Auburn contributes to partnership for low-income housing
Published 5:30 pm Friday, March 6, 2026
On March 2, the Auburn City Council agreed with the South King Housing and Homelessness Partners (SKHHP) executive board’s 2025 funding recommendations for building or rehabilitating local, affordable housing projects in the cities of SeaTac, Renton and Federal Way in 2026.
The SKHHP executive board will use $137,138 of the total $134,352 the City of Auburn has contributed to this funding round, a number augmented by $807 of the carry-over from 2024; and $2,026 of the 2024 SKHHP allocated interest earnings for the recommended projects.
In addition to Auburn and King County, the partner cities are: Burien, Covington, Des Moines, Federal Way, Kent, Maple Valley, Normandy Park, Renton, SeaTac and Tukwila.
Auburn’s approval is necessary to authorize the distribution to specific projects, even though it has already contributed to the 2025 Housing Capital Fund funding round for 2026.
The total amount of the distributions for 2026 is $3.9 million, according to the 2025 SKHHP Housing Capital Fund. To date, the partners have pooled more than $15 million to the fund.
The projects are as follows:
• The African Community Housing and Development, or, the African Diaspora Cultural Anchor Village, in the city of SeaTac. This is a 129-unit, multifamily, rental development, with 55 units set aside for families with children, earning 30% to 60% of area median income (AMI), and 13 units set aside for households with a physical disability. Set to break ground in 2026. Cost: $1.2 million
• St. Stephen Housing Association, Steele House in Renton. This offers six, three-bedroom rental town homes, at 50% AMI, serving families working their way out of homelessness. Renton funded the project directly in 2025. Cost: $1.8 million.
• Mental Health Housing Foundation, Steel Lake, Federal Way. This is a 20-unit multifamily rental development for families at 30% and 50% AMI, serving individuals with severe and persistent mental illness. Cost: $922,000
“There are no geographic restrictions by population, and so there could be Auburn residents that move in,” SKHHP General Manager Claire Goodwin told the council at a study session on Feb. 23, excepting, however, facilities serving chronic and persistent mental illness at the previously mentioned AMI levels.
Background
The original member cities launched the partnership in 2019 via an interlocal agreement to respond to South King County’s affordable housing shortage as “a unified, coordinated, and collaborative coalition.”
In 2019, Senate House Bill 1404 became law, allowing jurisdictions to enact a local sales-and-use tax to be used to support affordable housing initiatives. This sales-and-use tax remains a recapture of a portion of existing sales tax, not a new tax.
In 2020, House Bill 1590 became law, allowing jurisdictions to impose a one-tenth of 1% local sales-and-use tax to support affordable housing, with a limited window of time to act before the county collects the revenue.
Both of the bills above contribute funds.
In 2021, eight of the nine original member cities entered into a second interlocal agreement to pool sales tax receipts authorized by SKHHP to create the Housing Capital Fund.
The establishing-and-pooling interlocal agreements set parameters for the selection of awards involving pooled funds, and set the approval process.
In accordance with the interlocal agreements, the SKHHP executive board recommends to the participating city councils allocations for funding affordable housing projects, subject to each council’s approval.
