Spotlight: Mercy Housing Northwest
Our neighbors at Mercy Housing Northwest celebrate receiving a Charles Edson Award as they begin planning their new development at Mt. Baker Station.
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Nov 2, 2024
Agueda Pacheco Flores
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The new Millworks apartment complex features a green play space in the interior of the building, facing the waterfront. The building is notable for it’s sustainable features.
Bellingham is a long way from Mt. Baker, but they have something in common besides both being in the state of Washington — Mercy Housing Northwest runs affordable housing complexes in both places.
Recently, Mercy Housing Northwest’s Bellingham development, Millworks, won the 2024 Charles L. Edson Tax Credit Excellence Award in the Small Metropolitan category. The 83-unit complex is one of the first developments in Whatcom County to take advantage of the Washington State Department of Ecology Healthy Housing clean up program, which cleans up contaminated areas for affordable housing. Additionally, the waterfront complex was heralded for its use of solar energy and sustainable all-electric design, which are very efficient.
“It’s one of 10 awards they give out nationally for new affordable housing communities that utilize the low income housing tax credit program, which is the main vehicle for developing affordable housing these days,” said Mercy Housing Northwest President Joe Thompson.
Here in Mt. Baker, Thompson said that Mercy Housing Northwest plans to bring some of those elements that make Millworks a premier, award-winning complex, to the 431 units coming to the neighborhood.
The apartment complex was announced earlier this summer after a competitive proposal process to win the site from the City of Seattle for affordable housing. Located to the west of Mt. Baker Light Rail Station, the organization is partnering with another long standing community organization, El Centro de la Raza.
“It’s a true equitable partnership,” he explained. “We’ll be fifty, fifty owners of the entire project together.”
Like in Bellingham, the new affordable housing complex will center community gathering spaces. The Mt. Baker project will break ground in late 2026 and is set to have early learning centers run by El Centro de la Raza as well as an early learning training center run by the University of Washington’s College of Education. Find out more about the Rainier Valley Early Learning Center here.
“We’re looking to build roughly a 10,000 square foot community hub that would include gathering spaces for community and community-oriented commercial spaces, so retail and space for nonprofits to operate out of,” Thompson said.
Currently, Mercy Housing Northwest, which is part of a national organization with over 25,000 affordable housing units across the country, runs four other affordable housing communities in the South End, including Gardner House in Mt. Baker. The new development will be one block north of Gardner House, making it easy for families in both buildings to take advantage of the Allen Family Center at Gardner House and the new childcare centers.
This new project will be equal in size to all the Mercy Housing Seattle projects combined. Thompson noted that the affordable housing shortage in Seattle means the demand for their larger, family-sized units is very high. Market rate providers prefer to build studios and one-bedrooms because they earn more per square footage than if they provided family-sized units. A recent analysis by the Urban Institute projected that the housing crisis could last for decades and that 50% of units built need to be affordable; the over 400 units coming to Mt. Baker Station will significantly increase availability of housing in the North Rainier Valley area, as well as bring needed density to the Mt. Baker Town Center.
As the time gets closer to breaking ground and finding tenants, Mercy Housing Northwest will do extensive outreach, prioritizing communities who have historically called the Rainier Valley home, in order to “make sure the building represents the community that surrounds it,” Thompson said.
“This project is personally really important to me because I live about a third of a mile from it,” Thompson said, adding, “This is my neighborhood and I am really proud that I can be a part of something that’s going to have such a positive impact on the neighborhood.”
To learn more about the history of this project, head over to the Office of Housing’s website. To stay up to date on the project, contact our Director for updates.
Top: Gardner House as seen from the Mt. Baker Station platform, looking south.
Bottom: The new Mercy Housing Northwest development will replace the red building in the foreground of this image, which located to the west of the station.