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Master Builders Association Inducts Todd Levitt as President

BELLEVUE, Wash—January 11, 2021—The Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties (MBAKS) inducted Todd Levitt as its 2021 president of the board of directors during a virtual passing of the gavel ceremony in December 2020.

Levitt brings an extensive background in homebuilding to his role as MBAKS president. He has worked for more than 19 years across four western states on the land side of homebuilding—13 years as vice president of land at Pulte Homes and six years at Murray Franklyn as director of entitlements and government affairs. Levitt received his bachelor's in marine engineering from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and his master's in finance from California State University, Los Angeles.

Levitt set the 2021 MBAKS agenda as one of service: to the communities that homebuilders work in, to the jurisdictions that make housing policy possible, and to the association’s members and staff.

“Service is something I am very passionate about that is engrained within me,” says Levitt. “If we can serve our jurisdictions in a way that helps them be more successful with their councils, staff, and residents, this should only help us in accomplishing our goals in delivering more housing that is desperately needed in our very fast-growing region.”

Over the last four years, Levitt has performed as the service chair for his son’s Boy Scout troop, where he has organized community events like canned food drives, trail clean-ups, and Santa Scouts, a program that generates food, clothing, and games for underserved children. He also has dedicated time and resources to Habitat for Humanity and helped Doxa Housing build homes in Mexico, as well as participating in MBAKS’ Rampathon, where accessibility ramps are built for those in critical need.

The newly inducted 2021 board of directors is rounded out with First Vice President Cameron McKinnon (Gamut360 Holdings), Second Vice President Traci Tenhulzen (Tenhulzen Residential), Secretary Luellen Smith (Rhino Wine Cellars & Cooling Systems), and Immediate Past President Brian Holtzclaw (Village Life).

About MBAKS

Founded in 1909 and headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties (MBAKS) is the nation’s oldest and largest local homebuilders association. Like our founders, our members continue to take a leading role in all facets of homebuilding and support the planning for a growing, thriving, and inclusive region.

Halting development to slow growth? It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ‘em.  

If a building clad in a color you didn’t think fit your city’s personality suddenly popped up overnight, would you take action? 

That’s what the City of Issaquah did in 2016 when a multi-hued apartment complex started gaining attention for all the wrong reasons. The building in question, the Atlas Apartments, featured colors (including a brazen blue) that many residents deemed unacceptable to their city’s persona. The outcry resulted in an emergency ordinance at the Sept. 6, 2017 council meeting that paused development in the area, the reasoning being that new construction was not meeting the standards of the 2012 Central Issaquah Plan. 

On the moratorium, which was extended an additional six months after the original verdict last September, Issaquah Economic Development and Development Services Director Keith Niven stated that the decision was made not to deter future growth but to ensure the right kind of growth for the city. 

Critics claimed the Atlas complex served as an example of what the city didn’t want or need, citing its lack of mixed-use ground floor space and unsightly “Orlando architecture.” City leaders instead wanted to see denser projects fit for growth and which add vibrancy to the central Issaquah area. Twenty-one months after the original moratorium, city staff had revamped code to solidify areas such as parking requirements for new development and introduced a design and architectural manual to streamline future project aesthetics—including acceptable colors. 

Development changes also included a plan to help diversify the city’s available housing, including reducing hurdles for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and experimenting with a tax exemption for multifamily housing. 

The moratorium officially ended May 21, and so its effects are yet to be determined. But the underlying question is this: Are moratoriums like the one instituted in Issaquah ultimately beneficial or an unnecessary hindrance to providing much-needed housing? MBAKS Senior Policy Analyst Allison Butcher states the latter, calling halts to facilitate growth a “drastic measure” that won’t do anything but put our region even more behind the effort to give residents the shelter they demand. 

“We are obviously continuing to grow at a fast pace and instituting a building moratorium isn’t going to stop that,” says Butcher. “The growth is coming whether there’s a moratorium in place or not.” 

That sentiment hasn’t stopped other cities from following suit, however, as cities such as Federal Way, Duvall, North Bend, and Newcastle have all recently adopted moratoriums for a variety of reasons, from reworking zoning standards to policy updates and more. 

But the question remains, are these sudden stoppages ultimately preventing the very thing we need in this unprecedented time of growth and home prices? 

Butcher further explains the potential backfire our cities could see while instituting construction stoppages, saying, “While a moratorium is legal, it does not mean it is good policy. At a time when demand for housing is far outpacing housing supply, which drives up both home prices and rents and makes housing less attainable, building moratoria certainly are not good for housing. They also are not good for our economy or the families and workers looking for a home closer to job centers. Furthermore, they potentially could run counter to our region’s transportation investments that contemplate the need for more transit-oriented development in certain areas.” 

Butcher goes on to address housing affordability and how it relates to moratoriums, stating that “perhaps the biggest problem with building moratoria is that they are counterproductive to solving our housing affordability crisis. Simply put, moratoria are a bad deal for anyone looking for housing—they only make it harder for current and future residents to find a home they can afford.”

Butcher also says that stoppages also lose significant revenue from new construction, as participating cities become devoid of local income, taxes, and other benefits to new housing. Her solution? “Instead of enacting policies designed to slow or halt housing, local governments should work within their communities to expand housing supply and choices for families. Housing goes hand in hand with a strong economy and vibrant community.” 

Those looking for affordable housing options might not care about a wild blue tint outside their window. Cities must look out for their residents but must also be willing to let growth flourish because, as Butcher points out, the people are coming, and it shouldn’t be our self-imposed lack of available housing that leaves them feeling blue. 

By MBAKS Content Strategist James Slone

The Black Homeownership Initiative is working to close the homeownership gap.

In 2021, the Coalition for More Housing Choices joined a network of associations and organizations to launch the Black Homeownership Initiative with the goal of closing the gap between Black and white homeownership rates in Washington state.

The Coalition—representing a spectrum of nonprofit, business, civic, and labor organizations, including MBAKS— came together to develop a plan to build enough homes to accommodate regional growth in a way that “benefits current residents” and offers affordable housing choices.

The Black Homeownership Initiative was a natural outgrowth of the Coalition’s approach to housing with its strong focus on equity, seeking to align “infrastructure development, housing production and preservation, and underwriting and lending” to double the Black homeownership rate in the state.

They have their work cut out for them.

Mind the Gap

A history of exclusionary housing policies has meant that people of color and other minorities have been denied the financial equity, stability, and peace of mind that comes with homeownership—the basic building block of the American dream. The Black community has been especially impacted.

According to the Urban Institute, Black homeownership in the U.S. has not increased since the 1960s. Indeed, it’s actually declined 5% since 2011 versus just 1% of white households. These days, affordable housing is scarce for everyone, but for Black households, it’s even more elusive.

The situation is especially dire here in our own backyard. The Seattle Times recently reported that just 34% of Black people statewide own homes (compared to 68% of whites). In Seattle, it’s an abysmal 26%.

It is hardly surprising to learn that the median net worth of Black households in Seattle is just $23,000, compared to $456,000 for white households. Economic inequality means Black households are likelier than whites to spend more than half their income on rent and debt (e.g., student loans).

And even when they can save, their chances of being denied a home loan are much greater. An analysis by Zillow found that Black applicants were denied mortgages at a rate 84% higher than white applicants in 2020.

How did it come to this?

Racism’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Black and other non-white people were kept out of most Seattle neighborhoods in the early twentieth century through zoning and racially restrictive housing covenants. While the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the covenants in 1948, lenders and real estate companies continued to discriminate through “redlining,” a practice of designating communities of color “high risk of default.”

Redlined maps determined which neighborhoods received favorable mortgages, interest rates, and refinancing. The result? Homes in Black communities hemorrhaged value, decent loans became hard to come by, and predatory loans led to defaults. The stigma of redlining also led to a loss of jobs, resources, and investment in these communities as capital—and white residents—fled to the suburbs.

The 1968 Fair Housing Act made racial discrimination illegal, but the resulting gap persists—Black households have less intergenerational wealth to pass on or equity to invest in new housing. While gentrification displaces Black residents, single-family zoning means that more affordable types of housing cannot be built in threequarters of Seattle neighborhoods.

(See “Codifying Prejudice” in the fall 2020 issue of Master Builder.)

Mending the Gap

There are signs that things are changing. Perhaps the most prominent recent example is the Africatown Community Land Trust, which has created affordable housing and cultural spaces in the Central District to mitigate the effects of gentrification and underinvestment in the historic Black community. Another recent initiative spearheaded by the Seattle Foundation’s Civic Commons seeks to help 1,500 Black households become homeowners across the Puget Sound over the next five years.

MBAKS supports the Black Homeownership Initiative because closing the gap is a crucial part of solving the housing crisis in the Puget Sound region—which will need to accommodate 60,000 new residents a year—and because it’s the right thing to do.

The Housing Development Consortium (HDC), which encompasses all major nonprofit housing developers in King County, is a leading partner of the Initiative as part of its mission to “ensure that all people live with dignity in safe, healthy, and affordable homes within communities of opportunity.”

Patience Malaba, executive director of HDC, laid out the stakes last June. “We have decades of racial injustice and economic inequality that has consistently, persistently led to disparities in wealth, specifically for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] communities and disproportionately for Black households. One of the foundational steps in America to build wealth is homeownership.”

MBAKS’ Senior Policy Analyst, Allison Butcher, agrees. “The association recognizes the need to address race-based housing policies of the past to create a more inclusive future for our region. Part of the solution is creating more attainable housing choices for more people close to jobs, transit, schools, healthcare, and other amenities.”

The Initiative’s plan includes seven interrelated strategies to bolster Black ownership. These include marketing and outreach, pre- and post-purchase counseling, purchase supports and tools, changes in policies and practices, support for existing Black homeowners, and housing production to increase affordable homes.

MBAKS’ role, says Butcher, is “advocacy to enable more infill and more affordable ‘missing middle’ housing.” MBAKS sees increasing housing supply of all types as a key strategy to lowering home prices and barrier of entry for Black households.

Only the Beginning

The Initiative is off to a great start, but there’s still much to be done.

Currently most of the focus is on increasing the supply of and access to affordable homeownership. Looking toward the future, Initiative partners and the HDC hope to develop a policy framework that can be used to monitor and evaluate their collective efforts to increase homeownership opportunities.

Meanwhile, a Washington State Department of Commerceled Homeownership Disparities Work Group has developed recommendations for reducing the gap for BIPOC communities that intersects with the Initiative’s work. The report includes specific statewide recommendations that could be actionable in late 2022 or during the 2023 legislative session, creating additional momentum.

These are heartening developments. Solving the ownership gap means ensuring that everyone can find a home of their own. But to be lasting, it must go beyond up-zoning and legalizing more housing types.

It requires acknowledging the long history of racial discrimination that has narrowed homeownership options for Black people and actively working to overcome its grim legacies. Acknowledging that the gap exists—and why it exists—is an important step.