Good afternoon.
This is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Seattle City Council's Human Services Equitable Development and Renters' Rights Committee.
It is March 26, 2019, and the time is 2.03 p.m.
And I'm chairing the committee, and I'm joined by Council Member Juarez.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
I expect that today's meeting will not be very long.
We only have two items on the agenda, and they're both appointments to the Pacific Hospital PDA.
We will take them up together.
Robert Cook is being appointed for his first term by the PDA Governing Council, and this is Doris Kuh's second appointment.
She was originally a mayoral appointee in 2015. This time she's being appointed by the King County Executive.
Last time our committee had discussed with the PDA, they had talked about some exciting work they're doing.
They're starting to build affordable housing on the Pacific Hospital campus.
I have heard that this wasn't a unanimous decision on the part of the PDA, but I definitely support affordable housing at the campus, and I look forward to discussing it with the appointees and hearing from them personally whether they support the decision for affordable housing or not.
And we do have public comment before we bring our presenters to the table.
Nick Jones is staffing this council meeting and will be reading the names of the people who are signed up.
Each of the speakers in public comment has two minutes, and we are also joined by Council President Harrell.
Thank you for being here.
Nick, can you read the names out?
In public comment, we have Alex Zimmerman, and that is all.
Sieg Heil, my Dory Fuhrer, anti-Semite, criminal, and killer.
My name Alex Zimmerman.
I want to speak about people, what is your appointment.
My experience with almost 300 people, and I am most in every commissioner meeting, yeah.
And you all are identical.
You always choose the same people again and again and again.
This is very simple, because by definition, when you crook, they croak too.
This does not surprise me, because apple always not fallen far away from tree.
And I give you classic example about what has happened right now.
We have right now a council who go for re-election.
But we have right now a consul, like Gonzales, who violate law and constitution, opened public meeting five times, and no one from you mentioned her.
She's a crook, a criminal.
She supposed to be moved out from consul chamber yesterday, and nothing happened.
How you can go for re-election and ask people elect you again when you never go voice about criminal in your chamber?
How is this possible?
No, I understand when you support nine trespasses about Alex Zimmerman, when executive branch doing something in legislative branch support executive branch, so against Constitution.
I understand you.
You are crook.
But right now, it's very simple.
We have a consul, attorney, Gonzalez, who violate five-time Constitutional law court approve this.
Are you very quiet about this?
How is this possible, huh?
You are a crook.
So people who you choose, it's nothing will be different.
So right now I speak to everybody, stand up Seattle.
We need clean this Dory chamber totally from this crook, this people 700,000 sick, sick, sick.
Stand up America.
Bye bye.
Is there anyone else lined up?
No.
That's all.
So we'll close public comment and we will invite the presenters to the table.
Good afternoon, guys.
Good to see you too.
Me too, Doris.
Thank you.
Can we have a very quick one-line introductions from each of you for the record, and then Kenny or Jeff, I don't know who wants to start it.
Let's have introductions.
My name is Nick Jones.
I'm a legislative assistant with Shama's office.
My name is Doris Koo.
I'm hoping to be an appointee to sit on the PHPDA Governing Council.
Hi, thanks for having us.
I'm Jeff Natter.
I'm Executive Director at Pacific Hospital PDA.
And I'm Bob Cook, also a candidate for confirmation for the Governing Council.
And Kenny Pittman, Officer of Intergovernmental Relations.
Thank you, and who wants to start this?
Okay.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to present to you two appointments to the Pacific Hospital PDA, Public Development Authority.
The first one is Mr. Robert Cook.
And this is his first time appointee.
Since 2013, he's served as a strategic advisor to the PDA, and he is an appointee of the Governing Council themselves.
They have four members that they appoint.
Four members are appointed by the mayor and one by the King County Executive, and he represents the Governing Council.
He's also the senior director at the Washington State Housing Finance Commission in the area of finance and IT services.
has an extensive background in nonprofit and cooperative organizations, has worked with the Plymouth Housing Group, Cascadia Revolving Loan Fund, served on various boards, and comes very highly recommended as an appointee to the Pacific Hospital, and we support his appointment.
The next one is Ms. Doris Koo, who is a representative for the King County Executive.
The King County Executive has one appointment of the nine members on there.
And Ms. Coo basically was appointed in 2015, had to step off, and is now graciously agreed to come back and serve on the Pacific Hospital PDA.
And we're very glad that she's back there, has an extensive experience in nonprofit housing financing, and would be an excellent addition, along with Mr. Cook, to the Pacific Hospital PDA.
Thank you.
And in a couple of minutes, we would like to hear a little more from Jeff about the housing project itself and also, Kenny, if you can talk about the status of the funding for the project.
But before we get to that, could we have a few comments both from Ms. Koo and Mr. Cook about what your experience has been, you know, associating with the PDA so far and what makes you excited?
And I'm assuming you're excited about serving on the PDA and what you hope to accomplish.
And please weave in the points about affordable housing, because as you know, you already have got a question from my office.
I know other council members are also interested, so you might as well also address that.
Thank you, Councilmembers.
Good afternoon, Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Harrell.
I'm a proud resident of D5, by the way.
I spent my whole life and my entire career on affordable housing, first as a community organizer in Chicago, working on organizing tenants to take landlords to court for repairs, and then feeling that the process was too slow, switched course into building affordable housing, and that's been the mainstay of my career.
My involvement with PHPDA, as Kenny said, started with an appointment by then Mayor Murray, and I sat on both the Real Estate Committee and the Finance Committee, And it was under that period that we realized that there was surplus land on the campus of the Pacific Hospital campus.
And what better use to put that land if not affordable housing.
That's when we actually took a charter amendment to the mayor to allow the PHPDA to take on housing development.
including affordable housing, and we've never looked back.
We now have a plan, Jeff can give you more details, but the plan is to build roughly 206, close to 300 units of affordable housing, affordable to both residents below 60% and then partially for residents below 80% and a child care center to be run by El Centro de la Raza and a health center run by the Seattle International District Health Services.
We are very excited about that project and Signing back up to serve as governing council gave me great pleasure to look ahead to the completion of that project, but also to take a look at what else the campus can do.
As we both raised funds to help close the health disparity gap by making grants and providing affordable housing.
So the dual mission was something I passionately believe in.
And hopefully the service that I offer will allow me to do that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Madam Chair and other council members that are here.
I appreciate you being here and your interest in hearing from me.
I first became interested in the PHPDA in the 90s when I was a resident of Beacon Hill for nine years and I watched the North Tower the north addition being added for earthquake retrofit purposes and admired how well it was done so that you can't even tell that that was an addition.
So I've been a longtime interest in the campus.
But I really didn't know that much about what I did.
However, five years ago, in 2015, I became a strategic advisor, which is a member of the public that is a committee member on the Finance Committee.
And I've also, since 2016, when the Real Estate Committee was established, have been a member of that committee as well.
So with my 23 years of experience at the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, which does affordable housing through tax exempt bonds and low income housing tax credits.
And also as controller of Northwest AIDS Foundation before that, where we were the fiscal sponsor of the first HUD 811 project in this area, the Cal Anderson House for people with AIDS.
I've had almost 30 years of experience in affordable housing work.
So I'm very excited to be a part of this project.
Doris outlined very well what we have in mind, and I've demonstrated my commitment so far in participating in the Real Estate Committee, and I hope we'll have an agreement that I can support when we get to that point.
Thank you.
Could Jeff and Kenny also step in and talk about the project itself?
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd love to jump in.
It's hard to add to what Doris and Bob just said about the project and about the PDA.
I think I'm very proud of the work that we've been doing in the past six years.
We are a tripartite mission PDA.
Our first mission is to steward the Pacific Tower campus.
and make sure that it stays beautiful and accessible and that the tower itself preserves its landmark status.
Our second mission is to provide grants based solely on lease revenue.
We don't accept public funds, we don't do fundraising, but we provide grants to ensure health equity throughout King County based on our lease revenue.
In the packets that I've given you, I've given you a list of all the various grants we've given over the past six years now.
We average about $3.5 million per year in grant making going to a wide range of community organizations.
That's it.
Yeah, I'm pretty surprised at how much we've been able to do in such a short amount of time.
Also very, very proud of my governing council that has helped steward this.
And our third and newest mission is the development of Pacific Tower Campus.
You had mentioned prior to us taking the table here that there was some disagreement about moving forward with affordable housing.
The only disagreement that we really had, I think, as a governing body was when we decided to take the initial step, as Doris mentioned, and start to develop it.
And that disagreement is based on the fact that we weren't chartered to do so.
So that's what we.
Upstance of the idea.
Exactly.
That's really good to know.
So people were not saying, oh, let's not do affordable housing.
That's not a good idea.
The question was, do we have the authority to do that?
We knew we had the authority to lease it to someone else to do.
And then the PDA decided, you know what?
If we do that, we run the risk, obviously, that some for-profit developer could come on the site and build condos, which does not serve our social equity mission.
We're the needs of Beacon Hill.
The original concern was more about how do we gain the authority to do that mission?
And thanks, I have to say, very strongly to Doris's knowledge and input, as well as the input of some other council members.
We came to the mayor's office and did that charter amendment.
Since then, it's really been a question for us about how to direct and focus the project.
Initially, we thought we were going to build 150 units of low-income housing and 150 units of market rate, and use the market rate units to pay for some high-end cladding, some high-end landscaping, some gym facilities, and do a kind of social equity mix similar to New Holly or Rainier Vista.
We were moving forward in that direction until a very successful meeting we had with the Speaker of the House, Speaker Chopp, who raised some questions about whether we really wanted to consider doing half low income and half market rate.
He felt a better use for the property would be low income and workforce housing.
So in December of 2017, we made that Is that a 90 degree turn?
180?
We made a 90 degree turn to reorient the way in which we're working on the project.
We decided at that time when we were going entirely low income, the best thing for us to do would be to work with a developer that really knew what they were doing in low income.
And we're very glad that we're now working with the Seattle Chinatown International District PDA.
We're in the process right now of finalizing our lease with them.
They have been aggressively going out to find funding.
They just got some Can I talk about the state budget?
I guess it's public.
They just found out that in the current state budget, there's $9 million allocated to them to help move the project forward.
They've also gotten some other funds from the city and the county.
So we're very, very excited.
We hope to have the lease codified.
I hope.
Knock on wood.
would by early summer.
And as Doris mentioned, the lease does include a requirement that APACE, the aging in place facility that International Community Health Services is working on with Kinon and El Centro's child care facility are cited on the lot.
We would love to see groundbreaking in a year and a half.
Obviously, we'll have to resubmit the master use permit and do some more early design guidance, but, you know, This may sound a little odd, but I think those are the fun steps that you have to take because they really help you mold the project into something that's going to be long lasting.
The other thing I think is very important is everything we will do on the lot has to uphold landmarks preservation values.
So we're going to ensure that the tree canopy is all there, the fencing is all there, access will be the same.
And we think it's going to be a great addition both to Beacon Hill and to the residents of the property itself.
So I think that's, I apologize for the long-windedness.
I could talk for hours about the PDA.
I welcome any questions.
Thank you for...
First of all, describing some of the history and, you know, between all three of you, just clarifying what the background was.
And also, Jeff, I appreciate you making a distinction between merely adding residential space to the city, but between that and affordable spaces.
And so the emphasis being on affordable, given the crisis we are in.
You know, and also based on the specifics that you mentioned, hopefully the work that you all are doing can be some sort of model for how we should do it.
I mean, you went everywhere from affordability to tree canopy.
It's like, you know, sort of illustrating that we can have a city, not either or, you know, we can and we need to emphasize all those points because for living, having a decent quality of life, all of those things are absolutely critical, but it starts with affordability, as you said, so I appreciate you putting a fine point on it, all of you.
I think we've all been saying what we want to build is beautiful, affordable housing.
Right, beautiful, yes, because all of our people deserve to live in beautiful, affordable housing.
Absolutely.
Yes.
And Kenny, if you wanted to add something, and of course, I wanted council members, if you have questions.
None for me.
Go ahead.
I just have a few.
First of all, Jeff, thank you so much for providing all this information.
I love chronologies.
I have a long history, though, which isn't in here with the Pacific Hospital.
When it used to be the Veterans Hospital, it also was Indian Health Services.
So I spent my youth going to that huge building when it was IHS, which is not in your chrono.
So you might want to put that in there.
We are redeveloping that.
And that was the spinoff for the Seattle Indian Health Board, which, as you know, now flourishes with nurses and doctors and Native American traditional-based treatment, housing, all of those things.
And then, of course, when you guys became a PDA in 1981 is when we created the Seattle Indian Service Commission, also a PDA, for that same purpose.
So you're all in that same good family.
And also, I wanted to thank you when I was looking at your funding.
So many of these organizations that you fund, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, Food Lifeline, YMCA, Chief Seattle Club, Country Doctor, Ryther, CMR, we work with all these groups.
So I cannot tell you, you know, your partnership and what you do for the city and this community.
It goes far and wide, never mind the district, even though we love D5.
It's our favorite.
Thank you so much for that.
I did have a question for Doris.
And not so much a question, but more just a comment.
Doris, I've seen your work in all kinds of areas on the Yesler project and the things that you have done.
So this is your second term doing this, right?
So, I just want to ask you again, I know you kind of made some introductory remarks, what you think your vision is going to be, bigger vision this time around and what you want to do with this committee or this group.
Yeah, thank you.
The first term was a learning curve term, trying to figure out what the PDA could do and how to be loyal to its original founding mission, and then doing other things that I personally am very passionate about, which is affordable housing.
Now that we are fully on our path to realizing the affordable housing, I'd love to take a look at the rest of the campus.
There are other buildings and parking structures there that are historic, but with some creativity, maybe we can add even more affordable housing on the campus.
That's something to explore given the significant crisis of affordable housing we have in the city.
As a public agency owning land, it would be critical for us to look under every rock to figure out how to contribute both to closing the health disparity gap and to continue to build affordable housing on the campus.
The marriage between the Tower, which houses the Seattle Central College job training programs and many nonprofits, and our soon-to-be residential campus is also very critical.
It's not, you know, people come to work and then people come back home.
How do we provide housing for the trainees that are pursuing LI Health careers, dental hygienists and other things?
How do we help them live close to where they work is another great exploration to take advantage of the community preference policies that Council just supported, and the mayor signed, to figure out how we can turn as many affordable housing units in Seattle to the people who work in Seattle, especially lower-income jobs.
So that's another exploration I'd like to take a look at.
And just my follow-up, and it can be anyone who wants to answer, but as the chairwoman was saying, we are finally reaching the point where It's not enough to just have affordable homes that we are working at this now in D5 with non-profit and for-profit developers that pre-K and daycare should not just be an amenity.
That it should be part of the RFP process.
That that should be a sweetener.
You should get extra points when you provide that.
And we want that at our light rail stations.
And the other issue is, thank you so much for in the project and looking forward.
One thing that has not been a foundational block in these units are when we're building is services for our elders.
When we passed MHA, one of the nice byproducts, a gem of that was we got an additional 10,000 square feet in North Haven.
So we could put a medical clinic in there and a dental clinic.
So we're not just servicing the low-income elders in that building, but everyone up in D5 is the only district that does not have a elder community center and has the highest number of SHAG housing.
So I have been pushing the childcare-oriented development.
Is that right?
Yeah.
and pushing the services for elders on the medical and dental side, as well as the housing, so people can age in place.
So thank you so much for, because five years ago, when I used to do this for a living with another, when I was a lawyer, developer, working with tribes and other nonprofits and other for-profits, people always acted like that was just like a extra parking spot or some, like a nice piece of art.
And we were always pushing that, no, people have children.
It can't just be a one bedroom condo.
Two other amenities are going to be in the tower, important life necessities.
PacMed will continue to operate their clinic for primary care and specialty care in the basement and first floor, and NeighborCare Health operates a 20-seat dental operatory in the tower.
So it's going to provide people who live, and it really provides people access in the community, but now for people who move into the new community, whatever we might be calling it in terms of Pacific Tower steps or Pacific Tower Heights They'll have access to those services, too It's also nice to have fair start there which plans to expand its its training program obviously for barbistas and food handlers But also we'll be opening up a larger restaurant, which probably be a grab-and-go, but there'll be places to eat, too Eating is important.
Well, we also want to ask Robert about being on the sale men's cars.
Oh, I Thank you.
I'm in my 29th year of singing.
I thought you were going to break out in song in a moment.
We are doing Cher this weekend, so look for a lot of fun at McCarvel.
That's right.
Actually, I saw.
I did see that.
It's Hell Week.
Yes, so actually, I've been on the board for two different cycles there and president of the board over the years as well.
So that is one of my other nonprofit passions.
President?
Good question.
First of all, I want to thank Robert Doersch for serving.
I certainly look forward to voting for you.
You are formidable talents in what you've done for communities and in the housing world so that that's a no-brainer.
Jeff, you said something I just didn't understand and I wanted to come back to it and you said very quickly that The PDA doesn't accept funds from, and you said some sources, like we don't accept something, corporate funds.
Can you say what you were saying about that?
Many other organizations, including several PDAs, accept government funds.
We don't.
Our only source of income is the rental on the the tower.
Now the rental is paid for by the Department of Commerce, so technically one could say that is governmental in nature, but in the past it's been Amazon.com, so the only source of income the PDA has is through that rental income.
But the exception with the north lot, we're going to start You're going to get money from both the state and the city, hopefully.
Those monies will be going right now, Councilperson Harrell, to SCIPTA to help develop the site.
So we received some pre-development money from the state transit-oriented development bond funds.
Those came from King County and also from the historic South Downtown PDA.
Those allowed us basically to purchase the lease.
I see.
I just, it was just, I didn't understand the model.
I apologize.
No, no, no, no apologies necessary.
We're looking at, we formed PDAs and now we're looking on a state level forming another PDA for another building and I'm trying to understand better how these PDA models work.
The other sort of just question I had is, do you think with the development of North Quad at all, how might that either positively or negatively impact your ability to still give the nimble grants or the major grants?
Will that strain it a little bit, or do you anticipate it having any effect at all?
I'm hoping it doesn't.
One of the key Tenants that the board discussed when we move forward with this was that our grant making was sacrosanct We did not want to touch the grant making it was when as we described at the PDA We are not an either-or we're not doing health equity granting or doing housing.
We are both and so certainly every time we look at a decision in terms of what we're doing on the north lot and It is with the sense of how do we make sure that we safeguard all of our grants.
We're right now in the process, as I said, of developing a lease with Skipta, which will include some ground lease funds, which will certainly help make us whole in terms of future revenue that we might need to make sure the tower stays in one piece and as we develop the rest of the land I don't think we'll be gaining any funding for our grant making from this this project But our goal certainly right now, and I think we're right on target is not to lose funding at all wonderful Yeah, and I've been working with skipped on on the funding piece making a lot of you awesome So I'm very very supportive of what you're trying to do on this North.
Well.
I think that's an exciting opportunity So great look forward to supporting it
And I really echo also the point that Council Member Juarez, Men and Jeff that you added to, which is having child care, health care, and not characterizing them as amenities but life necessities, which well-off communities have very easy access to, but most working people actually have less and less access to.
And if you look at the expenses that people undergo for child care, it basically wipes out one income and a two-income family.
So those are as important as affordable housing and having that sort of well-rounded idea of what makes for a decent life.
So I appreciate all that.
I feel quite satisfied as to the passion of the two individuals we're considering for appointment in terms of their commitment for affordable housing and of the PDA as a whole.
Council members, any further questions or comments?
So, I will go ahead and move appointment 01238, appointment of Robert D. Cook as member Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council for a term to December 31st, 2021. Thank you.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Unanimously passed.
And then item number two, which is appointment 01276, appointment of Doris W. Koo as member Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority governing council for a term to December 31st, 2021. From D5.
Second.
From D5.
You might have to tell the clerk to amend that language.
I should cheer for D7 in here.
So it's been moved and seconded.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Thank you.
Both appointments are unanimously passed by committee.
It will come to council.
Ted, is it next Monday?
Monday next week, rather.
Yes, April 1st.
So you don't need to be there, but I have no doubt that this will be passed by the full council, and I'm really happy that you are going to serve, and congratulations and welcome.
Thanks for all you do for the city.
Thank you.
Very good seeing all of you again.
Thank you, and thank you, Kenny, as well.
Can we drink champagne now?
You can pick up the champagne now.
Outside.
Outside.
Tell me where.
We'll be there.
We already have our cups.
Any other items to come?
Oh, no.
Okay, seeing none, I will adjourn the meeting.
Thank you.