The CEOs' letter to Mayor Harrell and the Department of Planning and Community Development on May 20 came one week after a group of more than 50 business leaders, affordable housing advocates and local nonprofits sent their own letter to City Hall criticizing the mayor's plan. The May 20 letter is identical to an earlier letter from the coalition previously reported by Cascade PBS.
The full list of signatories as of May 20: AI Tinkerers, Allen Institute for AI, Anthos Capital, Arrived, Axon, Clearbrief AI, Cloud Paper, DreamBox Learning, F5, Flying Fish Partners, Forum3, Founders Co-Op, Logic, Madrona Venture Group, MediCoder, Mt. Joy, Outreach, Pioneer Square Labs, Qumulo, Redfin, Syndio, StatsIG, Tanium, Tola Capital, Truveta, University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, Unlock Venture Partners, and Zillow.
Kelly Fukai, chief operating officer of the Washington Technology Industry Association, which helped the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce organize the tech signatory companies, said Seattle's limited and expensive housing stock hurts tech companies' ability to attract and retain talent, a top concern her association's member companies consistently express.
“While we supported a housing tax, we strongly feel that a tax alone will not achieve the desired results,” Fukai said. “Modernizing the Comprehensive Plan will ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past and will set us on a path to improving housing affordability, access, equity and sustainability for decades to come.”
Seattle is in the midst of a once-a-decade update to its Comprehensive Plan, the document that dictates what kind and how much housing can be built in each neighborhood. The city has until the end of 2024 to finalize and adopt the plan.
When Governor Harrell unveiled his revised plan in March, it drew strong criticism from housing advocates, who argued that the plan would not allow enough new housing to be built in Seattle and would exacerbate the city's housing affordability crisis.
A group called the Complete Communities Coalition compiled a letter in early May urging other policy goals in the Complete Plan, including allowing higher density in all neighborhoods, not concentrating all apartment construction on major arterial roads and providing more incentives to developers to build income-restricted affordable housing without public subsidies.
The Complete Communities Coalition includes business representatives, advocacy groups, and for-profit and nonprofit housing developers. The group is led by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Housing Development Consortium, the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, Tech4Housing, Futurewise, The Urbanist, House Our Neighbors, and commercial real estate trade association NAIOP.
In response to the coalition's letter in early May, the mayor's office told Cascade PBS that it believes the current draft plan “achieves the goals of housing abundance and diversity.” But it also said the Department of Planning and Community Development needs to develop more detailed plans for each of the Comprehensive Plan's seven “neighborhood center” designations, which could be one way to increase density in parts of the city.
