SNOHOMISH — Fixed-income seniors living in below-market-rent apartments owned by the Snohomish Affordable Housing Group (SAHG) are feeling squeezed.
For years, SAHG’s longstanding monthly rent price was $395 for its senior one-bedroom units. Since 2021, though, it’s slowly risen from $395 to now $695 a month for the same unit. All new applicants enter at $885 a month for a one-bedroom.
For at least one senior SAHG renter the Tribune spoke with, $695 a month is more than 60% of their Social Security check — their only income source.
What’s happening here?
The nonprofit needed to increase rent to be able to build more housing and afford to maintain the buildings it has, SAHG’s president said.
Otherwise, it will be unable to fulfill its mission to bring more affordable housing residences to Snohomish, president Bill Raser said.
In 2002, SAHG’s rent was 65% of market price, he said. SAHG held the rent prices down for 20 years.
Trouble is, because it held rents low, “we got further behind on cash flow to be able to build,” Raser said.
“I’m sure it hurts some of our tenants and I’m sorry about that,” Raser said. “We’re trying to do the best for the community” and this is “what we have to do.”
Its prices are still below 50% market rate, he said.
Many of its longstanding senior renters had moved in at $395 a month.
Senior tenants spoke with the Tribune on the condition of anonymity because they are concerned that if they identified themselves they’d face retaliation for criticizing their landlord. Their tenant contracts are on 12-month term leases.
“We were approved at the rate we were at, and there was a reason,” one renter said.
They worked jobs throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. “All of us planned for a different retirement, but something happened” along the way, one renter said.
The same renters at their income levels wouldn’t have necessarily qualified for these units today, Raser said. It requires the rent to cost no more than 33% of one’s income.
A tenant in SAHG’s senior permanent housing next to the Snohomish Senior Center said they believed “the whole idea of that place was to have seniors live with dignity without having to cut things.”
They have. On top of other inflation pressures such as higher gasoline prices and food costs, they have had to cut elsewhere to compensate for rent going up.
One said they’ll probably have to cut cable TV — but only after baseball season.
Another mentioned rationing medicine. Prescription eye drops for glaucoma, for example, are an out-of-pocket expense, that person said. (Eye drops fall under Medicare Part D, an add-on to standard Medicare which not everyone buys.)
They cannot get food stamps because they’re not broke. Their savings accounts are too large to let them be eligible, one explained.
SAHG covers the water, sewer and garbage costs for all 103 units. It costs the housing nonprofit $140,000 a year, Raser said.
People living in the apartments next to the Snohomish Senior Center said moving away is unappealing. If they have no car, they’d lose the social lifeline the senior center gives. No bus runs up Maple Avenue.
A mission to build
About half of SAHG’s renters are seniors with permanent housing. The other half are in a short-term housing program where you get two years of housing with the expectation to move on to market-rate housing afterward.
SAHG is a homegrown effort that bootstraps its mission with its own funding resources. It does not take government grants.
Started in 1993, SAHG has 103 units across four buildings. Its 21-unit senior housing building it built next to the Snohomish Senior Center about 15 years ago is the last building it opened.
On paper, SAHG corrected the course through the rent increases in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
It does not plan to increase rents again at this time, Raser said.
Seniors the Tribune spoke with felt the rent increases were being done on their backs just so the nonprofit could build more housing and repair the units damaged by the short-term renters.
One called it “elder abuse” in an interview.
Raser said the mission to build more units meant “we had no choice.”
The organization has difficulty finding lenders for construction loans because it needs to show enough net income, and rent’s the primary income source to satisfy the loans. Lenders fundamentally look at the low rent prices as a negative.
Many affordable housing organizations use Section 8 vouchers, where the government pays 70% of the rent for a person, making it affordable by definition. Rent prices are typically above $1,000.
SAHG is one of the few affordable housing organizations in the Puget Sound that does not take Section 8.
The organization now has enough capital to get loans to build more housing, Raser said.
It is constructing an eight-unit affordable housing building off of Bonneville Avenue which could open by end of 2025.
It’s building a bigger, multi-story affordable housing site along Avenue D on a parcel it bought for $350,000.
Constructing the Avenue D site might cost $7 to $8 million, Raser estimated.
Federal nonprofit filings with the IRS the Tribune reviewed show the organization isn’t making a profit but operates close to neutral financially each year. It took financial hits in recent years: For example, its insurance carrier dropped the organization despite making no claims, and the new one is twice the cost — a $20,000 increase, Raser said. It paid for more than $450,000 in deferred maintenance because of turnover using its savings in the past one-and-a-half-years, he said.
One tenant suggested there be a sliding scale fee that accommodates lower-income tenants faced with rent increases. Raser said SAHG couldn’t.
“We can’t be setting our rent prices different for each person, we’ve got to be fair,” Raser said.
It does give a $100 subsidy off rent if the cost of housing exceeds 35% of income, a SAHG letter to tenants said.
The tenants weren’t aware of anyone leaving the apartments to live elsewhere specifically because of the rent increase. There’s not many other options around.
But if what you get from Social Security is maybe $1,200 a month, and the monthly rent is now almost $700, what do you do?
Who can afford what?
By the mean average, $1,992 a month is what a retired worker gets for a monthly Social Security check, a Tribune analysis of Social Security figures for in-county recipients shows. (It pencils to $23,904 a year.) A spouse’s mean average is $1,050 a month for their Social Security check — $12,609.30 a year.
Your monthly check is determined partially by how much you paid in through payroll taxes from your income, and partially by how early or late you start taking your retirement benefit.
SAHG’s rule for seniors is their housing-to-income ratio must be less than 1/3rd.
At $885 a month for the rate to apply, if they had nothing but Social Security, they’d be making too little to get into SAHG’s affordable housing. They would need to be getting $2,700 a month ($32,400 a year) for their check.
The same example senior living on $1,992 a month of Social Security can’t afford today’s average rent price in Snohomish if that check is their only income, according to data provided by Chris Collier, the program manager for the Alliance for Housing Affordability, a countywide workgroup. The advertised average rent in Snohomish was $1,926 a month as of June for a one-bedroom apartment. (50% of that is just under $1,000, at $963 a month.)
One of Snohomish’s affordable housing sites with units geared for seniors is The Woodlake Manor Apartments, developed by Mercy Housing Northwest. Rent is based on 50% of the resident’s income, Mercy says. It often has a waitlist.
Affordable housing groups, such as SAHG, rent to people earning less than 50% of the area median income. Because of Seattle’s hyper-inflated wages, 50% today is $73,500 a year, by how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calculates its figures.
Other affordable housing typically rents at higher prices than that.
Because the median income is seen as $73,500 a year, a single person making under $52,700 a year can get a Section 8 voucher.
The housing vouchers have the government’s HUD program pay up to 70% of the rent. HUD sets $2,269 as the average rental price for a one-bedroom. Thirty percent of that is $680 a month.
Seniors can be fast-tracked in the voucher program, but there’s still a multi-year waitlist within the affordable housing system to use the voucher, Collier said. “Waitlists for seniors are always full,” he said.
The rent prices at affordable housing sites usually exceed $1,000, but the out-of-pocket cost for the renter is low with Section 8.
“Regardless of what population you’re trying to serve, it’s hard. With a population with individuals with a fixed income, it gets harder still,” Collier said.
Turnover in affordable housing is slow.
Heck, construction of affordable housing is slow. The hyper-inflated Seattle area market has curtailed the ability for affordable housing organizations to easily find land and build on it, Collier said.
For the people hanging on, who worked all their lives and now struggle while living in affordable housing, they’re wondering about their next move.
“What will happen to us?” one asked.
For now, they were not clearly sure.
