Well, good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you very much for being here with us today.
I'm Teresa Mosqueda, and I'm thrilled to be here with my council colleague, Council Member Morales, as well, and our community panel as we have a discussion about how Seattle can grow more equitably, how we can combat displacement and address the legacy of exclusionary zoning.
We are so excited about the opportunity to have a discussion rooted in community views and ideas as we look ahead at the comprehensive plan that determines our city's zoning and thus our housing policies.
As folks know, this is a long process that actually doesn't end until 2024 for actual comprehensive plan changes.
But those policy ideas have to be developed in 2023. And they really should start with community ideas, which will start in 2022. Our conversation here today in 2021 is to set us up for a more inclusionary conversation, a conversation rooted with community ideas and values at the heart, and one that builds off of the racial equity toolkit analysis that we commissioned in 2018 and was just presented in the Land Use Committee in July of 2021. the indications from that racial equity toolkit compelled us to want to act, to bring together this body today of community partners, to make sure that we're doing a deep dive analysis of what that racial equity toolkit said.
And the takeaway was clear, that we need a both and approach.
We need to both address racial equity and discrimination that is rooted in our exclusionary zoning policies and we must address displacement that has disproportionately affected our communities of color, our lowest wage workers.
We can do this both and approach.
I am optimistic that with the data in hand and really led by the community voices and the qualitative information that came from robust community conversations, that if we start a conversation today, we can both address exclusionary zoning policies and tackle displacement that has affected our communities of color.
That starts, I think, with you all in the community.
So Council Member Morales, I'll turn it over to you for opening comments and save some of my other remarks for later in the discussion.
Terrific, well, thank you so much Council Member Morales.
No, that's me, Council Member Mosqueda.
I wanna thank the panelists who have joined us today and really thank you to all of the constituents who have joined us and really taken time out of your schedules to join this discussion.
Your involvement in this work is critical.
If we're going to really be able to assess what community is asking for, and it's important that we hear from our neighbors, This community engagement is really key to developing policy that works not for community, but with community.
So I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for co-hosting this alongside me today.
It's this kind of collaboration that allows us as policymakers to really bring forth the best kind of policy for our constituents.
It's really important, I think, that we both see our offices as a conduit for hearing from your great ideas, about your great ideas, and bringing them into the policymaking arena.
My hope for today is that folks walk away from this discussion with a greater understanding of anti-displacement and community investment ideas, but also that folks are energized to fight for more affordable housing, our neighbors, and for more investments in the kind of workforce development, small business support, and other policies that can really help communities thrive.
We know that people in our city deserve a living wage.
deserve housing security, deserve a community where they can walk to the doctor, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store, and really want and deserve options for how to invest in their sort of hyper-local community.
And that's what comprehensive planning can help us do.
I think it's important to give context for how Council Member Mosqueda and I want to frame this discussion.
We know that black and brown communities have historically been left out of decision-making processes.
And we know that historically policy decisions have been done to these communities instead of being done with these communities.
We know that our racist housing policies like redlining and like the urban village strategy really have kept people from building generational wealth.
And we know the way in which Seattle has grown in the last decade has also pushed people of color out of our city.
much faster and to a much greater degree than our white neighbors have been pushed out.
We know this.
So as we begin to strategize about what our next comprehensive plan looks like, how we right those wrongs, racial equity must be front and center in these discussions.
Prosperity and preservation of our black and brown communities must be front and center in these conversations.
So that's why we really have to look at the comp plan in a very holistic way.
It's not just about housing or just about jobs or land use policy.
It's all of those things together and they intersect and they affect all of us in similar ways.
If you push one lever, it affects something else.
So that's why this whole system, holistic, comprehensive planning process is so important.
So I'm really excited about starting this conversation with all of you today.
As we've both said, this is the beginning of a years-long process, but we thought it was really important to start it right by engaging with community, by acknowledging that our focus is gonna be on centering racial equity throughout this process, and really allowing us to envision together just what an equitable comprehensive plan could look like.
So with that, I'm going to ask each of our panelists to quickly introduce yourselves, and then I'm going to ask Ab to set the stage for us quickly.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for the invitation to be here.
I am Maria Guadalupe Ramirez, and I'm the chair of the Duwamish Valley Affordable Housing Coalition.
I also have the honor to be working with the Duwamish on the parking lot expansion project, which was funded by the UBI fund as well.
And we talk about our organization here now.
And so the Duwamish Valley Affordable Housing Coalition has identified three strategies to address displacement.
And I think the one that I'd really like to talk about the most today is preservation.
But before I do, I'll say the other two.
One is new affordable housing.
And we're really grateful to the city for supporting some new affordable housing that will be coming to South Park in a few years.
And then we also have an initiative for a multi-purpose building, a public space for opportunities to learn, economic development, just bringing the community together, perhaps housing the food bank, the senior center, the Duwamish.
And so we're really excited about that project.
But today I want to say, recently I was talking to someone about preservation and I don't think we were like talking about the same thing.
So I thought I'd say what I see preservation as.
And what I see preservation as is, you know, I work with the Latino community and in South Park area, I'm always amazed at how long folks have lived in their apartments, like 15, 20, 30 years.
And right now they're so fearful that their buildings will be sold.
And so for me, preservation is how can we find a new way to have resident owned communities where they can preserve their housing, create an affordable house, opportunity for home ownership and it's permanently affordable and so that to me is preservation.
Preserve what housing is already here.
It's green and for me it makes sense.
So that's what I want to talk about most today.
Thank you so much.
That's terrific.
Thank you.
Curtis, you want to go next?
I'm Curtis Brown.
I'm with the Brighton Development on the corner of Holly and Rainier.
We have about five acres of land that we're developing and adding housing there.
I grew up in the walk to meeting in the Madison Valley when you shouldn't walk in the valley.
Then I went to Garfield and then I lived South here in Hillman City, then Columbia City.
So I've actually got to watch displacement happen specifically.
over almost 50 years.
So it's a real passion.
I've watched it happen.
Currently, we're working on our anti-displacement plan is to develop a $100 million capital stack.
So we're working with banks, foundations, the city, entrepreneurs, and we're developing a stack of capital that everybody can access to purchase as much property as possible to fight back Our goal is actually to reverse the demographic changes that are occurring in the Brighton neighborhood.
Again, we just switched our name to the Brighton Development Group because we're actually working with seven or eight for-profit entrepreneurs that are Black that are actually doing anti-displacement work.
And so we want to be able to use our nonprofit to not only do our work, but to also facilitate Black ownership and Black entrepreneurship in their process of increasing community wealth.
So it's really exciting to see that we already have a Black entrepreneur that is developing ownership teams among African-Americans in Southeast Seattle.
And our goal is really stepping back as a nonprofit, but facilitating those through the capital stack to make sure that they can access the capital they need to change.
That's great.
Thank you, Curtis.
We lost you again for just a second.
I find sometimes that if I turn off my camera, it helps me, although I know that's a challenge here.
Andrea, do you want to introduce yourself?
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you today.
I'm Andrea Rae and I'm the president CEO of the Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce.
And as a regional chamber, our focus is absolutely on economic development, education and workforce development and support for our local businesses and community members.
Housing, of course, is a crucial key component for economic development.
We all know we need more housing, all housing types, but we also know that displacement doesn't just impact residents.
It also impacts our small neighborhood shops and businesses as well.
Businesses serve as key community hubs and lend themselves to the fabric and vibrancy of the neighborhood.
Much of our work with commercial affordability, housing, and anti-displacement strategies centers the needs of our community First, helping to work directly with the businesses and, of course, advocate for policies that create more opportunity and less hardship within our economic ecosystem.
And that means we're thinking creatively about finding solutions to these challenges.
Things like land trusts, public-private partnerships.
It's great to hear Curtis talk about some of the things that he's doing.
These are all great examples of solutions that we've seen work effectively within our community.
And we hope to continue to see and support more community-led creative solutions to help guard against displacement and create more economic equity.
And that's why we're here, and we're so happy to help support and continue the conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Andrea.
And Ab, let's go ahead and introduce yourself.
Thank you, Council Member.
I am Ab.
I'm a community planner, policy analyst, and community organizer.
I'm a program manager at Puget Sound SAGE in our Just Transition Infrastructure Program.
At SAGE, we chart a path to a living economy by developing community power to influence, lead, and govern.
And we work at the intersections of racial justice, and economic justice to advance climate justice, equitable development of land and transportation, and worker rights through community-based participatory research, coalition organizing, policy advocacy, and leadership development.
At SAGED, we envision a living economy where BIPOC workers, families, and communities thrive, and where we live in a sustainable relationship with our land.
And our work on displacement has been focused on community stewardship of land as a solution.
We've been organizing Seattle BIPOC community organizations to create opportunities for community control of land and homes to prevent displacement, preserve affordability, and create resilient communities.
We do that through our advocacy around equitable development initiative, Green New Deal, And in our Just Transition infrastructure program, we focus on building the new, where we can put in place a policy and resources we need to achieve collective ownership of land and housing.
And we see this in the context of the public health crisis that we're in.
As we think about equitable recovery and community resiliency, we need to think about that in our city's growth.
And for us, that looks like making deep investments in the self-determination of BIPOC communities and in supporting community-driven solutions to addressing institutional harms of displacement and the possessions that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
Thank you.
Well, Ab, I'm going to ask you to stay with us for a couple more minutes.
So I know that Puget Sound SAGE provided capacity building through the racial equity, the community engagement process with your COMP Plan 101 training.
And through that, you were able to connect with community stakeholders, particularly those who have been impacted by structural and institutional discrimination and racism when it comes to planning issues.
So, given this work, we wanted to ask you to help ground us, ground this conversation in the kinds of things that you heard through these trainings.
So, I'm going to ask you a couple questions.
How can we ground this discussion, particularly about the comp plan, in ways that are more accessible and inclusive for folks, particularly those who are impacted and who want to engage throughout the next couple of years in the process?
And so maybe, you know, if somebody is just moving to Seattle today, I will ask, what would you tell them about what they need to know to understand planning in Seattle?
Thank you for those questions.
We know that a comprehensive plan is a guiding document that articulates how a place and its community will grow in the future.
And planning happens at different levels of government, but it's often led by planning practitioners.
Historically, the city's comprehensive planning is something that is done to our communities with little participation from our people.
And so as we think about combating displacement and addressing the legacy of exclusionary zoning, we need to center equity in our community engagement in planning for how our city grows.
Like we should be truly clear on what is at stake in a comprehensive plan.
If our communities are not leading the planning, someone else is doing it for them.
And so we cannot underplay the impacts of a comprehensive plan.
It's not an easy process.
It should not be rushed.
Ultimately, this is about the health and welfare of our city and communities.
Simply holding large gatherings and expecting conversations by bringing together diverse groups will not be enough.
As we think about land ownership, economic disparity, language barriers that create power differentials at these gatherings, that never really results in the needs of BIPOC communities being met.
So people need to be engaged in their own context and supported through a community-led planning process, which doesn't have to be too long or too drawn out, but it has to be real and without recreating the power asymmetry that is already in place.
And so community-led planning is a participatory process that ensures there is meaningful community engagement in the development of a community plan, or in this context, or this context, our comprehensive plan.
It's an alternative to how traditional planning only asks for input instead of really engaging throughout the entire planning process.
And so we believe in the capacity of our communities to lead an engagement, hopefully, by building their capacity through these trainings and leadership development opportunities.
And these new opportunities for our community partners, we see that as a way to empower and really lift up the already existing assets in the communities and how we can build up and leverage the city's resources to further a community vision that is already in place.
Well, thank you very much for that summary.
And thank you, Councilmember Morales, for introducing our esteemed panelists here today.
Thank you, community, for being here, not only with us today, but as we help set the course for righting these historic wrongs.
for making sure that our footprint of the city stops shrinking where we can develop affordable housing and inclusive housing and instead actually lives up to its commitment to being an inclusive and welcoming city.
So thank you very much.
ABB provided a summary of how to orient ourselves to why this issue is so important.
And I think that that is so critical as I've had a few people ask me recently, well, why does this matter?
There's so many people who have moved here in the last three to five years.
So that level setting is important.
Ab, I want to thank you and Puget Sound SAGE as well for doing that type of orientation at the community-focused roundtables that accompanied the racial equity toolkit.
My understanding is Puget Sound SAGE helped to orient folks at the beginning of these community meetings about what was at stake and why we were doing this process that Ab just outlined, and really rooted those conversations in what the comprehensive plan did.
And I think very briefly, just to ground us as well in terms of what the report showed, The report that came out of those conversations that Abb and others at Puget Sound SAGE and community participated in showed that it was clear that BIPOC communities and our communities who are lowest wage workers and most vulnerable were at the most risk if we didn't change the status quo.
Participants said, according to the racial equity toolkit, that the BIPOC communities have suffered the most from insufficient housing supply, from lack of choice and lack of affordability.
The urban village strategy they concluded from these community roundtable discussions were seen by many as perpetuating a historical pattern of exclusionary zoning, and it should be examined and revised to be more racially equitable and inclusive in the next plan update.
It concluded that changing single family zoning to allow for more housing types could benefit BIPOC communities by reducing market and displacement pressures, by increasing access to high opportunity neighborhoods and amenities, and creating more options for homeownership.
And participants observed that under the current urban village strategy that I've just outlined and explained in these community round tables, that displacement and actual and threatened displacement had severely impacted BIPOC communities, household businesses, and nonprofits.
That cultural anchors were also impacted by displacement pressure.
All of that speaks to what Council Member Morales talked about, which is creating a sense of place and making sure that we're looking at economic opportunities as well as housing opportunities, cultural ways that we can thrive as well as make sure that we have the housing to survive.
And some of the participants in these forums cited the contributing factor of the exclusionary policies and displacement is the fact that they were shut out of neighborhoods and confined to areas that are now targeted for development and that we must look towards the plan for both an anti-displacement strategy and creating a growth strategy that emphasizes a range of tools, including creating more affordable housing, community preference, and creating household and community wealth being.
So with that recommendation in mind, with the ground setting that Abj is provided for us, we have a set of questions that we will ask.
And colleagues, we are going to have this little timer here just to try to keep us on time.
But the blue screen will appear when we're hoping that you'll wrap it up.
And this is not intended to be disrespectful because you have so much important things to share.
But to help us get through this conversation so that we can also field a few community questions that we know will come in.
The first question, and we're going to go through each of the panelists if you want to try to provide your feedback.
in two minutes, that would be great, and we will make sure that everybody gets a chance to rotate through, starting with Maria, then we'll go to Ab, then Curtis, and Andrea.
The first question is, the Racial Equity Toolkit calls for policies that increase housing and neighborhood choice to create more accessible, plentiful, and diverse housing opportunities.
across our city, and it states the city must end the prevalence of single family zoning, quote, with a, quote, racially inclusive approach, end quote.
What does it mean to have a racially inclusive approach to zoning?
And how can the city create more housing choices for our communities while centering BIPOC communities most impacted by these historic wrongs when we think about enacting that racially inclusive zoning approach?
Again, we'll start with Maria.
Thank you.
I hope you can all hear me okay.
That's a big question.
And for me, I was going to focus on some areas because I'm actually not sure if the comprehensive plan focuses on zoning, lending, and land use, if that's where we already know that the city can influence most.
So I'm going to talk about those areas.
For me, the city's doing it.
They're centering the BIPOC community the way their approach has been with SAGE.
And so I'm really encouraged to see that because you really need to connect the people with the problem and have them talk about it and think about it.
And so for zoning, I guess we have to also focus on the first wrong, which is that we're on stolen land.
This is the land of the Coast Salish people, the Duwamish called the river their home.
That's where they came from.
And so I think the first wrongs in zoning probably were from the beginning.
And so it's not just what happened after folks decided they wanted to have exclusive communities or exclude people.
So I think the zoning is just knowing how we're going to do that.
And so then lending, I know a lot of people I encounter the whole I-10, not being able to get a loan to buy a home.
And how can we make lending more fair and not having this be another feeding frenzy?
and that people are going to, as an option, because there's few options, they'll go to banks with higher interest because they'll take the ITIN.
So I think protection of consumers.
And then financial education.
Folks really don't know what it means to run up a credit card, how they're going to pay it back.
How do we inform the community to make better choices in how they manage the money they do have?
And so those are just a few of the ideas that came to my head.
Thanks.
Fantastic.
I love the lending component as well.
Next is Ab.
Thank you.
I think, yeah, as we think about access and what racially inclusive approach to zoning would look like, we must also reverse the exclusion from the finance tools and subsidies by the government, building then sort of housing won't help if BIPOC households can't get financing or the subsidies they need to make this purchase or rent.
And, you know, you could imagine a Seattle where multifamily developments sprout up in single family zone areas, but are still so expensive that accessing BIPOC communities are not able to afford them.
So we could look for our zoning tools.
I've heard earlier someone mentioned about how a community land trust can help mitigate displacement because we can imagine single family zoning areas being zoned for denser development that will create housing development is stewarded by community land trust and ensure that the transitions from non-single-family zoning is centered on these low-access households.
Thank you very much.
Next will be Curtis.
And Curtis, we are coming through looking good right now.
So we'll let you know if we can't hear you.
OK, great.
Quickly, I think what I like to do is just talk about what we're working on are innovative ideas, like small, tiny houses, rethinking our zoning.
So it would be great to have something as simple as where a number of council members and some of us who are working on innovative projects met monthly, and we're able to have a working group to work on those.
Example is we were working on a tiny house project and we had someone from land use and we were asking about sewer connections.
Well, that's very expensive.
And we asked the land, well, is there any flexibility?
And I started asking, is there any, how did you come to that decision?
And they said, well, and that was the answer.
Well, and it's the realization that there's a lot of power down in that office and to have, your team, we're working with our teams on these type of issues.
And so we can fast track zoning issues.
We can fast track some of the innovations so we can test and try new ideas because we're running out of time.
So speed is of the essence.
Any changes we make has to be speed related.
Every day lost is two or three families lost.
So that's all I want to say on that.
It's a great idea.
Thank you.
And Andrea.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's great going last, because I can just say everything Curtis and Ab and Maria said.
I think, again, it starts with what you said earlier, Council Member Mosqueda, in your opening remarks, that this is a both and conversation, and it starts first with community.
And I think that that's truly how so many of these complex problems are solved, is being inclusive with our solution finding.
Again, you know, Ab discussed how important it is to provide that alternative to how traditional planning works.
Again, just kind of flipping the script and instead of saying, hey, here's the plan, you know, give us your input.
We're saying, we think we need a plan.
What do you suggest?
Right?
And really engaging the community, you know, first and empowering the community, you know, to be able to participate in the process and giving the community the tools to be able to do that.
As mentioned, the power dynamics are different, and we need to shift those up so that there's trust and there's comfort within that process.
And again, the financial literacy piece, like Maria mentioned, how important it is to train the trainer.
There are programs available.
There are things that are working, but the lack of those programs working and working well often is just by not connecting the people that need those programs the most to being able to utilize those programs.
So community navigator programs, the idea, like Curtis said, of creating a cohort.
Can we meet quarterly and talk about this?
Hey, this worked in my project, but this didn't work.
OK, well, I'm going to take that and apply that to my project.
The more we can build in that collaboration, the more we can build in the efficiencies, and then the more work we're able to get done, we're able to get done together.
Thank you.
I've taken a lot of notes on even just this first question.
So thank you so much.
I'll turn it over to you, Council Member Morales.
Thank you.
I love what you're saying, Andrea and Curtis, about allowing these cohorts to come together to learn from one another, to troubleshoot together, and really increase everyone's capacity to understand how you do these projects well by learning from from your neighbors.
So we're obviously sort of reacting, responding to the racial equity analysis report that recently came out of OPCD.
And one of the things that the report recommends is increasing the supply of affordable housing, particularly units that are community controlled.
to ensure kind of long-term affordability, and also to consider developing a fund to support acquisition of units whose affordability is expiring, and able to use those units for community land trusts, for cooperative home ownership models, along with other affordable home ownership opportunities, and particularly in neighborhoods that are currently zoned for single family.
So you've all mentioned a few ideas in general that the city could be doing, but I wonder if you could talk about the role that the city could play in creating, really creating community controlled housing, community ownership models that are affordable, ownership models that are affordable to low and middle income families, particularly as we're trying to combat decades of you know, historic redlining and the displacement that we've seen.
Maybe I will ask, maybe we will go in the same order.
Maria, if you want to go first.
And again, if you all want to, don't want to answer this particular question or any of these questions and feel like you just want to pass, that's also fine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, council member.
Well, we've been struggling with this idea of community ownership in the coalition since we formed.
And when we first started out, we were told we couldn't create our own land trust.
And then now it sounds like we are, folks are.
And so for me, we need more understanding of what it takes to create a land trust and If that's really about the question, the question, let me see, it's loaded because there's a lot in here.
Creating community control housing.
Well, it's about the acquisition of those expiring units.
So that seems to be the biggest opportunity right now that we're seeing.
And so it's, again, it's about connecting the people to this and looking at the, it's not a problem, but you look at it and you have to analyze it and tear it apart.
And I love the idea of a fund to support the acquisition of expiring units.
I mean, that's preservation.
And so I've been asking for a revolving fund for preservation so that folks, because the first barrier to all of this is getting the land, the site control.
And so that's already, if there's already property that's under some agreement right now, and it could be moved over, then fantastic, because the biggest hurdle is a bunch of folks find out their building's going for sale, how are they going to compete in the market to buy it?
How are they going to come together with the pro forma and the lending?
They don't know what they don't know.
And we know that.
And so how can we make it possible in different scenarios to help folks come together and do this?
Because it's a vision.
I see it in legislation.
But I don't know if anyone's actually pulled it off yet here in Seattle.
So that's my only thing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Chris, you've probably thought about that particular challenge quite a bit.
What are your thoughts?
You're muted.
As you know, I'm 24-7 on this.
Our issue is access to capital.
And I could talk on, again, all of our work is around developing this $100 million capital stack.
So not only our nonprofit, but our entrepreneurs in the neighborhood.
And so we're working with all these different groups of the stack to make sure that everyone knows how to get the capital they need.
However, the question I think is in the context of the city.
What I really like the city to look at is where are they are parking all their money and investments.
And I think one of the issues that hasn't been talked about much is There are hundreds of million dollars coming in and it's going right back out, but there is that interim cash flow.
And one of the issues that we all deal with is liquidity.
So one of the issues I think that we could really look at is how we can access those dollars on short term for short term property acquisition until we can get our interim financing and then our permanent financing in place.
So I think we should really look at how city's investing this money and how we can do that.
Then what we can do with the banks is that money that could be seen as guarantees to the banks.
So we could really leverage the money that's coming in in a way that's kind of a big time process.
And I think the other part that I'd just quickly like to say, I would like to see the city require all nonprofits to have a crowdfunding aspect to all of their affordable housing.
and make property ownership part of doing business in Seattle.
The community who has been kept out of ownership needs to be a priority of making sure that they are.
So I would make crowdfunding a key part of all projects.
Nice.
OK, very good.
Andrea?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, yeah, I think similar, right?
I mean, it does come down, you know, to the money and it comes down, you know, to the resources.
And so, the city does have a unique leadership position, you know, within this framework and this model because the city can be the primary convener and the, you know, primary instigator for helping to, you know, share resources and leverage those resources for the benefit of the project, right?
Um, we can kind of go out of this, um, you know, the traditional landscape of, you know, either it's a land trust or, you know, it's, uh, M F T E or, you know, it's, uh, development agreements that reduce, um, different impact fees, et cetera, et cetera.
But again, we go back to the, um, you know, yes.
And right.
You know, how can we create more liquidity?
How can we have the city serve in that leadership role, especially as it relates to financing and land acquisition so that these projects can pencil more quickly and include more of the equity and the ownership piece so we can really start to create more of the generational wealth that we know home ownership is so key to that generational wealth and to breaking the cycles of poverty within our community.
Great, thank you so much.
Ab?
I think I'll just add that, you know, like the, as I mentioned around the context of being in a pandemic, the city has the resources to remove land and housing from the speculative market, especially those with expiring affordability subsidies.
These acquisition and preservation funds are critical.
And investing in infrastructures that enable these cooperative models of ownership, whether that's in the form of real estate cooperatives or funding land trust incubators, but ensuring that there is a program that provides technical assistance to really build the capacity of community organizations to not just engage, but actually lead the process.
Great, thank you.
That's what we're here to talk about, right, is how do we build capacity within communities so that these can be led by community, not just in terms of coming up with the ideas, but in sharing power, access to power and access to resources so that these community-led projects can be community-driven projects as well.
Thank you all for that really insightful information.
Council Member Mosqueda, I will pass it back to you.
Thank you so much.
I am on page two of note-taking, so this is very exciting.
And it's also reaffirming, right?
Many people have been saying this for a number of years, so we're all packaging it together in terms of talking about the menu of policy ideas.
So question number three, and I'm going to drop it into the chat as well so folks can see that.
We are talking a lot about the fact that this racial equity toolkit and the Office of Planning Commission's report that was shared in Councilmember Strauss' Committee on Land Use.
And just for a quick second, I want to thank Councilmember Strauss.
He's been a huge champion of this conversation as well.
He couldn't join us today, but has been at the forefront of also making sure that the conversation is present in his committee.
So I want to thank him and his team.
But the reality from that presentation, as we looked at sort of analyzing the growth strategy, It was a growth strategy centered on a plan that came together in 1994, when the population was 500,000 people.
And flash forward to today, we've seen the population grow by over 50% of that number.
We're at over about 780,000 people in the city of Seattle.
And that strategy from 94 is supposed to be determining how we have job growth, how we have housing that's built, how we support our businesses, And it's supposed to be centering community and equity and racial inclusion in the policy.
But I think the reality was that this strategy of an urban village plan that was purported to have racial equity and sustainability at the forefront, the reality is what we've seen over the last 40 years is that the housing affordability crisis has worsened.
Displacement crisis has worsened.
Homelessness has continued to increase.
which is a direct result from the lack of affordable housing and the legacy of discriminatory policies.
So I think with that sort of historical grounding on when this policy document was created and how it's supposed to inform our very different landscape today, what would a truly equitable and sustainable climate resilient growth system look like?
What are some of the pillars that you would like to see around equity and sustainability and climate resilience when we think about building the next growth plan.
Oh, excuse me.
And why don't we shake it up?
I'll start with Ab first, and then we'll go to Curtis, and then we'll go to Andrea and Maria.
So, Ab, do you want to get us started?
Communities already have a vision for how they want their neighborhood to grow, and it should not have to take decades before a neighborhood plan is taken action on.
The city should be directing resources to support these community-led solutions that grow the capacity of neighborhoods to be resilient.
Take, for example, the Grand Street Equitable Transit Oriented Development.
It is a community-driven vision for the future in preparation for the light rail.
We need to make sure that the city is reflecting this effort in its plan for growth.
There are many communities like the Grand Street neighborhood, especially in the South, that are doing the groundwork in organizing their communities to learn about community real estate, to learn about energy justice work, energy efficient infrastructure.
And so the city already has existing resources.
We need to keep investing in those.
Equitable Development Initiative is a resource in Seattle that has moved a lot of the community-driven mission in the city, and supporting programs like Green New Deal that addresses climate and the future of job growth in the city.
We have the policies in place, and we just need to continue building on those and leveraging existing resources.
Thank you so very much.
We'll go to Curtis next.
I'm going to pass for the most part, but I do want to say on just on the sustainability piece, having lived in Seattle my whole life, I'm concerned of my work that sometimes green might blunt black.
And so we have people that are down in the city that are very green focused, but live in these white communities.
And sometimes they don't think about cost and different things.
I think it's really important.
that there's an understanding of the impact of some of the sustainability when we use that word, especially in an environmental context, that we're not creating solutions that increase displacement.
And that's just a genuine concern that I have.
So green should not blunt black.
And so that's just how I just wanted to say that.
OK, interesting.
That might prompt some more questions later.
So thank you for sharing that.
And I would love to talk more about how we expedite green building as well for folks who are trying to create this more sustainable housing as well.
Andrea, do you want to take us off on your ideas on this question?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I'll just say that there will always be discussions surrounding what constitutes success, right?
You know, I'm sure that those discussions happened in 1994, right?
Here we are in 2021, we'll be here again in 2041, right?
However, what remains constant is that focusing and centering community to lead and define what success looks like, you know, really is that key component.
And again, you know, wealth disparity has also not decreased since 1994. We've definitely seen that wealth gap continue to increase.
And of course, that impacts housing with lower skilled and underemployed workers living further away from employment centers and spending time commuting that they could be spending on learning new skills.
And it all contributes to a cycle of poverty that we see played out in our community with families working multiple minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
Seattle is an expensive place to live.
And so I go back to, again, what are we doing to increase housing?
Yes.
So that workers can live closer to their jobs?
Yes.
And how are we investing in education and workforce programs?
Are we communicating with our young people that a career in the trades is a lifestyle where you can provide for your family and end those cycles of poverty?
So those are a couple of my key thoughts and takeaways.
Excellent.
Thank you.
And Maria.
Hello, everybody.
Well, I thought I'd take my affordable housing hat off and put my education advocate hat on.
Because for me, a vision, true equity, sustainability, climate resistance, we have to have folks who've gone through school and are educated and can make, can vote, you know, based on what they understand and not what they're told.
And I think it's a big, you know, like what I noticed with most urban villages is they don't draw on the school.
Schools are so important.
They're part of the community.
They're what make up, they're the infrastructure for young families.
That's how they connect.
And we're missing so much of human capacity by not engaging the parents more, the families, the kids more into civic engagement.
It's an old fashioned idea, this civic engagement.
I feel like it is.
I mean, I went to my first, volunteered at my first election when I was 15. You know, it was in my neighborhood and I went there.
And so, You know, it's just part of what we need to all visualize.
We need to harness this human capacity that we have, that we're missing out in.
We've got folks here who speak so many different languages, and yet they come here to learn English.
And we need to appreciate bilingualism and multilingualism and all the culture that comes with them.
It's so interesting now.
In the old days, it was a melting pot.
And then it became like this hot salad.
And I don't know what it is now.
You know, we're each having our own soup.
And so we got to figure out how we're going to maintain who we are, really understand who we are to feel comfortable knowing where I am.
Why do I look the way I do?
Where do I come from?
Why am I here?
And understand others.
And I think it's just basically all founded in a good education.
And that's a huge job.
And I don't know what the city sees their role as.
improving the outcomes of Seattle Public Schools.
But you know I sure hope that there's something in the plan that could help that.
Thank you.
I love all of these answers.
And I think that it also gets to the intersectionality of the need for us to harness the energy and the expertise within community that you all are displaying today and look through that intersectional lens at how we address the crisis of lack of housing supply, lack of affordable housing and the ways in which we're creating a sense of place to make it more than just a roof and a door.
which we absolutely need for folks, but then it needs to be so much more.
So I love all those answers and the way that they intersect as well.
Kazima Morales, I'll turn to you for our last set of questions.
Great, thank you so much.
Well, I love the focus on education, and I really also love what you were saying, Andrea, about our need to also consider workforce development, right?
So part of what the equity reports indicated was that we also need to foster a more equitable workforce development system.
I sit on the Economic Development District Board of the PSRC, and they recently commissioned a report on what an equitable economy looks like, what we need to do to really move in that direction.
And what we know is that the data pre-COVID is alarming, but not surprising, that the Seattle area ranks in the bottom third of large metropolitan areas for Black and Hispanic representation in tech jobs and in management roles.
And only 8% of high growth firms in the city are owned by people of color, despite the fact that they represent 35% of the workforce.
So I'm really interested in thinking about not just housing and land use policy, not just land use policy as it relates to housing, but what it means for preserving affordable commercial space, supporting small businesses, So can you all talk about the strategies that you might recommend be included in the comp plan so that we can center access to high growth workforce opportunities, to progressive wealth building opportunities, and for, you know, kind of thriving commercial corridors, as well as long-term affordable housing for folks who have been, who are in neighborhoods and communities that have historically been excluded.
Let's see, I'm going to, Andrea, I'll start with you and then ask Ab to go next.
Perfect, thank you so much, Council Member.
Again, I think we're on, as a chamber, on that forefront of providing that technical assistance to so many businesses.
And the pandemic just really showed us the disparities in our community.
And one of those greatest disparities, and I think a place where the city could hopefully really lean in and leverage some support, is with digital literacy.
Digital literacy, access to internet, broadband.
We saw very quickly how businesses and community members that did not have digital literacy skills or access to the internet were immediately, you know, so far behind, you know, others, you know, who did have that.
Another key element would be the support services, you know, services such as, you know, childcare.
And again, the expansion of apprenticeship programs so that workers can earn while they learn, investing in that technical assistance and the community navigator program so that we can prioritize the access to get to the people that really need it.
that that really should be front and center.
So again, the idea of investing in digital literacy, digital upskilling, supporting that more agile workplaces so that more businesses are able to take on younger apprentices, internship programs, a comprehensive approach to retraining, expanding apprenticeship programs, I think that really is huge.
I'll save my suggestion for year-round school, maybe for another panel another time.
But we need more access and we need more support.
Thank you.
Well, as the mother of two kids in public school, I fully support year-round school.
Maybe for different reasons, but anyway.
Maria Guadalupe, please.
Me?
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Sorry about that.
I thought it was that.
For me, I was just going to talk more recently about my experience.
Did you lose me?
There we go.
Am I here?
Go.
Please go ahead.
Yeah.
All right.
I was going to talk about my experience with the maritime and industrial work that I did.
I can't remember the formal name of the group, but we looked at the Ballard areas and Soto, South Park, Georgetown areas.
And those areas are just, talk about low-hanging fruit.
I mean, there's space there that we need to make affordable for folks or make it safe for the industry that's there still to continue doing what they do in a safe, clean way.
And I thought maybe I'm bringing in other subjects, but they didn't really want to consider affordable housing in that area.
And so we sort of like, they wanted to put a little placeholder there and say, let's talk about that next time.
And so there wasn't a lot of support for people who work in the industrial area to have affordable housing there.
But I think talk about sustainability and green, you know, shorter commute to your work, and not just commuting by car, but having the bus transportation and walking and bike trails to get to work.
And so I'm just going to look at my notes real quick.
That's really where that's all about.
Progressive wealth building to me means long term community ownership of land.
And so I think you're addressing that with the community land trust and long term affordable housing.
I think it's putting it where it's needed and have a variety of AMI of annual area median income so that it's more a mix and not so exclusive as it has been.
And I think, again, turning back to the original people who lived here and the use of land and the land that they lost, acknowledging that and how we're going to make that right.
If that's what the city wants to do, if that's what the community agrees to, if we're going to look at historically excluded people, we have to start there.
and then look at the BIPOC communities, you know, the black communities and the immigrant communities that come in after them.
So it's a huge job.
And thank you very much for inviting me to the conversation.
I know it's just the start.
So I hope that helps them.
Thanks.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Why don't we have you go next and Curtis can bring us home with that one.
Thanks.
I'll just speak on what Maria has also brought up about community ownership of land.
We really need to build the power of BIPOC communities to self-determine, increase their autonomy by establishing policies or increasing resources that the city already has to ensure that community organizations have the capacity to support residents in their neighborhoods.
And I think that legitimizing these community efforts as within the context of comprehensive planning is also critical.
We need to prioritize community-led planning, centering these impacted stakeholders.
And I think of One example is such as the International Special Review District, where a board of community stakeholders are able to review development projects.
We feel that communities need more of like a community planning board to be able to hold the city and developers accountable in how we build our city up.
Great, thank you.
Go ahead, Curtis.
Okay, well, I'm going to stick with progressive wealth building since that's my piece.
I really like the city to really start working on the idea of us having our own crowdfunding portal.
I know you're looking at community investment trust, but I think a crowdfunding portal versus that would be A, we get up immediately B, it would increase the number of entrepreneurs in the neighborhood, probably 10, 20 fold.
It would allow them to come together in groups and raise capital in a very simple legal way, which otherwise they're confined by all the issues of LLCs and just all the stuff that we're working through.
We definitely would like to work with this on changing some of the state laws that currently make it difficult.
for nonprofits to issue securities to community members so they can actually be part owners.
We have some of the most restrictive laws of security laws in the country, which prohibits us from raising capital.
I really like us to also look at how we might, how the city gives the granting process.
Everything is high stakes on a certain couple of dates a year.
And what that does is it keeps us from really creating real coalitions and coming up with ideas and getting ongoing continuous funding versus I got to put together a $75,000 grant.
It'd be great to be able to come for a five to 10, have, you know, here's our first part and developing these relationships and developing capacity as we need it, not on a high stakes, half a million dollar or half stake, $50,000 grant.
I really like to think of it as, as continuously in investments.
and more of a partnership with the city instead of doling out money.
And ultimately I think I have in the city help encourage nonprofits to see themselves as facilitators of entrepreneurs and ownership in communities versus problem solvers.
I think our nonprofits spend too much time solving problems, not looking for the entrepreneurs in the community and facilitating them to change our communities.
That's great, Curtis.
Thank you so much.
As somebody who was a grant maker and worked in nonprofits for a long time, how we structure our granting process is really troublesome.
And I agree, we really need to be thinking about longer term, more sustained funding rather than very frequent one-off funding that doesn't allow our community organizations to plan.
in any kind of sustainable way for the kinds of programs that we are hoping they fund or set up to serve community best.
So really important points there.
So we are going to move now to audience questions.
We do have a few audience questions.
We also have some reporters who are on the line.
So we're hoping that we have some time to get to some of those questions as well.
But first, I'm going to start by asking one question.
And I don't have the name of the person, so I'll just read the question.
My question is about the role of a public bank to address some of the more creative anti-displacement options that are more common in other cities or other parts of the world.
For example, cooperative models.
Is this something any of you are aware of and are advocating for?
And are there plans to include public banking discussions or current Seattle area lenders in that process?
I will ask our panelists if any of you have something that you want to chime in on here.
Is it Senator Bob Hasegawa?
has been talking about a public bank for quite a few years.
I started going to the meetings early on and there was a promise that there'd be money there for affordable housing.
And I think it's a great idea.
Why are we letting, putting all this money spending at the banks instead it could be recirculated within the economy of the public sector.
And so I'm all for it.
Yes.
Yes.
The public bank is needed.
Thank you.
I saw a lot of heads nod on that answer.
Yes, yes, and yes.
OK, did you want to chime in on this?
Yeah, I'll just add that public bank deters profiteering that we would normally experience with Wall Street banks.
Public bank gives an opportunity to have mission-driven financing institutions.
with their neighborhoods.
Thank you.
And I'll just say, I did see this morning some video, apparently AOC is also talking now about some federal legislation to help support this, the local and statewide efforts across some parts of the country anyway, to start moving in that direction.
So that'll be an interesting conversation to watch.
Council Member Mosqueda, I will hand it off to you.
Great, thanks so much.
And yeah, for folks who are interested in chiming in on the answers, feel free to jump in.
And if you don't really wanna go into the question, that's no problem.
We'll make sure to get more questions up there.
The next question that we have directly relates to something you all were talking about earlier related to the intersectionality of making our communities more thriving.
Let's see, it says, please talk about the connections between housing density, supporting small businesses, environmental justice, and transit options.
Reminds me of some conversations that we've had with a number of you about how we build an infrastructure that makes those connections, including a strong bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
Any thoughts about that?
I'll take a stab at that.
Again, I think it's about creating that holistic ecosystem.
So there's that intersectionality Council Member Mosqueda, the panel that you and I were on talked a lot about, you know, the 12-minute, you know, plan, right, the city's 12-minute plan, which is, you know, within 12 minutes, you know, you can get to work, you can get to school, you can, you know, you can shop, you can get to the doctor, right, you can have recreation, but that everything is easily accessible.
And I think that, again, that same model does approach, and that's what supports small business, and that's what supports that high quality of life that we all want for all of our neighborhoods and all of our community.
When we center community and we talk about what does the community need, what does the market bear, we're able to come up with those really creative, creative plans that are robust and have a high quality of life that include all of those needs.
So I think that that's where it starts.
We all want that.
And going back to how do we create that model?
How do we create that system?
How do we create that plan?
And then going back to some of the other previous conversations, provide that technical assistance and that support.
so that those ideas can really be flourished and stand up on their own.
I'd like to just say that while housing density is part of the solution, I recognize there's other kind of housing, the middle kind of housing, but when it comes to high density housing, like maybe we'll get in South Park, one big building, it is about creating an affordable, commercial space on the first floor.
I could see there's lots of small historic businesses that have been in the area.
So we invite them into the process.
Environmental justice will be part of the design of how it comes to be.
And the pedestrian infrastructure, you know, there is a bus, there are buses along the street.
We will be demanding more bus service in the area, I'm sure in the future, but I'm really Not quite sure how this all fits in with the comp plan, but I think it's a really beautiful vision to see all that come together.
And yeah, that would be my vision, my ideal in working and designing such a building.
Thank you.
I love it.
I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it.
Anyone else?
OK, great.
Well, thank you for those community partner panel questions.
And we do have Joseph Pija, who's been so incredible in helping to figure out the technology to have this live streamed event and to help host this today.
He's with our communications team at the city of Seattle.
So Joseph is going to field a few more questions that came in, it sounds like, from members of the press.
And Joseph, if you want to tee up those questions again, colleagues, feel free to jump in if you have an answer, and we'll try and get to as many as we can.
We have about 10 more minutes for this before we wrap up.
Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.
Our first question from the media comes from Andrew Engelson from the South Seattle Emerald.
He asks, displacement is a huge concern in the South End.
Central District has gone from being 70% Black in 1970 to 15% Black today.
Similar gentrification shifts are happening now in Columbia City and coming soon to the areas near the Othello light rail station and Rainier Beach.
Absent big outlays of funds for affordable housing at state and federal level, What are one or two high-impact steps you believe the city should implement to prevent the displacement failure that happened in the city from happening elsewhere in the South End as it changes zoning and increases density?
Donating surplus properties, converting city-owned golf courses, modifying the incentive zoning program.
Joseph, do you mind dropping that question, if you have it electronically, into the chat as well?
This is the first time We've all had the chance to see that question or hear it.
So I want to make sure folks have the chance to both visually see it.
That always helps me.
There's a lot embedded in that question.
So if folks have thoughts about the inclusivity and the disparity that was noted in the question, we will turn it over to you.
Yeah, I'll take a first stab at it.
Again, we work so closely with businesses with anti-displacement strategies.
And it very much starts with providing that technical assistance and those community navigators.
So from the small business owner's perspective, what do they see?
They get a letter from their landlord that says, you need to move out.
This is happening.
Again, in the normal planning process, it's that reactionary approach.
We need to roll it back further than that so that what the city can do is be more proactive with reaching out to the technical assistance advisors to provide that technical assistance to the businesses that are at risk of displacement.
So it starts with first identifying who are those businesses that are at risk How are we providing them with the technical assistance so that we can guard against displacement?
And then, yes, creating those programs, creating those mechanisms that we can then, if we have to, relocate that business to somewhere else still within the community, within that footprint of the community, or find another way to guard against that displacement.
And so I would say that the first absolute shift is, It's the crisis management because it is a crisis to guard against the displacement and the gentrification that's happening within our communities.
And that first line of defense is having that information and arming that technical assistance advisor to provide that direct assistance to the property owner or to the business so that they know what their options are.
And having a suite of options and services available because It's not a cookie cutter.
Every business is unique and different and we'll have to have unique solutions to truly guard against displacement.
Just taking the question as an emergency question.
I think the first thing I would love the city to do would be just to issue guarantees through a bunch of entrepreneurs without moving cash.
We know property in Seattle isn't going to go down in value.
So there's no risk of actual capital loss at the city.
Just an example, I started going to the banks to say, hey, I might get an SIF grant for $5 million.
I'd like to leverage that by $20 million.
And I would like you to issue me a $5 million line of credit.
and they go, interesting.
Exactly how's that going to work?
What's the collateral?
Well, but it's the house we buy.
Well, no, it's a line of credit, Curtis.
So, that means you have to have collateral before that.
I go, that's ridiculous.
I've done so many loans with you without me having the collateral.
No, no, that's permanent financing, Curtis.
You want a line of credit.
And so, we went on and on that conversation a little bit longer.
I'm trying to talk in their language.
Finally, they say to me, well, maybe we don't take the money out of our commercial money.
Maybe we take it out of our BIPOC money.
And I go, oh, there's BIPOC money.
I didn't know you had a special BIPOC fund.
It'd be nice to know that.
So the real issue is, it's not that the banks don't want to make loans.
They actually are not smart enough to know how to make loans.
And we have to understand that they don't know how to make loans in our communities.
And that really became apparent in the last couple of weeks.
So if we can have the city and other entities do guarantees where we could say, lend us the money, it's guaranteed over here on Seattle property.
I think we can acquire, I mean, literally hundreds of millions of dollars of property with just us understanding that people don't even understand the problem.
Our bankers do not know what this problem is.
They are so used to just making loans that are safe loans for their people.
that they don't know how to think differently.
We need to help them think differently, and the city needs to think differently, and we need to think differently on how to fix this.
Excellent.
And Ab, you put a great resource in the chat.
Did you want to speak to that?
Yes.
We had recently released our community policy brief on disaster gentrification, and some of the Recommendations that we have there include creating opportunity for BIPOC communities to secure land and buildings to preserve affordability by robustly funding acquisition and preservation funds.
We need to preserve existing housing and commercial property that are serving low-income and BIPOC communities.
And we need to continue investing in community-driven and equitable development policies and exploring enabling policies like tenant opportunity to purchase that prioritizes communities to have determination on their housing conditions.
Well, thank you all for that.
And I know we have a few more questions from members of the press, but it gets me really excited about where the city should change its lending policies as well.
So we can lead by example.
And we'd love to talk with you more about that.
Joseph, I'll turn it back over to you.
Thanks, Council Member Mosqueda.
Our next question comes from Erica Barnett from Publicola.
Are policies like right to return and affirmative marketing to people with ties to a neighborhood the right response to the challenges of gentrification?
And do they go far enough?
What are some other policy changes you would like to see to help people who are economically displaced from a neighborhood return to that neighborhood?
And just to sort of break it down a little bit, because I know that in housing and in zoning language, we often use terms and acronyms and assume folks know The affirmative marketing and community preference really is this term where when we build housing, we will affirmatively market to the folks who were there previously and at highest risk of displacement.
When we do community preference, we say we're going to build this building with the preference for X community who has been displaced from this specific community, and then really try to have them come in first.
This is a way for us to try to make sure that we're addressing displacement and then also work within the confines of state law.
But just to break that down in case anybody wants to jump in on that question.
I wasn't sure.
Go ahead.
You go ahead.
You go first, Maria, and then I'll go after you.
I wasn't sure how much fair housing, you know, how much we can do more given fair housing laws.
I mean, sure, we could, you know, I look at how we work with homelessness and have created this triage project where some groups decide who goes where when they're homeless.
I don't think I wanna see that much involvement in how we decide, like, let's say we decided Let's make sure everyone who's disabled has housing.
So do we get more affirmative and say, these units that are developed go to people who are developmentally disabled?
We sort of do that with special populations, funding when we have for homeless or the veterans.
I'm not sure.
I'd love to hear if there's other ideas beyond this.
I'd love to see this, because I think the policy's there, but I don't think we've seen it that much, so I think just unfolding this and experimenting, having community work with developers.
Let's see how far we can get with it.
I'm not sure.
Andrea, I'd love to hear what you have to say.
Thanks, Maria.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, again, I think that we're missing that middle piece, right?
So we have the initial, the outreach, the facing displacement piece, and then we have the policies to try to get people back.
But where do they go in the interim, right?
And so I think that if our policies like, you know, getting people to come back or, you know, write a first refusal or whatever the zoning language truly is, you know, to work, we have to have a plan for what happens during that, you know, three-year process while we're developing and we're building.
And so that does lend itself more to, again, some of Curtis's ideas of having these cohorts of more collaborative work that can happen to ensure that during that interim, there is a space, there is a support.
Honestly, it's hard.
It's hard once you build the new space, no matter how much money you put into affirmative marketing, to get people to invest in that transition and then come back, it's really difficult to see that work.
So I would like to see more thought and focus and emphasis put into what happens in that transition time.
Then I think we can be more effective with having people return to neighborhoods that they've been temporarily displaced from them.
I just like to throw a practical idea.
I would really like to see someone like the tenants union actually have a database of people of color that are living in the neighborhood.
So if properties come up and it's some type of responsibility where there's this database that even as a marketer of affordable housing, that's a first place that we could go to.
So it's not just marketing, we actually have a place to go to.
So just one that's been really thinking about how we could use the tenants union in a more, as a landlord, as a non-adversarial role, but actually as a positive role where our tenants are actually members of a union.
And is there a way to keep us out of the courts and keep us out of all these issues that come up?
I think the tenants union or something like the tenants union as its name could really play a huge role in that.
I love all these ideas.
Ab, I don't want to cut you off, but unless you want to jump in, we could try to squeeze in one more question, maybe with one answer, and then we'll wrap on time.
Does that sound right?
Yeah, I'll just do a short.
I think we really need to put investments in capital, technical assistance, and capacity building throughout our comprehensive planning process.
Communities can't just be part on one piece of it.
They have to be within.
the entire process and really focusing on, we talk about these great ideas that other places are doing.
We need to put our money into incubating these things.
We have enabling legislations.
We need to pair that up with actual dollar investments.
That is so true.
OK, Joseph.
do you want to throw out that last question see if we have a quick answer or council member morales how are we doing on time i think we have time for one more and a quick answer and then we can we can wrap it up great we have one more question from doug trump from the urbanist doug asks how can the city better leverage high opportunity areas where residents are at low risk of displacement?
Places like 401st, Vermont Lake that haven't been asked to accommodate much new housing in the past few decades.
The only thing I could think of when I was thinking about this earlier, I thought the same thing was, is there a public land there that is potential for community ownership and development of affordable housing?
I see that one, that's the only way I see in So that was my only idea that came up to mind.
I just want to say thank you to the folks who wrote in with questions, both from members of the media and the press.
And Council Member Morales, I will just say a few closing comments and turn it to you to wrap us up.
That sounds good.
I want to thank our panelists here today.
I've been getting messages as we have been online streaming from community partners who've been watching saying thank you for hosting this.
This has been informative and also inspiring.
Thank you very much, Andrea Ray from the Southeast Chamber, Maria Ramirez from Duwamish Valley Affordable Housing, Ab Jonner from Puget Sound SAGE, and Curtis Brown from South End Community Development.
I want to thank as well Aaron House from my office who has really been instrumental in helping set this up, along with Devin from Council Member Morales's office.
And I want to thank Joseph Peha for the work that they did to manage the technology aspects of this forum and you heard him on the line as well.
Thanks to Fadi Bey for watching our timer as well.
And we really got a list of great policy ideas.
We started talking about policy strategies to set us up for this comprehensive plan, building off of that racial equity toolkit, rooting our analysis through this racial equity lens, and really evaluating what has happened over the last 100 years and the ways in which we must confront the continuation of exclusionary policies in our zoning practices to this day in 2021. and address those head on, but be led with the community voice that has informed those community roundtables that Abb had participated in and started us with the orientation that folks receive.
And you all then sort of began to bloom on policy ideas from there.
to talk about what we must do in the interim, how we must create capacity building now, how we must free up the capital dollars to make sure that community actually has self-determination, autonomy, that we support residents by making sure that they have their own ability to house their neighbors.
And so much of what you talked about regarding crowdfunding and investing in communities that are high risk of displacement, we can do these things in addition to the changes that must be made to the comp plan.
So I'm very inspired by this conversation.
I want to say thank you.
And again, as we started with, This is just the beginning of the discussion of what needs to change both in the comp plan, but it's also a call to action for us to truly address the impact, the disproportionate impact of our current policies, whether it's housing, zoning, and lending that have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
And if we don't address, we'll further exacerbate evictions that we anticipate may rise, homelessness that we're continuing to see, and displacement and climate impacts So the call for action is now, the urgency is here and with your leadership, I look forward to addressing these issues head on and also creating that longer term roadmap to a more equitable housing and zoning future for Seattle.
I'll turn it over to Council Member Morales.
Thank you so much.
I really want to thank all of our panelists today.
You've offered a long list of policy ideas, whether it's supporting more cohorts, requiring community ownership in public projects, a crowdfunding portal, making sure that we're looking at state law changes that are required in order for us to be able to implement some of the things that we're talking about.
So this is all great and really exciting that we've brought all of your creative ideas and energy and rich conversation into this conversation about comprehensive planning.
And as Ab noted at the very end, in order for us to keep hearing from community about the kinds of things they're thinking about, we also have to build and invest in community's ability to participate, not just standard community engagement, but making sure we're providing translation services, meeting people where they are, ensuring that the community-based organizations that have real connections to community have the resources and the information they need in order to build capacity for our neighbors to be able to engage in this way, in this conversation in a really authentic way.
So I look forward to continuing this conversation and bringing your ideas into discussion.
As I stated earlier in the afternoon, prosperity and the preservation of our black and brown communities must be front and center in this work.
Racial justice, anti-displacement, anti-gentrification, community wealth building principles can't be ideals that we talk about or we consider in other policy ideas.
They have to be principles that we bring into our policy development from the very beginning.
And they have to be baked into the DNA of how we work as a city council and as a city in general, particularly once we get to the implementation side.
This is something that I'm committed to and I know is something that really guides council member Mosqueda's work as well.
And that's why I'm really excited to collaborate with her and with all of you on a new strategy for housing and for jobs and for land use so that all of these things start to move forward together to make sure that our communities that have been left behind in the past, not just catch up, but are really able to thrive as we move and grow as a city.
So I want to thank everyone again for your participation.
I can't stress enough how important it is that your engagement and your ideas be part of the policymaking process from the very beginning.
And I hope that today is really the start of a long conversation about how we organize together so that we can champion this long list of policies you've suggested and so that we really flesh them out and develop them alongside community so that when we win these policies, it really is your win and we can all celebrate together.
Lastly, I wouldn't be a good organizer if I didn't close by asking you for one thing.
This conversation has been recorded.
We've heard today that collaboration and movement building are really integral to getting this work to continue moving forward.
So in that spirit, I'm asking for you to share the video of this panel with your friends and family, loop in folks that you know into this conversation and encourage them to get involved and also to reach out to us and let us know what they need in order to get involved.
This is how we're going to start building a movement to really move in a way that is more just and really, at the end of this process, have a comprehensive plan that really is centering racial equity.
So I want to thank you all again for being here.
Thanks so much for spending your afternoon with us, and we hope you have a good rest of the day.
And please join us also next Wednesday in the Land Use Committee at 9.30 a.m.
I'm going to continue Councilmember Morales' organizing call to action to continue this discussion about the Racial Equity Toolkit public hearing.
And please help us talk about how language matters, inclusivity matters, and we need to be looking at a way to respond to this racial equity toolkit.
Thank you, Councilman Morales, and thank you everyone for your participation today.
Have a great afternoon, everybody.
See you later.