The premise behind Spokane's multifamily tax exemption policies is simple — encourage development of affordable housing in the areas where we most want it by giving developers a long reprieve from taxes on the properties. Yet, considering Spokane's failure to build enough housing to keep up with demand over the past five years, City Council members have repeatedly tweaked the multifamily tax exemption policies to try to encourage more construction. And that, says City Council President Breean Beggs, has been incredibly successful.
"The tax credits seem to encourage more dense housing throughout the city, including more affordable housing," he says.
In a unanimous vote on Monday, July 15, the City Council took another step, once again expanding the map of where developers are eligible for these exemptions.
"It expanded the use of them generally," says Beggs. "There's more places they can be done. Far more."
But the other tweak was even more interesting.
"In the past, the rap on low-income housing developments is they're always in the low-income neighborhoods," Beggs says.
But after the latest change, the short-term eight-year version of the multifamily tax exemption wouldn't require any affordable housing units and would only be allowed in the lower-income neighborhoods. It's not that you can't build affordable housing — you still can if you want the longer tax breaks. But if you're willing to settle for the eight-year version in these spots, you're free to build all market-rate apartments.
Multifamily developments in the richer areas, meanwhile, would only be eligible for the 12- or 20-year versions of the tax exemptions, which would still require a certain percentage of the units be affordable to get the tax break.
"It's great because it flips the script," said City Council member Michael Cathcart, in a short interview conducted when the Inlander ran into him while grocery shopping at My Fresh Basket. "It encourages diversification of our housing stock across the city."
Increasingly, that's been one of the goals of city planning — erase the artificial divisions between rich and poor neighborhoods and let all types of people intermingle in certain areas.
"If you don't do housing diversity, if you only concentrate other poor people [in] a low-income neighborhood, you can increase social issues in adjoining properties — it tends to be a descending spiral," Beggs says.
But when all income types are interspersing together, as with Beggs' own neighborhood on the lower South Hill, it's the opposite kind of spiral — one that improves conditions for everyone.
He has both the upper-income folks who often live on Rockwood Boulevard, he says, but also "more people of color and different incomes.
"I love it," he says. (DANIEL WALTERS)
MORE SCHOOL CULTURE WARS
On Monday, Aug. 15, dozens of people packed a Mead School Board meeting to discuss proposed bans on Critical Race Theory and elementary books that reference gender identity.
The first proposal would restrict employees from teaching what it calls the "mandated politicization in the classroom." The proposal prohibits the teaching of Critical Race Theory — a college-level academic framework that analyzes the way systemic racism is embedded in the legal system. The term has been used as a catch-all by conservatives to critique the way race and equity is taught in schools.
The second proposal would ban materials that reference "gender identity, gender fluidity, the gender spectrum or gender-neutral ideology in any form" from the district's elementary libraries.
The majority of public commenters spoke against the two proposals. Many compared them to censorship and said they would harm teachers and students with marginalized identities.
The two proposals were introduced by School Board Director Michael Cannon, who tells the Inlander he was surprised to see them evoke so much controversy.
"I know that we have widespread support within our district, because I've talked to parents about this for months," Cannon says. "And then to see such a strong opposition, in many ways from an activist community outside of our district, that surprised me. I wasn't expecting that much controversy."
Cannon acknowledged that some of the people who spoke did come from within the district, but overall, he believes the comments weren't indicative of how the district feels. He cites conversations he's had with parents in recent months. Many of them watched Critical Race Theory become a hot-button issue in other parts of the country and are concerned about it being taught in Mead, he says.
The proposals aren't necessarily in response to what's currently happening in schools, Cannon says; they're meant to be preventative.
At the same time, Cannon says there have been a few specific incidents where the district had to deal with "something that's crossed the line in terms of what students are being exposed to." He declined to go into detail about specifics.
During the meeting, Troy Hughes, principal at Northwood Middle School, said that while Mead schools do teach kids about racism, Critical Race Theory has never been taught.
"It is intellectually lazy and uneducated to throw a CRT blanket over any conversation that has to do with race or might make us uncomfortable," Hughes said. (NATE SANFORD) ♦