Habitat for Humanity says Liberty Commons shows both opportunity and financing gaps for affordable homeownership

Ryan Donahue, vice president of advocacy at Habitat for Humanity Seattle‑King‑Kittitas, described Habitat's permanent‑affordability homeownership model and presented two projects to illustrate financing challenges. He said Liberty Commons (Columbia City) is a 58‑unit, permanently affordable homeownership project with roughly $30 million in total development cost; the state provided a direct appropriation of $6,000,000 to support the project. "You all allocated $6,000,000 of that $30,000,000 total development cost," he told the committee, noting that the project required a city ordinance change and multi‑party partnerships to resolve design‑review hurdles.

Donahue contrasted Liberty Commons with a smaller 16‑unit project in Cle Elum, where local funding scarcity requires a much larger state subsidy per unit. He said construction financing and sales‑tax costs also changed the math (noting about $2.1 million in sales‑tax impacts on Liberty Commons and roughly $850,000 in construction‑loan interest on that project). He urged the legislature to provide "substantial and predictable capital," more local funding flexibility, a revolving construction loan fund to cut interest costs, and reconsideration of sales‑and‑use taxes as part of project costs.

Why it matters: Donahue's testimony framed a recurring committee theme: urban jurisdictions can layer local revenue tools onto state dollars to get bigger projects built, but rural and small‑city projects often depend more heavily on state capital appropriations to be viable.