Spokane, Washington has a federal voucher problem that no landlord law can fully fix: even residents with housing assistance in hand often cannot find a place to live. The Spokane Housing Authority is now trying a different approach, attaching those federal dollars directly to brand-new buildings so the units exist before tenants even need them.
The agency is soliciting developers to build affordable housing across Spokane County using Project-Based Vouchers, a tool that converts part of the authority's existing Housing Choice Voucher pool from portable tenant subsidies into guaranteed long-term rent payments tied to specific newly constructed units. The distinction matters enormously in a county where the vacancy rate fell below 2% at the peak of the region's housing crisis and where the authority's own waiting list has stretched for years.
The Spokane metro's affordability collapse accelerated sharply during the pandemic, when in-migration from Seattle and Portland, remote work flexibility, and constrained supply combined to push median rents up roughly 30 to 40 percent between 2020 and 2023. Median home prices roughly doubled between 2018 and 2023. The crisis hit hardest for households earning at or below 30 percent of the area median income, the population these vouchers are designed to serve. Spokane's 2023 point-in-time count showed surging homelessness, and the city declared a housing and homelessness emergency. In a city where winter temperatures regularly drop below freezing, that is not an abstract policy failure.
Washington State banned source-of-income discrimination in 2018, meaning landlords cannot legally turn away voucher holders, but the law addresses only one side of the problem. The deeper bottleneck is that affordable units simply do not exist in sufficient numbers. By locking voucher revenue into new construction deals, the housing authority gives developers the financial certainty needed to attract additional financing, including Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and actually build.
The project-based approach does not create new federal funding. It redirects dollars already allocated to Spokane under HUD rules that allow housing authorities to project-base up to 20 percent of their voucher supply, with additional units possible for populations such as the elderly, disabled, or homeless. The bet is that building guaranteed-affordable units now produces more housing stability than continuing to chase a private market that has consistently outpaced what vouchers can cover.
Developers interested in submitting proposals have details at the housing authority's solicitations page. How many units ultimately get built, and where in the county they land, will depend on the projects that come forward.
