PLUSH Committee learn about Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, previews COB’s legislative action
At the September 24 meeting for the Bellevue Chamber’s PLUSH Committee, members learned a bit about Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, and previewed the City of Bellevue’s upcoming legislative actions.
C.W. Early, Senior Managing Director at JLL, was on the advisory team working alongside Amazon to establish their Housing Equity Fund, and thus broke down the program for the Chamber alongside colleagues Lily Kim and Senthil Sankaran.
According to Kim, the fund has already committed over $2.2 billion — creating or preserving over 21,000 units across the region — and has another $1.4 billion promised between their primary service regions, the Puget Sound, Nashville, and Washington D.C.
“Currently, I'd say about roughly half of our portfolio is preservation versus new construction,” said Sankaran. “We really do want to try and maintain some level of balance, but the goal is really to utilize this fast acting, quick, low cost capital in order to preserve and create affordability across these regions, which are very high.”
With a focus on preserving affordable housing in high-cost areas, the fund has an emphasis on units serving 30%-80% AMI (Area Median Income) with long-term affordability agreements (99-year terms). It also includes a Housing Equity Accelerator, which has enrolled around 70 developers thus far.
Specifically, here in Bellevue, the fund has increased affordable housing supply by over 31%.
Members of PLUSH were then given the opportunity to ask a few questions — Will they support office-to-residential conversions? What happens if tenants’ income increases? How does the fund approach high development costs? — and were encouraged to dissect the resources available online. Those wanting to access the Amazon Housing Equity Fund portal can do so here.
The Committee then switched things over to Kristina Gallant, Planning Manager for the City of Bellevue, to update the crew on the City’s upcoming legislative happenings and the statewide changes impacting us municipally, notably House Bills 1042 and 1093.
When discussing the HB1042 proposed code changes, Gallant said, “ … We're looking at whether there are some additional provisions of the land use code that might need some adjustment to help facilitate these projects, and Council directed us to look at some specific incentives to make it more attractive, because we know that it’s going to be a really limited set of buildings that this could work for.”
She also took the opportunity to rally folks for a suite of public input forums, both at the City and state level, before giving updates regarding the City’s second phase of FAR (Floor Area Ratio) discussions and the Wilburton Vision Implementation process.
Check out the current status of FAR and Wilburton LUCA policies here and here, respectively.
She also highlighted some exciting things coming COB’s way in 2025, including an update to our Critical Areas Ordinance, land use code amendments for Bellevue College, the soft-launch of using pre-approved ADU plans, and the implementation of co-living housing (HB 1998) and SEPA exemptions (SB 5412).
“... [It will] be probably early 2026, but a look back on the downtown livability code amendments is going to be happening, so [we will] have an opportunity to fix some of the Downtown issues as well.”