Cascade Party
A new path in Washington State politics.
A new path in Washington State politics.
February 2026 Seattle Social Housing meetings report.
By Clinton Sprotti (March 4, 2026)
Seattle Social Housing's new leadership held two meetings in February. The biggest news was the $115M income from the city's compensation tax. The board plans on purchasing existing properties instead of constructing buildings. Plans were developing for managing board members elected from the tenant consituency. The new CEO tells the board, "I am the boss".
Recall January’s Seattle Social Housing board meeting report describing a dramatic and momentous event. The turbulent meeting produced new board appointments, dismissals and bitter resignations, and after it all, the identity politics faction of the SSHD board are now firmly in control.
Things apparently kept moving fast with a special board meeting was called for February 9th.
While Tom Barnard adjourned the January meeting, he is listed in the special meeting minutes as an attending board member. This means Barnard must have resigned as Chair in the period between meetings.
Vice-Chair Kaileah Baldwin presided over the special meeting. Published minutes recorded public discussions , which included a review of the draft Interim CEO Onboarding Plan.
Tiffani McCoy was formally introduced as Interim Chief Executive Officer. Ms. McCoy shared brief remarks regarding her background, initial priorities and commitment to advancing SSHD’s mission.
Baldwin moved, and Josh Nadel seconded to set the annual CEO salary at $230,000, effective January 16, 2026, which passed without opposition.
Topics covered real estate strategies, finance and operations, staffing needs and board governance, with the board engaging in clarifying questions about production strategies and external communications.
Executive committee elections then filled vacancies: ChrisTiana ObeySumner self-nominated and was elected Board Chair without opposition. Josh Nadel self-nominated as Treasurer. Leah Salerno self-nominated as Secretary. Carl Nelson and Ryan Driscoll both self-nominated as Board Committee & Member Liaison. Driscoll won the race, while the others were elected unopposed.
No public testimony was offered, and reminders were shared about upcoming deadlines and events. The session adjourned at 6:58 pm with no further business, marking a focused effort to stabilize and advance SSHD's initiatives.
February 19th Meeting
The regular meeting started with a roll call, revealing former board secretary Katie LaBret in attendance. If you recall from our last meeting report, LaBret had resigned in protest after CEO Jiménez was deposed.
Vice Chair Baldwin then moved to reaffirm major items from the special meeting, namely the officer elections and the CEO compensation.
Baldwin, took over the meeting and walked the group through the items that needed affirming.
Chair Obey-Sumner then resumed presiding. There was no public testimony.
New treasurer Josh Nadel then announced the need for reaffirming minutes and actions starting in November. Nadel walked through each individual monthly finance review for November 2025, December 2025, and January 2026. Eventually, the minutes were amended for these meetings.
Once this was accomplished, the real news was affirmed, SSHD was receiving $115M from the Seattle $1M+ compensation tax. Everyone on the board became giddy when hearing the sum. Baldwin was so stoked, she asked Nadel to repeat himself. He did and the meeting brimmed with excitement. What a difference from the last, bitter meeting. Josh stated he was, “incredibly grateful to the voters of Seattle.”
It was then announced how there should be a good investment policy by depositing the funds into a cash suite. Here we find the natural law of capitalism regarding money going where it’s treated best.
Seattle voters also knew how to best treat their money — as they left it in their own pockets! They voted to take money from big business to fund the SSHD project. The big money is now in the hands of the board, who are enabled to act on their grand plans.
The key term Nadel repeated was how the $115M came from “another government”, meaning City of Seattle . This distinction will be important later in this article.
Ginger Segal then went over the income categories for future tenants. Her presentation relied on a board survey that only 6 members managed to return. These categories are based on ratios in the SSHD charter. It’s an interesting view on median income scales and how they apply to the project controlling rental fees.
The board was concerned over displacement of any residents due to remodeling buildings. There was talk about racially diverse neighborhoods. Baldwin wanted to see more family sized units, as the current market favors small, single tenant spaces. She suggested adapting the application process to create preferences for families to live closer. For example, Baldwin said a grandmother should be placed near her children and grandkids.
There is a lot to unpack from this issue and survey, however for the sake of brevity, I will move on.
Independent Social Democracy
Segel was quoted in a February 22, article in The Urbanist.
“The market right now for recently constructed apartment buildings is quite good, so we can pick up some buildings at a good price point, and we think the market is going to cycle away from that in the next two or three years,” Segel said. “So we do hope to take advantage of that. You can buy pretty high quality apartment units for about $350,000 to $400,000 per unit right now, whereas to build them is like $650,000 a unit. So we want to take advantage of this kind of dip in the market…”
At the current rate, SSHD should bag over $1B within the next 10 years. At this meeting, the board were keen to how the new tenants, which their charter refers to as “constituents”, will affect the composition of the board.
Segel admitted how the current property acquisition strategy relies on purchasing existing buildings. In the short term, they're going to buy properites and not construct new housing. Instead of creating more housing supply, this strategy prioritizes building the self-contained social democracy — which is what SSHD is really about.
Recall Nadel mentioning “other governments” who were providing funding? SSHD is in effect “[an]other government” within the City of Seattle.
The project will have its own exclusive elections with only tenants voting for the majority of the 13 board seats. The agenda item considering this emerging issue, and how it affects control over the Board of Directors, is the Onboarding Plan.
The agenda proposed forming a committee to,
"[C]reate annual board development plans, standardize and support board members' onboarding and help in the creation of programming for SSHD residents to prepare them for stepping into board positions. It also names them as part of the board that will assist in the new board member elections.”
There was a comment about “who owns the onboarding?”
The solution is to orient new residents into what Baldwin referred to as the, “social housing family”. It was stressed how renters need to understand the system they’re joining.
It was announced Nikita Oliver will lead the onboarding process. Baldwin reminded everyone how the onboarding must express values like a restorative justice policy.
Here is my take: A zampolit will identify tenants who fit the identity politics currently dominating SSHD. These tenants will be groomed as candidates and then aided in runing for seats in board elections. I'm sure the endorsement of the Board of Directors will carry weight — after all, the SSHD Board is the landlord!😬
The Last Word
The board had a free ranging conversation about staff and the communications committee, until the Interim CEO interjected to lay down the law. She said,
“The Pyramid Communications [PR] contract when I entered as the interim CEO was already slated to expire at the end of February. I think that's because we're bringing our communications in-house and as a public agency, I think it's important for us to create public sector jobs and we don't need consultants anymore. We should celebrate that in a way because we are evolving as an organization.
And then second, I'm just going to flag something. I'm always going to do this team. So just like it's nothing personal, but I am the boss of Lily and staff. I'm the director of the agency from an employee perspective. And I'm always going to be nervous about imbuing any sort of idea that like the board is boss or advisor to staff.
I have personally worked in a situation like that where board members were telling me things to do. I had my boss telling me things to do and it was very unclear and uncomfortable as an employee to know who I was taking direction from. So I just want to like honor that and be aware of that and flag that. And if there is still relevance of this committee outside of the internal communications, which I totally understand and I'm looking at staff resources to help in that even in a different way. I just want to flag that like, the idea of board input and whatnot. We may have evolved past that, and this is what I flagged in the last meeting. There are going to be growing pains. You've all done so much to create this agency over the past couple years, but we have staff now, and I think that adding new committees, keeping old committees, I think sometimes it's okay if we get rid of old committees just based on like what are the goals of the board for the next year and I think that Ryan and others have flagged some of those is communications committee and having Lily have an outlet and me have an outlet for brainstorming the best use of all of your like really limited and stretched time so that's that's just what I'm going to flag for you all.”
Having the CEO direct staff instead of the board, is actually standard good organizational governance. Nevertheless, McCoy let everyone on the board know she’s the boss.
The meeting adjourned.
