Seattle City Council Select Committee on Citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability 12318

Hold on for one second.

There we are.

Good morning, everybody.

Sorry for being a couple of minutes late.

Today is Monday, December 3rd, 2018, and it's 1033 in the morning.

Welcome to the Select Committee on Citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability.

I'm joined so far this morning by Councilmembers Muscat and O'Brien.

Councilmember O'Brien, thank you for filling in for me at Council briefing this morning.

I appreciate it.

Though I am here on a lot of Tylenol cold right now, the show must go on as the saying goes.

This is our 15th meeting on citywide mandatory housing affordability, but the first that we've had in a couple of months since the conclusion of our public hearing out in communities that we wrapped up over the summer.

This morning, we've got three items on today's agenda.

We're gonna start with a briefing and discussion on the hearings examiner's decision on an appeal to the adequacy of the final environmental impact statement for the citywide proposal.

We're going to discuss the timeline for consideration of adoption of the citywide mandatory housing affordability program.

Then we'll hear a briefing on the displacement analysis that was done in conjunction with FEIS work.

And finally at the conclusion of today's meeting we'll open it up for public comment.

This is our last scheduled meeting for 2018 and we're hoping as we get a little further on in that process to outline a little bit what our proposals are for 2019 so folks have a better sense and welcome Council President Harrell and Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you for joining us.

So, without further ado, why don't I ask Noah to read in the first agenda item, please.

Agenda item one, decision on the appeal of the final environmental impact statement for the citywide mandatory housing affordability MHA proposal.

And we're joined for this topic by several members of the city family.

If you guys wouldn't mind introducing yourselves and then we'll kick it off to you for the presentation.

Mr. Freeman, do you mind starting?

Cato Freeman, Council Central staff.

Allie Panucci, Council Central staff.

Emily Alvarado, Office of Housing.

Sarah Maxana, Mayor's Office.

Jeff Wentland, Office of Planning and Community Development.

Nick Welch, Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you all, and good morning Councilmember Herbold.

Who would like to start off with a brief presentation?

Ms. Maxana, please.

Thank you for having us back after a little hiatus there.

We're pleased to be back today to talk about the next steps in considering mandatory housing affordability citywide.

And for this agenda item, we'll be providing an overview of the hearing examiner decision and next steps.

And I'm joined by Jeff Wendland, who's the project manager for all of the EIS work.

Of course, you probably recognize this slide from our numerous other meetings on this topic, but at the forefront, what this is about is changing the land use code and zoning so that new development will be required to contribute to affordable housing moving forward, all multifamily and commercial development, and that this lays a framework for growing more equitably and sustainably in the city.

I'm going to hand things over to Jeff to talk us through the hearing examiner decision and next steps.

Okay, great, thank you.

So before talking about the decision itself, I just wanted to remind us all a little bit of the context of what the environmental impact statement was and what the process was.

So as you know, the city is proposing or considering to implement mandatory housing affordability in numerous urban villages across the city and commercial and multifamily zoned areas.

and no action has been taken yet in those areas.

Before you all take action to implement MHA in those areas, under our state SEPA laws as well as our local city laws, the city must evaluate the environmental impacts to give you all the decision makers the information you need to make an informed decision.

So those are impacts to the environment on everything from transportation, to aesthetics, to parks and open space.

It also provides you information about what the alternatives could be in terms of different configurations of MHA and provides you a comparison with not taking any action.

The appeal process over the past year, the EIS was issued in November of 2017, was an intense scrutiny, if you will, of the amount of information that's provided to you, the adequacy of that information.

And the EIS itself doesn't really talk about whether MHA is a good or bad policy.

It's just providing you information about its impacts.

So as you see on the slide here, after that review at the city's hearing examiner, the hearing examiner last week affirmed Most aspects of the environmental impact statement, including importantly, you know, really the major structural components of the EIS, such as the range of alternatives of MHA that were studied, as well as the study area itself and the overall approach to analyzing the impacts.

I just want to emphasize for you that there are environmental impacts and the information is there in the EIS for you all to review.

The hearing examiner did make a finding and remanded a portion, a targeted portion of the EIS pertaining to the historic resources analysis.

So you can see the language there.

The decision clearly spelled out the steps the city must take now to address that remand.

And we'll touch on that in the next slide.

So at this point, our office, the planning office, in partnership with Department of Neighborhoods, is already taking steps to conduct that additional analysis.

We will work with consultants to support us on that work, and we think we can publish some additional information in early, I'll just say early 2019 at this point.

And once that information is published and made available, that would be the point at which you, the City Council, could take action to address MHA in these areas.

And it.

That's it.

Before we move on are there questions that folks have for Jeff either about the work that went into the FEIS or about the hearings examiners ruling on the FEIS?

Please Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

I just have a question about the city's motion for reconsideration regarding the appeal period.

Can you explain to me what that motion for reconsideration is and how that affects our timeline moving forward?

Great.

Last week, the city attorney's office did file an additional motion related to the the hearing examiner's decision.

And it really is an administrative or technical correction.

The hearing examiner had included some language at the end of the decision that's included in many decisions that go before his office about what the appeal period is at this point for the decision that he issued.

The language, the parties, let me just fast forward and say that the parties agree that the language was, you know, had a minor technical error in it, and the appellants have notified the city that they're essentially okay with the technical correction.

to that language that the city suggested.

It basically says that the next appeal opportunity is not 21 days from now when he issued his decision.

It would be 21 days from when the council takes action on implementing MHA.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Any other questions for Jeff?

Okay, I believe at this point we move on to further discussion about the timeline and process, if I'm not mistaken, but I'm not seeing anybody jump out of their seats and tell me that I'm wrong.

Ms. Panucci, can you offer an assist?

That's correct.

Ketel and I were going to quickly walk through some of the work that the committee has done to date and then talk about a tentative schedule for next steps for the council considering the MHA legislation and discuss the amendment process that will be important for that schedule.

And I guess for the record that's item number two, the proposed schedule for adoption.

I hope that that was enough for us to clear the legal hurdles there.

So Ms. Panucci, please take it away.

So the next few slides I'll move through relatively quickly.

This first one is just to provide some background on the work completed to date by the council in 2015. There was work done to adopt a work plan for implementing the mandatory housing affordability program in 2015 and 2016. The city established the regulatory framework for commercial and residential development.

And then in 2017, there were several pieces of legislation adopted that implemented MHA in portions of the city, including the U District, Downtown, South Lake Union, Uptown, Chinatown, International District, and nodes along 23rd Avenue.

In 2018, the committee initiated and really began to consider implementation in the remaining urban centers and villages and in existing multifamily and commercially zoned areas around The city, however, final action couldn't be taken as long as the appeal was ongoing.

And so the next slide sort of illustrates the work that was council-initiated community outreach on MHA, although the executive definitely played a role in helping facilitate these discussions.

But over the course of the last few years, there have been a number of community design workshops initiated by the council as well as last year there were five citywide open houses that came before public hearings that were held in this committee.

So this next slide just highlights the committee meetings that have been held today, including today's meeting.

There have been a number of public hearings that were held out in the community, as well as a number of topical discussions where the executive departments provided details on components of the proposal, as well as central staff presenting some of the issues identified to date that will inform future amendment discussions.

All right, so looking forward to the committee review process in 2019, I'll talk a little bit about conceptual schedule and then the amendment process.

The schedule is up on the screen there.

And I'll just identify early for you that this is sort of a best case scenario schedule.

It assumes that OPCD completes environmental review of an addendum, completes the addendum for the environmental review in early 2019. And it also assumes early identification by council members of potential amendments.

Walking through the conceptual schedule, OPCD does the additional environmental work here in December and early January of 2019. The committee takes up potential amendments to the legislation in January and February of 2019 and schedules a public hearing on two pieces of legislation, the MHA implementation legislation and also comprehensive plan amendment legislation.

That public hearing would occur in late February.

And finally, the committee votes on amendments.

So amendments are identified in early January and then acted on in March, late February, early March.

And then final council action would occur in late March.

There's a built-in public comment period that we're assuming that would happen after committee action on amendments and before a final full council vote.

So the next slide, please.

Hold on for just one second.

Council Member Herbold has a question.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

One of the things that I've been sort of beating the drum about, that I'd almost forgotten because it's been so long since we've talked about this, relates to my desire to work to develop urban village specific resolutions, uplifting some of the community planning elements that people have brought forward.

And I don't see any sort of place in that, in this timeline to do that work.

And whereas I've been promoting the idea of doing urban village specific individual resolutions, much like I offered specific District 1 SEPA input when we sent a SEPA letter.

But I'm open to there being a sort of a city, a single resolution that has individual resolutions urban village commitments, identification of issues within that single resolution.

Although, as I've said, my preference is to do sort of a district by district approach.

Yeah, and I'm sorry that that wasn't included in this slide.

That was an oversight on my part, Council Member Hubold.

It continues to be my desire that we do adopt a companion resolution.

As you well know, oftentimes in the course of discussion about citywide zoning changes, Other issues come up that are outside the scope of the land use code.

Resolutions offer the chance for us to make commitments about those issues, whether that's concurrency issues or individual analysis issues.

My expectation is that rather than do almost an infinite number of companion resolutions based on the issues that might arise, rather to do one catch-all resolution that would allow for us to have seven or eight disparate sections with those sections focused on either districted topics or topics that run across district boundaries that may be complementary to one another.

We may hear, for example, edge zone issues that are similar in your district and in my district.

And we could cut and paste that same language and have it live in a district one focused section and a district four focused section.

Or we may choose to have a sort of across district boundaries section.

But it is my intent that we will adopt as part of this timeline a companion resolution that addresses those issues, but probably just one as opposed to multiple.

And I wasn't advocating for an infinite number.

I was advocating for seven, for the seven districts.

But thank you, and I really appreciate your willingness to do this.

I think it goes sort of a partial way to addressing one of the issues that the hearing examiner raised.

That wasn't a legal finding, but it was a suggestion that we should be considering more geographic-specific planning.

And I think a companion resolution identifying the unique issues in different communities would really help address that issue.

I completely agree, and I think this is a nice opportunity to remind folks that, you know, as a previous slide pointed out, we had a series of year-long focus groups followed on by a series of community design workshops that all led in as data points into Mr. Wendland and OPCD's work on the final proposal that was then appealed by the hearings examiner.

And after that appeal was filed, we still continued with a series of community meetings and public hearings.

So the universe, I think, of known issues is pretty broad right now.

It's not to say that other issues won't arise over the next several months, but I think we have a pretty good sense about what community issues and concerns are out there.

Now we want to try to outline a process that will allow for us to address and talk through those concerns.

Maybe returning to the schedule here to talk about where drafting of that resolution might occur.

Yet staff had assumed that there would be some sort of companion resolution or resolutions related to the proposal.

That resolution would probably be informed by the discussion of potential amendments that will happen in January and February.

introduction of a resolution would likely occur in a mid-February timeframe.

The resolution, of course, is not subject to the same kind of friction that the amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and to the Land Use Code are, so there's somewhat more flexibility there, but it certainly would inform a public hearing that would happen in late February.

question.

Thank you.

And Keel, just following up on that and Allie, I'd like to ask you to address something and it's a criticism that we hear pretty much no matter what it is that we're dealing with in land use and that is you haven't listened to us or the neighborhood has specific objections that haven't been addressed.

I wonder if you could talk just a little bit more about the schedule and I think Councilmember Johnson has already identified the number of meetings that have happened over the last several years talking with neighborhoods.

But do you see is there something left unturned?

Have we missed anything?

Because of course, having The whole notion of livability in every neighborhood is really what we are trying to accomplish and accommodate the need for more housing because people are moving into our city in unparalleled and unprecedented numbers.

So could you just go back and maybe answer that question, which is what stones have been left unturned if there are concerns in neighborhoods that they're not being heard?

Sure, so I'll take a crack at that.

I think there is sort of some of this relates back to the hearing examiners.

remand, partial remand to the city.

Perhaps a stone that needs to be turned over and will be turned over here in December is a look at, a closer look at the city's historic resources.

And once that stone is overturned, the council members will have a more clear picture of the range of impacts associated with each of these alternatives.

I think from a public process standpoint, there have been multiple public hearings, so multiple opportunities for folks to testify in front of the council, in front of the select committee, in different parts of the city about concerns that are important to them.

And we're really entering the phase now where the council members will be making decisions about how to respond to that testimony.

I think we're at a point now where we almost have complete information after the environmental, after the addendum is completed, if that is the path the city goes down.

And then it's up to the council members to balance the benefits and the burdens of the proposal and figure out what additional steps may need to occur at some point in the future to realize that livability aspiration.

And to further on that point, Council Member Bagshaw, I mean, I think one of the challenges that we hear from folks a lot around livability relates to housing and the availability of affordable housing.

And as we near the end of a development cycle that I think all of us can feel is slowing down in some way, shape or form, I want to be sensitive to the fact that we want to try to implement this in an efficient enough fashion to allow for additional public comment and additional consideration while also weighing against the very real need for us to start a mandatory housing affordability program that requires developers who aren't required to right now to actually start paying into the fund to build affordable housing.

And I believe that that is going to have a huge impact on our ability to raise new revenue in 2019 to put towards the city's Office of Housing Notice of Funding Availability and that we are losing out on those opportunities right now.

Further questions, colleagues about timeline?

I think you've got one more slide.

Yeah, so moving on here to amendments.

And as I mentioned earlier, the schedule is contingent on early identification by council members of potential amendments so that they can be the subject of a public hearing and additional review by your staff.

But generally, the amendments will be of two kinds, changes to zone designations or changes to the official land use map, rezones, or changes to the substantive or procedural standards in the text of the land use code.

And as part of that process, we'll also be identifying language that could be incorporated into a companion resolution as well.

So this is, this amendment process mostly contemplates changes to comp plan and regulations.

There are a couple of limitations that go along with amendments that may be proposed by council members, and those are the usual limitations that, that you're used to in the context of land use decision making.

Specifically the amendments have to be within the scope of the final environmental impact statement as it may be added to or modified by the additional work that OPCD will be doing.

And also the amendments have to be identified early enough so that we can put them out for public comment and they can be the subject of either testimony at a public hearing or a comment before a final full council action.

I just want to reiterate those two points from my colleagues, because I think they can't be said loudly enough, even though I have a very soft voice today.

The first of which is that there may be a lot of really good ideas that come forward over the next couple of months, but if those good ideas are not within the scope of the EIS, I'm going to be very reluctant to have us consider those ideas as part of the final passage of this legislation.

It doesn't mean that we can't dock at those good ideas for future consideration, but I'm going to be looking to my colleagues to stay pretty strongly within the scope of the EIS.

And if you have questions about whether or not your proposals may be within the scope, I would encourage you to work closely with Ketel and Allie and other members of central staff in order to ensure that it is.

And then the second element of that is if we are going to give the public fair notice about potential amendments that we may want to consider as part of the final passage, it means I'm gonna ask over the next month or so, maybe five weeks, that you spend time and energy with your staffs drafting up what those amendments might look like, so that by mid-January, we've got a pretty good sense about what the public can review as part of the amendment process.

To Ketel's earlier point, any amendments that we might want to consider do require us to have some sort of public hearing associated with them.

And that necessitates a 30-day notice.

So if we're going to stay on the schedule, I'm asking those two things.

One, if you do have amendments, that you get them to us in the next five weeks.

And two, that those amendments are clearly within the scope of the EIS.

Okay, any further questions about process or timeline, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any.

Oh, please go ahead, Council Member Baxter.

Councilmember Johnson, are you anticipating now to move to public comment, or are you going to continue with the presentation?

We have one more presentation around displacement.

Oh, good.

Okay, that's what I was really, that's what I'm very interested in.

And then we'll move into public comment, depending on the, we're scheduled to adjourn at noon today, so my expectation is that this last presentation will be about a half an hour or so, and then we'll have about another half an hour of public comment once it's concluded.

And if I can just ask as you're going through.

Thank you.

Allie and maybe Office of Housing, as you're going through this, I'd really like you once again to address, I know a question that comes up all the time and I think we've probably heard the answer at the last 15 meetings.

But I know every single neighborhood says they want more housing on site, more mandatory and inclusionary zoning in the projects on site.

And there's no question that most of us would like to see more housing on site.

But again, I believe that the Office of Housing tells us that you can leverage those monies triple and It's not an either or, it's an and.

But once again, it's come up again this morning in the paper and I wonder if in your displacement you can just talk about that.

And then the other question is how we are really focusing on the race and social justice aspects of this.

Because the goal is to get more people into good housing across the city and not just feel like there are designated areas for people of low income.

Just as you're going through displacement, if you'd focus on those two questions.

Good segue to you, Ms. Alvarado.

I'm sure you have a slide discussing that at some point.

Can I add something?

Oh, please, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I would, in that same vein, Ms. Alvarado, if you could talk a little bit about another displacement risk strategy that UNI as well as the Office of Civil Rights have been talking about a strategy that I had hoped we'd have in place concurrent with the passage of MHA because as a way of addressing a lot of the concerns that Councilmember Bagshaw raised, but that is the developing a community preferences policy to address historic exclusion of people in particular neighborhoods and encouraging a way for folks to either stay or return.

Great.

Those are all great segues for this next part of the presentation.

So at our last committee meeting in August, we featured just one or two slides on the displacement analysis that was included in the FEIS.

And there were several questions that prompted the desire to have a more in-depth discussion of that displacement analysis, give a little bit of background a description of the analysis, talk about how it informed the preferred alternative and the legislation.

And then Emily Alvarado will talk about how MHA revenue is spent to further those goals.

So starting off before I hand things off to Nick Welch, who was the project lead for much of the displacement analysis at OPCD, just want to start with the statement that we've always made that MHA, because of the affordable housing outcomes, is in and of itself an anti-displacement strategy.

The 10-year goal of producing 6,000 rent and income-restricted units affordable to households at 60% or below of area median income is going to provide benefits to those low-income households that are struggling to stay in Seattle today, but also that we know that people of color in particular comprise a large share of households in rent and income-restricted units, so this provides a benefit there.

And this also, MHA gives us an opportunity to provide more affordable housing in neighborhoods with high access to opportunity, providing more housing choices in those neighborhoods throughout Seattle.

So I'm going to hand things over to Nick Welch to walk us through the background and the displacement analysis in the FEIS.

Thanks, Sarah.

Excuse me.

So in February of 2017, council adopted a resolution directing us to really focus the EIS analysis and our development of the MHA proposal on advancing equity goals and examining potential displacement impacts.

It specifically identified ways to analyze several different types of displacement, physical, economic, and cultural displacement, and encouraged us to use the growth and equity analysis from the city's comprehensive plan update as a framework for doing that.

As you've seen before, the growth and equity analysis was a document we prepared as part of the Seattle 2035 comp plan update in 2015 and 16. It helped us examine the different alternative growth strategies that were under consideration to identify how the benefits and burdens of different ways of distributing growth throughout the city could affect marginalized populations, people of color, low-income households, English language learners, and immigrants and refugees.

And we did this by measuring displacement risk and access to opportunity and how they vary across the city and then developing a typology that helped us consider different strategies that are appropriate for neighborhoods according to those two measures.

This map shows that displacement risk index.

It combines 14 different factors that are associated with displacement pressure, both demographic data about populations who are susceptible to displacement and physical factors that tend to drive development or housing demand and displacement pressure.

Areas in red tend to have a coincidence of both of those types of factors, both people and place factors.

And you can see the distribution or the displacement risk across the city is varied.

There's high vulnerability in certain neighborhoods such as Southeast Seattle, parts of South Park, Westwood Highland Park, and some areas in North Seattle as well.

And then a complementary measure was the Access to Opportunity Index, which combines several different factors that relate to some of the key determinants of well-being that people and communities need to thrive, and measures how those are distributed throughout the city.

And similarly, there are disparities in the level of access to opportunity that people have throughout the city.

Many of the areas shown in sort of the blue-teal color here that have high access to opportunity with good access to frequent transit and good schools and economic opportunity, also have high housing costs and are therefore unaffordable to many of the people that want to live and benefit from those opportunities in Seattle.

So we categorized each urban village according to those two measures and developed this typology, this equitable development typology.

Urban villages towards the top of this chart tend to have higher displacement risk.

Similarly, urban villages on the right side of this chart have higher access to opportunity.

And so this general distribution, these four categories, helped us identify strategies and recommendations to produce equity outcomes through the comp plan process and then through future land use planning exercises as well.

It identified equitable development strategies for areas at high risk of displacement and then recommended increasing housing choices in areas with high access to opportunity.

That framework then informed how we set up the MHA environmental impact statement.

And in that EIS, we also analyzed the potential for displacement impacts across a range of different alternatives for implementing MHA.

On physical displacement, we used two different methods for estimating the number of low-income households that could potentially be displaced.

under current zoning and current rules and under several different alternatives for implementing MHA.

One of those methods was to identify sites that are likely to redevelop in the future and to calculate the number of existing housing units that are on those sites and the likelihood that low-income households living in those areas could be displaced.

The other method looked at historical permit data and calculated the ratio in the past of new housing and demolitions, and then applied that ratio going forward to the amount of growth that we expect in the future.

So it was an empirical measure, or it was based on empirical data as another estimate of potential displacement in the future.

You see those two estimates in the green bars on that chart.

They vary, and the historical method actually produces a more conservative higher estimate.

And then very noteworthy in that chart is the gray bar, which represents our estimates of affordable housing that would be generated through MHA implementation.

So you can see that in all three alternatives where we would implement MHA through zoning changes, the number of affordable units is substantially higher than our estimates of physical displacement that could occur.

We also looked at and analyzed economic displacement, the phenomenon where households are forced to relocate simply due to rising housing costs, not necessarily due to a demolition or a rehab of their particular housing.

And to do this, we compared the amount of market rate housing production and the change in the low-income population in census tracts across the city in recent years.

So in this chart, each dot represents one census tract in the city.

There are about 140 of them.

And they're plotted on this graphic according to how much market rate housing was built between about 2000 and 2012, and then according to whether the low-income population in that census tract changed.

And what we found, what you can see in this trend line, is there's no correlation between market rate housing growth and a loss of low-income population.

In other words, areas that tended to have more housing production overall tended to retain or gain low-income households during this period.

And census tracts that had relatively less housing growth tended to lose low income households during this time.

So it's an important finding because it helped us understand and respond to a concern we frequently hear, which is that new development is causing housing prices to rise.

And we found in this analysis that there wasn't evidence for that at different income levels.

This chart is specifically showing change in households up to 50% of area median income, but the next slide shows a very similar pattern when we looked at up to 80% of area median income as well.

So even at a higher income level, we found the same finding.

Nick, this is resulting in some questions, as you can imagine.

I'm going to start with Council Member Herbold and then ask Council Member Mosqueda to go next.

Thank you.

So one of the issues that I've raised a few times, and you were just getting to starting to address it right after I formulated the question, so thank you for anticipating, was the fact that I had a lot of concerns that the analysis grossly underestimated the number of affordable housing units being removed because at the time of the initial analysis, you used tenant relocation assistance permits, people who were deemed eligible for relocation assistance through the Department of Construction and Inspections as the proxy.

And we know that many, many more low-income people are displaced from demolition than are deemed eligible for the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance.

So I'm glad that the secondary analysis looked at 80% AMI.

I'm interested to know what your, the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance number of people who qualified was the proxy for the 50% analysis.

What was the proxy for the 80% analysis?

How did you determine that?

We actually use the TRAEO data in the physical displacement analysis.

So in that first chart, this one here, you're exactly right.

The proxy for a low income household was coming from TRAEO data that goes up to a certain income level, 50% of AMI.

And for the reasons you described, we acknowledge in the EIS that there are some limitations to that data because we know it doesn't capture everybody who may be experiencing displacement.

In the economic displacement analysis, in this correlation analysis, the household income data is coming from the census, or from the American Community Survey data.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

And in the draft EIS we initially looked at 0 to 50% of AMI and then received many comments in a similar vein to what you're raising saying that it's important to look at a broader range of income levels.

And so in the final EIS we supplemented the analysis with additional correlations to do that.

Thank you.

And it's important to note that several people who are low income don't qualify for the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance because either they're between 50% and 80% AMI or they live in shared housing and the Department of Construction Inspections combines people's incomes for qualification.

So again, to the statement that MHA itself is a displacement mitigation tool, I think it's only a displacement mitigation tool to the extent that we are building new affordable, more new, and equal to or more affordable housing units than we're removing.

And to that note, I just wanted to thank you for acknowledging that this work, this resolution was initiated by the council.

I just want to refer back to the 2015 preliminary growth and equity report that stated, if unmitigated, new market rate development in high displacement risk areas is likely to lead to displacement of marginalized populations.

The analysis described in the report assumes that the higher the growth in high risk areas, the greater the likelihood of displacing marginalized populations.

Displacement is a concern under any alternative.

All of the alternatives are likely to cause displacement, which would have disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations.

And to the point of this last graph, I think it's also important to note that you, we're including non-profit developed affordable housing in this correlation.

And I think we're not.

No, this actually controls for that.

It does.

We remove rent and income restricted housing from what's plotted on the x-axis for that reason.

So it's really isolating the effect of market rate housing development.

All right, I'm happy to know that.

That's a good question, thanks.

One other clarification is the alternatives in that excerpt that you just read, Council Member, the alternatives at that time, that was referring to the comprehensive plan EIS, which was looking at alternatives for distributing housing growth, presuming it's market rate housing growth without an inclusionary requirement like MHA.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Would it be fair to say, too, in both of those analyses, Nick, that a no-action alternative also results in a whole lot of displacement?

Yes.

In the context of the growth and equity analysis, that was another conclusion, that across all alternatives, including no-action, displacement would be a concern.

And then, similarly, with MHA, the EIS says as much.

Got it.

Council Member Mosqueda, thanks for your patience.

No problem.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And actually, your point was exactly what I was going to say.

Yes, MHA is intended to be a displacement tool, but that mitigation tool can only be effective when we're allowed to move forward.

And so I'm very excited about the conversation that we're having.

I think it's critical that we note the last bullet on this slide here and continue to emphasize the need to scale up housing dramatically across all income levels.

If we look at the report that was just published by our office of planning The Seattle Planning Commission the neighborhoods for all report that came out this morning I think that it's very clear when you look on page for the stark difference between the increase in population growth and between 2005 and 2016 and the flat line of the new net new units that have been created in the same period of time.

There's a huge, huge gap here.

So I think as we think about mitigation tools for displacing, especially those at highest risk of displacement, as we get the green light to go forward, this will in fact be a mitigation tool once we're able to begin building.

Please continue.

The final piece of displacement that we looked at in the EIS has to do with cultural displacement.

This is admittedly much harder to measure.

We don't have perfect data about who is coming and going from the city and why people are leaving.

But we do have both quantitative and qualitative indicators that this is occurring.

The map on the slide here shows changes in racial and ethnic groups between 1990 and 2010. It's a little hard to see because it's small.

As an example, in the central area, you can see a pretty substantial decline in the relative share of the black population during this time.

So it's one indicator that this type of demographic change is occurring.

What we found in the EIS when we did a similar correlation analysis looking at the relationship of housing production and changes in different racial and ethnic groups is that unlike the analysis with economic displacement, we didn't find a significant statistical relationship between those two things.

In other words, it suggested that there are factors other than housing production associated with the type of demographic change that occurs with cultural displacement.

It could be influx of higher income households, loss of cultural and commercial institutions in neighborhoods, but factors other than just the quantity of housing produced in a neighborhood.

It also suggests that for that reason, there are other actions and strategies we would recommend to address cultural displacement beyond just strategies related to affordable housing.

Thank you, Mr. Welch.

So switching to the preferred alternative in the FEIS and the legislation that's in front of you, the growth and equity analysis that Nick described was used very much as a basis for the zoning proposal that is in the legislation.

And of note, it was in the work plan resolution for MHA back in 2015 to consider this framework as we are developing the proposal, as well as in the 2017 resolution on displacement.

Sarah, let me just interrupt for a quick minute, Council President Harrell.

All right, Sarah, playing a little catch-up ball here.

Nick, some of the conclusions that you made in terms of displacement, can you describe to me who's doing that analysis?

Are we using a consultant?

We've had some criticism in our lack of an RSGI lens on what we're trying to do.

So can you give me some context on how we reach those conclusions and, in your opinion, You know, we've been looking at this for a couple of years now, and there's been some suggestion we keep looking at it.

So, can you give me some context on how you reached those conclusions?

Sure.

For the MHA EIS, we did have a consultant that was supporting the work on the housing and socioeconomics analysis.

So, they assisted in that specific analysis that we talked about.

What's the background of that kind of consultant?

Are they familiar with cultural displacement?

Are they a housing MHA kind of expert?

Do they look at neighborhoods?

The consultant for that...

Are they local or out of state?

Just give me some context.

Sure.

The consultant was Burke Consulting.

They have an office here.

I'm not sure if it's their headquarters that's here, but they're local.

The staff we worked with are local.

And it was a shared effort because there's some areas, some of the technical and statistical work that they have a lot of expertise in as housing and land use policy experts.

And then there's some...

elements of the cultural displacement discussion that the city has a lot of expertise in, because it's a really important issue that we've worked on.

And then as I was mentioning to Council Member Herbold, we also got feedback during the draft EIS comment period that helped us refine and supplement that analysis for the final EIS, and that came from community members, the council, the Seattle Planning Commission, and others.

There were also consultants involved in the formation of the, or the production of the growth and equity analysis during the comprehensive plan update three or four years ago.

So let me not be coy and just sort of be direct.

And that is, one of my concerns is I think that Seattle has done some unprecedented work in our kind of race and social justice analysis that we've been doing.

I've looked at different cities and talked to different city leaders on how they actually want to learn from us.

this sort of displacement issue surfaces, I continue to ask myself at least is whether the city are being as granular on this approach as we could and should be.

And so I want to sort of plant that idea as we continue this work.

Are we being as granular in our race and social justice analysis as we really should be as opposed to just looking at raw numbers?

We can say, and I think part of your conclusion was it's not housing production alone that that causes displacement, okay, so then what is it and how can we also and that's one reason why during the budget process you heard me use the term cultural displacement a lot and some of the funding opportunities that we took advantage of so it's what I Get the point that it's not housing production alone, but I think in this analysis Is housing production 30% of it 50% 80% of it?

I mean, let's you know see how we could use this MHA tool to, I just think, be more granular in our approach, so.

Please, Ms. Benici.

I was just going to, what I was thinking when you made eye contact was, generally the analysis around displacement and what's causing displacement can be very complicated, and really knowing why a person moved is difficult data to collect, which is one of the challenges in understanding the phenomena.

And so the council has asked and continues to put in sort of looking for additional strategies to address displacement beyond the land use code.

And I know Councilmember Herbold has been working with the Department of Transportation and others on the executive side to look at strategies to try to collect that more granular level of detail of really asking why people move, what led to that decision.

Was it sort of a choice?

Were they forced?

And not just forced because their unit was being demolished, but because they felt like they didn't have options to stay within their community.

So I think that's a point well taken and work that the city is continuing to try to investigate how to collect that more granular level of detail.

And I think one must ask the question, when the analysis shows that there's no correlation between displacement and new housing production, whether or not there is a correlation between affordability and new housing production as well.

So as we contemplate a no action alternative versus an alternative that does result in the production of new units.

We believe, I think, that that is an affirmative anti-displacement strategy because of the 6,000 units that we will produce.

But I think that will be an important thing for us to follow on with, knock on wood, after implementation of the citywide image is concluded.

I want to thank Ms. Panucci for mentioning the efforts to get the PSRC, the Puget Sound Regional Council, to include as a question in their periodic survey.

That will help us get more at this question of economic displacement.

And so it would be great to get folks' support in moving that forward.

But also I think The question of the unknowns about economic displacement is definitely true, but I'm going to just say again, as it relates to physical displacement as a result of demolition, I think there is more to be known about that that is actually knowable than we've been able to do here thus far.

Maybe when our friends from the executive are done presenting, I want to just come back around and talk a little bit about a proposal I have.

Please continue.

Okay, just very quickly by way of review, the way that we use the growth and equity analysis in the preferred alternative in the legislation in front of you is encouraging relatively more new development capacity in those communities with low risk of displacement and high access to opportunity and expanding urban village boundaries to include the full 10-minute walkshed.

around frequent transit nodes, whereas in communities at high risk of displacement took a more sensitive approach recommending relatively less new development capacity.

So new development capacity sufficient to put the program in place, but wanting to be sensitive to the fact that new affordable housing choices in those neighborhoods might have trouble keeping pace with the rate of new development going in.

In those communities, we did focus some what we call M1 and M2, so larger rezones near in the immediate vicinity of those transit nodes, but just the M-level rezones in the rest of the area.

So now I'm going to pass things over to Emily to talk about MHA revenue and how the city invests those dollars.

Great.

So we have talked already about the extent to which affordable housing development and preservation can in and of itself be an anti-displacement tool.

There are other things we do when we invest in affordable housing to really hone in on those anti-displacement outcomes.

So it's not just about a unit, but it's where the unit's located.

and what are the amenities and the partnerships included within that development that helps to address displacement.

So first I should mention that our Office of Housing has a 35 year plus track record of investing affordable housing funds, and we continue to do so with real, in a thoughtful and disciplined way.

Our overarching framework for where we invest our funds overall is the Federal Fair Housing Act, and that fair housing analysis requires that we affirmatively further fair housing by doing two things.

One, investing in high-opportunity communities and in communities that have historically been segregated and cut off for people of color and low-income folks, and also that we invest in low-income communities, making sure that we prevent future displacement.

So those two pieces are key to affirmatively furthering fair housing.

Specific to the mandatory housing affordability program, we have explicit locational goals for our investments.

They include furthering fair housing, locating in urban centers and villages and near transit, promoting economic opportunity and addressing displacement.

and the additional bullet that you see there, locating near developments that generate cash contributions.

First, I should say that these locational goals are largely similar to our long-standing locational priorities, so we have a track record on delivering on these outcomes.

Second, I should say, Councilmember Bagshaw, to your point about communities' interest in seeing affordable housing located in their neighborhoods, this is a fabulous thing.

We're really happy to see that communities are stepping up and asking for affordable housing in their communities.

We heard that too.

We wanted to be responsive to that community priority, so we did so in two ways.

First, the framework has this explicit locational goal about locating near developments that generate cash contributions.

Second, we improved upon our monitoring and reporting, so we have a new robust monitoring policy that each year, annually, we report on where payments are coming from, where we are making investments, And in the event that there are communities that are generating a significant amount of investment and not getting a commensurate level of affordable housing investment back in that neighborhood, we can identify it as a priority area for investment in our annual NOFA.

So we want to be responsive to community on this issue.

We want to continue to provide housing choice throughout the city in all locations consistent with fair housing law.

I think I would say here that there's been a lot of national research on the relative benefits of payment and performance.

I should say on that issue, local research is the most important.

And locally, there were conclusions, an independent researcher analyzed the use of our incentive zoning payments, where they were generated and how they were reinvestment.

And that analysis concluded that there would not have been a significantly different locational outcome if the program had produced performance units as compared to how we made our investments.

And I think that's really transparent or apparent, I should say, in the map of our investments that you see up there.

One of the things that you'll see is there's a significant contribution in high cost areas where there's a lot of development that's occurring.

Those also happen to be high opportunity and high risk of displacement areas.

So we're hitting those locational priorities.

You'll see investment throughout the southeast corridor, largely tracking with our significant investments in transit.

And then in areas where you do not see our investments, I would reiterate, and I say this often, that largely those are in locations where multifamily zoning is not present.

So as has been mentioned by Councilmember Harrell and others, it's not just housing that addresses displacement.

It's really the honing of that housing and thinking about how we have intentional community connections, and we're meeting multiple priorities with our housing delivery.

So first, our affordable housing investments can really help to provide family-friendly housing.

And I think of family friendly housing in two ways.

One, it's about actually having unit sizes, two plus bedrooms, three and four bedroom units that can accommodate families.

But it's also about the design and designing in a way where there are spaces that are conducive to families.

We're gonna talk about a couple of investments here.

On the top left is the Tony Lee Apartments.

That's around 70 units of mixed income housing from 30 to 60% of the area median income.

a significant number of two- and three-bedroom units.

And not only in the units, but the first floor includes a four-classroom preschool that will be operated by the Refugee Women's Alliance.

There's a rooftop deck, there are resident gardens, and it's in a sustainable building.

At Plaza Roberto Maestas, there's a seven-classroom extension of El Centro's nationally accredited Jose Marti Child Development Center.

There are 112 apartments.

This is a mixed-income building, and the majority of those units are two- and three-bedroom apartments.

Those are a higher proportion of family-sized units than would have been produced in the market alone.

We also know that thinking about those community-oriented uses that can be delivered that really help to provide spaces for business, community centers.

Sir, I'm going to ask you to sit back down.

And if you interrupt again, I'm going to ask you to be removed.

You're being disruptive, sir.

Please sit back down.

Our presentation...

Sir?

Our presentation will...

Sir?

I'm going to ask you again to sit back down.

If you interrupt again, I'm going to find you disruptive and ask you to be removed.

Please continue, Ms. Alvarado.

Sir, that's your final warning, sir.

If I hear another interruption from you, I will ask security to remove you.

Ms. Alvarado, please.

Thank you.

We have business, cultural, and community spaces delivered on the ground floor that can help to anchor community.

You see at Uncle Bob's Place in the International District, not only are there 103 apartments, but there's also the Four Seas Restaurant located at the site will retain ownership of the ground floor commercial space.

Filipino Community Village is senior housing for folks 55 and older.

It's adjacent to the community center, and it includes space for residence, computer access, and a youth innovation learning center.

At Liberty Bank, in the top middle, we have 115 units, and this one's really exciting.

I'm sorry, Ms. Alvarado.

Security, I'm finding him disruptive, and I'd ask you to continue to escort him out, please.

Thank you.

Miss Alvarado, I'd like to apologize personally for those many interruptions.

I hope it hasn't thrown you off and I would anticipate that it hasn't.

Please continue.

At Liberty Bank there are 115 units, and a reminder that those 115 units will be occupied by 115 households, so this is where people will live and call home for the next 50 years.

The building's going to prioritize or prioritized local and minority hiring, supporting black-owned businesses.

creating a pathway to long-term African-American ownership of the building.

And just anecdotally, they did pre-leasing of this building not too long ago.

The phone lines crashed as a result of the number of people who were trying to apply for housing here, which I think is a testament, one, to how many people are seeking affordable housing and need it now, and also a testament to the number of people who want to return to their community who have been displaced.

Marion West you see not only are we're delivering other public benefits like a food bank as part of that property.

Part of making sure that these are anti-displacement investments is thinking about who is able to know about and live in the affordable housing that's created through MHA.

And last year we established new affirmative marketing policies for the units that are developed through MHA.

And affirmative marketing is rooted in fair housing law.

It's about having people know about vacancies and having equal access to housing regardless of race, national origin, familial status, or other protected class status.

I should say that to the question of race and social justice initiative and race and social equity, we ran a racial equity toolkit on designing this affirmative marketing policy, and based on significant feedback from communities of color and marginalized communities, we identified that the best way to hone our affirmative marketing strategy was to use informal networks as a way to let people know about the housing.

So our policy requires that prior to generalized marketing of a building, a developer must let three community-based organizations know about the vacancy so they can help to market those properties and also report to the Seattle Housing Authority so people who are waiting to use a voucher can have access to these properties.

To Councilmember Herbold's point, if affirmative marketing is about thinking about the pool of potential residents who could live in a building.

Some cities have taken a farther step and then put in place policies that talk about how people, how a selection process is used in the leasing or sales of affordable housing to give preference to folks that have longstanding ties to a community as an anti-displacement strategy.

We've seen that in New York and in San Francisco and in Portland, Oregon.

We are presently engaged in work to not only analyze what other cities are doing, but working closely with community to see how and whether to design a community resident preference policy ourself.

I would say that these policies can be designed to affirmatively further fair housing.

We also know that if not designed well, they can straight up violate fair housing.

Our interest is seeing if this could be a way to address displacement while doing so in a way that makes sure that we aren't excluding people.

Thank you.

Hold on.

Council Member Baxter, please.

Thank you.

And Emily, thank you again for the analysis.

And to all of you, I've got three questions that came up again this morning, and I was a little bit surprised to see that it's being repeated.

But one of the concerns has been, are we considering safety in neighborhoods.

Are we hiring more police?

We know in this council that it's an ongoing effort always to try to increase the number of police officers that are available across the five precincts.

I also heard a concern that we weren't considering sewer and water collection, and I just want to remind people that over the last few years, we have put massive stormwater reservoirs and retention systems at Magnolia at West Seattle and we're under construction in Ballard.

And this is millions of gallons.

And the third thing I heard about this morning was, well, we were not considering parks.

Well, in my time here on the council, we have procured land for 14 more parks.

We have done that area which is within a quarter of a mile or half a mile that everybody in the city has a park.

We've got 6,500 acres of parks across the city.

What are we missing?

What aren't we doing that someone might say, well, it's not fair or we're not considering these major livability concerns?

I could address that one.

And from the perspective of what was analyzed in the environmental impact statement and all those issues are analyzed and quantified.

On the first one you mentioned, the first two really, neighborhood safety in terms of police services as well as sewer and water collection, there weren't significant impacts found.

The city has a long range plan, a comprehensive plan, plans for the provision of those services with growth and we were sort of within the range where there wouldn't be a significant impact with this additional amount of growth due to MHA.

It's interesting that you mentioned parks because that is an area where we did find that there would be a significant impact.

The city already has, is struggling to meet its acreage level of service for parks.

That's something we know about today and with some additional growth that would continue to be a challenge.

Some of the ways that the city, our parks department and others are looking at addressing that is by basically getting more bang for our buck out of the parks and right-of-way areas that we have.

So adding services, it's expensive to acquire new land, making sure there's good access to parks.

So certainly parks and open space is one that we need to continue to enhance.

I appreciate the fact that you're keeping an eye on this, and I hope as you come back you can talk about what do we need to do that we haven't been doing so that we can either put it into next year's budget or make sure that it's part of these plans.

That's all we have.

Thank you for having us.

Okay.

So before we open it up to public comment, Councilmember Herbold had wanted to share a few words, and then I think I might share a few as well.

Go ahead.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

I just wanted to, in the spirit of Councilmember Johnson's request that we surface ideas early, this is actually something that I've shared draft background and policy basis in a previous meeting, but that was many months ago, so I'm going to do it again.

And basically, I've been working with central staff to address, again, my concern that we are grossly underestimating the number of affordable housing units that are removed by development.

Not necessarily development that's caused by MHA, but development generally.

And the resolution that was referenced earlier had language that said that the council intends to consider a range of strategies to increase affordable units sufficient to offset the affordable units at risk of demolition due to new development and strategies to address displacement resulting from changing socioeconomic conditions that may potentially displace vulnerable populations.

And then subsequently in the MHA framework legislation, the council included, passed an amendment and included language that said that we intend to consider whether to include higher performance and payment amounts subject to statutory limits for those areas where the increase in development capacity would be likely to increase displacement risk.

Factors to consider are areas that have been identified in the 2035 growth and equity analyzing impacts on displacement and opportunity related to Seattle's growth strategy as having a high displacement risk, areas where increased, an increment of increased development capacity is greater than the standard MHA implementing zone change, and areas where planning processes including but not limited to the SEPA process for MHA implementation have identified affordable units at risk of demolition.

We don't commit to a particular approach to address these displacement risks.

And I do acknowledge that the preferred alternative gets us a little closer by having a smaller zoning bump in areas that are at high risk.

But as we've already seen in the university district, there are several parcels of land that were identified as unlikely to redevelop where there was existing housing that are actually redeveloping.

So again, I have a lot of concern about the elimination of existing affordable housing.

And so this SEPA displacement mitigation tool has as a policy basis both our previous joint assessment of fair housing, and it really puts the question of fair housing at the center of this question, whether or not our policies are exacerbating existing patterns of segregation, and whether or not we are, in fact, doing enough to affirmatively fulfill our obligations to fair housing.

And the FEIS for MHA implementation also identifies displacement as a continued impact of future growth that is not fully mitigated.

And then finally, the 2016 DRA residential development nexus study estimated that for development in low-cost areas, the maximum justifiable performance and payment requirement, while varying by development prototype, are generally higher than what's proposed for low-cost areas in the MHA proposal.

And so what this proposal suggests is that we should consider amending the housing environmental policies of the city's SEPA ordinance to add a new subsection providing the authority for additional mitigation for displacement by residential development.

And this document suggests that there may be a couple of different ways that we might want to use that authority.

One is we might want to consider establishing a policy that requires one-for-one replacement of units for which TRAO, Tenant Relocation Assistance, licenses have been issued.

And two, the other option is increased payment and performance requirements for new residential development in areas with a higher risk of displacement.

So I just want to flag this as something that I'm going to be moving forward through the hopefully in parallel to these conversations because again, I continue to hear a lot of concerns about displacement.

I think it's a really good signal that we would be sending to the public if we move forward both our community preferences policy and as some sort of a SEPA displacement mitigation tool.

All well thought through points and arguments as always, Council Member Herbold.

I think that in the continuing conversation over the next couple of months, I can assure you we will definitely have space to be discussing things like the fee payment schedule in various zones.

To your point about the university district, there are also an opportunity cost that gets lost when we don't apply MHA.

There's a development that is going in on the ave right now, which is a place where we hit pause on MHA.

Buildings on the ave are traditionally about two stories.

You can build up to, I believe it's six stories on the ave right now.

And this building is going to be building up to about six stories.

And it is not required to make any payment or contribution into MHA.

When we do make a pause or we do choose to not implement in certain areas, there is a risk associated with that as well because even new development that may come in doesn't perform to the size that we might hope.

and also isn't required to pay into a city fund to build affordable housing.

So I think that there will be a tough, tight rope for us to try to walk to make sure that we are affirmatively raising a progressive revenue source to build affordable housing and ensuring that we do it in a way that is thoughtful about our neighborhoods and development.

So that's what we've been doing for the last couple of years, and I look forward to continuing that work.

I'm not seeing any additional thoughts or questions from my colleagues, so I'll ask our friends at the table to go ahead and go about the rest of their day.

We've got just a little more than 20 folks who've signed up to give public comment.

Considering we're a little over time, I'm going to ask that we give everybody a minute and a half as opposed to the usual two minutes, but that should still give us about a half an hour of public testimony between now and 1215. Colleagues, I know several of you have noon appointments, so I won't begrudge you if you depart early, particularly with my late attendance this morning.

When I call your name, please come to one of the two microphones at the front of the auditorium.

I'll call a couple at a time.

I would ask you to queue up so that we can move quickly through the public comment.

And I will start with Bill Rumpf and then Megan Cruz.

Bill, Megan, if you wouldn't mind coming to the other microphone.

Councilmember Johnson, we had signed up, Maria Batiola and I had signed up, expecting that we would be the first and apparently it was not included.

There was an earlier sign-up sheet that I had.

Sorry, just pause for one second, sorry.

There was an earlier sign-up sheet that was presented to me by the clerk.

They were the first three to sign up, I believe.

It was actually for the earlier meeting, but I could see their good faith effort to be personless.

I don't know what happened to that list because I had given it to the clerk.

Ms. Cruz, would you mind if after Mr. Rumpf, we went to those individuals who, or maybe if those individuals wouldn't mind, maybe after Ms. Cruz, we'll call you up in that order.

Since you're already at the microphone, why don't we go Bill, Megan, and then we'll move on to David and Maria.

Go ahead, Bill.

Thank you for your patience.

Thank you councilmembers.

I'm Bill Rumpf, president for Mercy Housing Northwest.

I'm just here to speak in support of the MHA process and timeline.

I know it's a process intensive process, but I really just want to support the fundamental direction.

I think the up zone is needed to accommodate our growth and it's just crucial to bring the private sector into delivering on affordable housing needs.

My organization is I'm an active nonprofit developer and I think this discussion here about placing housing opportunities all over the city is really important.

We have a large presence in southeast Seattle and our building at Mount Baker, at Sandpoint, and at Roosevelt.

And in each of those cases, I think it is possible to achieve the livability that people are talking about.

We're including childcare and health programming and multilingual staff.

And so we have had a high percentage of prior Seattle residents, people of color.

So anyway, thank you for considering the MHA.

Thank you, Bill.

Megan, thank you.

Great.

Hi.

I'm a resident of the Fisher Studio building.

That's a historic landmark built in 1912. I'm here to support the hearing examiner's remand that the city council include protection and analysis for landmark buildings in this legislation.

I believe Seattle can have both new development and protected historic buildings, but they need to establish a clear process and follow the existing rules.

As a historic landmark, my building won't remain economically viable unless new development leaves breathing space around us, including setbacks to provide access to daylight and reasonable privacy.

Seattle Development Guidelines and its Municipal Code offers these protections, but the Design Review Board believes that this is not in their jurisdiction to apply these mitigations.

Starting with design review, we asked the council to establish a clear mandate to analyze adverse impacts and address them in this legislation.

Ten years ago, the city thought our building was too important to fall victim to the anticipated building boom.

They restricted our ability to up-zone, and they asked us to sign a controls and incentive agreement that said we would partner with them to preserve this building for the future generations.

Right now, with everything happening around us, we're a vulnerable population.

And we're asking the city to remember that pledge and help us preserve this building for future generations.

Thank you, Ms. Cruz.

So, I was handed the sign-up sheet from earlier.

Thank you to our clerks who are clearly listening along back in their offices.

David Ward, Maria Bateola, and Deb Barker, you signed up on the Civic Arena sign-in sheet, but listed that you wanted to talk about MHA.

So, we'll go with you in that order, and then we'll come back around to Knut Ringen, who would be number four.

You spoke on the arenas.

We'll get to you, Mr. Zimmerman, in a couple of minutes.

Mr. Ward, Ms. Bateola, if you wouldn't mind coming to the other microphone.

Thank you.

Yes, well, I'm David Ward.

I'm president of the Seattle Coalition for Affordability, Livability and Equity, SCALE.

We're a coalition of 29 neighborhood organizations.

Affordable housing is low enough that under MHA, 90 to 97 people out of 100 won't get affordable housing.

Members of SCALE want far more affordable housing.

And when three people, later active in scale, requested that the city planner in charge of the EIS use an analysis with increased affordable levels, we were refused.

Even more than 90 to 97 out of 100 will be without affordable housing when you consider displacement.

And even the city admits their method of displacement analysis, TRAO, is flawed in six different ways.

neighborhood plans and neighborhood impacts.

Before the EIS was drawn up, we also requested that the city analyze the full impacts on different neighborhoods.

And again, the city refused.

Did not address the real impacts to each neighborhood for trees, parks, and open space, displacement, height, bulk, and scale, transportation and parking, and race and social justice.

and had the city done these, as the hearing examiner and the Seattle Times article said, they would have averted much of this community concern.

Just to say that SCALE is more than willing to meet with the city to give them a full briefing on our concerns and the deficiencies in the appeal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ward.

Maria, you're going to be followed by Deb Buckard, if you're still here, Deb.

Thank you.

Good morning honorable city council members.

This morning the Seattle Times published Scales article entitled a wake-up call to Seattle regarding Mayor Murray's mandatory housing affordability act.

This information we uncovered was new to us and may be new to you now.

Through the MHA EIS, though the MHA EIS was deemed technically adequate, Through the hearing process, we uncovered from the 100,000 CD documents information that indicated Mayor Murray intentionally excluded key livability and equity components from the MHA EIS.

Specifically, Murray excluded the livability report and comments from its own consultant CD planner and former council member Peter Steinbrook.

excluded city consideration of the adopted neighborhood plans with a broad brush upzoning, excluded city reports on the inadequacy of public safety services, inadequacy of tree ordinance, and inadequacy of sewer infrastructure that has our city dumping 100 million gallons of sewer and rainstorm water every year polluting our bodies of waters.

and excluded the city multi-departmental race and social justice analysis that was completed by the departments that indicated either the racial equity analysis was not applied or it was incomplete or inadequate.

Please address these livability and equity inadequacies in your MHA EIS, your MHA analysis.

We at Beacon Hill badly need affordable, livable and equitable housing and we have a lot of faith in you.

Thank you.

I know Deb Barker.

I'm not Deb Barker.

I'm Chris Ilgenfritz.

Deb had to leave, so I'm reading her comment into the record.

Go ahead.

Landmarks data information gaps in the FEIS are not minor issues.

The hearing examiner remanded this issue back to the city.

Staff has characterized this as a minor matter quickly resolved.

I disagree with that assessment.

There are hundreds of city landmarks that have not been registered as national register sites.

The steps taken to address the examiner's remand must be transparent.

I urge the council to work with city landmark staff who know the topic and this data a bit better than the MHA consultants.

The updated data must also be conveyed to these property owners who had not been previously notified as well as to the public as an addendum to the FEIS.

Thank you, Deb Barker.

Thank you.

So we're going to go back to the top of the list.

Knut Ringen, are you here?

Knut, you're going to be followed by Angela Compton and then Sarah Jane Siegfried.

Good morning.

My name is Knut Ringen and I live in the Fisher Studio building that Megan referred to earlier also.

And I thank you for your service.

Ten years ago, the City Council decided to up-zone 2nd Avenue and there's some really good lessons in that experience that we're learning now.

It ended up dividing the block between 2nd and 3rd Avenue in two zonings.

On the west side, towards 2nd Avenue, it allows for 45-story towers.

On the east side, towards 3rd Avenue, it allows for 12-story buildings.

The result is now that towers are being proposed and built that overwhelm the east side of this The reason for this is that the review process doesn't really understand how to take into account divergent zoning in a block, and better rules need to be developed for that.

These towers steal the light, air, privacy, and views from the east side of this block in a very, very bad way.

There are many of these buildings that are historic, and I ask you to do three things.

First, develop rules for divergence zoning and how to review proposed projects for that.

Second, put a hold on any historic project that is in the application process now until you develop a response and rules to deal with the remand that the hearing examiner provided you.

And third, many of these new high rises are being marketed internationally.

One that is in a pre-construction phase now is being marketed in China at a price starting at $1,440 a square foot.

This does nothing for our housing.

And I ask you that you develop rules to take into account international investor financing in our real estate before we Vancouverize our city.

Thank you.

Angela, you're going to be followed by Sarah Jane Siegfried.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Angela Compton.

I'm here today to support mandatory housing affordability on behalf of FutureWise.

We're a statewide nonprofit that focuses on preserving green space and farmland by reducing sprawl and trying to make our cities more livable.

We are pleased to see the mandatory housing affordability program move on.

The MHA program is something that our city needs.

Without it, we're going to continue to see rents rise and rise for people across the income spectrum.

The mandatory housing affordability program not only allows for more homes to be built, but it also reserves homes for some of our lower income neighbors.

Every day, I see folks in our community whose lives will be changed for the better by access to a home that they can afford.

When we welcome new people into our neighborhoods, we're welcoming new friendships, cultures, and ideas that will strengthen our communities.

When we show kindness to our neighbors who are struggling, we help our entire community become more resilient.

Mandatory housing affordability cannot solve all of our housing problems, but it is a good start and it will produce real homes for our neighbors who desperately need them.

We need to ensure that the people who are living in Seattle are able to stay and those who are coming to Seattle for opportunities are able to live and thrive as well.

Thank you for your leadership on housing affordability in Seattle.

FutureWise strongly supports the mandatory housing affordability program and encourages you to pass this as quickly as possible.

We can't continue to lose more homes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sarah-Jane Siegfried, followed by Josh Feit, and then Bart Cima.

Hello, council members.

I'm Sarah-Jane Siegfried from the Seattle Coalition of Affordability, Livability, and Equity.

The HALA MHA isn't delivering nearly the low income housing that cities such as San Francisco and New York require of their developers.

We are getting crumbs.

The developer fees pay for only $110,000 per unit when each low income unit actually costs over $300,000.

The funds that the city counts on to leverage developer funds, mostly tax money, are already committed.

As a housing advocate, I feel manipulated and misled.

What happened to the livability, the L in HALA?

Where are the investments in preservation, pocket parks, air quality, noise abatement, the tree canopy, and walkability, the quality of life aspects?

Displacement is the opposite of livability.

Our low-income seniors and families, immigrants, and people of color are being displaced.

The for-profit developers are not building any family-sized three-bedroom apartments, so upzoning the 23% of single-family houses that are rentals will obviously cause more displacement.

The mayor promised that she would listen to neighborhoods, but she has yet to do so.

Previous neighborhood plans were successful in directing 78% of growth into urban hubs and villages defined by their access to frequent transit.

Neighborhoods are anxious to participate in updating the existing plans to fulfill the goal of accessible housing for all parts of the city.

One size fits all up zones are the opposite of good urban planning.

Please partner with us to improve this legislation.

Thank you.

Good morning, members of the Seattle City Council.

Thank you for hearing this important mandatory housing affordability and upzone legislation.

My name is Josh Veit, and I am not originally from Seattle.

I did not grow up here.

I was not born and raised in Ballard.

I did not go to Roosevelt High School, and I am not a lifelong member of my community.

I am not a seventh generation Seattleite.

To those of us who chose to move here, Seattle stands out as an exciting 21st century landmark that is taking up a brave experiment in progressive city building.

I'm excited to be here.

I have a public sector job.

I'm a renter.

Please stop letting some residents of Seattle's single family zones play Seattle first politics by mythologizing neighborhood character and stigmatizing renters.

That kind of dog-whistling politics has no place in Seattle.

Please stop letting quarter-century-old neighborhood plans that were developed without a race and social justice analysis be the blueprint for Seattle's future.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, for challenging the anti-growth narrative by having us take a closer look at the 1994 plan.

As you know, the mandatory housing affordability legislation in front of you today did go through a displacement analysis by income and race.

Thank you for passing the six MHA Urban Center and Urban Village Rezones last year.

To make MHA work, to address the housing affordability crisis, all of Seattle needs to be neighborly.

Please pass this small but significant first step in taking down the walls that keep too many of Seattle's residential neighborhoods off limits for too many residents.

I'm not proud that I'm from here.

I'm proud that I moved here.

I hope I can continue to feel that way.

Bart Seema, you're going to be followed by Judith Bendich, and then Leo Brennan.

Good morning.

My name is Bart Simo.

I have the honor of serving on the board of Bellwether Housing, this non-profit developer here in Seattle.

There's 2,100 affordable units.

We have about 1,000 in the pipeline moving forward.

This program will provide yet another additional source of revenue to help us and other non-profit developers do this.

I want to thank the council and staff for their hard work on this effort.

I implore you to move ahead and get this implemented.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Seema.

Ms. Bendich, hang on for just one second.

Leo Brennan and then Patience Malabo will be next.

And just as a reminder for folks, I know it feels like you have to be uncomfortably close to the microphone, but Seattle Channel likes that so that everybody at home can make sure that they hear you loud and clear.

Thank you.

My name is Judith Benditch.

I am a resident of the Ravenna area.

I'm a volunteer.

I came out of retirement after 10 years.

A volunteer attorney who worked with the Friends of Ravenna Cowan as part of the appeal.

And I'm here today to talk about only the amount that was remanded to you, which is the historic resources.

And contrary to one of the previous speakers, we have resources here that we value because they make Seattle livable and they give us a shared sense of history and we should not destroy it.

What you don't know, and I have a letter that sets all this out, is that of the 27 neighborhoods that are urban villages, let's see, Only 12 of them, 15 of them have never been surveyed and among these are our most vulnerable populations.

And in the hearing, neighborhoods like South Park take enormous pride in their historic resources.

But here, we have never had, we have never had any kind of surveys done of Bitter Lake, Rainier Beach, areas in Othello, and I have a suggestion for you on how to accomplish that, because if you leave them high and dry, you've left the city high and dry.

So I'm going to hand out those letters to you, and I just also want to point out that in the National Historic Districts, we now have two new Historic Districts, among them my own.

The Friends of Ravenna Cowan voluntarily had a new Historic District, and that 10-minute walk shed will destroy it all.

We will happily take those items for the record.

Leo Brennan, followed by Patience Malaba, and then Alice Lockhart.

Mr. Brennan.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Leo Brand.

Myself and my wife and family have a property there in Roosevelt, Roosevelt area, and it is next to the US Bank, so it's next to a commercial property that is going to get, I think, up-zoned from...

Sorry, it's getting re-zoned to Inn 65, and on the other part of it is Inn 75, all in one block.

and we would be very much in favor of getting a rezone in that neighborhood.

I think part of the environmental study it was recommended MH1, what is it called, it's LR1 and LR2 and we would even prefer it more like LR3.

It's around the seven properties there.

It's on the west side of 12th Avenue, two blocks from Light Rail.

I think it certainly would help in providing housing for the area and for Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brennan.

When I spoke earlier, colleagues and members of the public, this is a great example of one of those questions about whether or not the request that you're making to change the proposal from what it is today to something greater or something less than.

Those are the kinds of proposals that would require us to do some additional analysis to see whether or not that question is in the scope of the environmental impact statement and what was studied.

So I would encourage you to circle back and anyone else who's interested in individual parcel analysis, to circle back with Noah on here from my office, and we can start the discussion about whether or not that's within the bounds of the environmental impact statement.

But a perfect example of that kind of question.

Sorry, thank you for that non sequitur, Ms. Malaba.

You're going to be followed by Alice Lockhart and then Frank Fay.

Good afternoon, council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

I want to begin by On the record, I am Patience Malaba with the Seattle for Everyone Coalition.

We're a coalition that's united on supporting the mandatory housing and affordability program.

And right now, I have a task of just doing two things here, which is, number one, to pose a question, and number two, to make an ask.

The question today is, what does this moment in time require of your leadership as it relates to the mandatory housing and affordability citywide program?

And it requires that you expeditiously move in passing MHA.

We have already lost out on 717 affordable homes that could have housed working families that continue to be priced out of Seattle and are having to drive an hour or two hours from South King County, Pierce County, and elsewhere.

And right now, report after report talks about a cooling housing market.

And as the housing market cools, it is now time for us to make sure that we leverage on whatever opportunity is left and ensure that we're including affordable housing in new development that comes up.

MHA is the right solution at the right time, and we ask you to move forward in passing MHA as fast as possibly can be done.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Malaba.

Please, Alice.

Good morning.

I'm Alice Lockhart with 350 Seattle, and I'd like to extend our deep thanks to council members and to so many community members who have worked so long and so hard to get us to where we finally are today with MHA.

I also want to recognize that many have worked equally hard in attempts to slow down or stop MHA, or in fact, almost any changes in housing policy that allow for more housing to be built, with admittedly true arguments that each housing policy proposed is not perfect.

MHA ain't perfect, but we need it so much.

As climate news grows ever more dire, the cost to future generations of suburban sprawl goes ever higher.

And time to do something about it is getting very, very short.

We have just a few years.

We cannot spend those years in more protracted arguments about whether it's okay to build housing in all neighborhoods of this city.

It's time for us as a city to, everywhere in our city, work together to much more quickly welcome new neighbors, welcome back those who have been exiled by the high cost of housing in our city, and build an equitable, walkable, bikeable, and green city.

I hope that others can, like this council, open their hearts and unleash their creativity to create the city we need to be.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lockhart.

Frank, you're going to be followed by Alex Zimmerman and then Jesse Simpson.

All right, I'm sorry to see that most of the council has left, but I will provide some remarks anyways.

I was originally going to talk on different things, but after hearing some of the testimony today, I would ask that the council really needs to put on their most skeptical thinking.

I guess skeptical hat, skeptical thinking.

It's really amazing what we saw today, that we have city staff presenting figures that don't match, city staff continuing to further narratives where they claim they're gonna produce twice as much housing as the FEIS says, and then city staff presenting data that simply has no correlation to it, and in fact has stated on their very own graphs that it really doesn't have correlation to it.

So the real fact is you can't conclude anything out of it, and it doesn't support their case.

And we really need to wonder why we're doing this if that's the case, because we should be doing something that actually has benefits.

And everything that's so far is showing on this doesn't show benefits, and particularly it does not show benefits for people who live here.

Neighborhoods are perfectly willing to help pitch out, help in, pitch in with trying to solve this crisis, but they have not been invited to the table and they continue not to be invited to the table.

So I ask you to ditch this plan and to work with the neighborhoods to come up with something better.

Thank you, Mr. Fay.

Alex, you're going to be followed by Jesse Simpson and then Lisa Kuhn.

Die Hive, my lovely concert, are Nazi social, Nazi social garbage rats.

A dirty antisemite and low life.

Guys, I spoke with you, to you, 700,000 MRI degenerate idiot.

You don't know what has happened here?

You don't know what has happened here?

Look who's talking about this.

You're talking about your tree.

How about talking about all forests?

And forests have only one way.

clean this dirty chamber totally from this crook.

That's not a simple political anonymous what is go for last year.

It's make us life miserable.

For all city, for all king country, for all state, this crook destroy us life totally for million people.

So, who care?

Who care about this?

People who come here are talking about something like a rabbit talking about your stuff.

Bum-ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom.

Simple point, what is we need doing for change and bring Seattle back?

What is I see for last story of last year?

Cleanse this dirty chamber from this crook totally.

It's only one way what is we can bring Seattle back to normal life.

Stand up America, stand up Seattle.

Cleanse this dirty chamber from this crook and criminals.

Thank you very much.

Jesse, thank you for your patience.

Always interesting.

Hello, my name is Jesse Simpson.

I volunteer with the Capitol Hill Renter Initiative and share the cities.

I was born and raised in West Seattle.

All too often, I hear from friends and strangers alike that they can't afford to live in Seattle or that they feel like this isn't a place for them anymore.

I support MHA because it will create thousands of desperately needed homes, though I recognize that it alone is insufficient to fully solve our housing crisis, which has been decades in the making.

When I was born in the mid-90s, my parents were able to buy a home in West Seattle for just over $150,000, getting help from that classic middle-class entitlement, parental assistance.

That house is currently valued at $700,000.

That obscene appreciation is due to the land-use restrictions that we've placed on what can be built in this city.

As it exists today, our zoning is exclusionary.

The status quo is not working for anyone who is faced with the crushing reality of Seattle's current real estate market.

We need more housing, subsidized affordable housing for working class people and an expanded rate of market rate housing to keep rents from rising further and accommodate people in this growing city.

I fully support building more housing in our urban villages, but we need to go further and allow for denser and more affordable types of homes throughout this entire city if we want to live up to our liberal ideals.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Lisa, you're going to be followed by Michaela Daffern and then finally Megan Murphy.

Okay, I'm Lisa Kuhn.

I'm here to address the self-satisfaction spiral the city council and so many city departments seem to be in, which is just leading towards a lack of understanding, a lack of listening.

In today's paper, there was an op-ed that was pro-MHA where they stated 717 housing opportunities lost.

Of course, one would have had to have passed MHA back in November, which, if you are going by law, you couldn't do because of the hearings that were going to be required.

And so, bottom line, it couldn't have been passed earlier than this last September, the 717 garbage.

Okay.

So, we're responsible for this, homeowners, because of redlining.

Article in the paper.

Bias in minority lending is found online, in person.

It's not just bank loan officers with racial biases who discriminate against black and Latino borrowers.

Computer algorithms do so too.

And bottom line with that, all the new housing, guess what?

People are going to be redlined out of it.

I'm going to leave this with you.

Interesting testimony.

Jeff Wentland did during the testimony.

And here, Mueller proves Trump loyalists' disdain for the truth.

Thank you, Ms. Kuhn.

I don't see Michaela still here.

Michaela Daffern, are you still here?

It doesn't look like it.

And I don't see Megan Murphy here either.

That was the last set of folks who signed up to testify, and I'm not seeing anybody come to the microphone asking for additional time.

So at this point, this will conclude our Well, additional time to spend it in terms of new time.

Mr. Ward signed up on the sign-up sheet three times today, so we were going to give him one chance.

Thank you, Mr. Ward.

This concludes the December 3rd Select Committee meeting on mandatory housing affordability.

We will be publishing a schedule for our committee discussions after the first of the year, sometime later on in December.

So for all of you who are following along, if you haven't signed up for the planning land use and zoning committee or the citywide mandatory housing affordability email lists, please do so.

And as soon as we've got those dates posted or dates ready for when we'll be having our committee discussions in January, we will send them along.

Unless there's anything else, we'll be adjourned.

Thanks all.