Seattle proposes new tax to fight homelessness
Seattle’s tech industry is booming. Amazon has hired more than 35,000 employees in the city since 2010. Google is building a campus that will be able to expand its workforce by 4,000 workers. Facebook is also growing its Seattle footprint. Downtown Seattle has led the world in the number of construction cranes for several years running thanks largely to the influx of high-paying tech jobs.
But now Seattle is poised to lower the boom on its largest and most successful job creators. The city council is widely expected to pass a head tax of 26 cents on every hour worked in the city. It will hit companies that have gross revenues topping $20 million a year.
The tax revenue would be used to address the city’s growing homeless problem.
When business owner Saul Spady, who founded Cre8ive Empowerment, compared this to a sin tax on jobs, he was dismissed by a city council member.
“The city is going to make us choose between taking care of our employees and giving back to our community,” said Spady, “and some businesses will die or leave Seattle because of this.”
The tax will raise $75 million from 600 companies. Among the businesses impacted will be HomeStreet Bank, which employs 700 workers in Seattle. But the company also owns land just across the city line.
“You start creating a scenario where it’s much more attractive to house employees outside the city,” said HomeStreet CEO Mark Mason. “That is bad for the city, it’s bad for jobs, it’s bad for the economy.”
The money will fund homeless shelters, build tiny house villages and affordable apartments. Despite spending in Seattle and King County that has ballooned to $200 million a year, the number of people living in tents, on Seattle streets and in vehicles has grown 20 percent since 2016, to nearly 4,000 individuals.
“Housing and homelessness is absolutely a regional crises and we need to act with urgency right here in Seattle to get folks inside,” said Seattle City Council member Teresa Mosqueda. “This creates almost 200 deeply affordable homes.”
By far, the biggest impact will be felt by Amazon. With a $540 tax on each of its 40,000 Seattle employees, the online retailer will pay $21.6 million by way of the head tax. Amazon is already trying to be part of the solution to homelessness. It’s spending $10 million to build a homeless shelter inside one of its many new office towers downtown.
At the same time, the company is deciding where to locate a second headquarters.
“What Amazon is doing is keeping their options open,” said Paul Guppy an analyst with the Washington Policy Center. “They’re saying they’re going to set up a headquarters in another city, then they can transfer work from Seattle to other places as needed and it’s just a basic business decision.”
Business leaders accuse the city council of being hostile toward private businesses, especially the largest corporations. In 2013 socialist City Council Member Kshama Sawant criticized Boeing for moving jobs to South Carolina and shockingly called for a government takeover.
“If you want to go, you can go,” Sawant said, “The machines are here, the workers are here. Let us take this entire productive activity into democratic public ownership.”
John Scholes, director of the Downtown Seattle Association, said businesses already pay nearly 60 percent of Seattle’s general fund tax revenue.
“The current strategy is not working,” Scholes said, “We’re seeing more spending from the city council on this (homelessness) issue, and there are more people outside. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
But advocates for the homeless say businesses that just received a big windfall from the Trump tax cuts can afford to pay more in Seattle.
“All corporations have a civic duty to make sure that Seattle is a good place to live and work,” said Sharon Lee, executive director of the Low Income Housing Institute, which contracts with Seattle to build affordable housing.
Head taxes are extremely rare in the U.S. and the ones in place are a fraction of Seattle’s proposal. Denver’s head tax amounts to $50 per year for a full-time employee. Chicago used to have a head tax until Mayor Rahm Emanuel scrapped it, calling it a jobs killer. And, in fact, Seattle also got rid of its $25 a year per head tax in 2009 because leaders said it sent the wrong message to businesses during the recession.
Seattle’s Head Tax 2.0 is 22 times larger than that one. The council is expected to pass it later in May.
The city government can put this new found revenue stream to good us. Wonder what percentage will actually wind up benefitting the homeless?
If it is anything like what the Clinton’s massaged in Haiti, most of the homeless will still be homeless.
Indeed. This money won’t truly help the homeless much unless it’s funneled into drug treatment centers and mental health facilities.
More and more “homeless” are neither drug-addled nor head cases. It has become simply another lifestyle choice to forgo work and use a combination of social services, charities and panhandling to get by. Working is for suckers.
I’d sure enjoy watching Starbucks take it up the corporate ass.
I got your bottom line. Right Here!
The fastest way to fix this is inflatable housing. It could be a use for empty mall parking lots. Or convert shipping containers.
Yeah – rafts. Then float ‘em out into the ocean.
How can liberal “city councils” just get up there and “DECREE” another tax out of the blue?? Just because it has a “feel good” help the meek ring to it?
Aren’t the liberal politicians like that pretty much responsible for the stupid homeless problem to begin with? So they tax the low-hanging fruit like multi-billion dollar conglomerates? Like taking candy from a child. Of course, the “constituents” will be all for it. Until they’re next in line.
I’d love every one of those companies to bid farewell to Seattle. Not that I care about those stupid companies either. They’d possibly be in trouble with the lack of soy-boy lackeys to do the work in other markets.
Hardly anyone debates the fundamental problem with this situation anymore. Anyone see that recent Prager U. video on “control the words?”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
We need new rules – there shall be no new taxes / fees / or increases in taxes without a referendum.
They already spend 200 million on 4000 homeless. What a waste of resources. They come for the music scene and cheap heroin, but they stay for the endless programs.
Not much in the way of sympathy. Thats already 50grand per homeless person. Above the US median income
Exactly. The article says “despite spending $200 mil, there are 4,000 homeless”. “Despite” should be changed to “because of”.
Just imagine a new highrise with homeless housing built into it. Batman, it’s even worse than the 1050’s…they had jobs back then.
Hire a cruise ship to Hawaii and give 3,000 folks a free one way vacation. They will have better weather, better fishing, more tropical food will be available, jobs more suitable to their skills, etc.
Tell that shithead Hawaiian federal judge that put an injunction on Trump’s travel ban that they are communist filth and Muzzie refugees from Central America and Bufustan and he will order they build housing for them. No where near where he lives of course but order it he would.
I WONDER HOW MANY OF THE JOBS THE BIG COMPANIES LIKE FACEBOOK ETC EMPLOYEES ARE ON H1-B1 VISAS WHERE THEY PAY LESS THAN HALF OF MIN WAGE INSTEAD OF EMPLOYING OUR HOMELESS VETS AND HOMELESS FAMILIES, WHERE THEY WOULD HAVE TO PAY FULL MINIMUM WAGE.
None. No H1B1 visas paying $4 an hour. Do not be a dolt.
Condos for the homeless? Seattle better up the ante on those companies. It will be enticingly the new mecca for homeless.
Wow, I am so sure that will work out well
(yeah, right).
Greetings,
It seems to me that you get more of what you reward. Any increase in spending on the homeless will only create more homeless. Ya know, I see this every time I step outside to go for a walk. The homeless are everywhere and I’m not looking at them from my google bus or out of my car window but right there, right in front of me each and every day. Now, these people do not live on air but depend on the charities, churches and government to provide for them. They are given mountains of food, clothes and camping items. I say take all of that away and replace it with a single place in each town where the homeless can get beans and a multi-vitamin.
People don’t live on the moon because it isn’t convenient to live on the moon. If living on the street is no longer convenient then far fewer people will do it and the ones that do will be easier to round up for treatment or to become a ward of the state.
Venezeattle coming right up.
Another liberal do good extract wealth from successful productive people and piss it out the window . A good corporate citizen generates profit expands employment , increases wages and benefits to its productive staff which in turn increases the tax base that supports the parasitic nature of government . That parasite needs to be destroyed it’s killing the host .
A companies number one mission is to make money ! When business operaters forget that in a true capitalist society everything dies . Crony capitalists benefit from the government largess . As for the H1 visa workers like 11 to 22 MILLON people here illegally , round them up and get them the fuck out of here ! They are like government parasites and they are literally killing our Republic !
I don’t hear answers.
Three-quarters of Disneyland employees don’t earn enough for basic expenses, one in 10 have experienced homelessness.
Yeah, but that’s in Mexifornia, not the US.
“The money will fund homeless shelters, build tiny house villages and affordable apartments. ”
That’s what we used to call “skid row” until “urban renewal” tore it down and put all it’s residents, ones who were barely eking by in the first place, out on the street as the homeless.
I imagine something similar is already in the cards for these new places now.
Why is it whenever I hear any of the politician talking heads pontificate on the homeless problem, NONE of them ever mention the ~banking fraud that lead to the eviction of 7+ million American households~ in the financial crisis, nor the $trillion TARP bailout of the banks?
And now TBP wants to shit on the homeless?
Am I the only one here who remembers Mary Malone (I think that was her nic) who spent years here trying to help defrauded homeowners? Where do you suppose they went?
These Americans are homeless primarily due to international financial manipulations, politically enforced restrictive land use policies, unaffordable property taxes, bloated bureaucracies, manipulated employment metrics, and offshore labor outsourcing.
30 years ago most of these same now homeless people would have had some kind of job and some kind of paid habitation. Those at the bottom of the labor pool have been fucked and well fucked, in the name of globalism, corporate and banking profitability, and ‘the environment’.
1) no you aren’t the only one. I posted the article. See my comment above also.
2) good call on Mary Malone. I remember her. Where did she go btw?
3) no-one on TBP has answers other than fuck them.
4) you could also look for my comment on the other $15/hour article posted yesterday.
It started with $15/hr….
All of us see that; we don’t look thru rosy government-can-fix-it glasses. But libs see it differently….”pay them more, they’ll live better” without ever thinking long term, critical, reverse effects, corporate expense, etc.
Now, with progressive logic, many mom n pops have closed creating a worse homeless situation. But libs don’t see it that way, either…they see “good, intelligent, hard working people just down on their luck that needs a little hand out to get back where they need to be”.
Let me enlighten you just a bit from someone who oversaw multiple “refugee” sights after hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the effects of government stepping in. The vast majority of the refugees..eh-kem…evacuees, were from the fourth ward in New Orleans and some from gov or low income housing in Houston. They weren’t relocated from which they had been productive, contributive members of society, or the breadwinner for an all American family. But because **government** decided the more than 14,000 needed to be taken care of because they were “down on their luck”,(just taken at their word) they were given, by FEMA, debit cards to purchase new clothes, free cell phones, places to sleep (some even in nice hotels) money for food…surely none of them would buy drugs or booze…. and very large checks, (up to $26,000) cashable at any bank, or in several cases a car dealership to replace what they had lost. Yup, that’s right, some of these poor, down on their luck evacuees drove up in new Cadillac Escaldes, drunk as a sailor, to pick up their next FEMA check. Gubment knows best for the poor, displaced, hardworking peoples caught in a storm. FEMA went broke and under sharp criticism and oversight. But did they learn anything?? Oh, but the children, what about the children??!!
Anytime a federal, state, or local government tries to “fix” a problem, rather than let neighborhoods, good citizens, and private charities correct it, it’s overpaid, underfunded, robbing the doers, giving to the moochers, angering the productive, giving a false sense of utipia to the dumbed down populace, and ultimately creating huge divides between the “rich and the poor”. One last question…At what point does gubment realize Robin Hood was a fairy tale???
“All corporations have a civic duty to make sure that Seattle is a good place to live and work,” said Sharon Lee.
Civic duty my ass… Chip
Why not mandate that for every x SF of new office space constructed, x SF of low income housing go in with it. And make them hire a specific percentage of their workforce from the homeless. And give them food and healthcare. And phones. And a car. Or why not just have them put the coporate accounts into joint accounts with the City so that they can write checks whenever they have to pay for something homeless related.
I was in Seattle in March. What a shithole and disgustingly expensive city. From there I flew down to LAX and socal was cheaper than Seattle??!! Hotel, yes. Restaurants, yes. Rental car, yes. What the fuck happened to the town that was fun and inexpensive back in the mid-1990’s when grunge music made you cool? Once upon a time I wanted to move to Seattle. Glad I never made that mistake. Now you just have drizzle and bums.
What the fuck happened, Democrats happened that’s what. You would not believe what a shit show this place has become.
“Despite spending in Seattle and King County that has ballooned to $200 million a year, …. to nearly 4,000 individuals.”
Hmmmm, some maff; that’s $50,000 per homeless person. If used only for rent, that’s $4,166/mo. Niiiiice!!
I recently said I wished I had a black vagina cuz of all the bennies. Let me modify that to; I wish I had a homeless black vagina.
“Homes for the Useless” Anthem; Rand
Guess they didn’t read Atlas Shrugged.
Wow, what a bunch of jerks commenting.
Nobody noticing that Amazon treats its warehouse workers so badly – like the practice of having ambulances standing by for when they collapse in 115 degree heat, or that these workers are more likely than not to be on food stamps and/or be living in their cars.
Or the way that Amazon will make “offers you can’t refuse” to manufacturers making products Amazon believes they can sell better – either sell out or get both your channel and your product taken over.
Simply amazing how the Reagan era “welfare queen” b.s. continues to hold a grip over conservative imaginations.
The real welfare queens are the corporate executives and their middle management minions – which are exactly the ones being taxed here. The only minimum wage workers in Amazon’s headquarters are the bus drivers, the janitorial staff and the cafeteria folk.
Equally interesting how conservatives used to be considered to be Christian and compassionate – instead a bunch of people bitching about how people with miserable lives are being subsidized.
Being homeless isn’t good or fun.
It isn’t a “win” for anyone, even disregarding the fact that a lot of them are mentally disturbed.
Going back a few years, poor people lived in poor housing. Poor housing disappeared in Progressive cities and was replaced by Condos, ninja loans, and Section 8s. The Haughty Taughty Cities need to lighten up on some sub-low standard housing so more poor people can afford a house.