four-bedroom homes needed by lower-income families.
“This leads to overcrowding and forces many families to rent up, stretching their housing costs beyond what they can afford just to find enough space to house themselves,” Shook said during Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting.
It’s not just low-income families facing overcrowding. The report found that more than 90% of households with three or more people do not match the existing housing stock, regardless of income. This indicates a shortage of larger rental units even for higher-income households. Nearly 28% of South King County renters in particular live in overcrowded housing, almost four times the rate in Seattle.
King County Councilmember De’Sean Quinn, who represents South King County cities, said parents often face housing options limited by their income.
“The likelihood of [large rental units] being built depends on basically a higher income bracket; having access to that type of housing is challenging as a parent,” Quinn said.
The King Countywide Housing Needs Assessment 2025 outlined three funding scenarios to generate the $3.96 billion annually, but they are deemed unrealistic. One calls for a regional property tax levy of $4.53 per $1,000 of assessed value, nearly 10 times Seattle’s current housing levy and far exceeding state-imposed lid lift caps, as noted in the report.
The other two proposals are equally unfeasible: a 4.23% sales tax rate and a 11.46% real estate excise tax, or REET, rate – more than triple the current maximum state REET rate of 3%. Both would require new authorizing legislation from Olympia.
The Center Square previously reported that county executive candidates Claudia Balducci and Girmay Zahilay, both members of the King County Council, are not supporting these tax proposals to address the funding gap. During Monday’s meeting, Balducci said the county should work to bring costs down rather than solely build revenue up.
“We probably can’t value engineer our way out of such a big hole, but we must absolutely have to do some value engineering; we have to figure out a way not just to raise the money that is needed and take the costs as given,” Balducci said. “We have to figure out a way to drive the costs down or we’re just not going to meet our goals.”
