I want to say thank you to everybody who's joined us today.
We are gathered here at lunchtime in the Bertha Knight Landis Room to celebrate what we hope will be the final passage of the next-to-last step in what has been a nearly four-year council process.
There are so many people to thank for being here, but before I go through the thank yous, what we're really doing here today is getting very close to the final adoption of our mandatory housing affordability program.
which is a program designed at its heart to create more funding for affordable housing.
The amendments and legislation that we're planning to adopt this afternoon will implement zoning changes in 26 neighborhoods and will result in the creation of nearly 3,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years at a time when the city desperately needs it.
And we need it and know that it's going to work because over the last several years as we've adopted the MHA program in six different neighborhoods throughout the city, we've already started to see the benefits.
Just in 2018 alone, the city was able to distribute more than $13 million worth of funding for affordable housing thanks to the MHA program.
And we also have done some analysis that leads us to suggest that over the last year, because of the delay in implementation of these citywide zoning changes, we've lost almost $100 million worth of funding for affordable housing and nearly 750 units worth of affordable housing.
This coalition has been a broad coalition from the beginning when we started more than three years ago, made up of representatives of the affordable housing community, the labor community, the business community, and just general citizens.
And we've got a great subset of those folks here today to share some stories with you.
The first person I want to introduce is Natasha Hundley.
Natasha is a community member who lives in Bellwether's Affordable Housing Village in the Wallingford neighborhood, and she's going to share some stories about how living in that community has made a big difference, not only in the life of her, but also of her children, as we all try to make sure that this city stays affordable and is accessible for everybody.
Natasha, please.
Hi, thank you.
So my son and I first moved to Wallingford in 2009 when he was in kindergarten, and now he's in 10th grade at a local high school.
And he's had so many opportunities growing up right in Wallingford, right by the Boys and Girls Club, affordable child care at Boys and Girls Club, but also he's a participant in the Keystone Program, which is a really important volunteer program for the Wallingford neighborhood.
I work in social services and have never made that much money but I'm following my passion of serving my community and I would not be able to live in Wallingford if it weren't for affordable housing.
Market rate rents have skyrocketed even since we've lived here and I'm paying, I'm probably paying for rent what people would pay in Snohomish or Pierce County and certain areas but I can't afford the time or money to get from those areas to the city of Seattle to serve my community.
I think there's a lot of preconceived notions about what people in affordable housing look like, do with their day, and I'm just here to say that we work hard, we deserve to be in Seattle too, and we benefit you and your community.
Thank you.
Natasha, thank you for being willing to share your story.
As somebody who came out of the nonprofit community before I came here to City Hall, I really believe in the work of service.
And I'm very grateful to you for your commitment to that.
Michael Winkler-Chin is going to be our next speaker.
And she represents the Seattle Chinatown International District community, one of the first communities where we implemented the mandatory housing affordability program.
Michael.
Thank you.
Just a couple of things.
For our neighborhood, the MHA was a, it was a chance for us to capture the benefit of all the growth that was happening.
There's a lot of development happening in and around our neighborhoods and we wanted to make sure that we're able to capture some benefit from that growth.
And so that was really, really important for us.
MHA is just another word for inclusionary zoning, which is a very common sense thing that happens in lots of places in the country.
It's not scary, but the way that we're doing it is being recognized by other people in other cities as, hey, that's an interesting way to go.
And so we should be proud of that, the fact that we're being a little innovative, because honestly, the city has tried to be innovative in a variety of different things over a lot of different times, right?
And it can be painful, like most things, but the right thing is not always the easiest thing to do.
For my neighborhood, as I said, it was an ability to capture growth because it's an ability to actually gather resources, whether it's in the cash or in the units themselves, for people who live in the neighborhood.
And for myself being an employer, having just gone through the last snowstorm, It's a great benefit to have your employees living nearby.
I mean, because how do you think the sidewalks got cleaned up?
How do you think we checked in on our residents?
How do you think my assisted living facility was able to function?
It's the ability for the residents of my neighborhood to be employees of the neighborhood and to serve our community greater than that in a great way.
Yeah, and one day I do hope my daughter can move out of my house.
This isn't just an issue that we deal with here in Seattle.
It's a widespread issue all throughout King County and throughout our region.
Polling has shown time and time again over the last several years that affordable housing is the number one issue on people's minds.
And to speak more about that, we've got Patience Malaba from the Housing Development Consortium.
Patience.
Thank you.
Today, we celebrate the committee board that is coming up from the Select Committee on MHA Citywide.
And the reason why we celebrate is that this is an opportunity for us to house more people.
For the past few years, you all have partnered with us in highlighting the need, the unprecedented need for housing in our communities.
And we all know the solutions.
We all know what needs to be done, which is produce more affordable housing.
MHA is that opportunity for us to produce that more housing by ensuring that we're producing more resources for our non-profit developers to be able to build more housing on site and also to engage our for-profit sector to help us build more affordable housing and grow affordably as a city.
This is an opportunity for us to model and chart a path to be an inclusive community of opportunity for everyone.
And we can only do that if we are tackling the issue of affordable housing head on, which is what we are doing with MHA.
So we are very thankful to Council Member Johnson, Council Member Mosqueda, and Council Member Gonzalez and there are others on the council as well who are really willing to take up this opportunity and ensure that we're producing as much housing as this program can get us to.
Thank you.
The MHA program that we're slated to adopt out of committee today has been more than three and a half years in the making, but it came out of a several-month-long set of discussions co-led by our next speaker, Faith Lee Pettis, as part of our housing affordability and livability agenda.
That agenda set forth a series of 65 recommendations, only one of which is the mandatory housing affordability program.
But we're so grateful to Faith for her stick-to-itiveness over the last several years, and not only coming up with bold solutions, but also staying with us as we work hard to implement them.
Faith.
Thank you so much.
So after 200 community engagement opportunities on MHA alone, which includes 16 urban village design workshops, five citywide open public meetings, and six evening public hearings on this topic, it's really time to take the vote and pass this thing.
We're on the cusp of a really important decision, and I apologize for this analogy, but we're on a bullet train to California.
Our future looks like San Francisco right now, but we have a unique opportunity to make a decision to step off that train and decide that we want a different future.
That's a decision and a choice that a lot of communities around this country envy us for having.
But if we take that decision and decide to be an inclusive, welcoming, open city, we'll change our course and we will be a different city.
So right now, this city is going to grow whether or not MHA passes.
And that's something that's really important to understand.
It's growing.
MHA is not causing the growth.
The city is already growing.
The question is, are we going to demand that as we grow, we include affordable units in that growth or not?
And this is the opportunity to do that.
So we need to insist that we get those affordable units, and we need to insist that we get the maximum number of affordable units that we can.
So I'm really excited for today and for the select committee's decision on this, and I would urge them, with the leadership of our council members here, to really insist on the highest number of affordable units we can get.
Thank you all.
So whether you're a teacher or an iron worker or whether you are involved in the home health care industry or in other parts of our labor community, we are grateful to you for your work and your service.
We also know that you represent a lot of the glue of our community.
Like nonprofits, folks in the labor community are oftentimes the middle class that is being displaced from the city of Seattle as our prices continue to go up and up.
To talk more about that, we're privileged to have Nicole Grant from the MLK County Labor Council.
Hello, thanks to all the professionals in broadcast and print communications getting the word out, telling the MH story today.
My name's Nicole Grant.
I'm from the Labor Council.
We represent 150,000 union workers here in King County, and we've been fighting for MHA from the beginning.
People have talked about this policy a lot as a policy that's about buildings.
But I want to reframe MHA as a policy about people, because we all know that King County is growing and that workers are coming from all over the United States and all over the world to be a part of what we've got going on here.
Workers are coming to work in tech.
in aerospace and beyond.
And this is our opportunity to take that growth and make a decision that we are going to be a welcoming city.
So in that note, Labor is going to be celebrating the opportunity for our members to finally have access to good housing in all of Seattle's neighborhoods.
Next, I'm pleased to introduce Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.
In the year plus that she's been on the Council, Councilmember Mosqueda has been a strong voice for those who are experiencing displacement in the city, and yet, at the same time, a strong voice for expansion of housing choice, proving that those two things don't need to be in conflict with each other, but can be supportive principles.
So, please, Councilmember Mosqueda.
Well, good morning.
I am so excited to be here.
I'm excited to be with entire Seattle and this delegation of folks who've been fighting to make sure that we can have this vote and this day come to fruition.
I want to recognize the years of work that it's taken to get here.
Chair Johnson mentioned that it took four years and longer.
Members of the community have been pushing, pushing for us to take action on inclusionary zoning, asking the city of Seattle to do, as you heard from Maiko, take the action that many other cities have already done by passing an inclusionary zoning program.
Today, your advocacy, your persistence, your demand has paid off.
We take action today to make up for lost time, for lost lives, and for lost neighbors.
Because Seattle has not built the housing that we need or allowed for additional housing to be built across our city, we have seen our neighbors pushed out of Seattle and pushed into the streets.
Today is one small piece of the puzzle to create the housing stock that our community needs to be able to address the growing population in Seattle.
This action comes after years of predatory legal delays, after decades of down zoning that exacerbated exclusionary land use practices, and after almost a century of the consequences of racist redlining and segregationist lending policies.
That is the action we are beginning to address today.
It is long overdue, and it is just one piece of the puzzle that we are trying to do to correct historic wrongs.
We are changing, however, only 6% of our land in Seattle.
6% of the land that is currently zoned for single family use is what we're talking about.
As we heard in the wee hours of your hearing the other night, thank you for chairing, Vice Chair Gonzalez.
We heard that while this is a small step, it is a critical, important step that we make to address what our housing advocates, labor advocates, Businesses, environmentalists, transportation advocates, and residents of Seattle have been calling for for years, which is to make sure that we actually create the housing that we need, grow our urban villages, and look at it through a racial justice, social justice lens to create more housing across our city.
We heard from affordable housing advocates and folks who are human service providers, like Natasha, who talked about the need to make sure that those who are serving our most vulnerable to find a place in Seattle can also afford to live in Seattle as they are doing their job as social service providers.
The truth is we simply do not have enough housing in Seattle, and we don't have the zoning policies in place to meet our city's needs now or into the future.
So today we are taking a step.
We are trying to right historic wrongs.
We are trying to maximize affordable housing.
And we're trying to increase access to some of our neighborhood's most asset rich neighborhoods and do it in a more equitable way.
I want to reiterate something that you've heard from these folks up here, and I think the folks who have testified in the hundreds of hearings we've had.
Development does not have to equal displacement.
In fact, the city's analysis of our own EIS program shows that economic displacement caused by being priced out of the city far outpaces the demolitions of new development.
So we can prevent displacement by allowing affordable housing to be built.
when we fund communities most at risk of displacement as well as creating urgent zoning changes, and we put them at the front of the line and we give them the tools and the resources to build affordable housing coupled with childcare facilities and senior care facilities and small businesses and community centers.
That is what it looks like to have direction and self-control and site control.
That is what we are going to do later this year as well to couple the activities that we're taking on MHA.
I'm really excited about the work that we have done so far to date.
I want to say this is just one piece of the puzzle as we've talked about, but this is also how we be better environmentalists to help prevent people from having to commute hours in.
We're the third city in the nation for mega commuters commuting more than 90 minutes a day.
That's not right.
That's not an environmental justice approach.
We need folks to live in the city they work.
This is how we make sure that we interrupt market forces, the market forces that haven't built low income and moderate income housing.
This is how we step up to the plate and live our values.
This is how we become the welcoming city that we claim to be.
And this is how we make sure that we live our values on a daily basis by not stopping today, but continuing to expand access to affordable housing throughout our city.
Thank you so much for your leadership to get us here.
Finally, I'd like to welcome up Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez.
Not only did she preside over what is now the record-holding longest committee discussion that we've had so far on this topic, last Thursday's four-hour and 25-minute public hearing on MHA, but she has been with us since the beginning.
As the vice chair of the Select Committee on Citywide Housing, MHA, She has been active in all of our amendment discussions, in all of our community design workshops, in every step of the way.
This legislation would not be what it is without the incredible engagement of Lorena Gonzalez.
So without further ado.
All right.
Well, I promise that my remarks are not going to be four hours and 25 minutes.
I can tell you that much.
So I want to thank Chair Johnson for all of his work to date on this really important policy issue.
This is one particular tool that the City Council is about to consider and hopefully vote on eventually.
But, you know, really Councilmember Johnson has been spending the entirety of his term on City Council really fighting for so many of the zoning changes that are necessary to make way for more people, more families, and more kids to call Seattle home.
So I want to thank you, Chair Johnson, for all of your work over the last four years.
I know we're set to lose you this year and I am just really grateful and humbled to have been able to work with you on these really important issues that don't receive a lot of gratitude.
So from all of us, thank you for all your hard work.
So, really, I want to be able to talk a little bit about some more particulars in this legislation.
First of all, I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for co-sponsoring the Child Care Amendment in the Mandatory Housing Affordability Program with me.
The prior version focused on just preschool classrooms.
Thanks to the amendment that we have made that will be considered in the consensus package today, we're going to expand that definition to include child care facilities, not just preschool programs.
And it's our hope that this tiny change in language means that we can bring more child care facilities online as child care is incredibly expensive, no matter what your family is making.
There are reports that there are families that pay $50,000 a year in this city for child care.
There are people in our city who don't even make $50,000 a year.
It is outrageous.
And this legislation will pave the path for us to be able to invest in child care facilities by requiring the developers build affordable child care facilities that meet state standards, that allow these child care facilities to stand up.
The report that was just released late last week by King County's Women's Advisory Board confirms what we know.
One of the biggest contributors to this cost is how expensive it is to bring childcare facilities online.
I believe, and I believe that my colleagues agree, that one important tool to address this crisis as we build more affordable housing means also building more affordable childcare facilities included in the design of the building that we're asking developers to construct, that we are demanding that they construct in neighborhoods across the city in a way we haven't seen before.
Having child care facilities that families can walk to or access in their neighborhood means we have stronger and more vibrant neighborhoods.
It means we have more families like Natasha in our neighborhoods regardless of what you do for a living.
Building stronger and more vibrant neighborhoods means we also need more affordable commercial spaces.
I'm proud to sponsor an amendment with Councilmembers Johnson, O'Brien, and Herbold that will be considered in committee today that will make permanent a requirement for developers to include smaller commercial spaces in their designs.
This will help more entrepreneurs launch their dream of starting a small business to serve their local communities, to stay in neighborhoods with the community they have built around them who were early investors in their entrepreneurial success.
Talking about amendments and specifics around land use is enough to make anyone feel just a little bit lost.
And it can feel inaccessible and complex.
We recognize this.
But this issue, this piece of legislation that we are here to talk about today impacts every single one of us as residents, workers, teachers, you name it.
This is the largest city in Washington state and MHA really means that it gives us an opportunity to continue to be part of this community, and that it will allow us to invite others to come to the city of Seattle, regardless of your income or how rich or poor or just in between you might be.
As a resident of the West Seattle Junction in District 1, it means that my neighborhood is walkable and dense.
I love being able to walk outdoors in my own neighborhood and support the so many great small businesses on Main Street right off of California Avenue in West Seattle.
My husband, who is a restaurant worker, is able to walk three minutes or bike in one minute to work, which is just one block away from our condo in the junction.
There are several buses that will bring me to any part of the city or a water taxi that is just down the hill.
This is the world and the neighborhood that I imagined for so many people in our city that is just not possible for them right now.
And MHA won't fix the problem for everyone, but it creates real significant increased amounts of affordable housing units.
And this description of how I live my life in the Junction is what I hope and wish for every resident in our city of Seattle.
The Junction is also the site of a weekly farmer's market and lots of block parties.
And wouldn't it be great if we can have more of that accessible to people who live right in the neighborhood?
I believe more density, more affordable density, will bring more of these great neighborhoods, amenities, and characters to serve more people of all incomes living not just in my neighborhood, my urban village, the Junction, but to other similar neighborhoods across the city.
Growing density means more neighbors if you're living in an urban village.
And that usually means more of the things that make our neighborhoods great.
And that's the people that live there.
The people that live in neighborhoods is what adds to the character of our neighborhoods.
MHA, once again, is not going to solve all the issues we have as one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
But it is a crucial policy tool that will help Seattle acknowledge and address the legacy of redlining.
Redlining is a policy that has plagued so many cities across the country.
Seattle, in spite of being a progressive welcoming city, is not immune from the historic racist legacy of redlining and those financial policies.
MHA means that we will build multifamily housing on more than 10% of the city's land.
and it will get us closer to our goal of building 6,000 affordable housing units.
It will help us build a more inclusive city that we can be proud of, that will have those main streets, and that will have those characters in the neighborhood that we will be able to ultimately call our neighbors, our family, and our friends.
So I want to thank everybody who's here.
Today is a really important day, and I'm really excited to be part of a city council that will stand for our progressive ideals and values while also making sure that we allow space for others to be part of our community.
Thank you so much.
When I ran for office in 2015 to when I will leave office in 2019, our city will have added nearly 100,000 people.
Our neighboring cities to the east and to the south have averaged in the neighborhood of 5,000 to 7,000 people.
over that same time period.
We are experiencing overwhelming growth in the city of Seattle, and as Councilmember Gonzalez and Councilmember Mosqueda and our previous speakers talked about, MHA is just one of those tools, but it's a tool that we can use not only to welcome more neighbors, build more affordable housing, but also address some of those other issues, whether that's about affordable child care, affordable commercial spaces, whether it's about trees, whether it's about the design of our buildings, this is an opportunity for us, and for me in particular, who's a fifth-generation Seattleite, to ensure that my little sixth-generation Seattleites can afford a place in the neighborhood that they grew up.
I'm grateful to so many of you who've stood behind us for lo these many years to get this bill to where we are today.
I'm very excited that we're nearing the final passage.
And I can't say enough thanks to so many people for getting us here.
I know many of you may have questions for individuals who are part of the lineup today.
Unfortunately, several folks have other scheduled commitments.
So I think you might have to grab people for some one-on-ones after we've concluded.
But unless there's any final thoughts from anybody, I just want to say a big thank you to all of you for being here.
And we're so excited to finally be here.
Thanks.