"One of our biggest issues in the region is affordable housing," Gray said.

Dana Gray

Seattle is among the least affordable places in the nation for people to live, according to a study released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association of Washington, D.C.

The study by MBA's non-profit Research Institute for Housing America found home prices and rent have exceeded income growth since 2001 in almost all of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas.

The Seattle metro area had the biggest gap between income growth and rent prices. Seattle's growth rate of rents from 2001 to 2020 was 4.8 times faster than income growth.

Seattle increased from the 8th most expensive rental market in 2001 to the 4th most expensive in 2020.

The population-weighted average of median rents for 2-bedroom units across the 50 metro areas in 2020 was $1,564 per month, or $18,768 a year. In Seattle, it was $2,243 per month.

BECU ($26.8 billion in assets, 1.3 million members) had decided before the pandemic to substantially increase its commitment to lending for multifamily projects for low-income and working-class households in Seattle and other communities it serves.

However, the pandemic slowed those kinds of projects, and slowed the need for loans to fund them.

Since late last year, BECU's production of commercial loans has been recovering, and now it is gearing up programs to help relieve the area's shortage of affordable housing.

One initiative is allocating $50 million per year over three years for multi-family commercial loans targeted at real estate projects meeting the needs of the low-income and workforce households.

"What we're discovering is that we even need affordable housing in the outlying suburbs of Seattle, because that's where most of the tech workers are working," Gray said. "These people have good, solid jobs."

The program includes bond debt refinancing, rehabilitation loans and loans for workforce housing. In 2020, BECU originated nearly $15 million in loans to support four local community improvement projects

Another initiative is the "BECU Social Lending Program," which targets nonprofit building projects that are meeting the needs of the low-income community in the Seattle area.

The credit union granted its first loan in late 2019: a $300,000 loan to Housing Hope to fund its HopeWorks Station II development in Everett, Wash. The $30 million building is designed to provide 65 homes for low-income and homeless families, homeless veterans, homeless transition-aged youth and individuals with mental health and substance abuse issues.

Gray said BECU is still developing its approaches.

"We're testing our products to see what's needed and how BECU can be a player and support affordable housing initiatives in the regions that we serve," she said.

These types of deals require a careful balance of borrower commitments to devote a certain amount of units to an affordable rent range, and lender concessions to compensate for the increased income risks the borrower is assuming.