Hello, I'm Brian Calame.
Can the Seattle City Council save the Showbox Theater?
What's next for the troubled Center City streetcar project?
Is the Key Arena renovation project on track to bring pro hockey back to Seattle?
Council members Rob Johnson and Shama Sawant answer these questions and the ones you're sending in, too, next on Council Edition.
Our fundamental goal here is to allow for slightly taller buildings to be built in a lot of neighborhoods where we already have dense development.
If you want to be data-driven, I'm all for it as an economist.
Let's be data-driven.
But the data shows that sweeps of homeless encampments do not accomplish one thing.
All that and more, coming up next on City Inside Out, Council Edition.
And here we are with Councilmember Shama Sawant and Rob Johnson.
Thank you very much for being here.
It is a busy, busy time.
Fall is in the air and a lot of talk about the Showbox Theater.
Shama, let me start with you on this one.
A live concert and public hearing just a day before we are taping this show here.
So the Council has been talking about this idea of expanding the Pike Place Historical District to try to preserve this venue.
Now, there's a lawsuit from the landowner.
He says the city's breaking its own rules.
I'm going to try to offer a few tweets to summarize what's happening here.
We got this one.
Why is it fair to the property owner to upzone the property last year just to downzone it this year?
Thank you, Kevin, for that tweet.
And also this one.
Preserve Seattle music history for future generations to enjoy.
That's from Save the Show Box.
What's next year, Councilmember Sawant?
Well, to decide what's next, I think it's good to sort of share a background of what's happened so far.
You mentioned what happened yesterday.
I have to say it was an amazing, almost surreal evening for me that we were able to organize a concert, live concert, with some of the best local rock musicians at such short notice to accompany the public hearing that was mandated by passing the law in August.
The fact that these amazing musicians, Smokey Brights, Spirit Awards, Soul, Sassy Black, they were all there, Ruler, they were all there.
It shows, it sort of really captures the passion that just a whole wide array of Seattleites feel.
I mean, this is now a majority of Seattleites.
I don't have a survey poll to back me up, but the fact that 100,000 people signed up on the petition that was organized by a local musician, Jay Middleton, just because he felt passionate about Showboxx.
He had no idea the petition was going to go anywhere.
And that was the starting point for our movement.
And I want people to understand that the reason we won that ordinance in August, which temporarily expands the boundaries of the Pike Place Market Historical District to encompass the showbox, was entirely due to the strength of the movement, just the passion that they brought, and the fact that we all stood united.
You know, we are all for affordable housing.
We are all for artistic and cultural spaces that are accessible to ordinary working people.
And just to quote Daniel Lyons, was the lead singer of Spirit Award, you know, who was quoted in The Stranger yesterday saying that, look, you know, things that we value as ordinary people are being snatched off from us, you know, in the middle of the night.
And unless we fight back, it is, you know, Seattle is going to be a sterile place for just big business and the wealthy.
Rob, I want to bring you in here.
You chair the city's land use committee and I know that you know the show box is on the city's list of unreinforced masonry buildings.
Not so good an earthquake.
It was reviewed as a potential landmark in 2007. Consultants at that time found it really didn't meet that criteria.
So what is the best way forward here?
I understand a lot of people are trying to say let's save this, but there's a rule of law to consider too.
Yeah, and I wasn't around for that vote in August.
And actually, if I had been there, I probably would have been on the other side of the issue.
You know, for me, what is lost in some of this discussion is the critical nature of the city's mandatory housing affordability program.
And fundamentally, the Showbox is a venue that is owned by one landowner, but is in a long term lease with a different operator.
And at any time, either of those parties could have ended that lease and we wouldn't have the Showbox as we know it today.
When we expand the Pike Place Historic District to this one property, what we've effectively done is we've taken a bunch of citizens who review things like small scale upgrades to the Pike Place market and asked them to weigh in on a major construction design project.
We asked that of our downtown design review boards and some of those other organizations that have a lot of experience and history with that.
It's not something that the Pike Place Historic District board does a lot of.
And unfortunately, it's put us in the position where it's, I think, a lot more difficult for us to engender a conversation that doesn't pit money for affordable housing and more housing generally against the idea of a historic music venue.
I think we could have facilitated a conversation that would have allowed for both of those ideas to move forward.
But now there's oppositional, and now there's a lawsuit, and now we have to kind of await further judicial action on this.
And I'm hopeful that we haven't closed the door to the idea that we could have development, housing, and a music venue there, and we'll just have to wait and see.
Shama, help me out with this, because I think Rob raised a great point here.
This whole mandatory housing affordability piece is a very important part of this.
Had this development been allowed to go forward, we're talking about $5 million in funding for the MHA.
And so I look at that and I think about trying to weigh these important things.
Yes, it's an important music venue, but yes, we have that need for affordable housing, or some housing, more density in downtown, which I know the council is looking for here, that I think you have to wrestle with a little bit.
I think it's a fact that we do have a mandatory housing affordability policy, which, as a socialist who's fighting for working people and affordable housing, I would fight for, with all my energies, fight for every possible affordable housing unit newly built or prevent an existing affordable housing unit from being displaced.
And I would say, first of all, that some of the same politicians who are saying that, well, I'm not so sure about saving the showbox are the same people who, if you look at their track records, are the people who actually have been an obstacle or people like them have been, politicians like them have been an obstacle to having a strong MHA policy and mandatory housing affordability.
If you look at cities like Boston, They have a much stronger policy, like San Francisco.
Why is it that Seattle has such a small – I mean, if you look at the kind of housing affordability we got in areas like South Lake Union, it's pitiful.
And for Councilmember Johnson and others to talk about $5 million worth of affordable housing after having repealed the Amazon tax that would have built hundreds of units of affordable housing every year.
That is just completely disingenuous.
And if we were going to have an honest debate, let's have an honest debate.
But let's not disingenuously and dishonestly pit affordable housing against those who are fighting for the showbox.
Because as a matter of fact, the same people who are fighting for the showbox are also the same people who are unable to pay $2,000 or $3,000 in rent every year.
And as far as downtown is concerned, look at the vacancy rate.
The vacancy rate in downtown Seattle is in double digits, precisely because a lot of people cannot afford the luxury units that are being built there.
So we have to have an honest debate, otherwise it's meaningless.
Rob, I want to make sure I close up this discussion because I know Council Member Sawant mentioned a few different things there.
when it comes to affordable housing, when it comes to building this thing downtown, and when it comes to, as you brought up earlier, trying to follow some of the rules that the city has set out for itself.
Where do we go from here?
Is it going to be a situation where, I don't know, some larger pocketed music people in this area, maybe some of the bigger bands here, get some money together to buy this thing, or what is the next move?
I really hope that that's the case.
And if it is, I hope that some of the purchase price here reflects what it would be lost in mandatory housing affordability payments.
So, you know, far be it for me to speculate about the private transactions between the landowner and their potential purchasers.
But I do think that we need to recognize that the part of this Conversation is really about the administrative processes that the city has gone through to upzone this parcel, to encourage more density downtown, but to require, as part of that new construction, a contribution to the city's affordable housing fund.
And we need to measure those questions at the same time as we measure important considerations like historic preservation.
And I don't think that it's ever as simple as, you know, five minutes of rhetoric back and forth between the two of us.
So generally, you know, I'm hopeful that we can continue to be an organization, a city that's thought of as being thoughtful about how we continue to manage growth and that we're not trying to pit one of those things against the other.
I know you want to keep talking about the showbox, Shama.
I really would like to, quickly, if you can.
I agree, but the way you frame the discussion is not just about the showbox.
Fair enough.
And we will talk a little bit more about MHA in a minute.
Questions about affordable housing.
For a politician to say we need a thoughtful approach, how thoughtful was it, what was exposed in the Seattle Times article of the back and forth text messages between Mayor Durkin and Nick Hanauer, a billionaire, and Council Member Gonzalez?
Yes, of course, because Council Member Johnson brought up affordable housing versus a showbox, so of course we are going to talk about affordable housing.
And how can a council member who voted for repealing the tax talk about affordable housing?
You've lost all legitimacy to talk about it after having pushed back against a movement that was honestly fighting to, and you know, let's put the tax in perspective.
We're talking about the largest businesses in Seattle paying a pittance in tax.
And we didn't see that happen.
And I also wanted to say that, you know, we are the movement and that I don't control.
This is a movement of ordinary people.
They are not awaiting judicial hearings.
You know, they're not awaiting judicial outcomes.
They are very clear.
They want to save this.
And they want affordable housing.
Let me do this.
We will get back to the head tax piece.
I just want to make sure we move on to another piece with regard to mandatory housing affordability that I think has an even bigger impact potentially on the city.
Rob, I'll bring you in here.
I know a hearing examiner just finished up two and a half months worth of testimony, people talking about the MHA upzoning plan.
You and the council have been working on this for years, trying to increase multifamily housing, housing in urban villages.
There are a few sides to this, of course, too.
You've got more than 30 neighborhood groups that are challenging this.
But then you've got people like Richard, who wrote to us this in email.
Why don't we remove all zoning height and multifamily restrictions throughout Seattle?
Please do what's right, not just advocate those who own homes and what's politically popular.
What do you want people to know about this process going forward with MHA?
So we have implemented the mandatory housing affordability program, which all nine council members voted affirmatively for in six different neighborhoods throughout the city.
And the program is intended to do a couple of things.
One is to allow for slightly taller buildings, particularly located by places where we've got dense light rail stations.
And two, to ask developers to pay a fair share into the city's fund for affordable housing or to build affordable housing on site.
We are trying to expand that program to the 28 urban villages throughout the city.
And we are now going to be, about one year after that plan was sent down to council, finally have a decision from the hearings examiner about whether or not there is adequacy about the environmental review that we've done.
Sometime around November or so?
November, early November is our expectation.
And our fundamental goal here is to allow for slightly taller buildings to be built in a lot of neighborhoods where we already have dense development and require a lot more affordable housing than exists today.
Right now we don't require any development to build affordable housing.
And that trade-off is a critical one that many folks have challenged, but also many have supported.
And unfortunately, that one-year delay is resulting in us losing not only tens of millions of dollars, but also lots of new units, both affordable and market rate, which we desperately need at a time where we're growing so rapidly.
My hope is that by the end of the first quarter next year, we have adopted an MHA requirement in a lot of the communities that don't have it right now.
And that helps us generate more money for affordable housing.
But this one year delay by appellants to the environmental review process is what's keeping us from implementing these zoning changes in these 28 urban villages.
I want to make sure I had you tag in here.
I know you don't serve specifically on the land use committee, but this is a really important council issue.
Where do you want this discussion to go regarding upzoning in neighborhoods around Seattle to deal with this huge influx of people coming into the area?
I could not agree more.
We have to understand that density is a part and parcel of building an affordable and livable and walkable city.
I mean, if you want to have a city that is actually reducing the carbon footprint, then we have to have density.
I mean, it's a rational phenomenon.
And I say that not only as a socialist, but also as an economist and also as somebody who grew up in Mumbai, which is a very dense city.
And so, I personally feel that just from my own lived experience that it is important to have taller buildings where we have affordable housing.
So, in other words, what I would say is that it's not – oftentimes, as Councilman Johnson was saying, oftentimes the discussion ends up being about whether you're for density or against density.
Really, the discussion should be about affordability.
and about sustainability.
And if you take those two aspects into account, then it does imply both density and making sure that as many units as possible are affordable for ordinary working people.
And that is where I would say that while I absolutely support every every little bit of affordability that we get from the MHA policy, it is really not strong enough.
We have other cities, I mean, it's not just me saying, other cities have done it, where they have stronger MHA policies.
And part of the reason we in Seattle don't have that was because the product, the MHA policy framework was a product of the so-called HALA, you know, the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda.
You know, it was like a, was so-called grand bargain with this, In my view, sort of a false idea of trying to get big developers, big landowners, big business, and ordinary people together, and then find out what they're all agreeing on.
Well, that's not going to happen.
So ultimately, as an elected representative, I think we should do what is in the interest of working people.
And you can't serve two masters.
You can't serve two masters who have opposite goals.
So, we cannot just talk about density, we also have to talk about affordability.
And then just one other thing I'll add to the MHA discussion is, and not just MHA, but overall the affordability and density discussion, is one of the things that was left out of the HALA discussions was displacement.
We have to—while I'm completely for density, I also want to have an honest discussion about how much displacement is happening, not only in terms of the units that are being lost—that is one aspect that a lot of ordinary people and activists have talked about—but also the eviction laws that prevail in the city, which has nothing to do with MHE, but I'm just bringing it up because it's in context.
Yeah, it's important.
The Washington Community Action Network, an activist organization that operates out of King County, they just had a press conference today where they're unveiling a study that showed how bad the eviction laws are.
They overly favor landlords opposed to renters.
A topic for another show, I'm sure.
Rob, you wanted to say something else about MHA.
Just briefly, we adopt those goals for a mandatory housing affordability based on a legal framework.
That legal framework is something that is important to us so that we can actually generate more revenue for affordable housing.
And moreover, when we've seen very high rates of requirement in other jurisdictions.
Not only does it result in less new market rate development being built, but also it results in a lot fewer dollars going to affordable housing programs.
So we've intentionally set it at a rate that encourages us to build market rate housing while also building affordable housing.
I have been a champion for affordable housing on this council through the work that we did on MHA, but more importantly, the work that we've done at Sound Transit, where we are taking huge parcels of land and dedicating them right on top of light rail stations to build affordable housing units in conjunction with community.
The way that we pay for those kinds of projects is through MHA.
So we need more of those resources to be able to build more affordable housing all throughout the city.
I need to move on to another piece.
There's another land use issue and I'm sure we'll have a good discussion here too.
This one's about Key Arena.
So, deadline passed earlier this month for groups to challenge the environmental impact statement that came out from this for that renovation project.
It looks like this is full steam ahead.
I know the council has a big vote coming up September 24th on this project.
Rob, are you planning to say yes?
Are there changes you want to make?
What do we got?
I'm super excited about this.
You know, I think this is an issue for a long time that I've been a champion on.
You know, my little brother played basketball at the University of Washington.
At 6'3", I'm one of the shorter of my cousins. We as a city are really excited about the possibility of partnering with Oak View to do a dramatic remodel of Key Arena, to bring NHL to Seattle, to bring potentially NBA back to Seattle. And the The transactional documents that we're about to approve are an important step after the MOU that we signed last year. And what I'm bringing forward as part of that conversation is a companion resolution to address a lot of the community concerns, particularly around the neighborhood, about transportation impacts. As we think about the impact that KeyArena is going to have and the construction of KeyArena in the neighborhood, we need to be very cognizant of how people get to and from the construction job site, how workers are going to get there, how workers who are employed by Unite Here Local 8 and other local unions who are going to operate that arena once it opens are going to get to and from work, and how fans are going to get there too. A coordinated transportation plan and who's going to pay for it is going to be an important thing, but $2.5 million for MHA, $20 million for other important community investments, including $10 million for our friends at Youth Care. I mean, there's a lot of really great things to like about this project.
I think it's going to be really fun.
Tell me your thoughts on the key and what's happening.
Something you want to add to this agreement or anything along those lines?
No, I think Council Member Johnson gave a good summary.
I would say that it also, when we have big projects like this, the convention center is going to be a big one and obviously the heart of downtown.
The period of maximum constraint.
Here we go.
Exactly.
I was just laughing because it's such a formal way of saying it.
It is.
We're going to have a lot of traffic, everybody.
Deal with it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, while I'm obviously being sort of jokey about it, also, you know, there's a serious component to it in the sense that what we're talking about is ordinary working people facing longer commutes because they are less and less able to find affordable housing close to their workplaces.
And so already commutes are so long.
We have traffic snarls, which is a daily occurrence.
I mean, you know what, I find that, you know, there's lots of agreement, disagreement, differences of opinion on lots of issues like minimum wage or affordable housing and all that.
But one thing that everybody agrees on, whether you're a business owner or whatever, is the need for municipal broadband and the traffic snarls are bad.
You know, those are sort of unifying issues.
And really it brings up, I would say that these big projects and the extra traffic problems that they create also brings up the larger question of investment in public transit.
And this is obviously not just a city question, it's a regional question, it's a state question.
At a time when There have been cuts to King County Metro over the last decade.
Ridership has gone up.
It tells you that ordinary people want to take on the responsibility of being environmentally conscious, but then the political establishment has the obligation to actually provide for public transit that allows people to leave their cars at home.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Sean, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about this new committee on homelessness.
All the council members are a part of it.
You're one of the co-chairs, reviewing essentially how the city spends its money on homelessness as we enter the fall budget season.
I know this is a very challenging issue, especially after the failure of the head tax, or after the head tax was repealed, I should say.
Those tax dollars were intended for the homeless.
What is your plan with leading this committee?
Are you looking for new revenue?
What's next?
Well, I think if you look at it again from a rational and sort of scientific database standpoint, then the framework for what we think about in terms of solutions hasn't changed.
The problem is still there.
I mean, it was shameful that the Amazon tax was repealed, but that hasn't changed.
solve the problem.
I mean, it's not like the tax was repealed because magically homelessness was addressed.
And we're not just talking about homelessness, right?
Remember, we're talking about, as the Seattle Times reported, over 23,000 working families, households, that are paying more than 50% of their income in rent.
And that is, you know, from the economist's rule of thumb, that is a household that is critically burdened, you know, overburdened with charges, because that means that you have that much less to provide for other needs of your family.
And so...
You know, my office and the movement that I'm a part of, you know, we don't mind having a new select committee.
But for me, as I said in my opening remarks at the inaugural meeting, it's not simply about having a meeting, because yes, we have lots of meetings.
The question is, what are we going to deliver as solutions to ordinary people?
And so if we agree that we need publicly owned affordable housing, because the housing market as we have under capitalism has failed us, which most rational people agree with, then it brings up the question of building publicly-owned affordable housing, which is what the Amazon tax was going to do, like build city-owned housing.
Then we cannot duck the question of revenues.
And so taxing big business is not a question we can duck.
So I absolutely look forward to leading that committee, but my goal with that committee will not be anything different than my goal has been in the last several years, which is how do we find revenues that are progressively raised by taxing big business in the world and not by taxing ordinary people to build housing.
Thank you for that.
Rob, is this kind of a back-to-the-drawing-board moment when it comes to homelessness for the city?
I know you're looking at a lot of costs going into the budget season here when it comes to homelessness.
What do you want to come out of this committee process?
Well, I want to give credit where credit's due, that I think we as a city have started to really being a lot more transparent with our data to be able to showcase exactly how we're both using our resources and the impact that those resources are having on real people's lives.
We haven't seen yet the second quarter data about homelessness services spending, but I expect that as we continue to review those numbers, that's going to be really critically important data points for us to judge our success.
I also think that it's really good for us to be in collaboration with folks like the county and United Way to make sure that we are funding across purposes and being on the same funding alignment is critical.
As a land use nerd, I think one of the things that I've been most surprised by is the changing public perception about homelessness in neighborhoods.
When I ran for office three years ago, I heard a lot from folks who were concerned about the number of folks who were sleeping outside every night, particularly in public parks.
And the rhetoric from a lot of those folks have changed from, I understand that people are sleeping outside and I want them to be somewhere where it's okay for them to be.
So rather than what we used to hear, which is get them out of the parks, I don't care where they go, people have seen that's not working.
So they come to our office and say we want to see more tiny house villages in our neighborhoods that we can provide support to as an interim step so that we're getting people indoors away from sleeping outside and before we can build enough affordable housing to get everybody inside.
So my hope is that the committee is actually going to allow for us to build more temporary homeless encampments than the seven that we've currently authorized and allow for a greater proliferation of those tiny house villages so that we can again create more space for people to not sleep outside and also do a better job of an intake within those tiny house villages to permanent housing solutions.
Okay.
A lot ahead with that.
Thank you for that breakdown.
I'm going to try to pick up the pace ever so slightly, Rob.
Talk about the Center City Connector Streetcar Project really under scrutiny right now.
a project that could help increase ridership, but I know costs are way up, way more than what SDOT first estimated three years ago.
What are your concerns here?
What do you want to see happen next with this?
Yeah, I mean, I think that the construction costs for everything are going up.
That's part of the equation here, but certainly, you know, the mayor's asked for a very thorough review.
KPMG, who's the firm that's in charge of that review, is doing both a review of the ridership assumptions and the financial models.
But that also, because we've got $50 million of the federal funding here, requires the Federal Transit Administration to get involved too and take another look at all of those numbers.
What I'm expecting here is that actually this is going to be an ongoing discussion into 2019. I'm a streetcar champion.
I believe that the Center City Streetcar is going to be a critical, important connector between the two existing streetcar lines that we have.
Got a lot of community support from Pike Place Market to the Chinatown International District and a whole lot of institutions in between.
But we need to be focused on how we're going to pay for it, and that's going to be a critical element here.
We still don't know what the final costs are going to look like, and I'm awaiting that report to really determine what the final costs are going to be.
Thank you for that.
We need to start wrapping up the show.
Thank you for the discussion here.
I want to talk budget priorities briefly.
I can give you about a minute here, Shama.
Going into November, I know this is a big time for the council.
Budget priorities that we haven't talked about already maybe.
I think affordable housing absolutely is at the top of the list.
It's also a question of—I agree, you know, we need to look at how we spend our money.
So, in other words, I am quite concerned that the mayor has indicated several times already this year that she plans to expand the money for sweeps of homeless encampments.
That is—again, if you want to be data-driven, I'm all for it, as an economist.
Let's be data-driven.
Sweeps of homeless encampments do not accomplish one thing to reduce homelessness, and as a matter of fact, they are inhumane acts and actually end up destroying whatever little community that homeless community members are able to build where they are.
We absolutely need to prioritize affordability and livability in this budget.
And as always, my office and in solidarity with other activist organizations, we will be organizing the People's Budget Movement for this year, and our rally will be happening on the afternoon of October 6th.
We know there will be more information forthcoming.
Thanks, Rab.
I'll let you wrap it up with budget priorities, please.
You know I think continuing to be a champion for safe consumption sites is going to be important to me and those funds are at risk both in our budget and because of the threats from the Trump administration.
With a new potential and she hasn't been confirmed yet but I think she's likely to be superintendent at City Light.
I think there's an opportunity there for us to revisit municipal broadband which both Councilmember Sawant and I have been champions for on the City Council.
And then finally, I think it's important for us to not lose sight in a big, booming economy like we're in right now of some of those base-level livability issues.
As somebody with kids in public schools, we have a lot of our fields that aren't lit.
We've got a lot of challenges every year funding waiting pools.
Some of the getting back to basics around livability that help make our neighborhoods feel like we're making investments in them, I think are gonna be important to me, too.
All right, thank you very much for this discussion.
We will see you next time on Council Edition.