9th Annual Affordable Housing Week Starts Today

The Affordable Housing Consortium (HDC), whose membership encompasses all of the major nonprofit housing developers in King County, as well as local housing authorities, financial institutions, service providers, consultants, architects, building contractors, attorneys, accountants, and government agencies," is celebrating the 9th Annual Affordable Housing Week, May 13-17.

Founded in 1988 as the Seattle Housing Development Consortium, the HDC serves as an advocate, broker, and convener for affordable housing in King County. Today, the HDC has over 200 member organizations.

With focus on the decadal updates to comprehensive plans across the region this year, the theme for this year's Affordable Housing Week is Planning for an Affordable Future". The HDC writes on their event page:

King County's exacerbated need for affordable housing is a regional problem and impacts all municipalities. This Affordable Housing Week, we hope tocatalyze a transformative shift in land use planning for affordable housingacross our region. This is an opportunity to urge cities across King County to adopt new and effective strategies that address our urgent affordable housing needs.

Events associated with Affordable Housing Week include building tours, educational seminars, and construction groundbreaking.

The Week kicks off at Seattle City Hall at 9am today, with speakers including King County Councilmember Claudia Balducciand representatives from the Washington State Department of Commerce, Puget Sound Regional Council, King County Affordable Housing Planning Team, Seattle Office of Housing, Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development, and the Bellevue Planning Department. The keynote speech will be delivered by Dr. Jenny Scheutz, Fellow at the Brookings Institute, and author of Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems.