Mayor Harrell Raids Affordable Housing Fund To Give Cops More Money In 2026 Budget

In a repeat of last year’s budget strategy, Mayor Bruce Harrell once again proposed raiding almost $200 million from a City fund primarily designated for affordable housing to balance the budget deficit. And he can save his excuses — any claims of hard choices will fall completely flat considering that while he sacrificed valuable units amid a housing crisis, he didn’t order any belt-tightening for his boys in blue. In fact, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) got a $35 million bump, the largest increase that any City department saw in Harrell’s budget proposal. 

Once again, cops come before all else for Harrell, even housing, the most fundamental part of the health and safety of our City. 

On Tuesday, Harrell unveiled his $9 billion budget proposal. Harrell certainly had his work cut out for him. This spring, City officials anticipated a budget deficit of $240 million, a scary figure that lowered to about $150 million in a more recent forecast in August. Harrell filled that budget hole with some small cuts across departments, the revenue anticipated from Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s B&O tax restructure that will face a vote in November, and by once again bastardizing the City’s JumpStart Payroll Tax. 

In 2020, the City Council passed JumpStart, which imposes a modest tax on the city’s largest businesses on their highest paid employees. The council set a specific spending plan to ensure the money went to issues the City had ignored year after year — 62% for affordable housing, 15% for economic development and revitalization, 9% for equitable development, 9% for Green New Deal initiatives, and 5% to administer the tax. 

The spending plan didn’t work out that way. Executives routinely stole JumpStart to bolster the general fund to backfill deficits or add new programming without collecting new revenue. Honestly, most of the previous progressive council was cool with that — COVID-19 did an absolute number on the City’s budget and the tax saved them a lot of painful cuts. But they did swear 2025 would finally be the year they fully observe the spending plan. 

Come last year’s negotiations over the 2025 budget, Harrell had a different idea. He proposed siphoning a whopping $360 million from JumpStart to balance the general fund and add $100 in new spending, including some more money for cops. He also proposed legislation to turn JumpStart into a permanent slushfund, a request the council basically affirmed when they passed Council Member Dan Strauss’s policy to keep the spending guidelines, but only as a suggestion, not a legal obligation. 

This year, Harrell kept tradition, diverting $189 million dollars (about half of JumpStart’s revenue) to the general fund in his budget proposal. He could have saved some of that for affordable housing if he decided not to give even more money to SPD — the City’s largest department, accounting for about quarter of every dollar of the city’s general fund. While every dollar of the $35 million added to the police department could have theoretically reduced this diversion, the Mayor cites specifically $757,000 of JumpStart dollars funneling into SPD. 

Harrell funded the Office of Housing at a little over $344 million, an about a $170,000 increase from last year, but about $3.7 million less than the council endorsed for 2026 in their previous negotiations. This doesn’t even keep with inflation from last year to present. That means, while the slight bump in funding allows Harrell to claim “historic” housing investment, the dollar amount will pay for less housing than the last budget could pay for.

At the end of the day, Harrell’s budget tells us exactly what matters most to him. When push comes to shove, he won’t hesitate to shortchange affordable housing, even in the middle of a homelessness crisis, if it means keeping the police department fat and happy. His willingness to raid once-dedicated funds while inflating SPD’s budget makes his priorities painfully clear — Harrell would rather let Seattleites sleep on the streets than think critically about if the City needs more cops as the crime rate falls.