Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 9/24/20

Wonderful.

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Today is Thursday, September 24th, and the Special Finance and Housing Committee welcome to order.

It is 2.02 p.m.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member, Vice Chair Lisa Herbold.

Council President Lorena Gonzalez.

Chair.

Council Member Andrew Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Dan Strauss.

Present.

Council Chair Teresa Mosqueda.

Present.

Five present Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you all very much for joining us today.

We have three items on our agenda um council colleagues and for the chair's report I'll just go over them very briefly before moving to amend the agenda slightly.

We have a briefing on the COVID-19 rental assistance homelessness prevention and home ownership programs and services offered by the city in partnership with community organizations.

We will have a chance to hear from Emily Alvarado the director of Office of Housing and Laura McGowan, the Senior Director of United Way of King County, and from Michelle Meriwether, the CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.

We also have a briefing and discussion and possible vote on the Loyal Heights transfer property.

We will hear from Erica Malone and Daniel Murillo of the Office of Housing and from Tracy Raskliff, our very own central staff.

Really excited about that piece of property.

And then lastly on our agenda, we will continue our discussion and have a possible vote on a substitute version of the Transportation Network Company Minimum Labor and Compensation Standards Ordinance.

continuation of the conversation that we had not just last week, but began prior to break as well.

We have an opportunity to hear from Dr. Baker from the University of Washington on some areas related to cleanliness, not just cleaning during COVID times, but her remarks will talk about the ongoing new reality of trying to prevent the spread of diseases and ensure safe public health opportunities for riders and drivers.

We will also hear from Karina Bull from Central Staff and Karim Levites from the Office of Labor Standards.

who will be able to answer any questions as we go through the proposed substitute that's been sent to you.

Colleagues, given that Dr. Baker from the University of Washington does have an appointment midway through our meeting, and I know that there is at least one council member who has to go a little bit early today, I am interested in moving item number three to item number one, and I will be going through the motions here.

We will get through all of the items still, but that just means moving item number three, which is the transportation network I would like to move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

the agenda is amended.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted as amended.

Great.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Again, we will go in the following order, item number three, then one, then two.

Thanks to the Office of Labor and Office of Housing folks, especially for our Office of Housing folks for staying on the line as we get through that first presentation.

At this time, we will move to public comment.

Thank you all for signing up.

As folks know, we are endeavoring to do our best to get through as much public comment as possible, especially as we meet remotely.

I am going to try to get through everyone on our list.

At this point, we have 46 people signed up.

We will spend the next 40, 45 minutes on public testimony.

Everybody will have an opportunity to speak.

If you're here, we will give folks one minute to testify.

So please amend your comments accordingly.

I also understand that there was a minor glitch in last week's public testimony.

If you did not get the chance to testify, we would definitely like to hear from you today.

And I'll be making sure that we are double checking our list before we get through public comment today.

Folks, what we're going to do is call the list in the order in which folks have appeared.

And I will be also trying to be conscious of anybody who did not get a chance to testify last week.

Our IT team is busy working to make sure that any restrictions or barriers that are presenting themselves for folks that we can work those out so everybody gets the chance to testify.

Do note that your line on the public testimony line will already have you muted, so you need to push star six to unmute yourself in addition to what our IT team will be doing to unmute you on our end.

The public comment period will go for at least 40 to 45 minutes.

I will call three speakers at a time.

Again, please push star six when you hear me say your name in advance so you are ready to go.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can still sign up for public testimony by going to the council's website, seattle.gov backslash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you're addressing.

As a reminder, please do keep your items on today's agenda.

You will hear a 10-second timer before your allotted time is up, and then we will ask you to wrap up your public comment and dial into the listen in line or watch on Seattle Channel or the online streaming option.

Once we get through the end of the list, if for some reason you weren't able to stay with us or weren't able to get in in time before public comment ends, you can email us.

Please do email Teresa.Mosqueda at Seattle.gov or counsel at Seattle.gov.

Public comment period is now open, and the first three people that we will hear from are Nicole Grant, Dawn Creary, and Jake Lindsay.

Nicole, good afternoon and welcome.

Good afternoon, Councilwoman Mosqueda.

This is Nicole Grant from MLK Labor, and I am testifying today in support of the TNC Minimum Labor and Compensation Ordinance.

This is a major priority for King County's labor movement, and it is our hope it will be voted today with Councilwoman's substitute language as written with no changes.

I want to take the rest of my time to thank all of the council members for their leadership over the years on this, as well as the mayor, the thousands of drivers who worked on this policy, and the 65 plus members of the Fair Share Coalition.

Drivers have families like all of us.

They are struggling with what everybody else is, whether it's distance learning for their kids or putting food on their table.

They should not be treated like an underclass in their pay.

It is time for this legislation to move forward.

It is moral, right, and timely.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Nicole.

Dawn, good afternoon.

Don Query, are you with us?

Hello?

Hi, please go ahead.

Yes, my name is Don Query.

I'm with the Drivers Union.

I'm calling in support of TNC Fair Pay legislation.

So why do drivers need more pay?

I'll just give you a real quick personal reason from my life.

Two weeks ago, I took my car in to have a catalytic converter replaced, expensive enough as it is.

By the time I got out of the shop, there was a brake job and front struts required as well.

$2,700.

Now, the TNC, Uber and Lyft, mileage and minute rates don't come anywhere near covering those kind of costs, which are common when you start driving your car every day commercially.

The mayor's proposal is a big step towards remedying this.

However, the modest proposal that the drivers union have made to increase that pay a little bit more would be very helpful.

I'd like to add, you folks, you have the power in doing this to pull thousands of Seattle workers into the middle class.

I mean, this is a fine moment, a moment of boldness and power.

Please seize it.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you for your comments.

Jake Lindsay, good afternoon.

Hello.

Hi, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Jake.

I've been an Uber driver and Lyft driver since 2015 and been volunteering with Drivers Union since 2019. I just wanted to pair it with what my brother Don said.

Since I began driving, the companies have only ever cut our pay as they take more and more of the share of the fare for themselves.

It's simply unconscionable that these companies have gotten away with only ever cutting our pay for so long.

This is especially unacceptable during the pandemic where we work a frontline essential service moving people and goods.

The cost of cleaning our vehicles was high before the pandemic.

Now it is even higher.

We should be compensated for this public health service that we provided so long for free at huge risks to ourselves and our loved ones.

Uber and Lyft driving is also a job work disproportionately by immigrants and people of color.

and this community is especially vulnerable right now, so I urge you to raise our pay even further than the mayor suggested in her proposal to make up for the years of pay cuts that our community has suffered.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Michael Wolfe, welcome.

Hi, this is Michael Wolfe, Executive Director of Drive Forward.

I want to be clear that we're testifying today against this legislation not because we don't support increased pay through a minimum earning standard for drivers, but we understand that this legislation, which is a copycat of New York's legislation, does not actually work.

Having the ongoing calculation of utilization rate forces companies to restrict access and freedom of flexibility of drivers to access their apps.

This is not good for drivers.

we would urge the council to remove the ongoing calculations of a utilization rate in the earnings standard.

Otherwise, keep everything the same.

We don't have a problem with anything else but the utilization rate calculation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

The next three people are Zacharia Jarto, Richa Verma, and Fana Abria.

If you could all push star six so you're ready to go.

Zacharia, please go ahead.

Do we have Zacharia with us?

Okay, the next person is Richa Verma.

Zachariah, I'll come back to you if you're still on the line.

Hi, City Council.

My name is Richa Verma.

Today, I'm representing my driver union for support of Two Ways, Our Pace.

I just want to say that before this COVID-19, me and my husband were working for Uber and Lyft.

But now, as this pandemic starts, I'm not able to work anymore.

My kids are not going to school.

And even my younger daughter, she's very vulnerable and has a weak immune system.

But still, we don't have any options.

So now only my husband works for us.

He has to work almost 12 hours in driving, because after every call, he has to spend time to sanitize, to clean his car, for the safety of customers and for his own family.

My kids really miss him because my husband has to spend all day out for our living cost.

Because when he comes home, he's so tired.

And at that time, my kids already sleep.

So my humble request, please raise our pay so we can earn enough money for our cost of living and also spend time with our kids, too, and our family.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Just checking to see if Zachariah is with us again.

Hi, Zachariah.

Just push star six to unmute, please.

Welcome.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Thank you.

Hello.

We can hear you.

My name is Zachariah Joado.

I have been an Uber and Lyft driver for the past five years.

For all those years I've worked for Uber and Lyft, a third of my earnings has gone to Uber and Lyft in the forms of commission and booking fees, while I'm paying all the expenses in the forms of insurance, maintenance, car payments, and gas, not to mention the way I drive my vehicle.

With the current pay, I'm earning well below minimum wage.

2019, I have driven over 70 miles, worked at least eight hours a week.

I'm still below standard wage.

And for most of the drivers, we're out on the road, not able to spend with our family.

is still earning below minimum wage.

I would like the council members to consider fair pay and raising the standard wage for gig drivers, please.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Zachariah.

Fauna Abreu?

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, councilmembers.

My name is Abraha.

I'm a part of driver union.

One of the reasons I'm asking for a fair pay today is to give my kids a family time with their dad.

As a driver, he drives seven days a week for more than 12 hours.

Lately, he even drives more to welcome our new child.

The other reason that I am asking rather than the cost of living in Seattle, is to give my kids a Christmas present.

They always write what they want for Christmas present, but they never get what they asked.

Not because they are asking expensive stuff, but our budget is very tight.

As a parent, that's a very sad thing to see when you don't fulfill your kids' needs, at least for Christmas, since they never had a family time or vacation time.

Even though we are a driver, I believe our kids deserve a better life.

So please, be our kids' happiness by fighting for a fair pay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

The next three people are Haley Pan, Abraham Avatayus, and Ali Seleban.

Please push star six to unmute yourself now so you're ready to go.

Good afternoon, Haley.

Hi, my name is Haley Tune.

Council members and staff received an email me from this morning very passionately saying that I am against the ordinance in the fact that I demand of you guys to take out the $1.17 per mile ordinance.

I second what Michael Wolfe is saying.

It is something that is going to be quite toxic in the long run for the viability of New Bridge State.

I am for fair pay.

I am for The $16.39 to go through, but I do not stand for something that will literally shift the very business model that Lyft and Uber provide currently for people to drive.

This $1.17 will make it to where we will have to be signing up in blocks, and that takes away our freedom to drive when we want to.

And I think that what you're trying to solve can be simply solved in a different solution, and I do not want this to pass because of that.

Please take it out.

Thank you very much for your time today.

Abraham, welcome.

Abraham, just push star six.

There you go.

Please go ahead.

Honorable Council Members.

Honorable Council Members, City of Seattle.

My name is Abraham Rapticius, driving for Uber since July 2012, and briefly for Lyft.

And I will see you again.

I thank you very much for the opportunity provided in front of you about TNC legislation, fair pay legislation.

It's why I believe fair rates must be increased at this time.

It's because with the income I was making as a four-hour driver, I was able to support my family of five and myself.

Years later today, with increased rent and shorting expense for living and with the same or maybe less income today.

I'm finding it difficult to make it from month to month.

In my case when I was forced out of work because of COVID-19 I did not have any savings that I could have used to cover my expenses.

Therefore I had to pay all my monthly payments.

I think in the best interest of the drivers who are struggling and the communities who are with mental health for their daily commutes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, Ali.

Please go ahead.

Star six.

Hi, Ali.

If you can hear me, just go ahead.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ali.

They have been overgrowing for about six years.

We need a fair pay rise.

A lot happened this year.

We lost a loved one.

We lost our jobs.

We all miss the hugs, our loved ones.

The pandemic is still existing.

We consider ourselves as frontline workers.

Living is getting very expensive.

We need a fair rate because I get afraid that this party, right, whatever they are doing, walk home safely.

I want to thank you all city council member and mayor.

The driver's power are not represented there.

Our voice and our rights.

And I support the union, T-MASTER, drivers.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

The next three speakers are Anthony Oray, Teresa Bowman, and Eddie Nasalu.

Please push star six to unmute yourself.

Anthony, good afternoon.

Hi, Anthony, I can see you.

We just need you to push star six, I believe, to unmute yourself.

Okay, Anthony, I'll come back to you.

The next person is Teresa.

Teresa, push star six and please speak.

Teresa, can you hear me?

If so, please push star six and go ahead and speak.

Hi, am I good now?

Yes, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, my name's Teresa.

I'm a woman of color.

I'm from the Philippines and came to Washington to work here.

And I'm opposed to this ordinance.

I'm not opposed to people making a livable wage, but just the terms in here, just forecasting it would bankrupt the company.

So if Lyft and Uber go down, that means that would be thousands of jobless drivers and hundreds of thousands of stranded people.

I just want to share my testimony with driving part time to pay off debt.

I also use it to offset my business expenses.

We used to have a business in Seattle but due to the summer we had to leave just due to vandalism and theft.

But I typically average thirty five to forty dollars an hour.

Pre-COVID on really good days sixty dollars an hour.

And when I applied to drive like no one made me buy a car.

And for the like no one no one's ever treated me underclass.

And all of my expenses are tax write offs.

If it's a training issue, I've always found help.

And so if there's a way to make a win-win with this ordinance, I'd love to help out.

Thank you, Teresa.

The next person is going to be Eddie, and then I'll go back to Anthony.

Unless, Anthony, you're ready to go, you're welcome to as well.

Star six to unmute.

Hi.

Hi, Eddie.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

My name is Eddie Nyansulu, and I'm here to support TNC.

I represent Washington State Coalition of African Community Leaders.

We're proud to support Uber and Lyft drivers who are signing up for a living wage.

Most of these drivers, you may not know, they come from some small countries in Africa, like Gambia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, some countries you've probably never heard before, and all over the continent of Africa.

We do appreciate you, council members, for taking the stand for fairness.

So thank you very much, and thank you for giving us time to speak.

Of course.

Thank you for calling in.

Anthony, you are up next.

Hello.

Anthony, if you can hear me, just push star six.

I can see you're on the line, but it looks like you're still muted.

Oh, we had you for a second.

Try one more time.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Thank you, Anthony.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you, counsel.

I'm standing in for Carrie Hurd.

She has a situation that is slightly different than some of the other folks here.

She works another job as a retail clerk.

If this proposition goes through, she will not be able to financially survive because she works as a Lyft and Uber driver part-time.

And the only way that folks in her shoes can survive living in Seattle are to, like she does, she works part-time, she drives Uber part-time.

That's her concern.

She is definitely for Uber drivers, Lyft drivers making more money.

But she is concerned that for her and thousands of others like her, she will not survive.

Thank you very much.

So the next three speakers are going to be Amma, sorry, Adama Durkay.

Good afternoon.

I'm from West African country.

We need a pay rise or we need a fair pay.

The reason why we need it, living cost is rising in Seattle and our pay are getting cut and cut.

The more we work, the more cut we get from Uber and Lyft.

We cannot support our high cost maintenance and our family needs.

Please, council members, we need your help.

We don't want to have more than, we need just a living wage in order to be able to cover our bills and pay and support our family.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

The next person is Jackie.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, council members, members of the committee.

My name is Jackie Morris.

I've been a gig worker for most of my adult life.

I've been a ride-share driver since 2013 and in various other forms.

I'm also a part-time employee of Drive Forward as the engagement director.

My job is to listen to the community and discover what the experience is like of being out on the road.

I'll speak on behalf of my experience and our over 2,000 members that we are in support of a minimum earning standards.

The hinging point here is the utilization rate, and we're crying out.

Don't repeat New York and Seattle because that utilization rate.

affects the algorithm to make sure that the cost of rides for the consumers is affordable.

And also you would be remiss not to listen to the Cornell study overseen by Lewis Hyman.

That was this is a historical study that has every data you ever asked for from the companies.

It's at your to continue the conversation, consider the Cornell study before you approve anything.

And we do look forward to a minimum earning standard in the future.

Thank you for your time.

Good day.

Thank you for your time.

The next is Tracy.

Good afternoon, Tracy.

Tracy will be followed by Mohamed Youssef, Ahmed Ali Djili, and Francis Kamau.

Tracey Hello.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Sorry about that Tracey.

Hello.

Yep there we go.

Hello this is Tracey.

Hello council members.

Thank you.

This is Tracey Harrell and I am calling in support of the TNC Fair Pay legislation.

I am president of the National Black MBA Association Seattle Chapter and as an organization we are celebrating 50 years in our community and across the nation.

focused on economic and intellectual empowerment.

There's tons of research as recently referenced.

So I don't really need to share any additional content there, but you've heard compelling personal testimony as well.

So as opposed to adding any new information, I would simply like to ask the city council to look internally.

really to ask yourself, do you truly believe in achieving racial equity and inclusion in business, in wealth, and in health?

And if your answer is yes, it's really in these moments of truth that you have an opportunity to align what you say to what you do.

It's with these tangible actions that you have an opportunity to change lives for the better.

So today, I simply ask you to vote your conscience and to do the right thing.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Ismalia Muhammad, good afternoon.

star six to unmute yourself.

Wonderful.

Hello.

Hello.

Good afternoon.

Honorable council members, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Ismaila Mohamed.

I thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify.

I'm in support with the drivers union demand for fair share.

I have been a driver since 2015, hoping to make ends meet, but it's unfortunately Uber and Lyft keep cutting pace for drivers.

As we all know, the cost of living keep going up in, you know, keep going up.

Example like our rent, you know, maintenance of our vehicle, you know, taking care of our families and other things that we struggle to provide for our well-being in the community.

Most drivers struggle and work long hours but still cannot make a decent living wage.

As we all know, we're still in the middle of a pandemic and drivers struggle to work and maintain their vehicle clean for the general public to be safe.

Honorable council members, it would be an honor to fight for my fellow drivers to improve their living standards.

I plead to you to stop Uber and Lyft from taking advantage of drivers.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Mohamed, good afternoon.

Mohamed Yusuf.

Good afternoon council members.

My name is Mohamed Yusuf and I'm supporting drivers union fair share plan.

The right of black and brown communities is always on the discussion table and I don't know when this is going to be over or finalized.

We started this fight for fair share plan on 2014 in order for the drivers to earn a better living and a better, decent living wage.

I know the majority of drivers depend on the fare share plan, and most of them are African immigrants.

No better time than now for drivers to receive the minimum wage, and I know this legislation is on the city hall.

Please support us for this legislation to be a law.

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you for your time.

Ahmed Ali Gili.

Good afternoon.

Hello.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Ahmed Gili.

I have been an Uber driver since 2014. I have a family.

And with the current way, I cannot support my family and pay the bills.

This is why I'm in support of Fairway legislation.

When I started driving Uber, the commission Uber takes from a driver was 5%.

Now, the commission of Uber and Lyft from drivers is infinite.

And the cost of living has gone up.

Drivers never get away.

Please support this legislation and thank you for your time.

Excellent.

Thank you for your time.

Francis, good afternoon.

Just star six and unmute yourself.

After Francis will be Mohamed Ali Kahali, Papa Devorah, and Kiko Budej.

Francis, good afternoon.

Oh, thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Francis Kamal.

I would like to highlight the huge expense that with Uber drivers in car towards insurance.

Assuming we give 100 rides every week and out of each ride Uber and Zip take $2 booking fee which they say goes towards insurance.

That means, in a month, we are spending about $800 on insurance only.

Then, on top of that, we have to get commercial insurance for our vehicles, which add up to another $300 to $400.

That makes our insurance expense about $1,200 to $1,300 per month.

So, if you can help us fix this insurance issue, you can help us earn more without increasing what Uber and Lyft charge our riders.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Mohamed, good afternoon.

Hello, Mohamed, please go ahead.

Just star six to unmute.

Hi there.

Yes.

Hi, city council members.

My name is Muhammad Ali.

I am Uber and Lyft driver.

I support the driver union fair share plan.

The reason why I start driving Uber and Lyft since 2014, and they used to put down the fare price.

They're cutting, going down while the cost of living was going up.

We're asking legislation to be passed and the driver will receive enough money because this is not safe job, you know, every time going down.

So thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Papa, you are up next to star six to unmute yourself.

Welcome.

Hi, my name is Papa Jawara.

I'm an Uber and Lyft driver since 2014. My very worry is, thank you to let me speak.

We have, we can say like 90% of Uber and Lyft drivers don't have any savings because of the cost of life in Seattle.

And I support Indian, for this chair.

Why?

Because if you don't have any saving, if something happened to anyone or anyone of our family, we don't have nothing, nothing to support them.

That's my warning.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Papa.

Kiko, good afternoon.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Good afternoon City Council members.

My name is Keiko Budich and I'm with Transportation Choices Coalition.

I'm speaking today on behalf of the Fair Share Seattle Coalition which is a broad coalition of over 65 orgs from unions to transportation housing advocacy organizations environmental community faith and neighborhood orgs.

We strongly support the Fair Share plan to raise driver pay.

This is critical labor protection and something we we can do right now to improve people's lives.

Raising pay would address racial inequality and low wages in our community.

And it would be yet another way for Seattle to lead the nation on progressive labor protection as we have done with sick paid sick leave the minimum wage and more.

So please stand with a broad coalition of advocates and support this legislation and let's finish this job and ensure that Uber and Lyft drivers in our city can earn a living wage.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Kiko.

On the next three people that are present are Issa Bachilli, Mui Khan, and Richard Browder.

Issa, good afternoon.

Issa, sorry, we can't hear you yet.

If you could push star six to unmute yourself.

Isa, I'm going to go on to the next person.

When I see you come off mute, I will come back.

We will keep you on the line.

The next person is Mui Khan.

And again, just star six to unmute yourself.

Oh, hi, Isa.

Could you hear me?

We had you for a second.

Okay.

Is Mui available?

And after that is Richard.

Hi, Isa.

Can you hear me now?

I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you, Isa.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Isa Bachili.

Wonderful.

Yeah, I work for UberCC.

I've been working for UberCC since 2015. I'm happy to join you guys.

So I just want to thank you guys very much.

So like what all my people and my brothers say, now to live in Seattle, everybody knows it's very hard.

So the rents go high.

I got like, I got five kids.

And everything costs like high.

Just want to make sure you guys can try your best if you can't get more pay.

So just, you know, that's what we need.

You know, we try to do our best, but now the pay is very, very low right now.

So thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Isa.

Moi, thanks for waiting.

You are up next.

Hi there.

Hi, my name is Mui Khun.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Perfect.

Hi, I just like, I'm not more talk about the payment, but I like to share my testimony as a part-time driver.

So now I'm a caregiver, being a part-time giver, caregiver, and also a part-time Uber driver allows me to have family time to help my grandson between time, you know, right now online courses, and maybe other family member, my nieces and my nephews.

I like the instant pay, but I'm more threatened with the possible, you know, being paid on payroll.

So I'm afraid of losing that flexibility of payment and drive as I please.

So I was hoping maybe you can reconsider or maybe find other options part-time drivers and full-time drivers.

Excellent.

Please continue if you have another sentence.

I lost my thought.

I'm so sorry.

That's okay.

We got your message.

Yeah.

I just like the independence and the flexibility of the Uber ride share.

I mean, and the Lyft ride share too.

Yeah.

Just the flexibility and being able to make family time to help families around, you know, just help family.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you for your time.

Richard, good afternoon.

Hi, Richard, just star six to unmute yourself.

Can you?

Yeah, we can hear you now.

It says I'm unmuted.

Perfect.

Yeah, I've been driving for over four years just just for Lyft.

And I don't support this change because The model has failed before that you want to use.

The other thing I'd really like to point out is the system has a rating system.

And some of the people who aren't making really good money are the ones who have got their ratings below three from their passengers, which means they never get matched again.

And we do have reoccurring people in areas that use the service.

And if that driver either has a bad car or a bad whatever and the passenger doesn't like them they rate them and then they never get matched again.

So I think that would be a component that should be looked at.

Also also if you know what times to drive it's better.

So I support it the way it is.

I'm a senior.

Without this I can't afford my supplemental insurance and I would really hate to see that go away.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Beverly Walters followed by Abdukar Kuneith and Anthony Gabe.

Beverly, welcome.

Yes.

Yes, my name is Beverly Walters and I am a five star driver with over 16,000 rides given and a former Lyft driver of the year recipient.

I want to address today the mayor's decision to implement this on your list audience that will directly affect my standard of living in Seattle.

I am retired and a widow living on Social Security and driving for Lyft, which gives me flexibility to maintain my lifestyle.

The beauty of rideshare is the ability to turn on and off the app and decide to drive when and where I want to.

Being an independent worker is critical for my circumstances and the potential to earn a living with the freedom to drive on my own schedule without restricting my ability to earn a livable income.

This problematic legislation will force rideshare companies.

And I want to say finally, that I am a mother, I am a financial advisor, I'm a recreational boxer, and I drive rideshare as it works for me.

Don't take away my flexibility.

Looking forward to be able to be a flexible driver.

Thank you.

Thank you, Beverly.

Abubakar, good afternoon.

Abubakar, everybody on this platform or on this call, think about the things that are so close to you that you cannot see.

Freedom, flexibility, and independence.

Take a look at your notes while I read my testimony.

Before my decision to drive Rideshare, I worked a minimum wage job.

Now as a Rideshare driver, I make far more than minimum wage, and I get to choose when and where I drive.

I started off as a part-time driver because I had a full-time job as a coordinator.

And you see, I love to help people, connect with them, offer my support and the knowledge I have.

Now I am able to continue that same social work, but as a driver.

and I do it at my own time, with great pleasure and freedom.

Since then, I have fallen in love with owning my business and making good money.

However, the government is imposing their will to affect my day-to-day and restrict my HOP, hours of operation.

I was involved in earlier conversations with the mayor's office, but it's frustrating to know that the people in power do barely have time to listen.

We're talking about independence, freedom, and flexibility.

With a tale of two sides, please consider both sides, not only one side, four, also one side again.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The last four people that I see that are present are Anthony Gay, Walt Ellis, Noah Miller, and Dragmar Oros.

If that is the full list, we will get through it all.

If you have signed up to testify, we don't see you present.

That's everybody who's present who has signed up.

Please do call my office right now if you have signed up or get in touch with us by the alert on the sign-up sheet so that we can get to you if your name has not been called.

We do not see your presence, so please do follow the instructions on how to get into the testimony line versus the listen-in line.

Okay.

Again, Anthony, Walt, Noah, and Dragmar, these are our last speakers, and then we will wrap up.

Anthony, please go ahead.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you for waiting.

Okay.

Yes.

I'm Anthony Gay.

I am a city of Seattle resident, and I've been driving as an independent contractor for various technology delivery apps since 2017. And I've never been so blessed with an ability to create financial income for myself in such abundance as I have in the three years, including during these recent troubling times.

I urge you to consider that many other independent contractors and drivers for such technology apps have a similar experience of increased freedom and financial empowerment derived from unencumbered access by unnecessary government interference to these apps.

I've never felt a need or desire or want for anyone to interfere or protect me from the app companies that I've contracted with.

I would either present my case to those contracted or pursue other more favorable work.

Unfortunately, I believe the problem is that some contractors do not understand that they are in fact working for themselves and thus responsibility for improving their income ability is on them.

I think that any contractors pushing for demand for a guaranteed compensation are in fact the poorest performers and would rather depend on government guarantee and oversight rather than improve their own performance.

or even simply choose to quit by choosing a different career in a field requiring less responsibility and less risk than is necessary for being an independent contractor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony.

Okay, thank you.

Walt, you are up next.

Hi, thank you.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yeah, sorry about that.

Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you.

I'm Walter Ellis, and I've been driving on the Uber and Lyft platform for about five years now.

And over these years, Uber and Lyft have consistently increased their market power by squeezing out other options and creating fewer options for drivers like me.

So then they abuse this market power by effectively telling us, well, here, take less.

And if you don't like it, have a nice day.

So effectively, we have a choice of taking nothing or taking less.

And they bully us repeatedly, year after year, reducing what it is we get paid.

And also, they try to scare us.

They try to tell us, oh, my gosh, if you stand up and demand rights and demand respect, we might take our ball and leave.

And not only are they trying to bully us, but they're trying to bully the city and tell the city that they're too big to fail.

Then really the people who are too big to fail are the people of Seattle, the drivers like me, the people who depend on this to feed our families.

And we are the ones who are suffering based on Uber and Lyft's threats to basically cut everything so that they can enhance their shareholder values at the expense of regular people like me.

Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you very much.

Noah, please go ahead.

Noah, are you with us?

And then after Noah will be Dragomir.

Hi, Noah, please go ahead.

Hi, Noah.

Sorry, it looks like you just put yourself on mute again, or we did.

Hi, could you hear me now?

I can see you on there if you can test your audio.

It just happened again.

Can you hear me?

Oh, there we go.

Please go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah, no, I'm Noah Miller.

I do not support this.

It's a fair share.

I mean, I understand some people I support making more income, but it's all about your work ethic, driving when it's busy, and driving in the areas where it's busy.

I've been driving Uber and Lyft since April 2018, and I make a lot of money.

I believe putting this policy into law will destroy thousands of opportunities for thousands of people, and it will limit the amount of drivers that can go online, and also the flexibility of choosing when you want to drive.

And I do not support it at all because I look at all the different arguments and everything.

And I believe if you go out there and you drive in the busy times, the areas, instead of sitting out for it, then you will make the money that you need to support your family.

Thank you very much.

And Drodmer, are you there?

Yes, I am.

Wonderful, please go ahead.

Hi, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Drago Miroros.

I've been driving for Uber and Lyft for about five years now.

Prior to this, I used to live in California and I used to own my own taxi company with many cars, many drivers.

When Uber shows up, I sold my company because I knew I cannot compete with them.

So with this issue that you guys implement now, if this is like the New York, this is not going to work.

100%.

Trust me, I have 21 years experience in the transportation department.

You cannot tell a driver what to work or not.

That's impossible, right?

Because that means you're going to have to have that driver quit.

That's for sure.

And then I'm not saying that Uber lived perfect.

Like I give an example, I bought a $60,000 car, and all of a sudden, Uber cut off the select line, which I'm not making money no more.

Lift cut off the looks black for my app.

So I'm not saying that things cannot be done, right?

But about money issue, if you want to work, you get out there and sit in the car and drive and work.

And by implementing these kind of rules and changes, they're not going to bring more customers.

If you're not in the car, if you're not going to downtown Seattle, and if you stay at home, you're not going to make money, even if your app is open.

If your neighbor is not going to call, you're not going to make money.

One.

And two, after you guys block us to go pick up at the airport, unless you have a hybrid car, I have 5.7 engine car.

You know what I mean?

You put $100 gas in there and the day is gone, right?

But I'm restricted.

I can go to the airport to drop off the customers, but I cannot pick up at the airport.

Excel car with Uber.

which is ridiculous, right?

So now you guys can agree with me.

Wrap up for us real quick, if you can.

Wrap up, please.

Yeah.

So overall, I don't agree with this at all.

Trust me.

I have 21 years of experience in this.

This is not going to work.

You're going to hurt thousands of people.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

The last three people that I see are Robert Flath, Ahmed Mumin and Jared Porter.

Robert, I just want to double check that you are with us.

I see not present.

Can I double check that we can unmute Robert Flath?

And the same is true of Ahmed Mumin.

I see you listed as not present, but I just want to double check.

Can we double check the lines?

None of those are present.

Okay, and then Jared Porter and Amman Hussein.

Jared Porter, Amman Hussein.

Those are all not present.

Okay, folks, that gets us through everybody who's currently present and signed up to testify.

I appreciate the flexibility.

We did go about 10 minutes extra.

Madam Clerk, I apologize for that and do want to emphasize our We did get through everybody this time and as well as everybody present on my list last time.

Thank you all for calling in.

That does wrap up the portion of public comment today.

the agenda item 3, Council Bill 119876, an ordinance relating to transportation network company driver labor standards, establishing minimum labor and compensation standards for transportation network company drivers, establishing provision of or reimbursement for personal protective equipment to transportation network company drivers during the civil emergency declared on March 3, 2020, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

But I appreciate your clerking for today.

We have Dr. Baker from the University of Washington and Karina Bull from our central staff.

I want to welcome Dr. Baker.

Dr. Baker, you can feel free to unmute yourself and begin sharing your screen if you like, because we are going to start directly with you.

We have an opportunity today to hear from our guest.

I know that you have a hard stop.

in about 20 minutes, so we want to make sure that we get through your presentation.

Dr. Marissa Baker is Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Washington.

School of Public Health, who is here to talk with us about some of the health and safety standards that many of us have been hearing about over the last few months.

And I know it's especially a concern and worry as we think about not only the protection and safety for drivers, but also for riders in the car.

You've all received the letters that she sent on behalf of her research last week.

And without further ado, Dr. Baker, I want to turn it over to you.

And then Karina, with your indulgence, we will do your presentation after we hear from Dr. Baker.

Colleagues, I thought that this was a really important way for us to sort of begin today's conversation as we think of some of the possible changes in front of us.

Dr. Baker, I'll just mention over the lunch break, I had the opportunity to see my sister.

She's 34. She was diagnosed with MS at 19 years old.

She comes up to Seattle every six months to get her infusions.

And you know that with a compromised immune system due to multiple sclerosis, we are always worried about her health and her safety.

She took a Lyft over from Cherry Street, and she took a Lyft back.

And this is a really key way for many in our community to get around our city.

And we want to make sure that they're safe always, but especially in moments where people have compromised immune systems or are elderly population who may be using Lyft and Uber.

It's really timely for us to be able to hear from you.

I was thinking about her as I saw her off in her lift to get back to the doctor's office and how important it is for us to be protecting the health and safety of riders and drivers and wanted to share that as an example of why I think this conversation, the presentation you're about to share with us is so critical in the moment of COVID, but also for ongoing public health and safety for all riders and drivers going forward.

So without further ado, let me turn it over to you and you feel free to share your screen.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

And thank you for sharing that story.

So I just have words to share.

I don't have a screen.

But my name is Marissa Baker.

And as Councilmember Mosqueda said, I am an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences in the University of Washington School of Public Health.

And I also direct the Industrial Hygiene Training Program through our Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety.

which is funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

So as an occupational health researcher, I study how exposures encountered at work can influence health, not only for workers, but also the community at large.

These exposures might be chemical, physical, or psychosocial.

And recently, my work has really focused on biological exposures due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent occupational health needs that it has presented us.

Through my training and research, I've observed time and time again, the important role the workplace plays in infectious disease transmission.

And now, due to the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we've all seen this too, and we all realize this, you know, such as the case of meat processing plants or agricultural workers.

but workers are also our community members.

So the infections that they may encounter at work are transmitted back into the community and community members on the flip side can bring their infections into workplaces and infect workers.

So in this sense, the workplace really serves as a vector of disease transmission and therefore is an important place for interventions to be focused because these interventions not only protect the workers, but also the community, community members that the worker encounters both inside and outside their workplace.

For TNC drivers, their workplace is their vehicle.

These drivers, as we know, transport multiple people over the course of the day, and each interaction is a chance to spread a disease, a disease which could then be spread to subsequent passengers and anyone else the driver or passenger may encounter.

So knowing that workplaces, or in the case of TNC drivers, their vehicles, are important for infectious disease transmission, as an occupational health researcher and also public health professor, I know that it is important to come up with evidence-based policies, practices, and controls to protect these workers and the community members they encounter at work.

So just to reiterate, Controlling exposures in TNC vehicles will help to reduce infections in the community.

It will reduce the burden of infections.

So PPE is one control that has got to be used.

Drivers are in an enclosed space with multiple people.

They're frequently less than six feet apart, and they're often together for periods of time that are long enough to constitute an exposure event, which is around 10 to 15 minutes.

Given the airborne route of transmission for COVID-19 and other infectious disease, small particles can be released by passengers even if all they are doing is breathing.

And it can linger in the air even after the passenger has left.

So this makes it important for respiratory protection to be worn at all times by drivers and preferably their passengers too.

In fact, Washington State Department of Labor and Industries would characterize drivers as being in the medium to high exposure risk group.

And I would as well.

And for this risk group, cloth masks are not advised.

Drivers would need to be in disposable medical masks at a minimum.

And there could be instances where an N95 mask would be warranted, especially if their passenger was not masked, or if their passenger had symptoms consistent with an infectious disease, or they were transporting that passenger to a testing or hospital site, which occurs frequently.

So the recommended masks are disposable and need to be replaced when they are worn out or damaged or get wet.

Ideally, at least once a day, but often more frequently.

Drivers will need multiple masks over the course of a week or even a day.

And this we know can come at considerable cost.

In Washington, employers are required to provide PPE to workers at no cost to the worker.

And TNC drivers should be no different, especially since their need for PPE is great.

The potential to decrease the spread of infection and the potential to decrease the spread of infection with drivers and passengers wearing PPE is notable.

Another important control to be used in vehicles is cleaning and disinfecting.

And briefly, these are two separate processes, but they're often used together, and that's important to remember.

So cleaning is the removal of germs, dirt, or impurities from a surface.

It doesn't kill germs, but it removes them, and so it lowers their number and the risk of spreading infection.

Disinfecting, on the other hand, refers to using an EPA-registered disinfectant to kill germs on surfaces.

This process doesn't clean the dirty surface or remove the germ, but by killing the germs on a surface after cleaning it, it can further lower the risk of spreading infection.

So for TNC drivers, they may not need to clean after each passenger.

But they might and however they certainly would need to disinfect after each passenger and that is consistent with guidance from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries and also consistent with the best scientific knowledge around how infectious agents spread.

So again, recognizing this airborne transmission of the virus and the enclosed space that the drivers and riders are in together, disinfecting would be necessary on many surfaces in the vehicle, including but not limited to the seatbelt latch, the windows where condensate from breath could form, the handle both inside and outside the car that the passenger may have touched, and any other porous or hard surfaces in the car where the passenger could have breathed on them and left those droplets that we're concerned about.

And when I mentioned disinfecting, I don't want the drivers to feel that they have to rush in and just spray a disinfectant all over the back of their car and that's fine.

Because this could unfortunately introduce other chemical exposures for them that are in the spray that they're using.

So they really need to have time to don and doff gloves, be able to spray the disinfectant into a cloth, and then use the cloth to rub it over areas of concern, and then to let it sit for the required contact time.

All of this takes time, and I recognize that.

However, this is the method that is most protective of their health and would be the appropriate way to clean their vehicles, even though the time to do so could take longer.

So I also want to remind the Council that vehicle cleaning should not be limited to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has certainly brought to the forefront the importance of hygiene.

And as a public health professor and occupational health researcher, I am heartened to see increased public consciousness around how infectious agents can spread.

However, many other common diseases that we encounter every year, such as flu, cold, other infectious diseases, also spread through droplets and fomite transmission.

So it makes it important to continue to clean vehicles, even as COVID-19 wanes in our community.

We've already begun to see a permanent change in public perception.

Hygiene is expected and will continue to be expected by the riding public long past the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lastly, there are other biohazard events, which aren't quite as nice to talk about, that would require more in-depth cleaning and disinfecting procedures for TNC drivers, such as if you have a rider that might bleed in their vehicle or vomit in their vehicle.

These events require swift and timely cleaning and disinfection, and doing an inadequate job could pose a substantial health risk to subsequent passengers in the vehicle.

So in conclusion, I want to reiterate to the council the importance of enacting policies and practices that can control exposures in workplaces, such as TNC drivers vehicles.

Controlling exposures in work settings leads to a decrease in infections in the general community, ultimately decreasing the burden of disease in a community.

For TNC drivers, a ready supply of appropriate PPE is important to protecting themselves at work and protecting their passengers.

and time to appropriately clean and disinfect their vehicles between riders is important during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond as infectious diseases are not limited to this pandemic.

And there are other biohazardous events such as vomiting or bleeding that are common in TNC vehicles and warrant timely cleaning and disinfectant efforts.

So I really appreciate the opportunity to share my expertise and the best available science on these topics with the council today.

And I certainly welcome any questions now or via email that may come up.

Dr. Baker, thank you very much for all of your research, your work, and your willingness to share this with us on today's committee discussion.

I want to note for my council colleagues, much of your research and these findings have been noted in the legislation that's in front of us today, beginning on the bottom of page four.

section H in our findings.

It was important for, I think, the viewing public and for the history of the background behind some of the changes that we're suggesting to have this codified in this in statute and for the purposes for our discussion today.

So I want to thank you and note that we have folded in this research that you just outlined into the conversations on page four and five of the draft legislation in front of us.

Colleagues, we do have about 5 to 10 more minutes with Dr. Baker.

Is there any additional questions that this has brought to mind or anything that you'd like to share?

I will add one note.

Dr. Baker, when I was reading your research over the last week or so, It was also during the time of our Board of Health meeting, and there's a number of members here who've been past Board of Health members and also current Board members with me.

And what we heard from Dr. Duchin, who is our local Seattle King County Public Health Director, is exactly what you said.

You know, this is the type of cleaning and public health safety precautions that we need to see go into place now.

But he also cautioned, as you did, this is going to be the new normal.

People have a new expectation and hopefully a new set of behaviors coming out of COVID.

And it might not be coronavirus-19, it might not be COVID-19, but it will be some new form of a virus, a new coronavirus.

And it will be up to us to continue good hygiene practices, good public health practices to protect against the next iteration of a COVID COVID-19 like virus.

So I think it's really important just to emphasize what you said, that this is not a static point in time.

It will all go back to normal.

That he said, Dr. Duchin says, we will not have an opportunity to go back to normal.

Hopefully this is our new normal going forward to prevent diseases in the future.

Council Member Strauss, did you have anything?

I saw you come off mute.

Excellent.

Well, Dr. Baker, I don't see any additional questions.

Karina, any additional comments or questions on this piece before we let the doctor go?

No questions.

Dr. Baker, thanks for your research.

Thank you for sending us your materials.

And we do look forward to lifting up the letters that you've shared with us, the memos, and very excited that you were able to join us today.

I appreciate your time.

Yes.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Take care.

Wonderful.

Karina, thank you as well for all of your work and for being with us and all of your time.

We know that we have begun this conversation quite a while ago.

I just want to reiterate for the public what we're hoping for is to finalize a conversation that we really began prior to the recess this year, but is a conversation that we began last year and in fact years before.

I'm hoping that this will be our last major piece of legislation to come out of our committee this year.

Last fall, as folks know, during the budget, this council passed a series of pieces of legislation surrounding TNC industry, including the resolution requesting a study on wages, benefits, utilization, and more.

And the study was completed earlier this year.

We have circulated a copy of that study on July 8th, along with a study commissioned by TNC companies, Uber and Lyft.

The week of August 10th, my office coordinated with the mayor's office and the office of labor standards to provide staff briefings on the study and the legislation and almost all of the offices were in attendance.

So a huge, huge note of appreciation for Kareem Levitas from the office of labor standards, Kylie Rolfe and Anthony Ariama from the mayor's office, Karina, you and Amy Gore from central staff for your work throughout the last, not just few months, but few years.

As we've looked at this, we've spent a lot of time looking over the particular study That's embedded in this legislation, and I think that what's in front of us is very well thought out.

Appreciate that the Council President hosted a TMC presentation in committee on August 17th.

And as you know, last week on September 15th, we held another hearing on this legislation to highlight concerns, questions, and to talk about possible amendments coming forward.

So with all of your work, with all of the help from various council members who've submitted ideas, we really appreciate the opportunity to walk through the substitute with Karina.

There's a few pieces in here that resonate with the conversation that we had last week.

And let's just go ahead and dive into the substitute unless there's any additional comments from our colleagues.

Hello, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you for joining us.

I know that you've been on the line for a while.

I just haven't had to say hello.

I haven't had the chance to say hello yet.

Thanks for being here.

Karina, why don't you take it away?

Hi, everyone.

I'm Karina Bull.

I am on city council central staff, and I have a PowerPoint presentation for today, which I will queue up.

Okay, hopefully everyone can see that now.

So the goal for my presentation today is to briefly review the legislation, which is Council Bill 119876, very briefly because as Council Member Mosqueda said, there have already been a number of presentations on this bill, but I think it might be helpful to go over some of the key components, especially as they relate to the substitute bill and the amendments to some of those components as well.

This ordinance establishes at its core minimum compensation standards and other labor protections for transportation network company drivers, and it would go into effect on January 1st of 2021 and would be implemented by the city's Office of Labor Standards.

The key components of the legislation are this minimum pay standard for drivers, along with tip protections, which is a guarantee that drivers can keep all of the customer paid tips separate from the compensation that is owed to them by the transportation network companies.

The provision of personal protective equipment and disinfecting supplies, that is the provision of those supplies or reimbursement for the cost of those supplies.

And that does not include time for the drivers to actually use those supplies and the time that it would take to clean their vehicles separate from the COVID-19 emergency.

So I'll go into the, in addition for cleaning time that is added to the minimum compensation standard later, that's in the substitute bill.

Next are transparency requirements for TNC drivers and passengers.

That means that the TNCs are required to provide drivers and passengers with an electronic receipt directly after the passenger trip with a variety of different information.

And then last, a TNC study that in the introduced legislation is tasked to OLS and also to the city auditor's office.

Just to ground us in an understanding of how this legislation is approaching the minimum compensation standard, I am using several slides that Office of Labor Standards has generously allowed central staff to borrow.

And this is a reminder that the compensation standard covers all of the time that the drivers are logged into the app, the P1, P2, and P3 time as it's That's the shorthand reference to available platform time and dispatch platform time and passenger platform time.

The P1 and P2 represent the time that the drivers are driving around, waiting to be assigned a ride.

And then the P2 time is the time that it takes the driver to get to the passenger.

And then of course, P3 represents when the passenger is in the vehicle, then moving to their final destination.

The minimum compensation standard has two components.

One is payment for the driver's time that they spend working, waiting for a ride, driving to a passenger, and then transporting that passenger.

And then the next piece is compensation for mileage expenses, operating costs, and also compensation for things that these drivers aren't getting because they are hired as independent contractors rather than workers.

So for example, they're not getting the benefit of being covered by Seattle's minimum wage, hence this legislation, and also they're not getting the benefit of other protections like employer provided health insurance and the fact that employers would pay payroll taxes and other items as well.

Just to put a finer point on that, as folks can see in the legislation in front of us, also in the findings, when we hear that drivers are making around $21.50, $21.53 is the dollar amount that we've been looking at per hour.

The reality is that the drivers are often taking home about $9.73 per hour.

Put that in contrast with what our city's minimum wage is, somewhere between $13.50 to $16.39.

And I think it puts in stark contrast the wage disparity that many of these drivers currently have.

$9.73 is nowhere near our minimum wage.

So that's really the crux of what we're trying to address for here.

Yes, please go ahead.

As a follow-up to that concept, so when we hear that drivers are making, you know, $23 an hour, we should assume that on, you know, not, there are obviously exceptions, but for the most part, they're not removing the costs associated with the work that has to be done to do this job, whether or not it's maintaining the vehicle or some of the other costs that are part of this formula.

Those costs have not been reduced from what the drivers see as earnings.

Correct.

And so the reasonable expenses actually make up the bulk of what they're being paid, and they're not being reimbursed for those.

So that is what this legislation is seeking to account for, to make sure that the drivers are being paid no less than the Seattle minimum wage for large employers for the time that they spend working, which means driving in the vehicle, for all stages of the ride process, and then also that they're being paid for the reasonable expenses that they incur.

During the driving as well.

And I just wanted to raise that because I hear a lot of the drivers who are Of the subset of drivers who are not supportive of this bill.

I hear a lot of folks saying, oh, well, you know, they're They're making X number of dollars per hour, and the people who are supporting this bill just aren't doing it right.

They're not doing the job right, or else they could be making more money.

But the retort to that is you may consider yourself making X number of dollars an hour, but have you considered that in order to really understand what your profits are as a worker, you need to take out all these other costs?

Exactly, exactly.

And it's unclear when everyone is assessing it, whether they're accounting for the reasonable expenses and also the time spent driving and waiting for a ride and the time spent driving to the ride.

So as you mentioned, there are a number of different things to consider when determining how much should be owed to a driver.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, Vice Chair, for lifting that up.

I think that that's a really important point.

And also just to reiterate, It's not only an important point that we hear from drivers, it is exactly what played out in the Wright and Parrott study, which we are continuing to reference in the legislation in front of us.

So it's data-driven solutions that we are looking for here, based not only on anecdotes that we hear from drivers repeatedly, but also from what the study bore out.

It's a good point to elevate, thank you.

This next slide shows the payment formula for the minimum compensation standard and you'll see that the time will be paid out at no less than Seattle's minimum wage for reference.

This is the 2020 minimum wage for large employers.

It is $16.39.

I anticipate in the next few weeks or so we will hear from the Office of Labor Standards what the 2021 standard will be.

It always goes up, it never goes down, so that's something to keep in mind.

And then that the per minute rate is multiplied times the number of minutes that the driver spends in the P3 time period.

And then it's added to the number of miles that the driver is driving in the P3 period and multiplied times the per mile rate, which you can see is a little bit less than that because of the utilization standard.

It is 0.830 per mile rate.

So the important piece to communicate about this formula is that The P3 time only represents one third of the equation for how to pay drivers.

And so in order to figure out how to compensate drivers for that P1 and P2 time, Parrott and Reich, the authors of the academic report that the city commissioned to determine this standard, developed what they call a utilization rate.

And so we've been hearing a lot about that in the public comments.

And it is a key part of this minimum compensation standard to get drivers to the appropriate payment for all the time that they spend working.

So the utilization rate measures how much time the drivers spend in their car driving in the P3 period and how many miles they are driving during the P3 period.

And it comes out that drivers are spending about a half hour of every hour with the passenger in the car.

Driving a little bit since they're driving faster when they have a passenger in the car their mileage rate is actually a little bit higher than then just half of what it would be typically.

So what this means is that the utilization rate.

in a percentage basis is about 49.2% of their time, and then the mileage is 62.2% of their time.

When figuring out the minimum compensation formula, it's the amount of minutes that the driver has driven times the per minute rate of the Seattle minimum wage divided by this utilization rate, and then the same thing for the miles, and then that'll get them to what they are supposed to earn.

A key part of this utilization rate is that it likely will not stay stagnant across time as the industry changes.

It is a dynamic calculation.

And so the legislation provides the Office of Labor Standards an opportunity to change the utilization rate in the future.

And so in the introduced legislation, the Office of Labor Standards can change it one year after the law goes into effect.

Adjustment will take into account an assessment period that can last up to 12 months and the office of labor standards is required to provide advanced notice.

to the transportation network companies and the drivers and other interested stakeholders of when this assessment period will happen before it happens, which means that the public and the TNCs will always know when an assessment period is happening.

And that is the period of time that the Office of Labor Standards will use to develop their basis for adjusting the utilization rate.

Any questions on that?

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

So again, just conceptually, that formula that you have where you have two numbers on the top and they're both, both numbers are divided by the utilization rate.

In doing that, that makes it possible for drivers to be paid for P1 and P2 time.

That is the formula, because math isn't my strong suit.

But the function of dividing the top number by the bottom number makes it possible to pay for that P1 and P2 time.

That is correct.

That is correct.

And I don't have the formula in my, I'm going to scroll over to the memo that I wrote, if I can find it.

That's what I'm going to ingrain in my brain from your memo.

Exactly.

And so my question is the advance notice of the adjustments to the TNCs.

Does that create an opportunity?

Not that anybody would to manipulate the utilization rates in a way.

You know, by taking, for instance, either by putting a whole bunch of cars on the road or taking a whole bunch of cars off the road, tinkering with the amount of time, I guess it'd be taking cars off the road.

If you, in advance, if you knew that there was going to be an adjustment, could you take a whole bunch of cars off the road in advance of that adjustment so that there is a utilization rate that assumes less waiting time and less dispatch time?

That's an interesting question.

I bet you wish I would have asked about a week ago, right?

I'm sorry.

The assessment period will reflect what is happening in real time.

And so since there is advance notice of when it is going to happen, and since the TNCs are in control of how they operate their business model, it stands to reason that they are in control of whether or not to change what drivers are on the road to the extent that they have the ability to do so.

I would say that since the assessment period can be up to 12 months, at least in the introduced legislation, the longer it is, I think, Um, and, um, I think that, uh, perhaps the, if, if anyone is trying to.

Reach a predetermined goal for the utilization rate a year is a really long time in order to be enacting those kinds of measures.

to happen in order to measure what's happening on the road and what's happening with with drivers and what passengers want.

So I think that the longer that the assessment period is provides a better a period of time to assess what's happening on the ground, so to speak.

That's helpful.

So the assessment period, I didn't understand that.

I knew that we weren't going to do another assessment for three years, but the period of time over which the assessment is done is over the full period of time.

It's not like a spot check in three years or in a year.

Correct.

It is not a spot check and just to jump ahead with the preview and the substitute bill.

I think now's a really opportune time to to talk about some of the changes that are in the substitute bill.

And so I will scroll ahead into that and Right here you see a I've lifted up the most salient changes in the substitute bill.

There are about five of them or so.

I'm going to jump ahead to the one that addresses a utilization rate, since it just segues naturally into this conversation.

And as I mentioned in the introduced bill, the director would have the ability to adjust the utilization rate one year after the ordinance went into effect and the assessment period would be up to 12 months again providing that advance notice to the public.

The substitute pill would change that delay and into three years so the director would have to wait three years until after the ordinance was in effect in order to adjust the utilization rate both for time and for mileage and the assessment period must be 12 months long.

That's not up to 12 months.

It's not no less than 12 months.

It must be 12 months again to account for the full seasonality of what happens across the year.

Different driving happening in December than might happen in July that might happen in January.

So those are the two main components affecting the utilization rate in the substitute bill.

Thank you for asking that Councilmember Herbold.

And Karina, thank you as well for jumping ahead.

I just want to note the importance and correct me if I'm saying this wrong, Karina, but I think the importance of us having this delay is also to try to get to whatever the new normal is for our local economy.

post-COVID and also give that 12-month time frame to really do an apples-to-apples comparison for the different seasons within our local economy.

Is that fair to say, Karina?

Absolutely.

I think everyone knows that the COVID emergency has had a dramatic, that's an understatement, a very profound effect on the TNC industry and the rides that the drivers are getting and that are actually happening in Seattle.

And so that could take a very long time to stabilize again.

And I don't think anyone knows what stabilization means in the industry after the COVID emergency as well.

So three years allows time for that to happen.

And I just want to again understand the concerns of.

When they point to the New York model, they're pointing to a model that has a utilization rate.

And the basic opposition is an opposition to being paid for P1 and P2 time.

Does that just kind of distill that issue in a way that's accurate?

The concern is that by paying people for time while they're waiting for...

impact the number of drivers.

And if there are fewer drivers, that that somehow will, from a driver's perspective, the platform will take more.

Certainly some stakeholders have expressed concern about the New York model.

The New York model does have a utilization rate that it uses to pay drivers for P1, P2, and P3 time.

It is currently 58% and my understanding is that it has not been changed since the law went into effect a while back and The transportation network companies have the discretion in order to change how many drivers on the road.

It's not regulated by the city, to my knowledge.

I believe that is at the TNC's discretion.

It certainly would be at the TNC's discretion here in Seattle, as far as I know.

And the researchers for the study that the city commissioned, James Parrott and Michael Reich, forecasted that one way that the industry could respond to this payment standard could be to limit drivers on the road.

And Parrot and Reich, I believe saw that as a benefit because it could limit the number of cars on the road and it could maximize the earnings of the drivers.

if a utilization rate was changed to reflect that there were fewer drivers on the road, then that could result in drivers earning less per trip.

However, they would be making more trips, which would give them more money.

And so it would maximize earnings over time.

And if I think one could posit, I'm no economist, but one could posit that if there is a flood of drivers on the road, because this minimum compensation standard is appealing, then right now the utilization rate is based on a half hour of driving around and getting to the passenger.

If there are too many drivers on the road, one might imagine that P1 and P2 time might be an hour long instead of a half hour long.

And the drivers wouldn't be compensated for that in this current formula.

So the formula wouldn't really represent their practice of what's actually happening, and it actually might not get them to Seattle's minimum wage.

And that's why it's important, at least in my assessment, for the utilization rate to change over time, because it will reflect what is actually happening on the road.

Super helpful.

Thank you so much.

So this is, of course, not the only amendment that is in the substitute bill.

So we'll go back to the content, so to speak, for the other amendments.

And the first one is a minimum per trip amount.

And this amendment would establish payment for a minimum per trip amount that would require the TNCs to pay drivers $5 for each TNC dispatched trip.

And the way this would play out is that drivers would get either the minimum compensation formula, which is time plus mileage divided by that utilization rate, or they would get this minimum per trip amount, whichever is greater.

So for a driver who maybe is taking a passenger just a couple blocks down the road and might earn $2.80 using the minimum compensation formula, in this instance, they would get at least $5 for their time.

Oh, sorry, Karina.

Yeah, this $5 would be increased each year to reflect the rate of inflation.

So it's not going to be a static amount over time.

And it doesn't cover every single trip that's dispatched to a driver.

But I think an easy way to think about it is that it covers any time that a passenger is in the car.

It covers no shows.

It covers passenger and TNC cancellations.

It does not cover a trip canceled by the driver.

It does not cover cancellations that happen when that fee is actually refunded back to the passenger due to driver conduct.

So drivers know that they will get at least $5 each time they take a passenger from point A to point B.

Thank you, Karina.

Colleagues, I think this is an important addition to the legislation.

Many of us are used to the $5 cancellation fee already.

That's already part of the platform, and I think many users or writers are accustomed to that.

This is also just recognizing that if a driver has passed on another fare to take someone just a few blocks down the street, and as Karina said, it's maybe $3, they have passed on another opportunity, so a minimum A fee here seems reasonable.

We're used to minimum fees in places of business across the city and country.

If you go to a store, sometimes there's a $5 minimum, things like that to purchase.

So I think it makes sense for the drivers, especially if there's just a short trip involved.

One note is that in the introduced legislation, there is a provision that would require the TNCs to pass on any cancellation fee that is charged to a passenger to the driver, which is kind of like a minimum per trip amount, but doesn't cover to the situations when there actually is P3 time.

So that provision is removed in the substitute bill and is essentially replaced and augmented by what is now the minimum per trip amount.

Thank you, Karina.

Yeah.

Next is a change to what is included in the reasonable expenses.

Those are the mileage and non mileage expenses that are paid to drivers.

And in the introduced legislation, cleaning time and rest breaks are not included in the per mile rate.

So the substitute bill would compensate drivers for 30 minutes per day for vehicle cleaning.

And that would represent the two to three minutes between passengers that drivers could use to clean the vehicle during the COVID emergency, after the COVID emergency to prevent the spread of infectious disease and also to address those other situations where maybe a larger event is happening like vomiting or bleeding in the car.

And we hear from Dr. Baker about the academic support and research on that issue.

The amendment also would increase the reasonable expenses per mile rate to account for rest breaks, which is a state mandated requirement for employees of 10 minutes of paid rest period per four hours worked.

That would now apply to the TNC drivers in the form of additional compensation.

This is something similar that the city passed for domestic workers a number of years ago as well.

So there is precedent for the city taking this kind of action.

Combined per mile rate for both of these additions to reasonable expenses would amount in a new per mile rate of 83 cents.

And then that translated to the per mile rate.

That's what happens when you divide .830 by the utilization rate, which is .622 comes to a new per mile rate of $1.33.

And so applying that to the full compensation standard for 2020. results in about $29.90 per hour.

And I want to note for folks who are following along with the memo that was posted for this presentation that there was some transposing of numbers in the memo regarding vehicle cleaning time and rest breaks.

So those have been corrected, and you'll see a corrected version of the memo posted after the agenda.

Thank you, Karina.

Colleagues, this is the slide I'm most excited about because you all know I'm a total nerd about health and public health.

So this combination here I think is really in the public health realm.

Number one, I know all of you have been strong advocates for rest breaks for workers in the past.

We did this with domestic workers and it's an obvious worker safety issue, but this is a public health issue as well.

As we see people driving across our city who need a moment to rest, go to the bathroom, perhaps grab a snack, some water, It is really important that people have a chance to take a break so that they're not driving with any kind of distraction.

If they're tired, having a chance to recoup.

This is a public health issue, especially as these drivers are across our city.

And we want other drivers and pedestrians to be safe.

The other important element here for as it relates to the presentation from Dr. Baker is Well, there's a lot of attention right now to making sure that places of work, as Dr. Baker said, these cars are places of work, are safe and clean right now.

This is going to be an ongoing need in the future for all workers to make sure that their places of work are safe and clean for customers.

And that is really important for us to continue to bake into the formula, the opportunity to have cleaning time paid for.

Not only is it important for public health, but as our findings also say, and it was noted in the public testimony, that the drivers are rewarded by the ratings for their riders.

And if their car is not clean, that is also potentially harmful for the driver's ability to make the wages that they need to and could come back to them.

So I think it's important to compensate for that time.

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold please go ahead.

Thank Karina for drawing to our attention right before the meeting started a recent settlement from the Office of Labor Standards of upwards of three $361,000 for premium pay.

And so I think that really underscores for us here today, the importance of recognizing these reasonable expenses.

And just wanna also thank the council and thank drivers for working with us to advocate for that premium pay legislation.

Excellent point.

Thank you Council Member Hurdle.

Additional comments, questions?

Okay.

Yeah.

So we talked about utilization rates.

The next amendment regards the transparency requirements that are in the legislation, which require a variety of information to be shared with the drivers and with the passengers via an electronic receipt.

The drivers receive this information after each unique trip, and they also receive a weekly notice of information that summarizes things for them.

And so this transparency requirement would And it would mandate that drivers receive notice of what passengers pay for each trip and then the total of passenger fares for the prior week, which means that the driver can look at how much they earned from each trip and look at how much the passenger paid for each trip and know what's happening as far as how the TNCs are charging for the trips.

as it compares to their earnings.

For passengers as well, the TNCs would be providing notice of the compensation paid to the driver with tips separately itemized.

And that says so that passengers can also have a full awareness of what is happening with how much they pay and how much is going to the driver.

I think this one's pretty self-explanatory, reminds me of the conversations we have about patrons potentially not tipping because they see a fee is included on a receipt, and so they think it goes to the worker.

In this case, we don't want the drivers to not receive a tip if the passenger believes it's getting passed on.

I know that it's probably no fault of the passenger, but having transparency is just critical for both the driver and for the passengers so that people can know how much the driver is making.

Colleagues, questions?

Okay, thank you.

Next is a requirement in the legislation for study of this minimum compensation standard and the other labor protections on the industry on the drivers on passengers.

et cetera.

So the way it is teed up in the introduced legislation is that council would require the city auditor to perform this test, and it would happen within two years after implementation.

And then OLS would have discretion to decide whether or not to do their own study in the first year after implementation.

With the amendment and the substitute bill, all responsibility for coordinating these studies would be assigned to Office of Labor Standards, since they've already begun this work.

And they would have the ability to do the study in the first year.

Council's study would turn from mandatory to permissive.

Council would have the discretion on whether or not to ask for a study.

And it would be specified that the study would cover the first two years of implementation.

That's similar to the study that the council commissioned for the secure scheduling.

It covers the first two years and the council's request for study would be due within three years of implementation.

So what this amendment recognizes is that Office of Labor Standards has done a baseline report and that they have the connections.

They've already started this process.

And they estimate upwards to about $278,000 per year of conducting a study when the city auditor does a study.

Both entities would contract with academic researchers, but the city auditor study are quite vast and comprehensive and could cost, you know, maybe almost double that amount per year.

So there are several things going into this amendment and assigning the study to OLS.

I want to thank you, Karina, for reaching out to Auditor Jones.

Folks, we worked with the city auditor's office in talking with them.

I think it's clear that Office of Labor Standards, being the entity that has already worked with the authors of the report or the study, are in a good position to follow up on that assessment that's done and continue to track this in real time.

I appreciate the conversations we've had with Otter and they're also, I think, they got a lot on their plate.

So does OLS, but I think that this is a better fit.

Comments, questions?

Okay.

Thank you, Karina.

And that brings us to the end of the amendments.

There are several other items in the memo.

add additions to findings which are already referenced that talk about the justification for adding cleaning time and rest breaks.

There are some technical changes.

There were some revisions to the penalties and fines to reflect the fact that now Office of Labor Standards knows what the rate of inflation will be for 2021. So those penalties and fines could be updated immediately in the legislation rather than it always being a year behind.

And the next steps for this legislation are vote, a consideration of the substitute bill, and then there's an opportunity for a full council vote on Tuesday, September 29th, the next full council meeting.

This was a very helpful presentation.

I know you put a lot of time into thinking through the charts to show us, to visually represent the times, and this is very helpful.

Thank you for all of your work.

Are there additional questions on the substitute that we have in front of us?

Okay, I don't see any.

This is not usually something we do, but because we are not able to have the chance to circulate the sub to folks before drafting it, I just wanted to see if there's anybody who wants to co-sponsor this substitute before we entertain its motion.

Is there anyone who would like to add their name as a co-sponsor?

Thank you.

Council President Gonzales, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis and Council Member Strauss.

I think that's a full finance and housing committee bill that's coming out in front of us.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

We will reflect that.

Please go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

You should ask who doesn't want to co-sponsor it.

There we go.

There we go.

Thank you.

Are there any other comments before we entertain the substitute?

Okay.

Well, please, Karina, pass on our appreciation to Amy Gore as well.

I know she worked with you on this.

The team at the Office of Labor Standards, we had the chance to hear from the Director and Kareem last time.

Again, we appreciate and acknowledge the work that's gone into this from the mayor's office, thanks to the mayor directly, to Kylie Rolfe, to Anthony Arayama, and the entire team that worked on this, especially the folks who were working on the study and with TMCs, and the drivers and drivers union, appreciate their work.

I wanna thank our colleagues in the community who I've had the chance to talk to a few times, including Lyft and Uber, I also want to thank Teamsters 117 for all of your time and the Drivers Association folks for our calls as well.

This is one more piece of the puzzle that we're putting together after a long set of years and just building on previous council members' work and dedication to both getting this information pulled together, some of whom are here in this committee, thank you, and some of whom are no longer on council.

So I want to acknowledge all of their work as well.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119876, and then we will amend.

Second.

Thank you, Council President.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any comments before we consider the sub?

Hearing none, I move the Council Bill 119876 be amended by substituting version D2J for version D1.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been seconded.

Are there any comments on the substitute?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of the substitute bill?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Five in favor.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, council colleagues.

The motion carries.

The substitute is adopted with all of your names listed as co-sponsors.

The bill is, as amended, will be before the commit, I'm sorry, before the full council.

Are there any additional comments on the amended bill?

I'm sorry, this is before committee.

We need to vote one more time to get it before full council.

So are there any additional comments at this point?

Seeing none, thank you, Council President.

I saw your hand raised to fix that process.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 119876 as amended?

Ayesha Herbold.

Yes.

President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Oh, sorry, I was on mute.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

That's a five in favor.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Now the motion has fully carried this committee.

The committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the September 29th city council meeting for a final vote.

I would like to offer that we do need to suspend the council rules to send the bills to the September 29th meeting.

so committee members because this meeting started after 12 noon the legislation that just passed cannot be sent immediately to the city council full council unless we suspend the council rules and with advanced concurrence from the council president the council president thank you has already agreed to forward both the bill to Sorry to has agreed to forward both bills to the Tuesday September 29th City Council agenda And I'm hoping without objection that the council rules relating to legislation passed at the meeting after 12 noon on This Thursday will be suspended to allow the council bill to be considered on Tuesday September 29th Is there any objection?

Hearing none, thank you very much.

The rule is suspended and the bill will be sent to Tuesday's City Council meeting for final consideration.

Karina, anything else we need to do on this?

No, I think it's all ready for Tuesday.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you again.

Thanks to the TNC drivers who've been waiting for this for a very long time.

Again, to Mayor Durbin, Office of Labor Standards, our central staff for your incredible diligence on this and all of the work with stakeholders.

I think We can say we are ending September again, making history on labor standards.

Really appreciate all of your work and look forward to voting on Tuesday.

Thank you very much.

All right, let's move on.

We got two more items.

Madam Clerk, will you please read into the record item number two?

Council Member, can I have some clarification?

Do you want, is this the rental assistance, or do you, like, what was number one, or?

Yes, please.

Thank you, Freddy, there for the clarification.

Item number two now is listed as item number one on the agenda.

Okay, great.

Agenda item one on the agenda, COVID-19 rental assistance, homelessness prevention, and home ownership support for briefing and discussion.

Thank you for today.

Thank you very much.

The Office of Labor Standards we have with us the director of Office of Housing Emily Alvarado for this presentation.

Emily, thanks for being here with us.

I know you have a crew with you.

We have Lauren McGowan, a senior director of United Way of King County and Michelle Merriweather, CEO of Urban League.

of Metropolitan Seattle.

Thank you all for being here with us.

I am going to ask Emily, I think you have a presentation, if you'd like to share your screen, you are more than welcome to.

And folks, thanks for waiting for us.

We're really excited that you're here today to talk with us about rental assistance, homelessness prevention, and home ownership supports that the city is making in response to the COVID emergency.

We know that many of us continue to say, stay home to stay healthy.

and you have to have a home to stay healthy in these times.

So much of what you're doing in front of us today is making it possible for people to stay healthy, especially during this economic recession, for people to keep a home or to prevent them from falling into homelessness.

And we know that this has a racial equity lens to it, recognizing that people of color are Black, Indigenous, and people of color population is more likely to face housing insecurity and homelessness.

And especially right now, compounding health crises with those who are living outside, having to experience not just higher risk of exposure to COVID, but also having to breathe this poor air that we just had in the last 10 days.

So I appreciate all of the work that you have done.

Looking forward to hearing more from all of you about the ways in which we can help people stay home, get shelter, and stay healthy.

I'll turn it over to you, Emily, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, and thanks to everyone else in City Council.

I'm trying out handy new headphones here, so forgive me.

Also, unfortunately, we've lost Michelle Merriweather.

She had to go to a board meeting.

She said she would follow up with comments to Council, just to talk more from her perspective as a Black-led organization, the Urban League, how they're able to support some of the critical rent assistance work that we're doing.

So you will hear from her, and she's sorry she had to leave.

Emily, thank you for noting that.

I am sorry I did not know that she had a hard stop, so I will reach out to her as well.

We really appreciate the work that they do, and thank you for flagging that.

So I'll jump in.

This presentation is really breaking down and looking at what approach we are implementing to the COVID-19 rent assistance, homelessness prevention programs, and homeowner support.

And I really want to start out by acknowledging and thanking City Council and the Mayor for committing this significant amount of resource to help stabilize renters and homeowners.

And just to give a little bit of background, and I know Council Member Mosqueda, you already set us up pretty well, but the Census Bureau has been releasing these weekly pulse surveys during COVID.

And for the Seattle area, from the September 7th to September 14th weekly survey, we learned that 14% of all renters are not currently caught up on rent payments.

And we saw so strikingly the racial disparities in those who are not caught up on rent.

58% of black renter households are currently not caught up on rent.

22% of Latino households are not currently caught up on rent as compared to 5% of white households.

And looking ahead, 17% of renters have no or only slight confidence about making next month's rent.

So really the work that we're doing to ensure that there's both access to rent assistance, that there's targeted strategies for homelessness prevention, is critical racial equity work during COVID.

So in today's briefing, I wanted to cover a few things really just to give some transparency and clarity into our approach to rent assistance.

I know we've had a series of fun sources that have come together and a series of strategies for how we can spend those resources.

I want to talk about homelessness prevention, and then I'm going to turn it over to my team member, Erica Malone, to talk about homeowner supports.

So first of all, the most significant portion of funds is really focused on rental assistance.

And our strategy for rent assistance, when we came to council many months ago and talked about rent assistance, was really threefold.

First, it was looking at how do we get broad awareness out with an easy one-stop place to access rent assistance while also making sure that that's being delivered in a way that's focusing on racial equity.

We did so that way by creating the United Ways Rent Assistance Program, and we'll talk more about that.

The second part of our broader strategy was really about addressing non-payment of rent in city-funded affordable housing.

So these are units that the city has invested in where there are low-income households who live in those units.

And because of an inability to go to work, job loss or other insecurity, people can't pay rent, and we're working to stabilize folks in the OH portfolio.

And the third part of this three-part strategy was really looking at how do we make sure that we're doing targeted homelessness prevention, building off of the expertise of the programs we have in place, and we'll talk more about that.

Breaking down money here, $12 million we are contracting to the United Way of King County's home-based program.

You're going to hear from Lauren about some of the details there.

Of that, $4 million is from the CARES Act CRF with the timeline of which those funds must be expended by 2020. And then $8 million of the contract to United Way will be for 2021 money from the city's emergency funds.

We have $4 million from the CRF fund as well, expended through the end of this year, that will be administered through the Office of Housing for city-funded affordable housing residents.

You're about to hear from Lauren, but just to talk a little bit more about the fact that we have two years now to do a strategy to really support renters and support renters with a focus on racial equity.

And so our strategic framework for the contract with United Way really has two parts.

One, 2020, we have two and a half months, three months to get dollars out the door and serve as many people as we can.

And so United Way is going to talk about how they are intending to leverage some existing systems in place, including partnership with King County, who just launched a rent assistance program.

And they're going to incorporate additional strategies to improve racial equity outcomes.

In 2021, United Way is going to do a little bit of a pivot and leveraging their older home-based model that focuses more on eviction prevention in partnership with folks like the Housing Justice Project to really think about how once the eviction moratorium lifts from Seattle, from other parts, from the state, from the feds, how do we make sure that those who are most at risk of eviction are those that we're targeting our resources towards?

So I'm going to turn it over to Lauren to talk more about Homebase.

Great.

Well, thanks so much, Emily, and thanks so much to council members for having us here today and for all of your support.

It's incredible to live in a community that both understands that it is unacceptable that so many people in our region experience homelessness and housing insecurity.

and that we are investing so much in rental assistance and eviction prevention.

We all know that we had a homelessness crisis before the pandemic, that far too many people were falling into homelessness, particularly because of evictions.

And that's why we launched the Home Base Partnership.

That program in just a year helped over over a thousand households stay in their homes.

Over 70% of them were BIPOC families.

And we really were able to both provide flexible financial assistance and legal services to keep those folks in their homes.

Unfortunately, when COVID hit, so many people, so many more people became unstable.

And we all know, as Emily just pointed out, how many people are behind in rent are taking out enormous debt in order to be able to pay rent and who are falling behind simply because they're not able to work or taking care of their kids and not able to meet their rent during this challenging time.

We are so grateful that you and the county and local philanthropy stepped up to help us pivot at home based program from a court based eviction strategy into a rental assistance program this spring.

And because of that, over 8400 individuals across King County were served between April and July.

More than 70% of those households that received rental assistance were families of color.

And we were able to form really important partnerships with many of the landlords and property management companies.

to negotiate payments that were less than we initially expected.

So when we started this partnership, we thought we'd help about 2,000 households.

We were able to help over 3,000, and in many cases for multiple months, because we were able to stretch those dollars further because of those negotiated rates.

Thank you, Lauren.

Just one second before we go on.

I know Council Member Herbal had a quick question related, I think, to the previous slide as well, but I just wanted to make sure we got that in before we got too far.

If that's okay, Lauren.

The question that I was hoping to get to relates to the number of individuals served between April and July.

The slide says that there are 8400 individuals served, but it doesn't give a sense of how many people applied.

I'm assuming that we weren't able to help everybody who applied, so it would be helpful to understand how many people applied, requested the assistance and also, you know, for the viewing public, it'd be useful to know whether or not you're still accepting new applications.

Yeah, great questions, Council Member.

We received over 7,000 applications in a 48-hour period.

Those are households, so we ended up serving just over 3,000 of those households.

About 50% of those that were not served were not served because they were not eligible for some reason.

Either they didn't fit the criteria, the income criteria, they were able to pay their rent in different ways, or their landlord or property management company wouldn't take the negotiated payment rate.

There are still families that we are helping from that initial process, but we are now out of funds for that process, and we were never able to reopen it to serve the thousands and thousands of folks that we're calling our offices, the Urban League, Wellspring, and many other agencies all across the region.

But now that there are CARES Act funds...

Lauren, am I right to say also that of the 3,000 households that you're citing, 1,238 approximately were in Seattle?

That is exactly correct.

Just to give a reference of Seattle relative to the rest of the county.

Thank you.

Yes, Emily, you are correct.

So what we know now is that King County government has used their CARES Act funds to launch a rental assistance process.

They have a lottery that individuals across our community can be applying for right now.

We know that there are over 3,000 households from the city of Seattle who have applied for that lottery and many more that are probably eligible but don't know about it yet.

And so our plan with these dollars is to, one, raise awareness about that lottery, particularly for Seattle residents, particularly for those BIPOC families and families who may not be hearing about that lottery in different ways, and then work with the county to ensure that those Seattle residents are being served.

So we will accept, individuals can go online, they can go to our website and click through to enter into that lottery.

And then Seattle residents will be forwarded to the United Way Home Base Partnership, and one of our agency partners will serve those residents.

We think that this strategy will help make sure that these CARES Act dollars get spent by the end of the calendar year, which is really critical.

And it provides a one-stop place for everyone, whether they're in Seattle or another part of the county, to go to access these funds.

We also know that the need is bigger than what these dollars are gonna allow us to do.

And that's why we, along with our partners, are continuing to advocate for additional rent relief from the federal government, and why United Way is committed to continuing to raise money from local philanthropy.

It's gotta be a mix of both, but we are still gonna need significant federal dollars as we head into 2021. As we look at the next slide, I can talk a little bit about who the partners are that are doing this work.

So there's sort of two phases to this work.

It's the rental assistance piece, and that includes the Urban League, Solid Ground, Wellspring Family Services, Neighborhood House.

We also partner very closely with the Housing Connector.

And I can't say enough about how important these partnerships with landlords and property management companies are.

Really working with them to take these discounted rates and stretch dollars as far as we can and have a clause that families can't be evicted for economic reasons during this time.

I think it will help to at least relieve some stress from the families that we're all trying to serve.

But as we move into 2021, as Emily has pointed out, the additional funds of $8 million are really gonna help us focus back in on who is most likely to be evicted in Seattle and provide a combination of legal services and debt repayment through flexible financial assistance to keep people from being evicted.

And that is gonna be, that's gonna be a lot of work, folks.

We know that the number of people that are gonna face evictions is really at a crisis point.

And so we're excited to have these funds.

I think this will help spur both some creative thinking, some good partnerships, and develop a very equity-focused strategy for keeping people in their homes.

So right now, if folks in our community are looking for rental assistance, we encourage them.

They can visit our website, uwkc.org slash rent help.

That will take them to the King County Lottery.

And we will continue to work in the weeks to come to increase awareness of that process.

Folks can apply at any time.

The lottery is pulled once a week.

So whether you apply today or next week, there's still time for our Seattle families to do that.

And United Way is very committed to working with our community partners to increase awareness of those services and then ensure we do everything we can to get families that are pulled from that lottery, get them qualified as quickly as possible, get funding out the door so we can continue to serve more families.

One thing that I want to mention, if I could jump in Lauren for a second, is that part of why we're leveraging the county system is that they have a couple of things in place already that we think are really critical.

One, the application and process has been translated into all of the, is it 11 languages?

It's over 20. Over 20 languages.

So that language access piece is already built in.

That was going to be something we would otherwise spend money on.

So how we can then help support this work is by our targeted outreach and engagement with other kinds of Seattle community-based organizations who can work with their clients and partners and community members to ensure that there are applications that are headed into this system.

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks.

I just want to note too, I believe that the council in our last allocation or plan to allocate funds for this purpose also expressed an interest in a fund that was targeted towards small landlords.

And as I understand it, the County Rent Assistance Program already has that.

So that's another, I think, good reason to leverage the county's new program because they have built in a component that was a high priority to this council.

Absolutely.

Other questions?

Otherwise, I'll keep going.

Please keep going.

I have a few questions.

I'll hold them until the end.

Okay, so our next key approach around rental assistance will be the $4 million that I discussed earlier that'll be allocated to the Office of Housing.

We're gonna administer it to our city-funded affordable housing portfolio.

Just to give a reminder, we already, Council and the Mayor, allocated 1.4 million previously to support this work.

We made awards to 17 agencies that applied for that assistance.

and there were 1,238 original households who needed assistance.

Cure transparency, it is CDBG, so we're working slowly to make sure that we're cutting the checks to all of those households.

But this new process will build off of that to administer assistance to the portfolio.

Here's why that's important.

We are seeing in our Office of Housing Subsidized Portfolio in June and July a precipitous increase in the amount of non-payment of rent.

So we're really hopeful that this $4 million will have a meaningful impact in stabilizing some of those significantly at risk low income tenants who are already in subsidized housing.

We also allocated $2.8 million, going back to this tripartite strategy of CDBG, into homelessness prevention programs.

And as you well know, the Seattle Housing Levy and other funds have been used for many years by the city to support homelessness prevention through contracts from HSD with community-based organizations.

You see some of those community partners listed there, and we intend to continue and grow the contracts with those agencies in order to deliver this $2.8 million.

And I'll say that I think that these strategies really work together.

You see a range of agencies that are meeting that have different kinds of cultural competencies, community connections, language access.

and they'll be very well positioned to serve diverse populations across the city.

So that is the sum of rent strategies, and I can turn it over to Erica to talk about what we are doing to stabilize homeowners, unless there are questions.

I'll go back one slide here real quick.

On the community partners piece and also in partnership with the slide where you showed the community partners, there's a question from one of our colleagues about the administrative support.

How much administrative support Are we able to get to the people of color-led organizations for their own admin and rental assistance for folks?

I know that we're asking a lot of our community partners here and just wanting to make sure that we're giving them that support.

And the other question is about how much total money is going to our community partners, people of color-led organizations versus the overall cost for admin.

Good questions.

I want to echo your colleagues' interest and commitment to providing capacity and support for the BIPOC agencies that are doing this important work.

And I often think that we overlook that.

So thanks for that question.

I will need to confirm the rate of the homelessness prevention contracts to date.

I believe that they were running at about 10% admin for those contracts.

And Lauren, do you have information on United Way.

Yeah, for this particular grant, there is, I believe, a cap of 10%.

But what United Way is doing is leveraging some philanthropic dollars to increase capacity, because in general, the CARES Act money has been really challenging with admin caps.

Makes sense.

Thank you.

Um, and just on, uh, this rental assistance, Tracy, I know, um, you may be busy doing something else.

I'm just hoping, um, as we, before we wrap up, if there's a possibility for us, hi, Tracy, um, for us to, um, do a quick comparison at the end on how much money went into these assistance programs from, the jumpstart COVID relief assistance bucket.

It might take a minute to dig that up, but sort of our original projections and then what ended up going over would be helpful.

So if I could ping you on that, we can come back later too, if that's helpful.

Thank you, Tracy.

All right, let's keep going.

Thank you.

Erica, do you want to jump in and talk about our homeowner supports?

Sure, glad to.

Firstly, I want to echo both Emily and Lauren's gratitude to the Council and the Mayor for coming up with these really vital resources to keep people housed in this important time.

$700,000 are going to counseling agencies to advocate for homeowners with their servicers And let's see, half of that is going directly to those counseling services and half will go to direct foreclosure prevention loans.

We are currently using levy funds to provide silent, second, deferred until resale or refinance loans to homeowners, income eligible homeowners at or below 80% of area median income.

in order to become current on their mortgage, pay back taxes, and or home ownership association dues.

And that's actually a really great use of those funds that not a lot of foreclosure prevention funding is able to be used for, those other sort of ancillary housing costs.

So we have a great partnership with Homesite who is, doing the direct lending of those foreclosure prevention loans, and then a new partnership with the Washington Homeownership Resource Center.

We're undertaking a really comprehensive community outreach strategy in partnership with them to ensure that our most vulnerable homeowning neighbors are aware of this opportunity for both advocacy and counseling, um, but also the direct financial support that is available both through housing levy funds and, and these new resources as well.

Um, we're working with, uh, several, uh, specific community media, uh, organizations, uh, hopefully placing a feature article of someone who's been helped through these resources along with some strategic ad placement.

We've also, translated just a real brief blurb.

If you're having trouble making your housing payments, call this homeownership hotline.

We've translated that into 11 different languages and are working to get the word out as far and wide as possible so folks can access these really, really important resources.

It's also worth pointing out, Erica, thanks for saying that, that the Washington Homeownership Resource Center is a statewide agency designed or a nonprofit designed to support homeowners.

And as we drive homeowners to them to get support, they have complete live language translation and access to really be supporting a range of folks.

Homesite, as you all know, is a CDFI in Southeast Seattle and has a long history of working with diverse populations in BIPOC households already.

And so we're building off of our levy partnerships to expand this newly invested resource of $700,000.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Does anybody know whether or not the King County Sheriff's order to not be, aside from the eviction moratorium, the King County Sheriff uh, for, uh, issued a policy that not only would she not be exercising evictions that were, of course, covered by the eviction moratorium, but that she was not going to be, uh, doing, um, the foreclosures is is that does anybody know if that's still in place?

I do not know.

There are various moratoria for federally backed mortgages that are in place.

Many folks are in forbearance now.

There are some privately held mortgages that certainly could go forward in the foreclosure process.

I'm not sure where the sheriff stands on actually removing.

people from that.

So we don't know whether or not people are being kicked out of their homes because of, I mean, it just seems like we have this program to help people from being kicked out of their homes because of their inability to pay their mortgage.

We would have some sort of an idea of what the current practices are.

I mean, I understand we want to help people pay their debts.

regardless of whether or not paying their debts results in their being kicked out of their homes.

But it would be helpful to know whether or not that practice is not being carried out by the sheriff any longer, consistent with the decision that she made.

whatever it was back in April, or whether or not the sheriff has now resumed enforcing foreclosures.

I'd be happy to look more into the sheriff's actions and how that's playing out locally, and I'll get back to you.

I think Erica did present this morning at our levy oversight committee some more information about generally what's happening in the homeownership market, though, and Erica, you're probably better off describing it, but How we are planning for intervention is that we're not seeing the need for immediate interventions at the foreclosure moment now.

We anticipate that that will happen for households, particularly at-risk households in 2021. And so we're really taking an approach to supporting folks first with awareness, knowing that that wave will be coming later.

Erica, did I say that wrong?

No, that's right.

Most, 90% of mortgage holders in Washington right now are covered by the various federal foreclosure moratoria.

Many are in forbearance, and the first wave of folks coming out of loan forbearance is likely to be in early spring, late winter, February.

So we're hoping to get the information out.

So if people are anticipating having trouble making their housing payments, Once their forbearance is expired that they would know where to find resources advocacy and financial support.

Thank you.

And so, yeah, so my, my, my question is, is of the mortgages that are not covered.

five-year moratorium, do we know whether or not there are court-ordered foreclosures that are being enforced by the King County Sheriff?

And I just think it's important for us to know that, too, in our assessment of how to help people.

That just, I think, information that is useful in allowing us to do that.

Agreed.

To make that assessment.

Absolutely.

Thanks for that.

We have about five more minutes.

It looks like we're at the end of that presentation.

Are there any other questions on this first topic from our friends from Office of Housing?

And you made a way and please pass on our appreciation of the Urban League.

We will make sure to reach out as well.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

So thank you so much.

I know, uh, uh, Tracy, I'm not sure if we want to follow up on that question later, just wanted to highlight some of the money that came from the COVID jumpstart relief package.

I know it was a, um, combination of funding that was announced earlier with the 19 million and 19 million that went out this year.

Um, a portion of that came from jumpstart, but just given the hard work that went into that package from this council, Tracy, is there any amounts that you might want to highlight from that package from this council as well?

I don't know if you guys can see me.

We can.

We can see you.

Oh, good.

I'm lost on my screen trying to find some other documents.

What I can tell you for sure is in the agreement that we reached with the executive on the $45 million amount utilizing emergency funds, $8 million will actually be allocated in 2021 for rental assistance.

I believe the intent is that $8 million would in fact go to United Way King County as they discussed to address the post eviction moratorium likely activity that will happen.

I can't access the document about what we had looked at in terms of the proposed $86 million originally, but I can find that information and get it to you all after the meeting.

Thank you very much.

Really appreciate all of that work.

And it sounds like from Erin House, our original bill included $19.5 million for existing homelessness prevention programs and rental assistance that serve individuals and families, such as the United Way of King County Home Base Program and other programs.

So I just want to highlight this because I think it's really important to continue to show, you know, we don't get to see tangible widgets that the council and the mayor produce, and it's nice to see this report to show how that effort is really translating into assistance.

But I think one of the things that, Lauren, you mentioned, and I believe has been reiterated by other presenters, is a portion of the folks that have applied are getting through the door.

So we're going to continue to look to you all, and I think to Council Member Herbold's point as vice chair of this committee really lifting up the ongoing need and the unmet need that's out there will be helpful for us to know as we consider the upcoming budget.

Thank you all so much.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I am really appreciate your time, Erica, Lauren, Emily.

Emily, I think we might be keeping you on the line.

I'm not sure.

You're keeping Erica on the line.

Erica, we'll keep you.

Okay.

Just a huge amount of appreciation.

Thank you very much.

And with that, why don't we move on to item number two on our agenda today, which is our last item for consideration with our revised agenda.

Farideh, do you mind reading item number two into the record?

Agenda item number two, council bill 119890, an ordinance relating to the transfer of city real property for housing development, transferring the jurisdiction of a one foot strip of the property from the office of housing to the department of transportation for right of way purposes for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Excellent and for this presentation, we get to keep Erica Malone office of housing, and we have trees with with our central staff here.

This is a small, but really exciting piece of legislation.

This builds on the work that we began last year, and they are before to enable the city.

to utilize city-owned property to be used for public services, public benefits such as affordable housing, and to make sure that that property gets a chance to be transferred to the city.

I'm sorry, to enable the city and utility-owned properties to be transferred at no cost for the creation of affordable housing.

beginning with community and housing advocates pushing for this policy change.

Today we are here taking our next step as we know the price of land is continuing to increase in Seattle and has over the last decade and there's greater competition for living in this area regardless of this recession as we've seen from the national statistics folks in this area.

largely continue to see income gap widen and people at the highest incomes continuing to make salaries and purchase homes.

The cost of housing continues to go up and there's very competitive market out there.

So with greater competition, it's important for us to continue to look at building affordable housing.

And I'm really excited about this piece of legislation in front of us.

I'll have more to say here in a second, but I'll turn it over to Tracy.

Uh, just, uh, or Erica, you tell me who, but I'll, I'll let, I'll let Tracy kick us off perhaps.

We're here really in some respects to complete the process that we actually started I think was a year ago when we actually authorized the transfer of this surplus city property to OH for the purposes of in fact disposing of it to an eligible housing developer for affordable homeownership so this they have done the RFP they have identified the developer and they are now ready to formally transfer that property and to the nonprofit developer and so that's what this legislation will do and I'll let Erica talk about what it is that they're going to actually develop very excitingly on that piece of property.

Thanks, Tracy.

Yes, it was actually a year ago to the day when I was building the slides all I had to do was change the year.

That's amazing.

So, just a quick refresher.

This is a piece of property in Loyal Heights in Northwest Seattle, close to transit, close to services, near Golden Gardens, near Whittier Heights, Loyal Heights, excuse me, Whittier Elementary, Loyal Heights Community Center.

corner of 28th and 80th essentially.

It's a roughly 8,000 square foot piece of property zoned LR2 right on the 18 express line and the number 40. So it's just a fabulous location.

We did come to you last year and you approved the transfer of the property from City Light to OH.

Through the competitive RFP process, we have selected Habitat for Humanity as our preferred developer.

and they now have, they're ready to start construction.

So I should say at that time a year ago, you approved the transfer of two pieces of property, one at Finney Ridge as well, and we're still working with our preferred developer on that site, Homestead Community Land Trust, to get their plans approved and be ready to move forward in construction with that project.

It's a slightly more complex transaction, but we're ready for this property to be transferred.

The legislation, as Tracy mentioned, authorizes the bulk of the property to be transferred from OH to Habitat.

There is a small one-foot piece on the back that is for an alley dedication that just needs a jurisdictional transfer to to SDOT.

In exchange for this no-cost transfer, Habitat for Humanity will be building seven three-bedroom townhomes that will be sold to households with incomes at or below 80% for affordable prices.

And that affordable price is going to be around $175,000.

Anyone who's been shopping these days knows that that is very, very affordable relative to market, but most importantly, affordable to our target income market.

They originally had proposed eight townhomes, and I will just mention they are really exceptional in their sort of good neighbor work.

And because of the trees to the south side of that property, they determined they could build seven without disrupting the root zones of those trees.

And I remember then Council Member Bagshaw asking a question a year ago at the same conversation about the trees.

So if she's out there listening, We're saving the trees.

All right.

So because of the 50-year affordability covenant that OH will record, we know that these homes being built at all subsequent resales within that 50-year period will also be sold to income-eligible buyers for affordable prices.

But because of Habitat's mission to actually provide permanently affordable home ownership, they utilize a 99-year renewable inheritable ground lease, much like Homestead Community Land Trust.

The homes will be permanently affordable, affordable forever in Northwest Seattle to families.

And I think that's the end of my presentation.

Any questions?

Thank you very much.

Before we move on, I want to say thank you as well to Daniel Morillo.

I see you on here as well from our Office of Housing.

Excited to have you.

I know that you are the Policy and Equitable Development Manager, which is a very cool title.

Anything else to add before we take Councilmember comments?

No, I do not.

Thank you, Erica.

This is a really good, exciting opportunity to provide some permanent affordability in the higher opportunity area.

So thank you.

Excellent.

Okay, wonderful.

Speaking of loving trees and being a strong advocate for trees, Dan Strauss, Council Member Strauss, would you like to go ahead?

I saw your hand up.

Yeah, thank you very much, Chair Mosqueda.

And Erica, could you remind me?

I heard you say it, but it went very quickly.

What is the price point of these units?

And you mentioned that there's a 50-year covenant for affordability.

Can you share with me, again, those details of how do we keep these affordable, what will those rates be, and who's going to benefit?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So the target price point is $175,000.

And that is made affordable by the Office of Housing's investment, along with some of Habitat for Humanity's direct investment.

So the cost of each of the homes is about 220. Cost to build is about 280, excuse me.

But They'll be sold for $175,000.

Of course, they're able to come in at that low cost due to a lot of donated materials and donated labor.

That's the beauty of Habitat for Humanity's model.

The covenant, I'll speak to actually the ground lease.

So the, they both actually align.

So the covenant, the OHS covenant is for 50 years.

The ground lease from Habitat for Humanity is 99 years, renewable and inheritable.

So it is essentially in perpetuity.

Habitat for Humanity will continue to own the land and lease the land to the homeowners on which their homes sit.

And so in exchange essentially for this good deal for the first home buyers, they agree to when or if they sell their home, to do so at an affordable price to the next buyer.

They have a resale formula which balances the equity that a home seller would get upon leaving with the affordability for the next household.

That's really excellent to hear.

It allows for that generational wealth to be built and for affordability to continue to exist.

Can you share with me, is there an area median income requirement to purchase these?

How do we determine who's eligible to purchase these homes?

Yeah, great question.

Yeah, so to be eligible, you have to have an income at or below 80% of area median income.

Habitat for Humanity has been really successful at serving much lower incomes than 80. 80 is our maximum, but I think their average income served is about 65% of area median income.

And that will be the case for all subsequent home buyers over that 99 plus 99 plus 99 year period.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And chair, if I may just make some general comments to this.

Great, thank you.

I see you nodding your head.

So this location actually is a place that I walked past on my way home from Whitman Middle School so many years ago.

And when my family, when my parents, you know, two social workers purchased their home in Ballard.

Homes were usually about $100,000 in that area.

Ballard was not a desirable place to live necessarily.

It was for all of us that lived there, maybe not for other parts of the city, if you might remember some of the almost live skits kind of poking fun at Ballard.

So if you're lucky enough to be from Ballard, you're lucky enough.

That was the saying back then.

And nearby, there's some really great open spaces, and you'd be surprised that As recently as the 1970s, some of the houses along Sunset Hill Park that's not too far away were going for $30,000.

So I paint that picture because the economics of Ballard have changed so much.

And so not only has it become a more desirable place to live, that has also increased the cost of a house.

The reason that I am still a renter today is because house prices are out have been out of reach for me.

And so, you know, I go back to that the the price of a house was $100,000, you know, not so long ago, just in the 1980s.

And with that, you know, you could have many different lines of work and be able to achieve the American dream of owning your own home.

Today home costs, there's a home that's not too far away on 75th and 28th that is I think 600 square feet and it's going for $425,000 and it needs to be It will need a lot of love to be fixed up.

So I just want to flag that this is such a great opportunity to create a pathway to home ownership.

I know that there have been past proposals to create green space in a park there.

And I flag that there is a lot of green space nearby, not only with Golden Gardens Park, which is about a half mile, quarter mile away, Sunset Hill Park, quarter mile away, Loyal Heights Elementary School, which is just a couple blocks away.

And while when I walked past there all those years ago from Whitman Middle School, there were some really amazing cherry trees that were there on that property.

And it is sad to see that those cherry trees were removed a number of years ago, I think before this whole process even began.

And so I just also want, in that same breath, thank you for preserving the adjacent trees that really do provide an economic value.

I think that this proposal alone demonstrates the challenge at times regarding the preservation of trees.

We lost one unit here.

You had proposed eight units, and we now have seven.

It also demonstrates that the trees have an economic value.

So overall, huge thanks.

This is great.

It creates a pathway to homeownership and generational wealth for families that moved into this neighborhood so many years ago that might be priced out today.

So just lots of thanks.

Thank you, council member Strauss, I just want to add or maybe remind Thank you all because these are levy funds.

And so all of you and all of us voters are what's making this possible.

Great, good point.

I know Council Member Lewis, you have another appointment soon.

If you have anything else to add, Council Member Lewis, happy to get you in.

i thank you so much manager first i want to uh...

begin my remarks by stressing expressing that as another ballard native my fondness for uh...

those uh...

almost live sketches about ballot i was also a very reluctant on accordion lesson students not really but if anyone wants to go and and get a good good idea of what the ballard and i grew up in what's like to watch those almost live sketches of the young bill nye But transitioning back to talking about the matter at hand, I have a couple of questions.

I think I'll just ask them all right now in the interest of efficiency.

The first one is I appreciate the art that's been part of the presentation on seeing how these units are going to come together.

And I wonder if you might be able to explain a little bit about the materials and the mode of construction and whether that has been a significant cost saving and how something like that could be replicated or maybe incentivized in a market-based way to extend the affordability, you know, into other sort of townhouse development throughout the city.

So that'd be the first question.

The second question would be, Based on the lease and sort of covenant method of transferring the properties to allow folks to build intergenerational wealth but also preserve long-term affordability, what some tactics might be or what a strategy might be, to extend and incentivize those kind of arrangements, again, in a market-based way, particularly in a scenario where the city were to potentially expand housing options in more of the city for development that allows multiple families to live in plots like this, in ways that we can focus on not only doing it in these these sort of unique coalition building projects where we bring a lot of stakeholders together to build seven units on city-owned property with a non-profit developer, but ways we can provide incentives so that can be replicated by folks that build this kind of missing middle housing.

If there were city regulations permitting more of it, but doing it in a way where it was expressing this kind or stressing this kind of equitable arrangement of transfer and ongoing support for low-income families.

Yeah, thank you for those questions.

Firstly, the cost savings that Habitat employs, the construction is fairly conventional stick built.

They are doing some energy efficiency measures through the Evergreen standards.

But in terms of replicability, I mean, Habitat is, you know, they're sort of a powerhouse both in philanthropy and in mobilizing volunteers.

So I'm not sure I can really speak to potentially how replicable those cost savings might be for other types of developers.

To your second question, the office of housing actually has a tremendous history of investing in permanently affordable home ownership, firstly through Homestead Community Land Trust.

They have hundreds of units throughout the city, maybe 300 in the county.

Sorry, not in addition to, 300 total, including units that are in King County.

And this type of arrangement, this sort of equity sharing arrangement, if you will, that homeowners get affordability in exchange for passing on affordability is a national approach, usually utilized by organizations called community land trusts.

But additionally, Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the country are looking at this as well.

I personally think it's a really great way for the city to invest in homeownership because it is a growing stock of permanently affordable homes for people in our community who will always need them.

So I hope that answered your questions.

I might've lost track of the second part of the second question.

I tried to scribble them down.

Let me know if I missed the mark.

No, that was perfect.

Thank you so much.

I think the bottom line when it comes to the market, you know, private market being interested in this kind of model, the private market when it comes to homeownership they're into building it, selling it, and leaving.

And the benefit of Habitat and Homestead is that they're in it to build and to stay involved in helping to make sure that that housing stays affordable over the long haul.

And they, in fact, have a legal responsibility through the covenants, et cetera, to make sure that that happens.

And they're a mission-driven organization that's in it for that long haul outcome.

And the private market really is not oriented that way.

Generally speaking, they're in to build, sell, and be gone.

And so, I mean, that's the benefit of having these nonprofits who care about affordability for people, not just for the first homeowner, but for all the others that will come after, because it's inevitable that you're going to have a turnover in those homeownership units.

That's just that tends to be the nature of homeownership.

So just to add that on to why the market may not be quite incentivized or interested in this kind of model.

Excellent.

Any additional questions?

I'm not seeing any hands.

I will just make one more note of appreciation for the length in which it has taken us to get here, the timeframe.

This is, again, you know, it's hard not being able to see how votes that you take immediately translate into action, but it is important for us to remember all of the work that it took to get to this point.

Again, the conversation started with a recognition that in 2018, in partnership with our friends at the state legislature, we passed legislation to update the state's disposition policies to put into place newly granted state authorization to make sure we were prioritizing affordable housing for surplus lands and to embed an equitable development lens into that process.

We know as well that a small piece of legislation that we passed previously, years ago enabled the city and city utility-owned property to be transferred at no cost for the creation of affordable housing.

And as we know, the price of land continues to grow up.

So what's really important here is that in the last year, we authorized the first no-cost transfer to the Office of Housing for affordable home ownership in Loyal Heights following that legislation and this piece of legislation that follows on top of that.

is enabling our department to transfer the site to actually create a permanent affordable housing on site.

This is a really, really exciting opportunity, but I just wanted to highlight that because it's years of work and also partnership with the state legislature.

I remember it was Representative Ryu, if I was right, and Speaker Chopp who were part of this effort as well.

And Three years ago, I was riding around with Tony To, who many of you know, and he was pointing out various places where we in the city had invested decades prior into first-time homeownership opportunities.

I was like, this is so exciting.

Show me the latest one.

And he's like, frankly, it's so slow to pull this first-time homeownership opportunities online.

We need so much more of this.

Just yesterday, I was talking to him about this legislation, and he was emphasizing the need for us to create homeownership opportunities for people up to 80% AMI.

so that there's a pipeline to get people out of the lowest income housing, requires them to be able to move on to first time home ownership opportunities like this.

This frankly is a key tool in addressing generational poverty as well, to end cycles so that people actually have equity that they can fall back on.

Equity in many uses of that term.

So with that in mind, I don't see any other comments.

Let's go ahead and move passage of the bill.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119890. Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there additional further comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

Council colleagues, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 29th city council meeting for a final vote.

I want to thank Aaron house as well as central staff and all the folks at the office of housing our community partners who've been working on this for a very long time.

and to also recognize all of your work that got us here.

We really appreciate the presentation today and the work.

One more time, Council President, just for the good of the order, I'm going to go ahead and ask that the rules be suspended so that we can also move this bill to Tuesday's meeting.

Committee members, again, because this bill, I'm sorry, because this committee meeting started past the new deadline, we need to suspend the council rules and advance concurrence from, I'm sorry, and with the advanced concurrence from the council president, forward this bill to the Tuesday, September 29th city council meeting agenda.

with that if there's no objection the council rule relating to legislation passed today after 12 noon thursday will be suspended to allow for this council bill to be considered on the tuesday september 29th the city council meeting is there any objection hearing no objection the rule is suspended and this bill council bill 119890 will also be sent to tuesday's city council full council meeting for final consideration Thank you all.

That concludes today's meeting.

Is there anything else for the good of the order?

Hearing none, council colleagues, this is our last meeting for 2020, knock on wood, at least until we get through the council budget process this fall.

I wanna thank all of you for your work.

Our last committee, I'm sorry, this was, Okay, just double checking my script.

I saw September 30th date on there and I was like, do we have another meeting?

No, we don't.

September 30th is when we begin our budget meeting.

So I don't want to cause any heartburn for anybody else.

We promise we will not have any more meetings with that.

Today's committee meeting is adjourned.

We will see you at full council and then begin our budget process on Wednesday, September 30th.

Thank you all for all of your work.

And Farideh Cuevas, thank you for clerking us through this committee.