Councilmember Sawant unveils legislation to prohibit evictions of school children & families

Okay, let's begin.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Thomas-Swan, I'll have you start.

Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for being here.

The School Children Eviction Defense Bill will prevent the evictions of school children and their families and educators during the school year.

It is common sense, but there is also mountains of research showing that when children are evicted, it has devastating impact on their academic achievement and development.

Imagine trying to focus on your schoolwork as a child while losing your home.

For example, the Losing Home Report found that, quote, of evicted respondents with school-aged children, 85.7% said their children had to move schools after the eviction, and 87.5% reported their children's school performance suffered very much because of the eviction, end quote.

There are many reasons for impact on academics.

The children might be forced to move away from their school to another school or to a location that requires a long commute.

And not to mention, how are you supposed to do your homework when you're losing your home?

How can you even concentrate on your lessons when you are facing this instability in your life?

In 2018, the state found that nearly 4,200 Seattle public schools, sorry, public school students statewide were homeless in the city, sorry, were homeless at some point during the school year.

That is a staggering 7% of all public school children.

In practical terms, that means that in an average class of 30 students, two will be homeless at some point during the school year.

This is a racial justice and Black Lives Matter issue.

Just as Seattle landlords evict Black tenants at much higher rates than other tenants, we also see that Black and brown students and other students of color disproportionately face homelessness.

The 2018 state data found that fully 40% of homeless students were Black and 23% of homeless students were Latinx, even though Black and Latinx students constitute much smaller proportions and that population is a much smaller proportion of Seattle's overall population.

For the high school graduating class that year, the Seattle PI found, quote, for the class of 2018, 55.2% of homeless students graduated on time compared to 84.5% of students who were housed.

These are staggering data and they underscore why we need to pass this legislation.

Preventing school year evictions will reduce at least this one form of systemic racism impacting students.

I continue to believe that children who are evicted in one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world is a damning condemnation of capitalism itself.

But at the very least, our city's legislators have the power to stop evictions during the school year.

I'm really looking forward to building this movement alongside so many of our activists in the education community and in the renters' rights community.

So I would like to invite Bruce Jackson, an educator at Akai Karuse Middle School, Seattle Education Association member.

Welcome, Bruce.

As Shama said, I'm an educator at Aki Kurose Middle School.

I've been there for about 17 years, and we're located on the south side of Seattle, one of the schools most heavily impacted by the COVID virus.

We were the first school in the nation closed due to the infection.

We were one of the oldest buildings in the city with ventilation that reflects its age.

Our school is 90% children of color, but the homeless and edge of homeless population is higher than most schools in the States.

I think we had 90 kids in 2019 that were homeless or near homeless.

We were in this fight and coming from a man who's experienced homelessness in his lifetime, being sick and homeless is as close as you're gonna get to death.

Being educated while homeless is difficult and being educated while fearing eviction, a new kind of nightmare.

That's why a group of us in SEA are going to bring forth legislation to get our union beside the fight against homelessness.

We're going to back this bill as hard as we can.

We're going to bring it tonight to the floor of the Rep Assembly, and hopefully we're going to get teacher support in making this crisis a little bit easier for our children to bear.

And I'm currently at school, so I don't have a lot of time to stay, but that's what we're going to do, and we're going to make this happen.

So judging from the WEA reception to what we proposed, what we mentioned during the day, there's a good chance that we're going to make this happen.

And with teacher support, I'm hoping that we can make You can at least cut this down.

I have to go.

I have classes.

Thank you very much for your attention.

See you later.

Thank you so much, Bruce.

And I should mention that not only are we honored to have the Seattle Education Association fighting on this good cause, but also Seattle Education Association has a history of fighting for tenants' rights, including for the educators and the students.

And they were an important part of the struggle when we won the move-in fee cap and payment plan a few years ago.

Next, I would like to invite Natalia McConnell, Seattle School student and environmental activist.

My name is Natalia McConnell.

I'm the freshman class president at Franklin High School, although I'm speaking today in a personal capacity.

I am fortunate enough to have a home, but I know that so many of my classmates do not.

As of 2018, 4,200 Seattle Public School students were unhoused at some point during the school year, and this rate had grown from the previous 10 years.

This means that in a typical classroom, more than two of my classmates are homeless.

This is shameful.

That's why we need to stop evictions of school children and their families and school staff.

I'm very excited that Shama is moving this bill forward on behalf of the renters rights movement.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Natalia.

It's extremely important that Seattle Public School students are at the forefront of this fight.

Next, we're happy to have Julissa Sanchez, organizer with the Tenants Union of Washington State.

Good morning.

My name is Julissa Sanchez, Community Organizer and Tenants Rights Educator with the Tenants Union.

And I just want to say that as our state has just started to reopen completely, families are barely getting back on their feet from the economic, mental and physical devastation that this global pandemic has caused them.

The eviction moratorium prevented many displacements.

However, landlords sure made use of the loopholes found in the eviction moratorium, as we know.

using language and resource barriers to unlawfully evict Latinx and undocumented families.

As a Tenants Union representative, I am a firm believer that housing is a fundamental human right, more so a child right.

As an educator, mother, and human who has lived through displacement, I can assure you that evictions and displacement ruin lives.

Latinx And undocumented children and their families have been hit the hardest during this pandemic undocumented children have been displaced from their own countries and recreated a community here in Seattle, Washington, it is of some importance that we preserve their community and well being.

housing and community stability positively supports the mental and overall health of children, which supports them thriving academically.

Children who have already endured so much under the pandemic and have demonstrated incredible resilience under it all, it is our duty to protect children and their families from displacement and keeping them housed and saved, especially black and brown children who disproportionately suffer from housing injustice and who are witnessing their peers being murdered at the hands of the police.

We must pass legislation to protect children and their families and have them feel safe and protect children and their families from homelessness.

Having a stable home supports children's mental, social health and education and their future.

I want to thank Council Member Kishama for putting this bill and for putting children and their families first.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Julissa, for the work you do with the Tenants Union, and also for eloquently describing the devastating impact of evictions on the development and the mental health of young people.

Next, I'm really happy to introduce Seattle School Board Director, Zachary DeWolf.

Director DeWolf was actually the first person in the community who brought forward this idea to us, and we're delighted to move forward on this.

Director DeWolf.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council Member Sawant, and thank you so much for having me.

Really wonderful to be able to follow such wonderful advocates and voices, particularly from our schools.

So thank you for including those folks.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Zachary DeWolf.

I am the District 5 Director for the Seattle School Board.

I am also a citizen of the Chippewa Cree Nation of Rockville, Montana.

Before my current job, I was actually at All Home King County, which predates the regional authority on homelessness.

And I worked a lot in student homelessness, homelessness prevention and diversion.

And evictions are a key factor in determining someone experiencing homelessness.

And I wanna give you some quick numbers here from Seattle Public Schools.

We have 43 students who are unsheltered.

who are living on the streets in vehicles.

We have 57 that are living in hotels and motels.

We have 218 that are living in shelters for families.

We have 231 unaccompanied youth doubled up or in a group home or in a youth shelter.

We have 365 who are in transitional housing.

We have 1,177 who are doubled up families.

And we have 2,149 in our MKV program.

These numbers are really stark, but these are the students that I'm particularly focused on today.

So I wanna just thank first Council Member Sawant for taking the idea and making it something that would be workable for the city.

We all know, and as Council Member Sawant mentioned, housing is a right, it's a human right.

And it also is a really critical privilege that so many of us have, and it's also a barrier.

students education if they are experiencing homelessness or housing instability.

It is really, really critical that we do what we can in this city to illustrate to our students that their educations, their futures, they matter.

And that we want to do whatever we can to ensure that the system is set up to make them succeed.

This won't affect everybody.

And speaking as somebody who's had an experience of homelessness and housing instability in my life, This will be a huge deal for the students that are experiencing this drama.

So I thank you for bringing this forward.

I'm excited to support this.

Please let me know if I can be helpful and really, really looking forward to being able to supporting these students who are the most vulnerable.

And to mention also the school staff who will be positively affected by this as well.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawant.

Likewise thank you so much Director DeWolf and the statistics that you just laid out are just they're making a compelling case of their own of why Seattle needs a legislation like this both for students and their families and for educators.

I would like to now invite Matt Mailey Seattle Education Association member like Bruce Jackson and renters rights activist and member of Socialist Alternative.

Welcome Matt.

Thank you and good morning.

Like was said, my name is Matthew Mailey.

I am a special educator in the Seattle School District and a member of the Seattle Education Association.

I am also a member of Socialist Alternative.

And I just want to really start by thanking Council Member Sawant and her office for bringing forward this important legislation.

This is legislation that would have an immediate positive impact on students and working families.

And so I look forward to this being taken up at the council.

We've heard already this morning how the lack of housing for students and families exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic has been going on for the better part of a decade.

where I don't need to repeat the statistics, but suffice it to say up to 30% of students in any given school are facing housing instability at a given time.

And I just want to make a really quick note about the statistics that were just laid out by Director DeWolf.

I really appreciate bringing those numbers up, but those are the students we know about.

Those are the students enrolled in McKinney-Vento, the district's, it's a federal program for supporting housing insecurity and homelessness.

So those are the students who are currently receiving, um, support for their housing situation.

Uh, but the fact is those are just the students that we know about.

So on top of, um, preexisting, uh, lack of affordable housing and the crisis of homelessness, uh, students are facing difficult, uh, difficulty accessing transportation, uh, with the Teamsters, uh, Local 117. recently raising the challenges with the return to school and providing adequate transportation to students with only an hour break between the morning and afternoon student in-person shifts.

This is just one of the many complicated issues faced by young people and their families that has been drastically exacerbated by the pandemic conditions.

So not only do we need eviction defense for educators and for families, and school-age students in this context of a pandemic for the rest of the school year.

But the problems of housing instability for school-age students were causing real devastating harm for well before that.

And so I urge other council members to support this and to Yeah, sign on to the legislation being brought forward by CM Sawant's office to make it a reality for school-age students, for educators, and for families to be protected from eviction during the school year, regardless of whether or not there's an active pandemic.

Finally, I just want to say that as has come up, these issues have existed for well before the pandemic.

And so we absolutely need to fight on this issue.

We need to build the strongest possible movement behind Council Member Sawant's office and this particular legislation, but not stop there.

We need to continue the fight to win high quality, steeply affordable, publicly owned housing built by union labor.

We know the problems students are facing, and we know that there are solutions.

And so thank you so much again to Shama for bringing this legislation forward and inviting me to speak.

I really appreciate everybody else who has already spoken.

And so thank you and solidarity.

Thank you so much, Matt.

And as you correctly said, this legislation is only one of the legislation that we have to bring forward in order to make sure that basic rights of tenants, not to mention young people, are protected, but that we cannot stop there.

We need a major expansion of social affordable housing, and we need also to fight to cancel rent, mortgage and utility debt as renters will begin to face a tsunami of evictions once the eviction moratoriums are lifted.

Thank you to all the speakers for bringing in these important voices from the community in public schools.

I would invite the media now to ask questions.

And of course, Stephanie will moderate that.

And I'm sure all the speakers here who are still here are able to respond as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Again, thank you to our panelists this morning.

We have a number of reporters and stations on the call right now.

And so if anyone would like to ask a question, I'm hoping perhaps you can use like a raise your hand function of some sorts.

And that way we can go in order.

Let's see if that's possible.

Let's see, I'm seeing the chat function here.

So if not, you could also use the chat function to indicate that you have a question for Council Member Swan or any of the panelists.

I'm hopeful that we can at least, technology-wise, reporters are able to ask questions if they would like.

So again, if you would like to use the chat function, that could potentially help.

I see Dan Beekman from the Seattle Times.

Dan, if you would like to unmute yourself and ask a question, you're welcome to now.

I was just going to ask, I believe the COVID-19 emergency moratorium on evictions is still in effect, if I'm correct.

So would this measure, if it were to pass, kick in next school year?

Thank you for the question, Dan.

I mean, technically the law would be in effect just like any other legislation that's passed by the city council would be in effect 30 days or going to effect 30 days after it is signed by the mayor.

But in practical terms, I think what you're saying is right in terms of the school year, in terms of the moratorium still being in place.

I think practically speaking, the answer to your question is that it, yes, it will probably kick in the next school year.

Thank you council member and thank you Dan for that question.

Again if anyone else has questions please use the chat function that seems to be working properly and then I can have you guys unmute yourselves and you can ask them.

I believe most of our reporter press pool that is on this call is recording it.

And so feel free if you have questions later up to follow up with myself or with Dana Robinson-Sloat, you should have our contact information from the media advisory and we can make sure that we get council members Sawant and her staff to answer those questions later or any of the panelists, for example.

I believe that's it for now then.

Council members Sawant, is there anything else you'd like to say to close out today's

Thank you, Stephanie.

Yes, I do have some closing remarks and all but before I get to them because they are related to another renters right legislation.

I just wanted to quickly brief the media, but we will follow up on questions later.

I just wanted to quickly say that we will have uh sort of a Q&A or FAQ on up on our on my council office website about the defending school children and educators from evictions up really soon sometime this week so we will make sure to share it with communication staff and we can share it with the media.

I also wanted to let everyone know that last week our office introduced legislation to close the what's called the just cause loophole in the current tenants rights law in Seattle.

Many tenants in Seattle have what are called just cause protections, that is protections against landlords evicting tenants without a justifiable reason.

But tenants in term leases, for example, like six or 12 month leases, don't have that protection when their leases expire.

the loophole has created a situation where landlords can refuse to renew a tenant's lease without any cause at all and as those of you who've been active with our council office in the tenants rights movements in the last seven years you will know that this is something that my office has been really eager to close but there have been all kinds of obstacles and also I would like to thank former council member Nick Licata for also You know, having really this on on his radar and wanting to close it and together our offices had been exploring for years, how we could do this, the bill that we are now bringing forward.

follows the model of the legislation passed by a grassroots movement in Federal Way recently.

This is really important because this passed with flying colors in Federal Way.

The initiative movement gathered signatures and eventually passed the Stable Homes Initiative, which created just cause eviction protections in the city of Federal Way and included renters on fixed term leases.

and my office intends this bill to be on the introduction and referral calendar for next week.

My office has also been in touch with Council Member Morales's office on this issue, and we understand she is also drafting legislation that addresses the just cause loophole, but with a different approach.

And as I have said to Council Member Morales many times, and also to rent-tax-tax activists, We're really looking forward to working together to develop the strongest possible bill that protects all tenants from no-cause evictions, and I'm really looking forward to bringing these discussions forward, including defending school-age kids and educators in the upcoming committee meetings.

The next committee meeting is on the 27th of this month, where we will be having a discussion on school-age bill, and we will also have some remarks related to just cause.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you for those closing remarks council member.

Once again, thank you everyone for being here to the reporting press.

We'll make sure that we send this recording to you in case you don't have it.

And if you have all questions, please let us know.

I think that's it for now.

Thank you everyone.

Have a good day.