Laurel Forest brings 56 units of affordable housing to downtown Bellingham; 58% of construction costs were covered by tax credit program; Cantwell-championed housing program awaits a vote in the Senate after House passed it on overwhelmingly bipartisan vote
BELLINGHAM, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined local leaders in celebrating the opening of the Laurel Forest Apartments, a 56-unit affordable housing project in downtown Bellingham made possible by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program.
In her remarks, Sen. Cantwell called on her Senate colleagues to pass the bipartisan tax package that would significantly boost the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. The Opportunity Council, the nonprofit which built Laurel Forest, used the LIHTC program to offset 58% of the cost of construction. Sen. Cantwell’s legislation would extend and enhance LIHTC, and those improvements would fund an additional 1,700 units of affordable housing in Washington state in 2024 alone.
Sen. Cantwell emphasized that the vast majority of affordable housing that gets built in the United States uses LIHTC to help offset the cost of construction.
“That means that if we don’t increase that tax credit federally, we’re not adding capacity. So that is why we’re in a big fight right now in the United States Senate on legislation that I’ve sponsored to increase that tax credit and provide 200,000 more units nationwide, 7,000 more units in the State of Washington over the next two years,” Sen. Cantwell continued. “We need to make sure that everybody who is part of this solution here understands that getting this done at a federal level — building [many] more projects like Laurel Forest — has to be our nation’s priority.”
Sen. Cantwell was joined by the Opportunity Council’s Executive Director Greg Winter and Early Learning & Family Services Director David Webster, Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund, Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu, Puget Sound Energy Senior VP and Chief Customer & Transformation Officer Aaron August, and future Laurel Forest resident Colin Neale.
The brand-new Laurel Forest Project will provide 56 one-bedroom apartments for low-income seniors, and features an attached child care center and access to Bellingham’s public transportation system. More information on the project is available HERE.
Sen. Cantwell has long advocated for the need to increase the availability of affordable housing and is the leading LIHTC advocate in the Senate – she worked hard behind the scenes to make sure improvements to the program were included in the tax agreement. More information about Sen. Cantwell’s work to include an expansion to the LIHTC program in the bipartisan tax package is available HERE.
Video of today’s press conference is available HERE; audio is HERE; photos are HERE; a transcript is HERE.
About LIHTC
Since 1986, the Housing Credit has paid for 90% of the federally-funded affordable housing construction across the country, and has financed over 3.8 million affordable homes, including more than 100,000 in Washington state.
The package lowers the requirement for bond funding from 50% of a project to 30% of a project for developers to receive the tax credit, marking the first reduction in the bond test in 35 years. According to the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, this will allow the state to issue millions more worth of bonds and build nearly twice as many units as expected — an additional 1,500 units of housing financed in 2024.
The package also restores a 12.5% tax incentive increase that originally expired in 2021. According to the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, this improvement will allow Washington state to fund 222 more affordable apartment units in 2024, and 600-650 units over three years. The increase will help the state allocate more funding for housing for the lowest income and most vulnerable people in Washington state, especially the homeless.
In 2021 and in 2023, Sen. Cantwell introduced the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, along with Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA, 01). Sen. Cantwell led efforts to build a bipartisan, bicameral coalition in support of that legislation, which is now joined by 254 Members – 47% of the entire Congress – evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Provisions of that Act were adopted in the deal announced in January and which passed the House on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.
Since its creation, the Housing Credit has helped build or restore over 100,000 affordable homes in the State of Washington. The economic activity that the credit generated has supported nearly 170,000 jobs and generated more than $19 billion in wages.