{"id":314,"date":"2019-06-11T02:30:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T02:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=314"},"modified":"2019-06-11T07:30:49","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T07:30:49","slug":"amazon-led-a-tax-rebellion-a-year-later-seattle-is-gridlocked-bloomberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/314\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Led a Tax Rebellion. A Year Later, Seattle Is Gridlocked – Bloomberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-06-09\/after-amazon-led-tax-rebellion-seattle-s-homeless-aid-stalls<\/a>
\nAmazon Led a Tax Rebellion. A Year Later, Seattle Is Gridlocked Matt Day Tent encampments show growing human crisis in thriving region
\nThe wine was flowing as a group of Seattle\u2019s business elite gathered at Bar Cotto, an Italian restaurant in the city\u2019s trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the menu features an expansive selection of salumi and pizzas topped with truffle oil or Calabrian chili. The topic up for discussion: how to solve the region\u2019s intractable homelessness crisis..
\nThe usual ideas came up. Donations to charities. Tax-code tweaks.
\n Daniel Malone in Seattle, on June 5. Photographer: Chona Kasinger\/Bloomberg Then Dilip Wagle started talking. The senior partner at McKinsey & Co. had written a report saying the city needed to double its spending to provide the roughly 14,000 additional homes needed for people who couldn\u2019t keep a roof over their heads. Philanthropy wasn\u2019t enough, he said, according to attendees of the November function. A lot more money was needed..
\nThe exchange underscored an impasse that\u2019s persisted in Seattle a year after Amazon.com Inc. and other companies beat back a city effort to raise money for homeless services through a tax on large employers. The lobbying win has left the campaign to help one of the country\u2019s biggest homeless populations in limbo, with a patchwork of philanthropic offerings rather than a comprehensive effort to address the issue.
\nMany businesses argue that the solution to the challenge isn\u2019t more government spending; it\u2019s government spending more efficiently. Local officials, meanwhile, have failed to articulate a clear plan, while facing a regressive tax system that limits how new funds can be raised. That\u2019s led to a divide that\u2019s left little room for action.
\n Tent encampments under a highway Photographer: Chona Kasinger \u201cIt\u2019s all stalled,\u201d said Daniel Malone, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, which provides supportive housing, health and employment aid. Not only did the tax fail, \u201cbut I think the fight has kind of stalled out, even the conversations on where to go forward.\u201d
\n\u2018Seattle Is Dying\u2019
\nChronic street homelessness in Seattle has become a constant reminder of civic failure in a progressive city that\u2019s thriving economically. Tent encampments are a regular sight along highways and under bridges, while makeshift shelters have appeared in neighborhoods where homes regularly fetch more than $1 million. In March, a local news channel produced a controversial documentary on the issue called \u201cSeattle Is Dying\u201d that attracted millions of views and spurred calls for a more aggressive response.
\n Amazon building that will house Mary\u2019s Place homeless shelter Photographer: Chona Kasinger\/Bloomberg Big companies\u2019 relief efforts have largely centered on donations to nonprofits and aid to the mayor\u2019s office. Both Amazon and Vulcan Inc., the investment vehicle of late Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, are financing the construction of new shelters.
\nThe crisis is spreading up and down the West Coast, with both the Bay Area and Los Angeles recently reporting big increases in their homeless populations, as out-of-control housing costs tip people into living on the streets. But other cities have had more success in raising new funds to tackle the crisis. San Francisco voters last fall overwhelmingly passed a measure, championed by Salesforce.com Inc. co-chief executive officer Marc Benioff, that would raise as much as $300 million a year for homeless services through a tax on big companies. In Los Angeles, residents in 2017 approved a quarter-of-a-cent sales tax.
\nWhat Seattle \u201chas failed to do overall is to unite people around a message and a plan,\u201d said Sara Rankin, a professor at Seattle University\u2019s School of Law and the director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project who is working with local business leaders and nonprofits to address the issue. \u201cSo as long as they\u2019re not communicating that, they\u2019re not going to see a lot of activity from the business community.\u201d
\nDouble Spending
\nThe funding gap is large. Wagle and his McKinsey colleague, Maggie Stringfellow, found that the city needed to spend $360 million to $410 million a year to help people experiencing homelessness get a permanent roof over their heads, roughly double the outlay in 2017. The bulk of that money would go toward rental vouchers and other programs that expand the supply of homes accessible to people who can\u2019t afford market rates. Through a spokeswoman, Wagle declined to comment.
\nSeattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has responded to the crisis by proceeding with a years-long effort to increase the supply of housing, as well as scrounging for funds elsewhere. The city also is working to create a new authority with the county that will spearhead a regional initiative to address the issue.
\nIt\u2019s had some success. An annual snapshot of the area\u2019s homeless population, released this month after a single night count in January, showed an 8% drop from a year earlier, the first decline since 2012. Even so, other measures indicate an increase in the number of people who are accessing homelessness services at any point in the year. The mayor\u2019s office declined to comment for this story.
\nThe lack of leadership from Seattle\u2019s business community was highlighted in January, when Microsoft announced that it would set aside $500 million to help build affordable housing in the region, with $25 million to address homelessness. But that effort is targeted mainly at Seattle\u2019s suburbs, where the company is based, rather than in the city.
\nAmazon, Seattle\u2019s largest employer, is allocating 47,000 square feet of space in a skyscraper it\u2019s building for Mary\u2019s Place, which shelters homeless families. The company says the cost of the project, in the works for two years, will total $100 million over a decade in grants and foregone rent. An Amazon spokeswoman said the company also expects to pay $30 million in in-kind office space and grants to FareStart, a nonprofit that provides job training to people in poverty or at risk of homelessness. She declined to comment further.
\nAmazon also was represented in a group of business leaders convened by the mayor after last year\u2019s tax fight to explore ways to reform city government and build public support. The group in April offered the first public update on their work, including projects to better collate data on homelessness and build online portals to link people with city services.
\n\u2018Not Enough\u2019
\n\u201cThey are doing good things — it\u2019s not enough,\u201d said Heather Redman, co-founder of Seattle venture capital firm Flying Fish Partners, and a member of the council. \u201cIt really does feel like the relationship building is almost as important as the tech building. There are fundamental fault lines in Seattle that have almost become so big that you can\u2019t cooperate to do the right thing.\u201d
\nSome in the business community now say they\u2019re open to higher taxes, a sentiment that was scarce during the head tax debate a year ago. Steve Singh, who founded Seattle-area expense reporting company Concur Technologies Inc., said he could support levies on luxury real estate, for instance, or increases in business taxes on large companies.
\n\u201cThese are community problems,\u201d Singh said. \u201cYou have to pay for the community that you have.\u201d
\nStill, Singh said he worries that the government won\u2019t use the new funds responsibly.
\n\u2014 With assistance by Dina Bass<\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-06-09\/after-amazon-led-tax-rebellion-seattle-s-homeless-aid-stalls Amazon Led a Tax Rebellion. A Year Later, Seattle Is Gridlocked Matt Day Tent encampments show growing human crisis in thriving region The wine was flowing as a group of Seattle\u2019s business elite gathered at Bar Cotto, an Italian restaurant in the city\u2019s trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the menu features an expansive selection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}