Together Center is a model for affordable housing across our region

Today, I’m excited to announce that Microsoft has invested $6.8 million in the Redmond-based Together Center project, which will help create 280 units of affordable housing atop a new collaboration space for 20 Eastside-serving nonprofit organizations. The investment is part of Microsoft’s $750 million commitment to advance affordable housing solutions in rapidly growing suburban cities in East King County. The Together Center project fits squarely into Microsoft’s Affordable Housing Initiative because it will build more affordable housing, expand access to essential community services and allow us to pilot an innovative financing tool that would catalyze more affordable housing production in the future.

Together Center was founded more than thirty years ago when several small nonprofits jumped at the opportunity to purchase an old strip mall in downtown Redmond to co-locate. It eventually grew into a full campus where 20 nonprofits now serve 28,000 people each year with essential services such as healthcare, counseling, job readiness, childcare and shelter. Microsoft has been a longtime supporter of the Together Center and many of its nonprofit residents.

With this partnership as a foundation, it wasn’t long until Microsoft and the Together Center began heeding the community’s call for more affordable housing. Shortly after Microsoft made its public commitment to affordable housing in January 2019, we learned about Together Center’s vision to create 200 units of affordable housing, 80 units of permanent supportive housing for families experiencing homelessness, and a fully integrated, modern campus for its nonprofit members. The project was already in progress via a great partnership with Inland Group, Horizon Housing Alliance, ARCH, the City of Redmond and the local community.

However, this partnership provided an opportunity for us to become involved. In addition, a common barrier to creating more affordable housing is the ability to quickly secure financing for the period between the construction and project completion.

That’s where we were able to help. We worked with ARCH, a coalition of Eastside cities whose purpose is to promote affordable housing development. Together, we created a new pilot program where Microsoft will provide capital into a recyclable loan pool that enables ARCH to access and allocate capital with speed and efficiency. The Together Center development is the first to utilize this pilot by securing $6.8 million in bridge financing.

Our hope is that this new pilot will become a model for the housing sector, paving the way more development and potentially inspiring other private funders and companies to invest in affordable housing projects.

We can’t solve our affordable housing crisis without innovative financial approaches like this. But our community must also adopt critical housing policy measures to truly make a difference. We applaud leaders from the cities of Bellevue and Kirkland who are enacting smart housing reforms such as reducing parking requirements, expanding affordability, and increasing density near transit. We continue to listen to, learn from and work with our public and private partners on the front lines of our region’s housing crisis. The Together Center project is a promising step to address this crisis, a step that represents what is possible when our region unites around innovative housing solutions. Together, we are working to turn the vision of affordable housing into reality across the Puget Sound region.