Almost a fourth of Renton’s hotel rooms no longer available for travelers, compared to just 4% countywide

Renton is building hundreds of affordable units as part of this Solera project in the Highlands

Renton Housing Authority is building Sunset Gardens,  76 units for homeless veterans, seniors, and other people in need.  (This picture and the one above both taken today)

Renton has worked hard for decades to reduce homelessness and has delivered results that can’t be beat by any other city.  Yet too many Seattle-based policy makers have falsely accused Renton of not doing a fair share. Lately, these policy makers have been trying to divert money from Renton Housing Authority, and they’re taking more of Renton’s hotels to house Seattle residents instead of using Seattle hotels. They’ve now taken almost 1/4 of Renton’s hotel rooms out of commission, hurting Renton’s commerce, reducing options for visitors, reducing options for Renton’s own unsheltered residents, and reducing lodging tax which Renton needs for marketing. On average other King County cities have given just 1/25 of their hotel rooms.

At this moment Renton Housing Authority is currently building 76 new beautiful, deeply-subsidized apartment units for homeless families, while the City of Renton is working on a seperate project with Solera development partners in building hundreds of new affordable apartments (for families making 60-80 percent median income) in Renton Highlands.  We’re building real apartments, with kitchens and often multiple bedrooms, capable of housing families long-term– not hotel rooms. Renton is only 4.8 % of King County’s population. If all of King County had matched Renton’s current construction numbers, we would be witnessing active construction of 1,500 new subsidized apartments, and 6,000 affordable units in King County.  Had this happened, by next year these hypothetical 7,500 subsidized and affordable apartment units, assuming average double-occupancy, would be  enough units to house 15,000 people.  This is more than the 2022 one-night count of 13,368 sheltered and unsheltered homeless for King County (though admittedly not as much as King County Homelessness Authority believes is the full number of individuals suffering homelessness).

But King County Regional Homelessness Authority has instead been focused on purchasing or leasing about 1,400 hotel rooms in Renton and other suburbs, with a single-minded goal of relocating people experiencing homelessness out of downtown Seattle into  suburban hotel rooms.

This effort has now absorbed nearly one-fourth of Renton’s major hotel rooms, while the average conversion of hotels across all of King County is only four percent.

Renton’s Clarion Inn is the latest of three Renton hotels to provide emergency housing for residents of Seattle

I would not have written about this, except that the King County Homelessness Authority has been continually  complaining that Renton has not been doing enough to help, while asking Renton to give them money we’ve been giving our Housing Authority. Read more about this unfair complaint here.  And I’ve even seen some of our own council members inadequately defend this unfair accusation.  At some point the hypocrisy simply becomes too much, and something has to be said.

Here are my rough estimates of the hotel conversions (the numbers are not easy to find):

There are 43, 490 hotel rooms in King County.    1256 rooms are being purchased as part of “Health through Housing”.   I’m estimating another 500 hotel rooms (approximately) are being leased by vouchers County-wide.  (1256+500 rooms) / (43,490 rooms) is 4 percent of King County Hotel rooms.

In Renton, our major hotels are:

Hyatt,  347 rooms

Hilton Garden Inn, 150 rooms

Hampton Inn, 110 rooms

Larkspur Landing, 127 rooms

Residence Inn,  146 rooms

Econolodge,  116 rooms

Best Western, 104 rooms

Sonesta Simply Suites, 137 rooms

Sonesta Select, 114 rooms

Extended Stay,    110 rooms

Renton Red Lion and Convention Center, 250 rooms

Clarion Inn,    110 rooms (split: travelers/emergency housing)

The hotels shown in bold have been put in total or partial service as emergency housing; the Extended Stay is a full-time shelter, the Red Lion is in a state of ruin from serving as a Covid emergency shelter, and the Clarion Inn has a large number of its rooms being used by Seattle residents experiencing homelessness, via vouchers.   While I don’t have numbers for how many vouchers are in use at the Clarion Inn, for purposes of this analysis I’m estimating 50% of rooms are being purchased with vouchers.

Renton had 1811 rooms at the start of 2020, and 405 no longer available to travelers.  405/1811 = 22.3% of Renton hotel rooms no longer generating commerce and hosting our visitors in our city.

Downtown Seattle has 14,861 hotel rooms of their own.  If they gave up the same percentage as Renton,  in the Seattle neighborhood where they people experiencing homelessness currently reside, there would be 3,314 new rooms coming on line.

But who among us actually thinks hotel rooms are the cheapest housing option?  No one who understand economics decides to go stay at Clarion Inn long-term, at $150-200 per night, to save money on an apartment.

Renton is building more low income apartments per capita than other King County cities, and sacrificing its hotels at 6 times the King County rate in order to help house Seattle’s homeless population.  This is on top of our having preserved thousands of multiplexes and modest houses from WW2 and the postwar era, which provide affordable “missing middle” family housing for thousands.

With Renton continuing to chart the course for real permanent fixes to our region’s housing problems, it’s time for regional officials– including some of our own council members, to quit talking like we’re not doing our part.  If you hear of someone doing this, please send them this blog post.  (Renton’s loving and compassionate residents are also assisting those with inadequate housing in many ways in addition to new housing construction, and I’ll cover that in a seperate blog entry.)

Renton’s current affordable housing construction is not just a one-time event.  It’s a pattern. Last year Renton Housing Authority completed these Sunset Oaks Apartments, lovely homes for low income families in Renton Highlands

A few years ago Renton Housing Authority completed Sunset Court Apartments, subsidized townhomes and apartments for families in need