Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committee 3/25/2026

Thank you.

Okay, the March 25th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 2.02 PM.

I'm Dionne Foster, chair of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Rink.

Vice Chair Lin.

Here.

Chair Foster.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Great.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Fantastic.

We have one in-person, is it an in-person speaker?

Great.

We have one in-person speaker and there are no remote speakers.

So each speaker will have two minutes and we will start with the in-person speaker.

All right.

The public comment period is 60 minutes.

The first speaker is Ashley Ford.

Hi, I just wanted to give a quick thank you to you all for just how refreshing it has been to work with City Council recently over this last transition that we've seen.

It's been really refreshing to see just the difference in how Council's been engaging with our various commissions.

I didn't introduce myself, I'm Ashley, I'm one of the commissioners on the LGBTQ commission, previously one of the co-chairs.

and even this meeting alone I think is a really good example of just like how much better things have been recently so just really want to thank you all for your professionalism working with our commissions and just being really willing to collaborate with us it's very meaningful and again a very refreshing change from what we have experienced previously so thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate that.

And with that, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Oh, and before you do, whoops, just want to acknowledge that we've been joined on the Dias by Council Member Rink.

Welcome.

All right.

Agenda item one, overview of Washington State Housing Finance Commission Covenant Home Ownership Program.

Great.

And I believe our presenters are with us virtually today, so will not be joining us at the physical table.

So I will ask our presenters to join us at the virtual table and please introduce yourselves when you are ready.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and hopefully reshare my screen.

Let's see.

Can everyone see that okay?

We sure can.

And I'm just going to share a few words quickly after you introduce yourself, but go ahead and introduce yourself and then we'll go from there.

Great.

Well, thank you.

My name is Lisa Dubrock.

I am the Homeownership Director at the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, and I truly appreciate the invitation to come and share with you a little bit about our Covenant Homeownership Program, along with Morgan Williams from the National Fair Housing Alliance.

who will introduce themselves.

For those of you not maybe as familiar with the Commission, in terms of home ownership, we bridge the gap to home ownership for low to moderate income families by bringing a variety of different first and second mortgage programs to the market to help families achieve home ownership.

On a typical year, we help a minimum of 5,000 families statewide per year and the Covenant Home Ownership Program being one of them.

So would you like Morgan to introduce himself next before I continue on?

Yes, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lisa and everyone.

Pleasure to be here with you virtually.

Again, I'm Morgan Williams, senior counsel with the National Fair Housing Alliance, which is a national civil rights office based in Washington, D.C. I myself am based in New Orleans and work with a variety of civil rights advocates industry partners and a number of different stakeholders across the country to advance fair housing efforts.

Talk more about our engagement with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission in the course of this presentation, but it's a pleasure to be here with you all today.

Thank you so much for that.

We're excited to hear from you.

And Morgan, if you're able to adjust your mic to get it a little bit louder, that might be helpful.

We can hear you, but it's a little bit faint in the room here.

And right before we hand it over to our presenters, I'll just sort of remind my colleagues, this is part of our ongoing conversation on home ownership in the city.

As you all remember, a couple of weeks ago, we were joined by the Office of Housing staff who talked about the city's home ownership programs, including efforts that we are doing for homeowner stabilization, supporting homeowners with down payment assistance and so much more.

And so this is a follow-up conversation so that we can learn more from our partners at the state about their incredible leadership with the Covenant Homeownership Program and the successes that they've had at ensuring that they are directing dollars and supporting home ownership for residents around Washington state.

We've talked about this already in this committee, but I'll just bring it up one more time.

As we look at the area median income for, and particularly we've talked about for black residents being about half as the highest income earners with lower rates of home ownership, it's really important that we continue to put a focus on this really important issue as the cost of living goes up and as we become a city that is majority renters, there is still need to make sure that we are supporting people to find stability and long-term homes for themselves through homeownership.

So I'm really excited about the work that the Washington State Housing Finance Commission is doing and excited to learn from both the findings of the Covenant Homeownership Study as well as the strategies and investments that have come forward because of this work.

Colleagues, I do ask that we will wait for questions until after the briefing.

And with that, I will hold it.

I will not hold it.

I will hand it over to our presenters.

Well, thank you so much.

And thank you for the kind comments.

Again, we're excited to share with you a little bit about the program, the study, and then results thus far.

And pictured here in this slide was the happy day when Governor Inslee signed the bill back in May 2023, along with some of our amazing advocates.

And really Morgan will go into a little bit more detail about the act itself.

However, I think it's important to note that this is truly a landmark bill and for this legislation, all of the stars simply just aligned.

We worked hand in hand with the Black Home Initiative and stakeholders throughout the state on the bill for the passage as well as the program.

And it's the first of its kind in the nation, especially for a housing finance agency.

where in this case, the state is taking responsibility for the harm that it caused through its racially restrictive covenants.

And it really shut down families from gaining that generational wealth.

So on the slide, it does show that it's bipartisan legislation addressing the legacy of housing discrimination.

There are three main components.

First off, there was a new source of funding from real estate recording fees.

These fees started to be collected in January of 2024. and they are received monthly at the Housing Finance Commission to operate the program.

Secondly, the legislation talks about a research study on discrimination, its impacts and effective remedies, which Morgan will go into great detail on.

And from that, the housing finance agency or the commission was to develop a new down payment assistance programs.

Also, this bill is overseen by an oversight committee hosted at the Department of Financial Institutions.

And I think as you've somewhat alluded to, this bill is just a huge win for equity for Washington families.

The commission was tasked by the legislature to oversee the covenant research study and then design and implement a program based upon the study.

and we hired the wonderful National Fair Housing Alliance and their partners.

So I'm very, very pleased and honored to have Morgan here with us to to talk more about the study.

Morgan.

Thanks so much, Lisa and everyone.

It's great to be here with you virtually and part of this discussion, a part of these efforts.

As Lisa mentioned, the Black Home Initiative and the broad network of local leaders who forwarded the covenant homeownership concept and legislation and program are really doing incredible work to advance housing equity in an affirmative manner and in a thoughtful manner in a way that deploys limited resources in a very strategic way and we honor privilege to have been part of the team to to prepare the study that was called for in the legislation.

Again, with the National Fair Housing Alliance, in the course of the work that we do, we impart work to support the efforts of local fair housing centers across the country.

There are two in the state of Washington that we partnered with in this effort, the Northwest Fair Housing Alliance based in Spokane, and the Fair Housing Center of Washington based in Tacoma, which served broad regions in the state.

And also had the great privilege of working with App Associates, a consulting firm who provided a great deal of data analysis, which embedded, which grounded the modeling work that we did.

And then I'll talk about kind of at a high level in some of the presentation here.

We'll go to the next slide, please.

So I'll say a word about National Fair Housing Alliance, provide some background on special purpose credit programs, talk about the study as we were asked to talk about the methodology and recommendations, and then I guess turn it over to Lisa to talk about the program implementation.

um and uh and so again the National Fair Housing Alliance is a civil rights office it's based in Washington DC that works to advance uh fair housing through investigations and enforcement uh policy advocacy especially at the federal level and a variety of other kinds of efforts including consulting work and in the course of that work, we were selected in our proposal to carry out this study.

Next slide, please.

So special purpose credit programs, or SPCPs, were authorized by Congress in a 1976 amendment to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, ACOA, as a tool to counteract centuries of unfair laws and policies that deprive millions of consumers of the right and opportunity to access fair mortgages and credit.

SBCPs are targeted lending products designed specifically to help an economically disadvantaged group of people who, under customary standards of credit worthiness, would probably not receive credit or would receive it in a less favorable term than ordinarily available to other consumers.

Congress ensured that these programs serving an economically disadvantaged group may consider race or ethnicity without violating ECOA's prohibition on discrimination in order to increase access to the credit market by persons previously foreclosed from it.

Next slide, please.

As Lisa noted, in spring of 2023, the Washington State Legislature passed the Covenant Home Ownership Act, which acknowledges the state government's role as both an active and passive participant in generations of discriminatory policies and practices that created barriers to credit and homeownership for historically marginalized communities in Washington.

and that these discriminatory actions continue to impact these communities today.

The act, as Lisa noted, compelled the commission to complete or commission a study to inform the development of a new special purpose credit program that would remedy racial disparities in home ownership and access to credit left by the state's long history of discrimination And so NAFA's study fulfilled the requirement of the act to document historical discrimination and its impacts to analyze the effectiveness of current programs and policies and to recommend an approach to remedy lingering inequities.

We'll keep moving.

There's some information on the slide there about the parameters that were detailed in the act, but in the interest of time, we can go to the The next slide, please.

So the structure of the study, which I'll detail here, kind of speaks directly to the methodology and the find and the recommendations.

But chapter one documents past housing and lending discrimination in which the state government was both a passive and an active actor.

Chapter two analyzes the extent to which the impacts of that discrimination still persist.

Chapter three then analyzes the extent to which existing race neutral approaches are sufficient to remedy the disparities that are an impact of this discrimination.

Chapter 4 models various options for programmatic solutions and recommends particular race conscious approach.

and then chapter five discusses approaches for evaluating the program and monitoring it in an ongoing basis.

So go to the next slide here and we'll briefly kind of walk, well, I guess I'll just say before going chapter by chapter here that the study used mixed methods approach involving analysis of historic records, legislation, census data, home lending records, housing market trends, zoning policies, as well as a community survey and stakeholder interviews.

Next slide, please.

and the commission actually elected to expand the stakeholder engagement as the process was underway to really ensure that the community was engaged and informed about the process as it developed and then also informed the assessment as the report and analysis was being prepared.

And again, really credit our local partners there, the Northwest Fair Housing Alliance in Tacoma and the Fair Housing Center, I'm sorry, the Fair Housing Alliance in Spokane and the Fair Housing Center of Washington and Tacoma for leading those efforts.

Next slide, please.

So again, chapter one here.

provides a historical overview of how discriminatory federal, state, and local policies systemically denied communities of color and other marginalized groups in Washington equal access to housing and credit opportunities for over a century.

Key findings include that Washington residents of color and other marginalized groups faced widespread discriminatory barriers to equal housing opportunity from the 19th century onward, implemented through state and local governmental policies and practices.

These discriminatory actions included land seizure, forced removal, over 50,000 racially restrictive covenants barring people of color and other marginalized groups from purchasing homes and having and living in specific neighborhoods, exclusionary zoning practices, and racist practices in the state licensed real estate industry.

And state courts reinforced many of these practices.

As a direct result of these practices, people of color and other marginalized groups in Washington were prevented from buying homes, accessing credit, and building wealth.

um next slide please um as noted in the sequence of the analysis of the study chapter two documents the ongoing lingering impacts of this historic discrimination the chapter analyzes present-day data on home ownership wealth housing costs burden homelessness access to mortgage lending and appraisal disparities and just in the interest of time, I'll just jump to the next slide, actually.

Noting that there are persistent disparities among a variety of demographics.

Chapter three evaluates key policy approaches for expanding home ownership opportunities to impacted residents.

Key findings from this analysis conclude that race neutral approaches are unlikely to be effective or efficient in addressing past discrimination and ongoing disparities.

And so through modeling, the chapter establishes that existing homeownership programs in Washington primarily aid non-impacted residents, that is non-impacted, non-impacted residents as defined by those impacted by covenants in the pre-1968 context, or that they are descendants of those households.

rather than directly remedying past harm through a targeted approach.

And so there was a modeling of a variety of scenarios, and it showed that specifically designated race-conscious SPCP focused on impacted residents could substantially remedy the wealth and credit access gaps left by historic discrimination with significantly less funding than a race-neutral program and it modeled that approach and those those quantitative distinctions next slide please based on these findings chapter 4 recommends implementing a race-conscious SPCP to remedy the ongoing harms of discrimination by the state and it models several options for structuring a down payment assistance or DPA program that could be incorporated into a special purpose credit program or SPCP these include both fixed down payment assistance models which provide the same amount regardless of where someone lives in the state as well as customized down payment assistance models in which the amount each household receives varies based on housing prices in their county and their income.

The chapter also identifies administrative challenges that the Commission may need to consider and identifies additional policies and programs that would complement a down payment assistance program by addressing other housing challenges that limit homeownership opportunities in the state, such as policies that expand supply of lower cost homes for purchase.

Next slide, please.

And then as was subject to kind of the dictates under the legislation, the study provided recommendations for a new special purpose credit program consistent with the act to include implementing a special purpose credit program for economically disadvantaged households with black, Hispanic, Native American, Alaskan, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander, Korean or Asian Indian borrowers to provide customized amount of down payment assistance that enable households with income between 80 and 100% AMI to afford a modest cost home in their county and to provide down payment assistance as a zero interest loan.

Next slide, please.

The recommendation also encouraged the consideration of new state legislation to allow for different types of assistance and eligibility.

And that would involve considering expanding the eligibility to incomes up to 140% AMI, which I'll let Lisa talk further about, to avoid trapping households in their homes, considering allowing them to reuse some or all of their assistance to apply to the purchase of a subsequent home.

And finally, that given the widespread discrimination documented in chapters one and two, that potential additional study could be undertaken to apply the feasibility of, consider the feasibility of applying SPCP.

that would support other economically disadvantaged households impacted by the state's unlawful discrimination who are not eligible under the current legislation.

Next slide, please.

Oh, so at that point, I think at least I turn it back over to you here.

I was going to say a word about evaluating the program in Chapter 5 but I'll in the interest of time here reference the study itself which has quite a bit of information there and turn it over to you.

Thank you.

And the study in its entirety is on the Commission's website if anyone's interested, as well as a summary.

So it's a very interesting read.

So when the actual, after the study was developed, we based our program based upon the program parameters per the legislation and the study from the legislation.

Again, a down payment assistance loan that's repaid owner-occupied and there was some individual eligibility.

The household needed to be a Washington resident.

At the time that the original legislation passed, it was for families at 100% and below of area median income.

The state legislature in the, not this past year, but the year before, raised our AMI to 120% of AMI.

This program is only for first-time homebuyers who have a family history within the state of Washington prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act of in April of 1968, and Morgan went over it very quickly, but the home buyer does need to provide all of the documents showing their family chain, whether it was themselves, their parent, their grandparent, and identifying who is in Washington and such, and I could probably spend a good hour just talking on that point, so you can bring me back at some point.

The study recommended specific racial groups that Morgan mentioned, so those are the families that we are helping, and we realized that many, many families were hurt by the racially restrictive covenants.

However, the recommendations were based both on the historic discrimination and current home ownership disparities.

hence what you see there.

We did go with the down payment assistance loan at 0% interest and our loan terms after working with many of our stakeholders throughout the state is up to 20% down not to exceed $150,000 plus applicable and normal closing costs if paid by our home buyer.

The loan term repayment is due at the time of sale.

However, the legislature then went on to amend our legislation a little bit, which is great.

So for home buyers that are at or below 80% of AMI, we can now forgive the loans after five years under certain criteria.

And the results so far have just been absolutely amazing.

We are very, very proud of the results.

This program was only launched in July of 2024, so Gosh, we're going to get to our two-year mark pretty quickly, but we have thus far helped 1,259 families throughout the state with their purchase of their first home.

And I looked at our data, 76 of these families have purchased within the city of Seattle with an average loan amount of just over $130,000.

And pictured here is one of our actual families.

You did ask for some information as well about the race of the families, and this is notably a little bit different.

This is the race of the home buyer, not necessarily the person who was here prior to April of 1968. And what's notable here also is this only tracks the race of one of the home buyers, and many of our households had up to eight people within the home, and it tracks who the lender put as the primary home buyer.

So it may seem a little bit different than what you're expecting, but we track different items.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Morgan.

I know you have one quick final comment before we go to question and answers.

Yes, Lisa, that's in regards to just the application of the scope of the study specifically, is that what you're referencing?

The legality, I believe.

I think you were going to talk a little bit.

This is a study we needed for the legal backing of the program.

Yes.

I think that in the context of considering a race-conscious program, the legislation undertook establishing that the study carried out the various steps that it did chapter by chapter whereby it undertook an assessment of the sort of state impact and historic discrimination the impacts of that in the current market, an assessment that a race neutral approach isn't necessarily going to achieve the goal that you need to achieve, and a narrow tailoring of a race conscious approach to remedy the harm, and then a monitoring of that over time.

And that is a kind of nuanced analysis that the courts have essentially established as needing to be undertaken in instances where a public entity would engage in a race conscious activity to address an economically disadvantaged class of people who are disadvantaged as a function of the state's historic actions.

So that is the legal context in which this analysis was undertaken and it also, I think, underscores that You know, it is a kind of fraught legal context with great legal risk, which is, I think, borne out by the fact that there is a pending lawsuit against the Commission by an organization that's asserting that The discrimination is unconstitutional in discriminating and excluding potential households.

And so that litigation remains pending.

And I will say that the Commission did survive motion for a restraining order to freeze the program which was denied and so the program continues as Lisa mentioned but the lawsuit continues as well and the commission remains in defense of that so that just underscores the ascent to which any actors who are thinking about undertaking these efforts need to do so with great caution and forethought and very specific analysis to the context in which one would undertake such an effort.

So I think that's the additional comments there, Lisa.

I hope that that hit it there.

So I'll stop there and appreciate the opportunity to be here and checking in with you all and happy to discuss anything further.

Fantastic.

I want to just thank you both for that really incredible overview.

And I know that it can be a lot of detail to get into for the various chapters that went into the study and the connections that needed to be built in order to to execute the program successfully.

But what I do think is really important and that I wanna make sure we uplift are a few things, but obviously one of those final slides that you showed us that showed the number of black households that benefited from this program as well as I think you had the native and Latino households on there and the ability to be targeted has allowed for a program that has a much greater direct benefit than other programs, at least any other programs that I'm aware of.

So I think it's really important to see that result of all of that, those pieces of work.

Colleagues, I'll ask you if you have questions to go ahead and raise your hand in the chat.

And before you do, I'll just ask my one question, which is if I can ask you to reiterate again for us the role of the special purpose credit programs and how that ties directly into the study.

I think it's my understanding that the state legislation essentially sort of prescribed the chapters that needed to go into that study to ensure that the final study allowed for utilization under the special purpose credit program.

Is that correct?

Yeah, so I'll address that last question.

Thank you.

So the state legislation calls for a study and for the program.

And it is a program that the legislation and that the study itself acknowledge as a special purpose credit program.

And therefore it's acknowledged that it's, oops, excuse me, specifically implemented under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which allows for private institutions, private lenders for non-profit organizations as well as for government entities to institute affirmative programs that address unmet credit needs.

And there's limited regulatory oversight as it pertains to especially government actors.

There is the prospect that the federal government may, under this administration, rewrite some of the guidance under Regulation B under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act that applies to private entities, but essentially the program is implemented as a special purpose credit program as its complement as it's contemplated under the statute under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which specifies and especially permits these kinds of programs that are targeted lending products designed again to specifically to help an economically disadvantaged group of people who are underserved in the community.

In this context, It's also specifically targeted in a very narrow fashion and with some in-depth analysis that contemplates the broader landscape of constitutional scrutiny of these issues that informed the state legislation and the components of the study that were called for.

Thank you, Morgan.

Colleagues, any questions for our presenters?

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

And thank you to our presenters.

As you mentioned, this is such an incredible program.

I had the chance to see it developing when I was working with the Office of Housing and the impact that you're making and the incredible advocacy and research and legal framework that went into this and I know people around the country were looking at this and seeing how they could create programs to model after this and I understand that it's difficult and there's always legal risk when you're doing something new and bold and trying to correct the wrongs of the past as you're doing here.

And so I do just want to, you know, the long list of people that played a role in this is probably too many to name, but I do want to name a few.

You know, the late Representative Frank Chop, Representative Jamila Taylor, Representative Sean Scott, before he was a representative, was instrumental.

I believe UW Professor Quintard Taylor also played a role with all the history that he provided.

And so I just want to call out a few of the names who played an instrumental role in the research and legwork to get this passed.

A few questions.

In terms of glad to see 76 loan closings within the city of Seattle, I've heard out in community that even with this incredible program that it is hard to make it pencil just due to the high cost of housing in Seattle.

Just wondering if you have any thoughts about how people are able to make it work in Seattle and if there's anything that we can do to make it easier for people in Seattle to take advantage of this program.

Yeah, absolutely.

I can take the first stab at that.

What we've seen so far is multiple layers of down payment assistance.

So it was contemplated that this program would be used as one of the programs and the array of programs.

So we do see, especially in high cost areas where you will see three and four layers of assistance.

Unfortunately, Washington as a whole is a very expensive state, Seattle being clearly the most expensive parts.

So, you know, there's never enough help.

We are also big advocates of working with our housing counseling network as they are very helpful in terms of getting our families' mortgage ready and ready to be in position.

So in terms of other things you can do, the more layers, the better.

So if we can, I know you do offer down payment assistance as well, and I believe we probably have that paired our programs together.

Thank you for that.

And the loan forgiveness is a newer component of this due to more recent legislation.

Just want to hear how that's going and whether there are tax concerns for folks who are getting a loan forgiveness and how y'all are working through that issue.

Yeah, thank you for the question.

And we did research the tax portion quite thoroughly and there are no tax issues.

Again, these are only for families at 80% and below.

So we're good on that.

You know, we're almost two years into the program.

So we're another three years away from loan forgiveness for our first sets of families.

But there, you know, we have, we Part of what we do is after loan closing we evaluate every loan after pooling and we do let the families know if we feel they are going to potentially be eligible in five years if they're still going to be meeting specific criteria.

So we look forward to the day where we can start forgiving some of the loans for a large number of the families.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And again, just want to celebrate the incredible importance of this program, the research.

We see at the federal level how our history is, folks are trying to erase our history and the critical importance of documenting that past discrimination, to lay that groundwork for the legal framework for these programs so that we understand why there's this incredibly huge wealth gap in our community, why we see these huge disparities in homeownership, and to document things like how our city played and city and county and state played a role in this discrimination, not only in redlining but also in our zoning practices, and we continue to see impacts of that with segregation continuing today in our neighborhoods and our schools.

And this is just one critically important piece to remedy that.

So thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lin.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

And really well stated, Councilmember Lynn, thank you for acknowledging all of the work that went into this effort.

And I know we had an opportunity to touch on some of this last year when we were honoring former Speaker Chopp and his legacy and his hard work on this.

And no one person does it alone.

A large coalition brought this to fruition, and now an amazing team is continuing to do that work.

So I want to thank you all from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission for coming before committee today.

And thank you chair for also scheduling this in committee.

I just have a couple of questions here for today.

Can you please expand on the findings and recommendations related to disproportionately higher property tax rates due to appraisal disparities?

Morgan, are you able to chime in on that?

Yeah, I mean, it's been two years since we issued the report.

So I did prepare for these remarks, but it was at a high level.

So we did look at appraisal disparity issues.

Off the cuff, I'm going to need to go back to the report and and just I have it open here, just very quickly kind of review kind of the context of that.

I will say our office does do a significant amount of um work in regards to the appraisal industry and I I'm looking here to see what data sets we would have analyzed in regards to appraisal matters.

I'm sorry to say I can't recall specifically offhand.

Not a problem at all.

Happy to follow up on that point.

Not a gotcha in any type of way.

I was just really curious.

Page 71 of the study is going to be the place to look at some of what we looked at in disparities in home value and appraisal.

And then it's charted and further detailed in through pages 75, 71 to 75 in the study are gonna chart some of the issues that we looked at in regards to appraisal disparities.

Perfect.

Thank you so much that's really helpful just really want to dive in there's so much valuable information here and so that's a good starting place for us and can follow up if we have additional questions and I think just on face value I'm really keen on how we can further support the work of this program and so is there anything we can do here on the city level to further complement this work as you're engaging on this?

So I think we're always open to further discussion.

I would encourage you to reach out to me.

I'm happy to, my contact information was on the last slide.

We're always happy to chat.

I'm happy to bring in our executive director, Steve Walker, as well as some of my other counterparts, but we're always happy to engage.

So feel free to reach out.

Sounds like a plan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

And before we go to our next presenters, I just wanted to say, I appreciate your question, Council Member Rink, about how we at the local level can be supportive of this program.

One of the reasons that I really wanted to have these folks in today was to walk us through the structure and the approach that they took to both understanding the scope of what the special purpose credits allow local state or other governments or non-profits to take advantage of and then how the study needed to be shaped in order to ensure that it accurately researched the history and accurately presented the information in a way that allowed for a program to be designed in accordance with that federal allowance.

So I think if anything, colleagues, that's one of the pieces that I wanna ask for us to take away today is that we look at the state as a model example of how that research and scoping then allowed for a program that was designed to be targeted to be implemented.

And then we are excited to continue to partner with the state and again want to appreciate particularly Representative Jamila Taylor for her leadership on this bill at the state level.

It just can't be said enough, I think, how important that was.

So thank you, Council Member Berlin, for reminding us to thank our colleagues in Olympia who helped make this policy possible.

and with that, thank you so much to our presenters and we are gonna ask the clerk to read item two into the record.

Thank you.

Agenda item two, overview of Seattle Office for Civil Rights Commissions.

Fantastic.

And I believe for this portion, we have a combination of presenters in person and online.

So I'll ask our in-person presenters to come join us at the committee table and to please introduce yourselves when you are ready.

I believe that we may have a large number of folks with us today, which is really exciting from our various commissions.

So we'll give you all a second to get settled at the table.

on Zoom, okay.

Hi.

I'll just do a quick intro here.

Hello, council members and Chair Foster.

My name is Meredith Stone, and I'm the Commission's Manager for the Office for Civil Rights.

It's my pleasure today to introduce our four commissions that are supported by our office.

It's the Human Rights Commission, the Women's, LGBTQ, and Disability Commissions.

These are all here.

I've worked with these commissions for almost five years.

and really admire the work they do and the expertise that they bring to the city.

As you know, city commissioners are volunteers and are committed to serving Seattle's communities.

Thank you for inviting them to come to speak today to share their work plan priorities, and we look forward to continuing to support their partnership with City Council.

I'll go ahead and turn it over.

Let's start at the end here.

Jessa, if you want to start with intros, just go down the table to introduce yourselves and what commission you're on, and then the presentation will start.

So thanks very much.

Sounds great.

Oh, green light is on.

Excellent.

Hi, Jessa, she, her.

I'm one of the co-chairs of the LGBTQ Commission.

Cody, he, him, I am co-chair of the LGBTQ Commission.

Bianca Gallegos, I am co-chair for the Seattle Disabilities Commission.

Janet Stafford, I'm commission staff with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Good afternoon, my name is Emily Rose Barr, and I use she, her pronouns, and I am one of the co-chairs of the Seattle Women's Commission.

Whitney Nakamura, I use she and her.

I'm also with the Seattle Women's Commission.

Good afternoon.

I'm Beverly Smith.

I'm the vice chair of the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

Hi, Gwen McCullough, and I'm the chair of the Human Rights Commission.

And I believe there's one person joining us from online.

If you can go ahead and unmute yourself and introduce yourself.

Hi, yes, my name is Scott Nelson and I'm co-chair of the Seattle Visibility Commission.

Fantastic.

Welcome and thank you so much to everyone for joining us today.

We really appreciate you all taking the time out of your schedules not only to serve on the commissions but to join us at committee and to discuss your work.

We're really excited to get an overview and especially important because the Office of Civil Rights houses so many commissions and these four commissions play a vital role in ensuring that you're advocating for and elevating the needs of the communities that you serve and helping us as the council, but also the mayor and the departments make sure that we are delivering for residents of Seattle.

And so we appreciate you and your service.

I know we are gonna walk through a slide.

We're gonna walk through a slide deck today and we're looking forward to hearing from you all as chairs and co-chairs.

So I'm gonna hand it all over to you and then colleagues, I'm gonna ask that we wait until each of the four commissions have presented to do questions because there are not overlap, but it may be that one committee's work plan answers a question that you might have.

So we'll ask that you all do that.

and then you can, we will hand it over to you when you're ready and we can see you on Seattle Channel.

So if you're, I know that's a weird seat to be in, but if you'd like, you're welcome to move over there, but do whatever feels most comfortable to you.

Okay, thank you.

I'll introduce myself again.

Gwen McCullough, and I am the chair for the Seattle Human Rights Commission, and these are all of the other commission members for the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

The SHRC was established in 1963 to advocate for justice and equal rights.

We advise the city of Seattle on human rights issues and engage public and private sectors on eliminating and preventing discrimination citywide.

These are the committees and task forces associated with our commission and the workflows from these committees and task forces is what makes up our work plan for 2026. The communications, events, appeals, and policy review committees along with the housing and unhoused criminal legal system reform and anti-human trafficking task forces.

One of the unique responsibilities of the SHRC is to consult and make recommendations to the Office of Civil Rights.

regarding city problems that could result in discrimination.

This year, we launched a new committee, the Policy Review Committee, in order to serve that purpose.

The committee will advise and recommend policy revisions to the Office for Civil Rights that have the...

potential to have deleterious effects to our citizens, and we will be coordinating reviews of city policies associated with the most frequently addressed issues in the discrimination appeals hearings that we hold.

Our priorities for 2026 are to recruit a full 21 commission, to collaborate under our new leadership structure, for us to have timely completion of all the appeals hearings that we perform, which is usually about two a month, and then reiterating the launch of that new policy review committee and engaging with community and city council members in addition to strengthening partnership with our other sister OCR commissions on shared goals.

Beverly?

Thank you.

Once again, Beverly Smith.

I'm the vice chair.

I'm honored to serve with Gwen on this committee.

Looking ahead, this is a different slide than we actually have.

This is a new slide for me, but we're going to wing it.

We're going to go with it.

The large impact is around consistent and productive engagement across all of our task force in the communities that we serve.

and having those events tied to support each task force's goals as they move forward.

The Housing and Homelessness Task Force is focusing largely on the encampment sweeps and really educating and understanding around those impacted by homelessness.

So we will be doing monthly community listening sessions, and we'll actually have a dedicated day to highlight and focus and provide socialization around housing as a human race.

that is actually gonna be June 30th, by the way, not June 27th, so just a point of order.

For the Human Trafficking Task Force, they again are focusing on engagement and also impact, and they're trying to isolate meaningful data regarding human trafficking activity in Seattle, as well as work with local organizations already creating positive change in this area to act as a support in those efforts.

We also are including dedicated speakers during HRC meetings for education awareness, and we have a goal of doing at least two of those for this 2026 cycle.

And then we also are continuing our partnership with the FIFA World Cup group, focused on preventative efforts to deter trafficking activity during this global event.

Okay, so that slide was what we were doing before.

So several events through the rest of the year, I've highlighted some of them already on this slide.

But as you can see, we're trying to do monthly engagement with the communities that we serve to increase awareness.

But also a large focus for us will be the desire to strengthen our partnerships, both at the city council as well as the city attorney's office, as well as our sister commissions, which Gwen already highlighted earlier.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, so I have a copy of our work plans that I was going to share with each of you before we get started, so I'll bring those up now.

And maybe I'll get started while she's passing that out.

So thank you so much for having us.

We're super excited to be here and share our focus areas.

And this is very high level, so we really do encourage you all to look at that detailed document.

That's our full work plan, and it has quite a bit more than what we'll discuss today.

The Seattle Women's Commission was formed in the 70s by council member Jeanette Williams, a longtime council member serving for 20 years on city council and a strong human and women rights advocate.

So just want to start with gratitude to that founding and certainly the legacy of all the strong, creative women who have powered the Seattle Women's Commission over the years and really paved the path for and gratitude to all of our incredible SOCR staff and Marta as well.

Oh, sorry, you can go to the next one, thanks.

So these are our focus areas, gender-based violence, housing stability, and our women's health and wellness.

Our structure includes our standing committees.

Those are ongoing, our exec committee and our outreach committee.

And then our subcommittees are voted on annually, and they develop two-year work plans that that have more information about how we are implementing all of these focus areas.

And before Emily goes over the focus areas, I just want to highlight these are largely a continuation of previous years.

And honestly, these mostly align with what community was elevating over 50 years ago when the Seattle Women's Commission was formed.

and certainly have a lot of overlap with our previous subcommittee work as well.

And so in terms of promoting the health and well-being of women around gender equity and employment, opportunities for stability and empowerment, child care, addressing gender-based violence and safety, these are these are long-term challenges and we recognize that they are complex and systemic and so we also understand that the impacts and solutions are dynamic and so just want to name that a version of this focus, these particular areas has has been going on for a while.

So we're proud of this work.

We're excited to share some of our upcoming initiatives.

And we just want to acknowledge that there's still a lot of work to do and certainly eager for ongoing partnership and long-term investment in these focus areas.

Thanks, Whit.

So I'll start with our first focus area, gender-based violence.

And I'd like to share with all of you some statistics that I pulled from the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

An average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States.

That's more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year.

Nearly one in three college women, 29%, say they've been in an abusive dating relationship.

Women ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 generally experience the highest rates of intimate partner violence.

And finally, 30 to 60% of intimate partner violence perpetrators also abuse children in the household.

So our gender-based violence subcommittee works to prevent and address domestic, intimate partner and gender-based violence through survivor-centered, culturally responsive initiatives, data-informed policy and advocacy, campus prevention campaigns, and community awareness in Seattle and at the University of Washington.

and on this slide under the action portion you can see just some of the ways that we're working to combat violence and elevate the voices and lived experiences of survivors and their advocates.

Our Housing Stability Subcommittee works to improve housing accessibility, affordability, and abundance in Seattle for residents of all ages, races, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, income levels, and abilities.

For our current work plan, some of our initiatives include offering education on fair housing rights, creating a fair housing laws guide for women and families, developing policy recommendations to protect to protect vulnerable populations and collaborating with community stakeholders through fundraising events and a renter's resource fair that provides legal and practical support.

And our third subcommittee is our women's health and wellness, which was formerly our reproductive health subcommittee.

This year, we voted to expand that to encompass women's health more broadly.

So this subcommittee has identified five interconnected priority areas that were noted in the previous slide.

And for today's presentation, I'd like to focus on two of those areas, maternal mortality rates and gender-based health inequities.

In 2015, more than 26 deaths were recorded per 100,000 pregnant women.

This means that compared with their own mothers, American women today are 50% more likely to die in childbirth.

And the risk is consistently three to four times higher for black women than white women, irrespective of income or education.

And with regards to health inequities, the second priority area that we've identified Women have higher incidences than men of certain mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

National data show that women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection, or STI.

And finally, one in four women in the United States dies from heart disease.

Coronary heart disease, which is the most common form, is the leading cause of death among both men and women.

And in addition, women are at higher risk than men for other forms of heart disease.

And on this slide, you can see some of the ways our Women's Health and Wellness Subcommittee plans to engage with these priority areas.

Just really quickly, these are some examples of other recent work that will likely relaunch in some form in the near future as well.

And again, just emphasizing that a lot of our efforts, while we are developing two-year plans and voting annually on our subcommittees, that we recognize a lot of these issues are interconnected and ongoing in various ways.

Next slide, please.

and a reminder that we are here and eager to partner individually as our commission, collectively as SOCR commissions.

The Seattle Women's Commission is a great group.

I mean, we are a super diverse, passionate group of women who volunteer because we care about our city, we care about our communities.

and we represent a lot of different districts and perspectives and experiences and we really value the opportunity to bridge that connection with elevating those community voices and priorities.

and offering recommendations and partnering around our shared goals and priorities.

And so we welcome opportunities to connect specifically with this committee and certainly the full council and you individually as well.

And here are a couple examples.

And then on the next slide, also just a reminder of some of the upcoming stuff that we have, but we are, we're here, we're doing stuff every month and we certainly welcome collaboration with you all.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And before we move to our next presenters, I wanted to say thank you for giving us the work plan.

We do have one council member who's joining us online today, so we'll make sure that we get that over to you, Council Member Juarez, as soon as we get a digital copy.

Okay, I will introduce myself again.

I am Cody Allen.

I use he, him pronouns, and I am one of the three co-chairs of our commission.

The Seattle LGBTQ Commission was created in the early 90s to advocate for queer, trans, and gender non-conforming citizens in a very queer city.

Next slide.

So here is a list of all of our members.

As I said, we have three co-chairs, and then we have a pretty full commission right now, which is pretty exciting.

And we're doing a lot of recruiting right now to fill the rest of our open seats.

So this is a statement from our co-chairs.

So our 2026-2027 work plan details how we will meet the needs of the two-spirit LGBTQIA plus Seattleites who are crucial in our city.

Constituents share with us their fears, such as safety concerns in public spaces and deepening uncertainties about legal protections amid rising stigma and public hostility.

especially towards transgender and non-binary residents.

These realities coincide with affordability and accessibility crises as federal actions targeting our communities and renewed efforts to restrict healthcare access reshape the conditions in which we live and organize.

These strains ripple across every neighborhood intensified by the arrival of two-spirit LGBTQIA individuals and families relocating as internally displaced people within their own country, seeking safety while confronting the skyrocketing cost of living.

Yet the LGBTQ Commission responds as our history teaches us to respond, with resilience, hard-earned hope, and by having each other's backs.

We will strengthen community partnerships and imagine a future that prioritizes mutual flourishing over zero-sum survival.

We move into the chaos of this moment, not away from it.

Clear-eyed about these challenges and yet determined that this welcoming city will live up to its values, not only for Two-Spirit LGBTQIA plus residents, but for all residents.

and so these are our three standing committees.

We have our community outreach and social media.

This committee handles most of our partnerships with external community leaders and community organizations as well as our social media outreach.

We have our commissions operations subcommittee.

This committee ensures that We are regularly reviewing our bylaws, we are following our bylaws, handles programs such as our new member orientation, and whatnot.

And then our Racial Justice and Intersectionality Committee makes sure that everything we are doing centers racial justice in the many, many intersectionalities that the communities that we serve have, both within what we are doing internally and how we are communicating and working with our partners and with the city.

Alrighty, so I'm terrible at making eye contact with people when I speak, so this seat is perfect for me.

Alright, so I just want to echo something that Cody shared from our statement here.

When we started working on this work plan in January this year, we wanted to take lessons learned from our previous work plans and take into consideration the world we live in now and how different it is from just two years ago.

So we're starting off with these three pillars, and the next few slides will kind of go into a bit more detail, but we're focusing on intersectional advocacy, community empowerment, and commission sustainability.

If you want to go to the next slide.

So each of these pillars have two main focus areas, and we have a full work plan that we'll share a digital copy of with individual goals that have some sort of measurable outcome and a tangible impact.

These could be policy proposals, or they could be meetings with co-chairs.

We need to talk.

I'm the chair of the Community Outreach Committee, and I want to do some stuff together, so it's been on my to-do list.

But I'm looking forward to ways that we can center the intersectional nature of the queer community in particular.

You know, there is no queer community separate from the community of Seattle, right?

So we are everywhere within the various communities, and we want to make sure that the voice that we're giving to issues and the way we shine a light on things represents everyone in the queer community, regardless of who they are or where they come from.

So some things that we're talking about on here, of course, there's been a lot of conversation about something like an Office for Trans and Queer Affairs.

I'm trying to read because this one's not a little far away.

We are also working on what a community rapid response plan looks like in terms of increased attacks, especially on transgender people.

We did some important work in February in a committee meeting on that, which I was really glad to sort of get a lot of community input on.

and in addition, we are also working on amplifying these welcoming city initiatives that we have and really making something tangible come out of all that.

Want to go to the next slide?

There's a lot of overlap here with community empowerment as well.

Again, I just mentioned our community advocacy meetings in February was our initial starting meeting for that series, and we're doing that quarterly, so we had Council Member Rink with us.

We have Council Member Foster coming in May, Council President Hollingsworth in August, and Council Member Lynn in November, so thank you to each of you.

And what else do we have under this one here?

Some other tangible things I wanted to point out.

We are voting on more of these goals in our upcoming meeting, but we want to just amplify in things like our community advocacy meetings being a bridge between the broader community and city entities like city council and others.

So that's sort of our goal there is to bring needs to people who have the answers and the resources and ideate and provide solutions together with our community.

I'll go to that third slide.

Yes, cool.

All right.

And then Commission Sustainability is the last one.

Basically, this is just working on all the less shiny parts of being on a commission that often fall under our Operations Committee.

Things like, you know, working on our bylaws and setting up an onboarding process for new commissioners.

We also want to prioritize ensuring that our commission reflects and represents our broader community.

So in addition to that, building capacity in future leaders.

It's our hope that two, five, ten years from now that the transfer of knowledge and empowering of people who come after us leave the Commission better than we've found it.

So that's something I'm really excited about building out in the next two years as well.

And I think next slide and I'll stop talking.

Yeah, so this slide is just some of the accomplishments that we wanted to share from 2025. So I won't read through all of them, but I will go through a couple.

So we collaborated on drafting and educating the community on the city's shield law.

We partnered with multiple community orgs and city departments to divert a repeated anti-queer rally at Cal Anderson Park.

We engaged with FIFA Council to advocate for Two-Spirit LGBTQIA inclusion and visibility during that planning process, especially since that is going to be during Pride Month and the impact that that is going to have on Pride Month celebrations.

We began a Know Your Rights social media campaign that was very, very successful that educated community on their legal protections both on the statewide level, county and citywide level.

As always, we hosted the pride flag raising and sponsored and participated in numerous community events.

We launched the quarterly community advocacy meetings that Chessa was talking about.

We collaborated with the state LGBTQ Commission and Councilmember Rink's office on Trans Day of Remembrance.

Thank you again for that, Councilmember Rink.

Commissioners in total volunteered approximately 400 hours collectively.

That includes regular meetings and then an additional 375 hours in community work at events outside our regular meetings.

Thank you.

And now moving forward with Seattle Disabilities Commission, I will reintroduce myself.

I'm Bianca Gallegos.

My pronouns are she, her, ella, and a visual description of me is I am brunette.

My hair length is to my shoulder.

I am wearing a maroon top and a brown jacket with brown pants.

Now moving forward with what is the Seattle Disabilities Commission?

The Seattle Disabilities Commission advises the mayor, city council, and city departments about issues of importance to people with disabilities, recommends policies, practices, and legislation to the city in matters affecting the concerns of people with disabilities, and encourages among people with various disabilities as well as between people with disabilities and the larger Seattle community.

Next slide, please.

and for our 2025-26 impact and accomplishments.

Most notably, there have been five of them.

The most important one has been the boom in capacity.

We have 14 confirmations of commissioners in the year 2025. and due to the increase in the membership, there has been an expansion to three co-chairs.

And second, co-sponsored a candidate forum around disability issues for local elected officials and that's been a first in over four years.

Third, advised and consulted FIFA Seattle on matters related to disability and tourism for the FIFA Men's World Cup 2026 in Seattle.

Fourth, continued a power of wheelchair charging station rollout.

And lastly, advocated via letter a support to the Washington State Legislature for the continuation of funding for the Washington Talks Books and Braille Library after announcing budget cuts.

Now I'm turning it over to my co-chair, Scott Nelson.

Hi.

My name is Scott Nelson.

I use he, him, his pronouns.

I have short brown hair.

I'm a white male in his mid to late late 20s.

I wear glasses and I'm wearing a green button-down shirt.

And I wanted to also point out that we have a third co-chair who's not here today, JJ Jensen.

Yeah, so For the 2025 to 2026 season, we saw an absolute explosion in the capacity that we can take on and the work that we're doing that we haven't really seen since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Our partners that we wanted to spotlight in particular for this past year of work have been the Washington Talking Book in Braille Library.

We learned a lot from them about services that they provide and were able to submit a letter of advocacy to Washington State because they faced funding issues at the state level.

as well as the Friends of Waterfront Park.

We were graciously invited earlier this year, or last year at this point.

The Waterfront Park had its grand opening.

They invited us for an inaugural tour of accessibility features down at the Waterfront, which were very impressive.

I think we can go to the next slide.

Throughout 2025 and 2026, we have partnered a lot with other organizations, obviously the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library and the Friends of Waterfront Park.

We too had consultation with the local organizing committee for the FIFA 2026 World Cup around issues of disability access, especially with the boom in tourism that we're expecting, as well as the Washington Civil and Disability Advocates Apart from that, we have had a lot of dialogue and a lot of really important work being pushed forward at the level of Seattle's departments.

So obviously we work very closely with the Office for Civil Rights, but we have had projects over this past year, year and a half, with FAS, Parks and Recreation, SDOT, the Seattle Center and Seattle Public Library, as well as being in constant communication with our sister commissions here.

And one of our big goals moving forward is to utilize the positionality that advisory commissions have to facilitate really strong teamwork between commissions, city departments, and city council.

Next slide please.

Moving forward into the future, we have some very strong committees that have been set up, had their first meeting and are already working on advancing our goals forward.

These are the committees that we established earlier at our last retreat.

Our advocacy and representation committee is doing fantastic work ensuring that the Seattle Disability Commission is a bridge between the community and representatives.

The commission will prioritize intentionally listening and seeking out voices that exist in the margins.

Disability is a difficult category sometimes because sometimes it impacts people's ability to be heard It doesn't so much impact that people need things and that people have voices that they are expressing with but more that structurally it's difficult for those voices to be heard based on historical contingency.

Our Security and Access Committee is tasked with ensuring that every person's basic necessities are met.

So this is our committee that deals with a lot of important issues to people with disabilities in the Seattle area, like job security and housing issues.

We want people to be able to, no matter what their ability status is, be able to find meaningful work and to find a place to rest their head as sort of a basic human right.

and our internal growth and development committee is tasked with ensuring that the Seattle Disability Commission stays connected to its work, the community and fellow commissioners.

Because we've had that expansion in our capacity.

We're being very intentional about the systems that we're setting up and the engine that we're putting together.

We're building block by block to be able to effectively advocate and in a lot of cases do the very, very real work of compiling, gathering and sharing information between the different stakeholders that we saw in the definition earlier that set out in the law for what the Seattle Disability Commission is supposed to be doing.

So thank you very, very much for all of your time, council members.

It has been a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

What a nice way to end.

Thank you so much, Scott.

And thank you to all of our presenters.

And I'll again say thank you for your time.

I know the LGBTQ commission presented some tracking numbers around the number of hours that you've spent volunteering, both just going to commission meetings and doing the regular business as well as business outside of that.

And I'm sure that it's probably much the same across all of the commissions in terms of numbers of hours that you're spending.

both together and out in community.

And so I really wanna both thank and commend you for that service.

I myself was a member of the King County Women's Commission for a little while and really valued the community and the partnership there.

just wanna say it's incredibly meaningful.

And I know some of us have plans to visit some of your committees already, but not others.

And we hear that as a request coming from you all today.

And so we look forward to, my office will certainly look forward to following up and making sure that happens at some point as a newly elected council member, but I am looking forward to being able to collaborate with you all more.

Colleagues, any questions for our presenters this afternoon?

All right.

Council President Hollingsworth, excuse me.

Sorry, I won the prize.

We were all rushing to hit and go, and then my hand popped up first.

Well, first off, just wanting to thank you, Chair, for putting together a really great meeting.

And I don't think I just wanted to echo what and we had public comment just like, you know, this is a really good opportunity and like first time where I have had at the table like all the commissioners and commissions and just walking us through everything that you all do.

And I was honestly taken back.

I knew what you all did, but just taken back by the level of detail and information and thoughtfulness and outcomes.

and preparedness that you all do with intentionality to make sure that obviously that the city is running well, that our council is engaged in with you all and the work that you are doing and how vital part you are a bridge for people in the community to us and how you make information to them palatable and oftentimes because there's just so much information out there and to have like trusted resources and people who have titles of commissioners and are doing this work or integrated with a lot of the things that we're doing at the city I think is really, really important.

So just wanted to, I don't actually have a question.

I'm just literally here to say thank you for all of the work that you all are doing.

I'm going to literally take a deep dive in like the work plan and some of the slides as well.

And we'll be reaching out with you all just to make sure that we are engaged and in lockstep with some of your priorities and what we're doing as well.

And knowing that you all are also a resource for us as well, just to hear like, hey, what is the commission thinking and where you all and sometimes we might not align on where we land on something, but to run a good process to get that feedback from you all is what is really important, just to making sure that we are doing our due diligence on that.

So just wanted to thank you all for being here and just being very thoughtful about your presentations, all of you today.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Council President Hollingsworth.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all our commissioners for everything you do.

And similar points and sort of question, certainly want to do what I can to engage and meet with various commissioners, various commissions, and just, and see the work plan for the women's commission, for many of the other commissions, and these are large bodies of work.

And so just wondering what else we can do to support, it's a lot for I think the one executive department to support so many commissions.

So I'm just wondering, and this would be kind of for anybody, Are there other ways to also support with other executive departments?

Just wondering how that relationship works in terms of engaging with other departments.

If anybody wants to chime in.

I'll just share something briefly.

Yeah, I wanted to thank each of you here today, especially all four of your offices have been really quite responsive and easy to work with.

And as we continue to build these relationships, I'm looking forward to creating connections with the other commissions that we have here as well and vice versa.

I know I've spoken Councilmember Lin with people on your staff about reaching out to other departments and that's really quite helpful.

Sometimes our emails go to spam or they get missed in the shuffle and it's just great to have someone give a little nudge.

So thank you for having already done that many times even just this year and looking forward to just that small bit of support moving forward and I think there was another comment here.

Yeah, thanks so much for the question.

I would also add a lot of us, including the Seattle Women's Commission, have a number of new commissioners, as you heard.

Like, COVID was rough on all of us, right?

And so as all of our commissions are building back up capacity, we lose some of those institutional relationships and knowledge as folks turn off and honestly just get lost in the mix of who is the right contact at any given department or who's new on that side too, right?

So there's certainly a lot of newness all around.

we really do appreciate those opportunities where you all can kind of expedite that for us and say, oh, this is the right person, or let me even e-connect you.

Even if you can give us some guidance there as we're still getting more familiar with how all that works, that's super helpful.

Yeah, that's such a great point.

Whether as when I first joined the city as an employee in the city attorney's office or as we try to help constituents, so often the question is just trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the city, who to talk to.

And so, yeah, certainly anything we can do to support in that regard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I wanted to acknowledge, I think Scott also had a hand up and wanted to speak to that.

Scott?

Yes, thank you very much, Chair.

Yeah, that's a really good question, Council Member Lynn.

Depending on definition on where we sit on the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, there are 28 or 29 executive departments or department-level entities at the City of Seattle.

and so it is actually important that we are doing our due diligence as commissioners and as commissions to engage with all of them because I don't know a single one of the departments that does not overlap with the issues that OCR supported commissions deal with.

In sort of the same breath, there are 71 active boards and commissions in the city of Seattle, ranging all the way from sort of the board of directors of the Seattle Public Library all the way to advisory boards and commissions.

but one thing that I think is important to remember and I just wanted to highlight is that the boards and commission support is actually housed within the legislative department and within the legislative branch of the City of Seattle and so I know that it's a monumental task for them to be coordinating so many boards and commissions at the same time but if there is any support I think it would be nice for that to be centralized for that to to have a way of connecting boards and commissions, maybe more broadly with our many, many, many executive departments.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Scott.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

And Councilman Barink.

Thank you, Chair.

I wanted to draft a question for every commission, so I hope you'll indulge me a little bit, but I wanted to make sure I just gave every commission a little bit of TLC.

I just want to reiterate again what my colleagues have said.

Thank you for your work and for volunteering your time to serve this important function for our city, whether it be weighing in on policy or advising departments, just thank you.

And I know many folks in community look to you all to really represent, champion, advocate here at the local level.

So thank you for for being a part of this and for being in committee today, for just starting us off to our Human Rights Commission co-chairs.

Thank you all also for the work you did last year on the eviction panel.

That was a really astounding event with huge turnout, and I learned a lot from that documentary screening, so I hope you all, yeah, that was wild.

And I wanted to also thank you all for taking a moment to for your subcommittee work on housing and homelessness for the lens that you all are taking in terms of centering the voices of those with lived experience and taking the time to directly connect with and talk to people experiencing homelessness.

And I think it's just important to center and I know the Human Rights Commission does a really amazing job at this.

Just everyone deserves dignity and too often our unhoused neighbors are stripped of that.

And so I'm really grateful you're doing that work and I'm wondering are there specific actions or recommendations that you're hoping to derive from those conversations or is it more of a person-to-person connection kind of effort?

I'd say yes.

We're taking that in to then craft our strategy because we need to make sure we understand it at the level of those that are directly impacted by it.

So yes, we have the data.

You can search the data, but we need the experience to direct where we will make the most meaningful impact in what we do, whether that's our partnership with community partners or in recommendations that we actually make regarding steps like the encampment sweeps and things like that.

It's making sure we're educated enough to make meaningful impact with that community.

So yes, it is helping guide our strategy and our approach.

That's really encouraging to hear.

Thank you.

and to our Women's Commission co-chairs.

Again, happy Women's History Month, everybody.

And I know we're gonna be back-to-back also recognizing next month the Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

And so, looking forward to continuing work with the commission.

And I wanted to uplift one thing that really stuck out to me in your work plan.

The Fair Housing Law's Guide for Single Women and Families.

This is really interesting to me, and I'm wondering if you can speak to a little bit more where that idea came from or what that looks like.

Yeah, I can speak to that.

So I am the chair of our Housing Stability Subcommittee.

And I think the idea for that came from, I was doing some research around discrimination as it relates to obtaining housing, so whether that's renting or home ownership.

And women, in particular, single women, single mothers, were one of the highest ranked groups that experience discrimination when trying to obtain housing.

And that was not surprising to me, but it's It's sad, right?

That should not be the case.

So I think from the subcommittee's perspective, we are viewing that as a gap that needs to be addressed, right?

Why are women, particularly single women and single mothers, so frequently discriminated against when they're simply trying to get a roof over their head, right?

So I know that One of the executive departments in Seattle puts out a renter's guide each year.

I think it's updated annually, and it's a fantastic resource.

I've utilized it myself, and it's very comprehensive.

Part of our intention is creating something similar, but geared specifically to women, and along with that, families, because women still are predominantly primary caregivers.

Having a resource that addresses the specific difficulties that women face is the goal, because I am not sure a resource like that in Seattle exists.

Again, the renter's guide is an outstanding resource, but it's much more broadly focused, so really looking to support the women who don't have the guidance and resources that they deserve to navigate the landscape that is renting and owning property.

And relatedly, it also ties into, so our GBV, Gender-Based Violence, subcommittee is currently working on an amendment to address women who have experienced financial abuse in an abusive relationship and therefore face barriers to obtaining housing.

So that's an area where our subcommittees intersect and that's something that as well could be addressed in our renter's guide for women and families that's also being addressed via GBV with the amendment that they're currently working on.

That's really great to hear around that work.

And I similarly, I haven't heard of a specific tailored guide for women, families, single moms, have not heard of that.

So that seems particularly novel and would be just interested in learning more as you develop that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And it's taking us to our Disability Commission.

We haven't connected yet, and we're gonna fix that coming out of today's meeting, but it's great that y'all are here.

I really appreciate your uplifting of the Talking Book and Braille Library.

I know we've taken up some discussion on that in the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee, which Seattle Public Libraries reports up to.

and it's my understanding that there was a proviso in the state leg session from Representative Thomas to restore some of the hours for the Talking Book and Braille Library.

So can follow up on that, but I don't think we're at full restoration of hours, but they were closed for a little bit there, but just wanted to speak that into the universe so folks know that is one good thing that came out of session among many.

and my question for you all is related to the subcommittee on security and access.

Could you all speak to a little bit more of what you're hoping to take up with that?

I'm asking just as chair over human services, I wanna make sure we have a disability lens and I'm hopeful that we can hear more from this subcommittee moving forward and just make sure we're working in concert.

Yes, so for the Security Access Committee right now, it just barely started.

We just had our very first meeting last month and we have a leader that's representing that group.

One of the goals for the Security Access is that we make jobs more accessible for people with disabilities.

Also, we want to ensure security for people with disabilities as far as access to events, activities, meetings.

Most recently, we worked with the Seattle Channel to make the Seattle Channel more accessible for people with disabilities.

and who are not able to, who are visually impaired and are trying to access the web and records from the city through the website.

So we are working with and collaborating with various groups that come to us and also we reach out to groups.

Also members of the community have reached out to us during our table session and we like to, we've been addressing those issues as well.

on a case-by-case basis.

Scott, would you like to add to that?

Yeah, so specific work that's being done through that committee and by people on the committee.

First off, a lot of the continuation of the work that the Seattle Disability Commission has already done and been engaged with is being done through this committee now.

We have been working with a variety of Seattle's executive departments to get wheelchair charging stations in a lot of the public-facing buildings and the public-access buildings like community centers, libraries, the Seattle Center, and sort of FAS's series of little city halls.

So that work is continuing through that committee.

We also have a member on the committee who is working tirelessly right now.

engaged right now in an exploratory for getting an accessible kayak boat launch for folks who, a sort of self-service accessible boat launch for folks who have mobility disabilities as well as anyone who wants to use it.

So it's in talks right now with Parks and Recreation and with you know, a few folks to figure out what the feasibility of that and the correct location for a proposal would be.

And that's all being headed up right now, the Security and Access Committee by actually our Get Engaged Commissioner.

So I also wanted to spotlight really quickly that Get Engaged has been fantastic for us and has been a great resource for getting young people and young voices heard at civic engagement levels.

Awesome.

We'll definitely be following up and good shout out for Get Engaged.

And just to wrap us up to our LGBTQ commission co-chairs.

Hi.

It's been great to work with you all in a few different capacities now, whether it be bringing forward a policy that we're considering or in honoring our community members.

And I wanted to ask an open question here because we know that trans people in America are under attack.

Seattle is poised to take in many, frankly, folks asylum seekers, so folks seeking refuge.

And I think for many of the commissions represented here today, we know that people survive oftentimes by hiding.

And it is front of mind for me thinking about the trans folks who are coming here seeking refuge.

and are hiding for their own safety.

And so I wanted to allow you all to speak to this openly, what the commission is understanding at this time about the influx of trans refugees to the Seattle area.

Yeah, thanks for that question.

You sort of referenced some stats that I was already thinking in my head in terms of wanting to highlight something that we have in our work plan as well.

We're calling it a community navigator program that addresses the fact that there's You know, according to recent data, 400,000 plus people, trans people, have left their home to seek safety in another place.

I saw another statistic today that said that that number also represents one in seven queer households in the whole US.

And Seattle's a destination for a lot of those people.

so the community navigator program is something we want to start building and providing resources for people who show up like I did here almost three years ago to connect people with programs and resources that do exist because when people first arrive they don't know where to go and Often the process of reaching out and making appointments and following through on whatever list you might get can be very overwhelming and lead people to give up.

So in speaking with our community partners, there's been a lot of enthusiasm already in terms of like, wow, this is something that we need.

There's a gap between when someone arrives and when they come to us.

How do they know to come to us?

So that's something I'm really excited about and probably gonna spend way too much of my free time working on this year.

And I also wanted to let Cody share anything additional on that topic.

Yeah, I think specifically with this, what we are seeing is the influx in trans refugees coming is already is kind of inflating the already really bad problem of trans homelessness that we see here in Seattle.

We see this both through our community partners who are coming to talk to us, mutual aid groups, organizations that are working in parks where there are huge numbers of homeless trans people of all age groups.

I see this in my personal work as a manager of a young adult homeless shelter, we have seen a huge influx in young trans people who have fled rudder states who come here without a plan, and when they get here they have no support.

They have no family, they have no friends.

They came here because they heard it's a safe place, but when they get here, you know, it's a safe place politically, but it's not a safe place.

There's no safe place for them to go once they get here.

And so I think that this is exaggerating a problem that was already overlooked in Seattle.

And I think that's something that the commission really wants to focus on and work with the city on solving this, this really, really pressing issue that is only becoming worse.

Thank you all for that.

I think it's so important that we daylight this and continue to daylight it so folks know this is going on and I'm looking forward to working with you all on that and looking forward to working with all the commissions here today on this critical work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate the engagement and I see no further questions from colleagues.

So with that, I want to once again send my appreciation over to you all as presenters.

You've given us so much to consider and so many connections to look forward to having with you all.

and the other folks on your commissions who you represent as chairs.

And with that, I am gonna call the, what day is today?

The March 25th meeting of the Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committee to a close.

Thank you so much for attending.

It is 3.50 PM and we are adjourned.

Thank you.