Housing and Human Services Committee 2/14/2024

All right, good morning, everyone.

The time is 9.36, and the February 14th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee will now come to order.

I'm Kathy Moore, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Here.

Here.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Vice Chair Morales.

Here.

Chair Moore.

Present.

There are five present.

Wonderful.

So if there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

All right, so thank you everyone for being here today for the first meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

As outlined in Resolution 32124, this committee will provide policy direction and oversight and deliberate and make recommendations on legislative matters relating to the Office of Housing, the Human Services Department, the Office of Civil Rights, and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

as well as rental regulation policies and practices, including regulations and enforcement activities administered by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and the Office for Civil Rights.

So this is a large and important body of work that touches the lives in one way or another of everyone in our city.

It will be our responsibility as members of this committee to promote the general welfare of our residents through thoughtful and careful consideration and deliberation.

And I look forward to our work together over these coming months.

On today's agenda, we have three items for briefing and discussion.

We will have introductory presentations from the Office of Housing, the Human Services Department, and the Office for Civil Rights.

I do want to mention that these are only introductory presentations, and I do plan to invite departments back for future in-depth presentations on specific programs.

And I wanted to just make an initial thank you to all the department heads for being here today.

Colleagues, please feel free to reach out to my office with requests for additional briefings if there is a topic that you would like to explore in further depth at a further committee meeting.

So that brings us to our hybrid public comment period.

So Madam Clerk, how many speakers are registered?

There is one online public commenter and three in-person public commenters.

Okay.

So we'll begin with the in-person public commenters.

Let me just read through the rules here.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

Pursuant to council rule 7.10, this committee meeting will broadcast members of the public in council chambers during the public comment period.

The clerk will call on two speakers at a time.

We will start with speakers in chambers and then move to the online speakers.

We will call on speakers in the order in which registered.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period by adding your name to the public comment sheet at the front of the council chambers or to speak remotely, you can go to the council's website at seattle.gov backslash council.

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

Once the speaker's name is called, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be will be the remote speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Please begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or within the purview of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If the speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once remote speakers have completed their public comment, we will ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

So the regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open and we will begin with first person registered for in person comments.

Then we will move on to the online public commenters.

The first commenter is Cliff Cawthorn followed by Chris Smith.

There you go.

Awesome.

Well, first of all, happy Black History Month and happy Valentine's Day.

My name is Cliff Cawthon, he, him.

I am the Advocacy and Policy Manager for Habitat for Humanity of Seattle, King, Kiatas Counties.

And I'm testifying here today because, well, Chair Moore, I couldn't agree more.

that the work that you're doing is really going to define the way this city looks for decades to come.

So I just wanted to come here to further introduce myself and Habitat for Humanity and also talk a little bit about the work we've done so far as well as why I believe that the work that we're going to do together is going to make the difference between whether or not Seattle can be a place where everyone can find a home versus a place where some are able to live inside and some find themselves on the streets.

So Habitat has been around for 38 years and we've been working with community to build homes, but also to build community, to help those who are our bus drivers, who are grocery store workers, who are nurses and teachers make the transition into home ownership.

And particularly as a permanently affordable homeownership provider, we have been lucky to be able to work with the broader Black Home Initiative in order to a partnership of various nonprofit and for-profit actors in order to promote Black homeownership in the closing of the racial homeownership and thus the racial wealth gap.

And in the work that we've also done with the city and the Office of Housing, that we have been able to make key investments in West Seattle and South Seattle and North Seattle throughout the entire city in terms of being able to create units.

So I'll just close by saying that we look forward to working with all of you as a partner.

We look forward to being able to provide our insight.

And thank you for the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

Next speaker?

Up next is Chris Smith, followed by Jesse Simpson.

All right.

My name's Chris Smith.

My name is Christopher Smith.

I live right here in this building right here.

I've been there 10 years.

And I wonder why...

Why am I being laughed at and not taken serious when I ask them if I can move from the back to the front to pay my rent every month?

I mean, if I have to sign something to get into it or something, I want to know why they keep laughing, literally laughing in my face or this stuff.

I don't understand that.

I've asked this once a month practically since I've been here.

I have anxiety right now.

Now, I didn't even know I had it.

But I was a different person when I moved in here.

I wanted to give money to people.

Now I don't.

Now I don't even talk to anybody outside in front of my building.

It's like, wow, it's changed over the past four years.

And it's like, wow, they need to fix it.

And why isn't there garbage cans in front of this building right here, since you guys put a Metro bus stop right there?

I don't think you have to police it, or at least put a police car on the block or something, I don't know.

I don't feel safe here anymore, but I don't feel safer living in the back of this building either.

I just want to see people.

All I see is a brick wall, and I've been asking this for the past, whatever, since I moved in.

They asked me if I wanted to move out of the building, and I don't.

I actually like everybody who lives in the building, including staff, sometimes.

And yeah, I just would like to be taken serious once in a while.

You know, I mean, I just, yeah.

If that could be addressed somehow, that'd be great.

Thank you, thanks.

Thank you very much.

Next speaker.

Jesse Simpson.

Hey, morning council members.

I'm Jesse Simpson.

I'm the government relations and policy manager for the Housing Development Consortium.

On this meeting where you're getting to meet Office of Housing and get an intro from them, I thought it was appropriate that you get an intro from the Housing Development Consortium as well.

So we're a member-based organization representing over 200 members across the affordable housing sector.

including nonprofit developers, contractors, architects, community-based groups, service providers, and more, who are all working to provide more affordable housing and ensure that everyone in Seattle and King County has a safe, decent, affordable place to call home.

We do this through advocacy to increase the amount of funding available for affordable housing and to reform land use to allow more homes to be built in more places.

We take a collaborative tone.

We like to approach all of you as partners to leverage the expertise of our membership and our own policy understanding to help craft policy that works best for the low-income people that we serve.

I HOPE WE CAN ALL WORK TOGETHER WELL AS AN ORGANIZATION WITH YOU AS COUNCIL MEMBERS.

LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HOW YOU IMPLEMENT THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING PRIORITIES THAT YOU'VE IDENTIFIED THROUGHOUT YOUR CAMPAIGNS AND YOUR TIME ON THE DIUS.

THANKS FOR BEING HERE TODAY.

GREAT TO MEET YOU.

THANK YOU.

DO WE HAVE ANY MORE IN PERSON?

We now have online speakers.

Calls.

David Haynes.

Mr. Haynes?

Hi, David Haynes.

Thank you.

We're going on another decade of a homeless crisis, and the only thing we've changed is the name of the agency that's in charge.

The capacity was never built.

And I really think that the council needs to consider lobbying our other representatives to demand that the $50 billion in American Rescue Plan dollars that ex-speaker Kevin McCarthy claimed he was saving money on to be given back to this country to solve the homeless crisis throughout the regions, especially in Seattle.

Part of the problem with solving the homeless crisis is we have a racist-driven data manipulation of what constitutes proper policy.

And what I mean by that is instead of an innocent, houseless person who would make real strides to move forward, they're purposely discriminated against for people who are bothering people in the business community, where you have repeat offenders who who are prioritized for housing and services.

And a lot of money has been squandered on a lot of self-destructive people, while innocent people are still unnecessarily suffering.

And I think that the council needs to consider not only like an open investigation of what King County Regional Homeless Authority is not doing, but consider petitioning the governor and say, look, we need the National Guard to stand up some authorized encampments so we can like almost overnight build a mass amount of low security capacity to make it safe for people to send people to start triaging their troubles.

whether it's like behavioral crisis, addiction, trauma, you know, whatever is like bothering and ailing them and solve the crisis once and for all.

And hopefully you all will be able to do that.

And there will be more people that step up to.

All right.

Any other speakers?

That ends public comment.

Okay, thank you.

So that concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

We will now move on to the first item on our agenda.

Would the clerk please read the first item into the record?

Agenda item one, introduction to Office of Housing for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Okay, we are sitting here.

Right.

So thank you.

So today we have very pleased to announce that we have with us Director Michael Winkler-Chun and Kelly Larson from the Office of Housing to walk us through the work of their department.

We will get a glimpse of their work with affordable housing programs for homeowners and the 2023 housing levy implementation.

So without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn it over to our presenters.

Thank you very much, Council Member.

Thank you very much, Committee.

As Council Member Moore said, I'm Micah Winkler-Chin, and this is Kelly Larson, our Director of Policy, and we're going to split the presentation here today.

So a little bit about the Office of Housing.

Our vision at the Office of Housing is that all people have a safe and affordable home.

And our mission is to work with our partners in creating affordable housing equitably investing to prevent displacement and increase opportunities for people to live in Seattle.

The important thing to note here is that we invest.

We do not own, but we invest in the development of affordable housing.

Next slide, please.

So here you see roughly 40 years of housing investments throughout Seattle.

We have the things in the blue there that are our current and pipeline rental project, and then we have some light pink ones or dark pink ones that are planned rental projects.

So here's a visual to give a sense of what 40 years of investment in our housing has looked like.

And at any given time, we have over 16,000 people living in OH-funded homes.

That's not all the homes that OH regulates, but in the homes that we have invested in directly.

some key department data here for you.

Our charter responsibilities, as established in the charter when in 1996, 1997, was that we would develop new permanent housing, leveraging other public resources, and preserve existing permanent housing.

Our 2024 budget is $339 million total.

We have 65 full-time slots for employees.

And the sources that fund our department is, as you can see on the pie chart up there, about roughly the housing levy of $122 million, payroll expense tax, which this year is about 141 million, the mandatory housing affordability fees of we're anticipating 50 million this year, and then the other category.

The other category are things such as community development block grant and home funds from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, weatherization funds that come from the federal government to our department that we deploy in community, and other one-time things such as some funds that we've gotten from oil to electric conversion from the federal government.

So just kind of a general pot of miscellaneous funds.

We talk a lot about affordable housing and low income and AMI, the Office of Housing gets into alphabet soup a lot.

We do and we kind of forget it.

So if we do start going down that way, please remind us because we forget sometimes.

So one term that we use a lot is area median income.

And it's a HUD designated thing.

And it is the midpoint of a region's income distribution.

And it's defined annually by HUD.

And there's no Beacon Hill median income.

And even the Seattle area median income is actually bigger than the city of Seattle itself.

It's a geographic area.

And so these definitions were created many, many years ago.

But a low-income household makes less than 80% of the area median income.

you hear us saying it all the time, AMI, very low makes less than 50 and extremely low makes less than 30% AMI.

And over a third of Seattle households are low income by this definition, right?

I mentioned several sources of funds that we use, and you hear us talking a lot about it.

You hear us talking about the housing levy, the PET, the expense tax, however, it's called multiple different names, but that's that chunk, and MHA, the mandatory housing affordability.

So here we tried to show you what the different pots of money are and what are the different programs that they serve.

And you see right across the top, all those AMIs, right?

And that's just the different levels of income that the dollars can go towards.

Can I ask a quick question?

Sure, go ahead.

Michael, can you just explain what the current AMI is?

What is the area median income in Seattle right now and what does 80% mean?

I would have to look it up.

So there's a federal level that's always at the, for a household of four.

And Kelly, what is it right now?

I think it's $120,000.

There is an income chart that is produced by the Office of Housing.

And the income chart typically comes out in April.

And so they are adjusted.

And so they're adjusted, the federal government gives us what it is for a household of four, and then we break it down to the individual.

So I would have to say, that a 30% AMI for a single person is probably, I'm going to guess, around $27,000 a year.

Thank you.

I just wanted to be, you know...

Just to give a sense of it and just weird percentages.

Yeah, because most people don't really know what that means, but if you think, you know, as an individual, that means I'm making $30,000, $40,000 a year.

and trying to support a family on that, that's not much money for rent.

No, and if you're making $30,000 or $40,000 a year, you are one person.

You might be at about 40% AMI, but if you add somebody to your household, and a household is just whoever lives in the home with you.

If Kelly and I were going to live together in a household, there's no familial relationship, you are considered a household.

Or if my mother moves in, that is part of a household.

If I have a child, that is also part of a household.

And if you have two people earning income together, it's not the income of the individual, it's the income of the household.

And that's where it gets a little hard sometimes to determine who it is that can actually live in the household unit.

Council member, is that what you're hoping for?

Yeah, thank you.

Okay.

If I could just add, I think I recently read that 80% for a single person in Seattle is about $71,000.

So that's just what I read recently.

But I had a question.

Do you have the, I'm sure you don't have them on hand, but at some point, do you have the statistics for the percentage of population in Seattle that are at 50 to 60 AMI?

and also zero to 30.

We do have, we've presented on housing need data.

We can particularly present on housing cost burden by income level, and we can bring that back.

We've talked about coming back again to talk in more depth about the data and some of our investments.

We can bring that back next time.

That would be wonderful.

Thank you.

I actually believe, Councilmember, that you will probably hear that number and what that percentage is when we start discussing the comprehensive plan when the Office of Planning and Community Development does write, because that's part of their work as well.

Okay, so this past year, you might have heard a lot about the housing levy.

It was up for the vote last year, and this council will have to...

You will see from Kelly's slides later on about some of the administrative planning that has to happen with the housing levy.

So the housing levy will generate $970 million from 2024 to 2030. I'm never quite sure of the years, but that's what it falls down to.

And the housing levy will create over 3,100 new affordable homes, both rental and for sale throughout Seattle.

We typically take the housing levy and it's a seven year tax property tax, and it funds these four different areas of work.

The first is the creation of housing.

The second is assisting in homelessness and housing, homelessness prevention, eviction prevention, and residence services at, you know, throughout the...

throughout Seattle.

We actually also fund a third bucket, which is what we call OMS a lot, which is operations, maintenance, and services, and worker stabilization.

So those funds are primarily for our permanent supportive housing that I'll get into in a second.

Those properties do not collect and affront to pay for their basic operating expenses, such as utilities and insurance.

And then also, in our permanent supportive housing, those properties require higher servicing needs than some buildings, so they have 24-7 staffing oftentimes.

And in order to have that level of staffing that provides for people feeling safe and secure in their homes, the rent does not cover that cost.

And so we support that operation there.

Can I ask you a quick question about this?

What percentage of this levy is allocated to that bucket?

OMS.

OMS is about 16% of the housing levy.

No, I'm talking about funding for permanent supportive housing and also at and or the amount that is going for housing from zero to 30%.

I think it is 55%.

At least 60% of the overall levy investments are required to be dedicated to households at 0% to 30% of area median income.

It's a lot of percents.

So 60% of the levy is dedicated to the most low-income folks.

100% of the operating maintenance and services program goes toward the lowest income folks.

And then of the homes that are built, that 3,100 homes, at least 55% of those will be set aside for folks at the lowest incomes.

What amount of funding is allocated to 30 to 60 or 60 to 80?

So that would be the remaining 40% of the housing levy.

There is workforce housing that's funded by the housing levy?

Correct.

Do we go up to 80%?

For homeownership.

For homeownership.

Yeah, that was $50 million, I believe.

Okay.

Okay.

The fourth bucket here is the preventing displacement and support community-based developments that reflect the communities that they are rooted in.

And that is really thinking about how housing levy along with other local funds continue to support developments by community-based organizations that provide culturally specific housing and services, as well as retail and gathering spaces that reflect the community.

and these projects help prevent displacement.

So previous council had advised, and actually I think by resolution asked OH to work with OED and OPCD to really think about the investments that we place in community and what are the additional benefits other than the units there that can be spread upon the community, such as having locally owned businesses, which may be culturally tied to the community.

and that are looking for places to live, or childcare, or those types of things.

Councilmember Morales, you look like you have a question for me.

No, that was my slide.

Okay, okay.

Okay, you just look like you had that question, yes.

All right, that was your effort, yes.

Okay, next slide, please.

So this is a slide that's difficult for me to do because I tend to want to get into the details of all of this, and those details will be covered on future slides.

So what is it that the Office of Housing does?

Well, we do affordable housing, and we do that through the development, towards investing in the development of rental housing and by providing operating support.

We do asset management, where we look at the investments that we've made over time and make sure that those properties and those projects are really meeting the requirements that we placed on them.

We have market incentive programs.

This is where I start getting into the alphabet soup.

There's a multifamily tax exemption.

There is the mandatory housing affordability.

They both begin with Ms, and we tend to confuse them, but they're very, very different programs.

And the incentive zoning program.

And we also do permanently affordable home ownership development.

Get into that a little bit later.

The green section is the program that we have for homeowners.

So this is probably the most direct service program that OH does.

So our staff go to homes and make sure that they do inspections, and then they help with the delivery of home repair services, weatherization programs, converting heating systems from oil to electric, and also looking at side sewer repairs there that are funded through the government.

They're targeting primarily seniors and those with disabilities, so it's a low-income population traditionally that access these programs.

Most of it is grant-driven, and most of those grants come from the federal government.

And then the third area is the policy and planning, and that encompasses our strategic initiatives, place-based initiatives and equitable development and different land use tools.

We'll get into the details on the following slides.

So the first is affordable housing development and production.

As I said, we invest to develop, we also invest to operate, and then we do that compliance.

Council member Nelson brought up PSH and some of the homeless activities that we have.

So the city currently in our portfolio has 4,000 permanent supportive housing units, PSH, more acronyms for you.

And those are housing for those that are coming out of homelessness with those wraparound services as I mentioned previously.

In 2024, we did $55 million in workforce stabilization and operating maintenance and service contracts to keep the buildings operating and functional.

And there's three upcoming permanent supportive housing developments that we just wanted to highlight.

One is in Inner Bay.

One is in Woodland, Woodland Park.

Just to be clear, that's Woodland Park.

And then the third is Lake City.

Next slide, please.

Oop, too fast.

We also do affordable home ownership, and we invest in the development of the units and in the first-time homebuyer programs.

So those are, as Cliff mentioned earlier, the Habitat for Humanity, the Homestead Community Land Trust, and...

Homesite, they're the big three H's in the home ownership space for us right now.

They're also partnering with other organizations to make sure that the communities that these housing units are in really help serve that community's needs.

The other area is the market incentive programs.

As I said, multifamily tax exemption, mandatory housing affordability, and incentive zoning.

So the programs for homeowners, as I've mentioned, those are the four programs.

And here's just kind of a house that has gone through one of these home repair programs.

So this kind of reminds me of like, how do these pictures, how do these pictures are different?

So the difference in this picture is one, you'll see that the home has a new roof.

And from the exterior, you can see that there's grab bars put on or railings put on.

For that, it looks like the siding might be different as well.

And that probably might have to do with some insulation work that's done.

On the inside, there's probably a new heating system that's been installed, especially as we go from oil to electric here at the city.

Thank you.

I think Council Member Saka has a question.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just going back to a few slides on slide seven, you talk about, for example, under the 2023 housing levy goals is to create 3,100 new affordable homes.

On the next slide, talk about, you know, affordable housing and some of the different, I don't know, features of that.

But just curious to better understand how.

How does the city specifically create, in the case of slide seven, 3,100 new affordable homes?

Does the city specifically go and build and develop this themselves?

Or do we contract with developers to build it and then a certain amount of homes based off of whatever AMI criteria that we have in mind?

Do we fund...

the investments from MFTE and like use that as an incentive to developers to create part of these 3,100 new affordable homes.

How does the city like go about doing that?

Lots of questions there.

So let me try to answer that.

So the city is not a developer.

We do not build it.

We don't own it.

We don't build it.

So we invest in the creation of affordable homes.

And we tend to do that in two different ways.

Kelly's like, uh-oh.

So these are the two ways that you'll hear about.

And actually, you'll hear about that a little bit in Kelly's work.

So what we have traditionally done is issue a NOFA.

And what is a NOFA?

NOFA stands for Notice of Funding Availability.

And what we do is annually we put out and say, hi, we are, and typically in June, we issue a NOFA and it says that we are issuing X millions of dollars with these priorities for this type of housing.

And this is a rental family NOFA.

The home ownership NOFAs are a little bit different, but And they're issued in June because we align our investments with the State Department of Commerce through their Housing Trust Fund and King County through their Department of CHS Community and Housing Services, Human Services.

And so a long time ago, I'd say about 10, 15 years ago, instead of having multiple applications that development entities would go through, we packaged them all up as one.

So tried to make it a little bit easier.

and the Housing Finance Commission, which issues something called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and 4% bonds.

So we tried to consolidate all this together, and you might want a later conversation about the intricacies of this.

And so organizations apply to the combined funders, which are us, the state, the county, and say, I need investment of X dollars for the development of this housing.

And their applications mention where they are, who they're gonna serve, both from an AMI perspective, but also if there's programming involved.

So it could be, we are building, for example, housing for families at a variety of different income ranges.

We are choosing this location because it's proximate to bus, schools, whatnot.

They write this out in their proposal to us, it's pretty sizable.

So we issue an RFP sort of thing, and it's a competitive bidding process for developers, and based off of whatever specific specs and requirements that we put in this June thing, MOFA or whatever it's called, and then we receive bids, and then we make decisions based off of the information we receive?

Yes.

Okay.

So that's it.

In our spec sheet that we put out, is location part of that, or do we have flexibility, like leave that kind of flexibility for developers?

We talk about locations.

We have traditionally not been very, very specific as to our priority areas.

We do not say, I want it in the Admiral District of this.

We have not traditionally done that.

What we do talk about is references to language in the comprehensive plan, such as high opportunity areas, high areas of displacement, location proximate to transit, that sort of language, right?

So that's kind of where we put our priorities.

And Seattle.

It all has to be in Seattle, yes.

That's the only location that we generally...

Yes, in Seattle.

The other thing I was going to mention is over the past several years, the city has started to do RFPs, request for proposals, very specific to sites, specific sites.

So one that Kelly will discuss probably later on, I'm hinting, is Mount Baker.

which is a site next to Mount Baker Station that we acquired through land transfers from the University of Washington, and we will have an RFP related to that site.

There is a potential for an RFP very specific to the site, which is Lake City Community Center.

And so we issue these very site-specific RFPs, or we participate with say, for example, Sound Transit in an RFP very specific to a site that they have.

Thank you.

Thank you for helping me better understand the how, which is really important in terms of us aligning on a shared understanding of the really important mechanics of how this all works, so yeah.

Now, there's one thing that I wanted to clarify, though, Councilmember, is you said MFTE dollars coming in to fund housing.

MFTE is a tax exemption program, so there are no dollars coming to us for that.

They provide, developers provide units uh in exchange for getting the tax exemption this is where the m this is where the m's get confused uh somebody that is uh doing the mandatory housing affordability or they can choose to pay by giving us money or to perform yeah that's the language so we may get the payment dollars and those go out through the nofa does your office track the

performance versus payment of the penalty, essentially, like that, and track and monitor that and make sure more people are able to actually perform rather than pay.

That will be a discussion this upcoming year, or upcoming couple of years, yeah.

Yeah, and we will be having a more in-depth presentation on how all the funding works together.

I think we had talked about that before.

Okay, Kelly, where are we on the slides?

Are we here?

Okay.

So one of the areas of work, it was the brown one that was over on the right, is policy and planning.

And this is a relatively new body of work for us that we've incorporated into this team.

And they work on strategic initiatives.

So one of those strategic initiatives was the housing levy.

How do we pass the housing levy and the community engagement and the knitting together of what goes into the housing levy?

So there was a housing levy for that.

Other major policy investment effort was on something that you'll hear about later this year probably, which is the permanent supportive housing pilot that we did during the pandemic where we looked at different ways to deliver housing.

And if we could have...

whether those different ways of delivering the housing impacted time, so got units on faster, cost, and we just need to go back and do the study up and figure all that out.

So all that sort of research work happens in the policy and planning shop.

Let me get my glasses up here so I can read.

Oh, you went too fast there.

The other one is also place-based initiatives.

Mention Mount Baker, mention Lake City.

The other one would be as the one that's pictured here, which is Fort Lawton.

And then we work with our partners at SDCI and OPCD to examine and implement the city's land use tools, right?

So that's the third bucket there.

And so a lot of that factors around MFTE and MHA.

This past year, we really worked on trying to define what low-income housing is in the land use code, because it was not clear.

So we're just going for clarity and simplicity in the land use code.

And now I will turn it over to you, Kelly.

Great, so we'll just talk now about the plan for 2024 legislative actions coming through this committee.

First up, we'll have our 2023 annual reports.

Then we'll talk a little bit more about this as we go.

I'm just going to highlight each of these and then go into more detail.

The housing funding policies and the administrative and finance plan for the housing levy.

Our MFTE extensions, evaluation and reauthorization this year.

Three Rainier Valley affordable homeownership initiative land transfers and a social housing definition.

So coming up soon, our annual reports come in the middle of this year.

We do four reports, and that references what you mentioned, Councilmember Saka, bullet number three, mandatory housing affordability.

We report it annually on performance versus payment.

Generally, the payment is a trade-off for increased development rights to then contribute to affordable housing.

There's been a perennial debate and conversation around encouraging performance over payment and how we get there.

That conversation continues.

So we'll be talking more about that over the next year or so.

The Seattle housing levy annual report will be coming in to close out the 2016 housing levy as we enter into the first year of investments for the 2023 housing levy.

And finally, we'll do a report on the multifamily tax exemption as well.

So a little more detail about the housing levy ANF plan.

This follows typically the passage of the Seattle housing levy by the voters of Seattle.

We update numerous policies that guide all of OH's investments.

We add new programs, we're modernizing some terms and reflecting input from community partners that we've gathered over more than a year of community input.

We have had recent public meetings at the end of 2023 to discuss these proposed policies, take an input.

We're still making some changes, trying to wrap those up to bring them forward in a couple of months here.

I noted that you have more planned in 2024. Do you have an actual schedule for that or that we could?

The date to bring this in?

No, the public meetings.

Oh, yes.

We do not have a schedule yet.

We were hoping to have these out in February.

We're running a little late.

So hopefully we'll be scheduling some public meetings soon on our proposed initial draft of the policies.

That's the plan.

So February, March.

Okay, and if you could just keep this committee apprised so that we can make sure that the public's aware of that opportunity.

You bet.

Thank you so much.

So just a quick overview on the multifamily tax exemption before I talk about the legislative action that may be coming to this committee.

So MFTE is a state authorized property tax exemption.

Seattle first adopted the MFTE policy program in 1998. The purpose, according to the Seattle Municipal Code, is to increase and maintain affordable housing.

It also serves as an incentive for development.

Seattle requires 20 to 25% of affordable housing at different income levels, depends on the length of your exemption and how you set your incomes up.

Reauthorization generally is approved by council every four years, and 2024 will be the seventh reauthorization.

So we typically refer to these by their program numbers.

We are currently in P6.

We will be reauthorizing to P7.

Council has adopted a number of ordinances, 15 specific to MFTE.

A lot of work has been done.

So currently, we are in P6, and it's been extended through the end of 2024. The Office of Housing has received a number of questions and comments from developers that are interested to understand the process ahead of us, the schedule, and what's to be expected.

We have an extension that we are considering to bring forward, potentially to push program six into 2025. We'll come back with more detail on that just to give some reliability and predictability to developers as we are pursuing the reauthorization.

As part of this reauthorization this year, there is interest in doing a little bit more analysis to understand the impacts of the program.

It has gotten quite large in the city of Seattle.

We have the largest program in the state, obviously.

We have over 6,000 low income homes that have been created as a result of MFTE.

So we're interested in trying to understand who's living in those units, how they are doing, what is the cost and benefit analysis of the program overall, the exemption versus the benefits to community.

So that is the work of the evaluation that we're hoping to bring forward along with the reauthorization of program seven.

Yes.

How have you, are you working with a consultant or how are you, How are you performing this analysis?

We are pursuing a consultant contract.

It's not quite final, but we can share those details with you all once it is ready.

Very close.

That is really important to me because it all depends on the consultant, just like it often depends on the lawyer.

So get different answers depending on who you ask.

Bellevue recently updated its MFTE program, and apparently it's having...

it has resulted in increased participation by developers.

And so do you, will this analysis or will the consultant be looking at nearby cities with similar markets so we don't have to completely recreate the wheel or start from fresh?

Yeah, we can talk about that.

Certainly, the City of Seattle's program is long-standing and has done a little bit more on affordability than other jurisdictions, but we are interested to understand what the other jurisdictions are doing, so we're happy to do that as part of the rollout.

Yeah, and just when I heard you say something along the lines of its benefits to the community, that piqued my attention because...

On the one hand, we say we want on-site performance, right?

And the MFTE program does provide on-site performance.

And if the levels of affordability are inhibiting participation, we really do have to look at that because this is a way to get private developers to make affordable housing over a big chunk of time, I believe.

I don't know.

It's not in perpetuity.

I think it's...

20 years, something like that.

But in any case, this is an important tool to get low income, I mean, low income, affordable housing at various rates and have onsite performance, which are policy goals that we have committed to for a long time.

So I just encourage looking at other cities and what they've done recently.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member.

I think Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Excellent point.

I think by a council president here, I just want to, I just want to emphasize the importance of what was said at a high level from my perspective as well.

Like Seattle is, is facing enormous challenges in many material respects.

We are the leader.

We have the most, you know, developed programs and capabilities out there.

Um, that said, We literally do not need to recreate the wheel.

And we need to look to what our other local agencies and jurisdictions are doing.

And then also outside of the state.

What are folks doing across the country to address similar challenges?

And obviously, we're not going to be able to port over one for one.

It's not a direct comparison, what's going on.

even in Bellevue to here, but there are, I think, insights and key learnings and best practices that have worked elsewhere that I think, and yes, we need to be able to and willing to humble ourselves as well and incorporate best practices from others.

And by the way, that same principle has universal applicability across every agency, every department.

But it is really, really important.

If I may add, since we are going to be re-looking at the MFTE, is there any thought to looking at how MFTE and MHA might be able to work together, perhaps amplify one another?

I know there's been some discussion in the community about the fact that MHA doesn't count towards MFTE and that perhaps that might be a better way.

So just opening a line of inquiry that perhaps we could look at how those two programs might work synergistically together to amplify the amount of affordable housing we're actually getting.

We'll think about that and bring that back.

It's kind of a big idea.

No, no, no, that's great.

I think that's why I think making sure that we have the time to thoroughly analyze and think about this, right?

which I think is very important.

The MFTE program, as Kelly mentioned, is typically for four-year periods.

A lot can happen in four years, and I think it's important that we think about that, as well as also acknowledging that the development community needs a level of predictability in that decision-making.

So that's my nice way of saying we can't wait until November to pass any sort of legislation related to this.

That would be that's too close to the end that I think it would be, they're nervous about it now.

And it's a hard time right now to be a developer because your interest rates just tripled.

So, yeah.

I think we need to open those lines of dialogue because We do significantly.

I mean, we need to have, the market's not gonna solve the problem, but we need to look at how we can work at them to incentivize.

And I'm not sure that MHA has been working as effectively as it was intended.

It was initially meant to be inclusionary housing.

You know all of this.

So, and that we've got these two very powerful engines.

Is there some way that we can make them work together?

Yep, agreed.

I'll just make one final comment, if that's okay.

Sorry about that.

I'm not very good at noticing.

It's okay.

I didn't even raise my hand.

And that's particularly important because there was an article written by David Croman in the audience here that came out on the 2nd of February, and it reported that Seattle will award far less money than usual this year in affordable housing projects, only $53.3 million for four projects compared to $147 million for 12 new projects last year.

You know, the number hasn't dipped below 100,000 million, I mean, 100 million since 2018. Right, you read that article, too.

Anyway, but the driver is, and I didn't realize this, is that the Office of Housing has to backfill costs that were unanticipated on projects already in the pipeline, and you're doing that for about 90 million going forward, and that's why you can't award more this year.

And so...

When we're talking about the MFTE program, the private developers absorb whatever unanticipated costs or the city is not on the hook for backfilling and then having less money going forward is one of the plugs for this important program.

And later on offline, I do want to know what kind of Does the Office of Housing have the capacity to examine at a really granular level the assumptions in the pro formas of the affordable housing developers?

Because this quoted Sharon Lee saying that, well, we couldn't anticipate the increased interest rates.

you know, I don't know how, when the, when that project was planned, but I'm just thinking that maybe if offline we can look at how you look at whether or not these are really sound assumptions in these projects so you're not in this position in the future.

Of course.

Okay.

We're moving on, on the slide deck.

We're almost at the end, y'all.

Almost here.

So the Rainier Valley Homeownership Initiative, the Affordable Homeownership Initiative, this is a partnership with Sound Transit, a no-cost land transfer to develop new permanently affordable homes for homeowners, low-income in the neighborhood.

We're issuing a request for developers this year, and this will just be the transfer of the last three sites.

And that is enough for us.

Oh, wonderful.

Oh, I thought we had slide 20, but we didn't.

All right.

Is that is that it?

No, we did not.

All right.

Well, let me ask with this has been a hot bench, as they like to say, but are there any additional questions from council members?

No.

Oh, thank you, Madam Chair.

So very insightful presentation.

Thank you.

And thank you for entertaining my pesky questions and my comments as well.

One thing that would be curious to learn more about is your agencies, or even the city, if you have a view on this more broadly, role in helping to shape, activate, and expand public-private partnerships in the role of, or with respect to, you know, affordable housing, for example, and, you know, understanding kind of how we got here in terms of lack of affordable housing, homelessness crisis, You know, people can no longer afford to live in the city that many work in, and it's unacceptable.

And as someone personally who has overcome the foster care system and, you know, Section 8 housing myself and went to 13 different K-12 schools, I feel very privileged that I was able to eventually work in tech, in big tech.

And so, like, I think it's well established now that big tech help play a role into the current challenges.

And, you know, we also need to look to them as partners in helping to solve this.

And it's not just by going and clubbing people over the head and organizations over the head and asking for more money.

You know, we need to work with private organizations, many of which, especially the larger, more sophisticated, advanced ones, want to help in this respect.

And I read an interesting article a day or two ago from the Seattle Times about essentially the collapse of We Are In and a number of other public-private partnerships and how Seattle's public-private partnerships in this space, affordable housing, addressing the homelessness crisis is less advanced and further behind than other cities and jurisdictions like Austin, for example.

And so, which we're leading in many great areas, there's an opportunity for us to do better.

And the city plays a role, so do our private sector actors.

And so, how can we best, against that backdrop, how can we best activate that, bring our public-private partnerships in this really important space further along and eventually lead

So a couple of thoughts on that.

So the I don't know if you call this a public private partnership, but the low income housing tax credit program, which is a federally developed program, we use that tool for almost all of our affordable housing development.

And all of those require an equity investment from typically somebody that needs tax credits.

So if you're looking for tax credits, you're probably a bank.

In the past, they've been energy companies.

Interesting groups have shown up in that tax credit space.

So almost all of our investments into affordable housing are into projects that are owned by a limited liability corporation or LLLP, depends on what the flavor of that time period is.

They almost all have bank loans, they all have construction loans, and they all have an equity investor that's typically a private corporation.

It's established in a private corporation at the end of the 15th year, that tax structure falls apart and it eventually falls back to the nonprofit.

So almost all of them are public-private in that sense.

Some of our projects have...

worked with Amazon on the Amazon Housing Equity Fund.

Yes, and we've been involved with them for over two years for the length of their $2 billion investment into their three major markets.

So they are investing in our projects and we're trying to figure out how we work together in that space.

I'm hearing Microsoft is interested in investing, although they haven't told me directly because at first they were very interested on the east side.

They're like, ah, we don't wanna be in Seattle.

So that's fine.

And there are private investors that have invested specifically in our housing or in housing that we work on.

So there is some of that.

I am not able to speak on the...

I can speak to you about the David Croman article, but I can't speak with you about the David Kim article, because that's a different...

Or Greg Kim article, because that's a different space in what we work with.

We work adjacent with homelessness, but once people move into our housing, they're housed.

They're not homeless anymore.

They may have been formerly homeless, and the services that they may need for that is there.

And a lot of the organizations that we invest in have philanthropic relationships with the corporations that are giving charitable donations to them in order to help keep our neighbors and our community safe, right?

So we may not directly interact, but there's...

So as the developer of affordable housing and operating housing, you're working with many different people.

We are just one of them.

And so we are aware of those other people that are in our space, but we may not intentionally do that.

We can get further into that, Councilmember.

I think we have an individual one-on-one with you and happy to explore that more.

I'm thinking you might hear about it from the people sitting in back of me.

Maybe they're more into that.

So that was not a punt, but that was a soft handoff.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

I guess I'll just, if it's not clear at this point, emphasize that that is something that I view as a really important and frankly urgent opportunity for the city to deepen and expand.

The role and prominence of public-private and the impact of public-private partnerships in Austin, they $150 million or something built tiny homes.

There's more, and it's not just homelessness.

And as we know, a lot of people are teetering on the edge of affordable housing and being housed.

So it all relates together.

I would also say, council member, as I think about this, as I go a little bit deeper, I think about my colleagues, not in back of me.

They are also our colleagues, but colleagues on the same floor over at the SMT.

It's the Office of Economic Development.

So those are not big corporations that they work with, typically, as I think about them from my past life working in community.

the people, the businesses that they work with are really members of the community, and they are the same as community, and sometimes, and sometimes in my buildings, the people who lived in the affordable housing were trying to start businesses on the ground floor, right, and those are actually public-private partnerships, and we have, those are some of the best ones because those are members of community, right, and sometimes we forget that, but Thank you.

It warms the cockles of my heart.

That was not meant to be a ploy for you.

No, I mean, plug for neighborhood small businesses.

Thank you.

I'm going to let Council Member Morales have the last word.

Thank you, Chair Moore.

I just want to thank you both for being here.

This is going to be a lot of work for this committee this year.

And I think it is important to convey my appreciation for your deep level of expertise.

I mean, Maiko and I have known each other for 25 years.

You go way back in the housing world, leading a housing development organization, leading community development.

And the depth and breadth of your expertise in this field is going to be really important for us to take advantage of.

You know, as we move through your legislative agenda for the year, I think it will be really important for all of us to be meeting with you regularly to understand all of the technical aspects of the decisions that we have to make this year and appreciate your understanding of how to build partnerships as well within the community and with the broader Seattle business community.

So just a plug for appreciating the expertise that our city workers and our departments bring to help us understand the hard decisions that we have to make because we are not experts in many of the things that we are charged with overseeing, which is why we have to rely on your expertise, and I appreciate it.

Thank you for that.

The one thing I would say is if you give me an idea, I may make a face.

Don't take that face as being, oh my gosh, you hated it.

Sometimes, and I need sometimes that little bit of space to think about it because my mind automatically goes...

No, I will also say I've known Michael 25 years and we do not always agree.

That's OK.

We do not.

That's fine.

We know that about each other.

So thank you very much.

I really, really appreciate your presentation.

I appreciate you being willing to take the questions on the cuff to roll with it and being open minded.

I echo the comments about appreciating your depth of expertise and knowledge in this area.

We definitely will be asking you lots of questions and drawing upon that.

And we really do look forward to working with both of you and your department over the course of this year.

Thank you so much.

We look forward to working with you as well.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

If we could read, Madam Clerk, Agenda 2 into the record.

Agenda Item 2, Introduction to Human Services Department for Briefing and Discussion.

Great.

Thank you.

So as they're getting settled, we have with us Director Tanya Kim and Kevin Munt from the Human Services Department, and they will be taking us through their six impact areas and some of the programs that the Human Services Department oversees.

Good morning.

For your patience as I get water, getting ready for my questions.

Thank you so much for having us here.

For the record, I'm Tonya Kim, Director of the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

Chris Clayson, Interim Director of Homelessness at HSD.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I first want to thank Chair Moore for having us here and really sitting here amongst amazing colleagues sandwiched in between OH, Office of Housing and Office of Civil Rights.

And so this is a privilege for us.

We're going to give you an overview of the Human Services Department and you'll have a flavor of our budget, how we do our work, the areas that we invest in, as well as sharing some performance measures just as a teaser for the complex and breadth of work that we do, and happy to entertain questions as well.

I am mindful of the time, and so I'll go quickly and slowly at the same time.

So in that vein, always starting off with our mission.

And our mission here And I reiterate this mission all the time because we have so many organizations in the city and throughout the community that work with people.

And it's so important to remember which department is leading in what space because so often many of us in community work with some of the same community members and knowing the role is really critical.

And so our mission is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need so all Seattle residents can live, learn, work, and take part in strong and healthy communities.

You'll see we do this work through a racial equity lens.

In fact, the Human Services Department has been leading in this space for quite some time.

In the six different impact areas, and this is really gonna frame the conversation for the next slides to come, is really touching everything from youth for success all the way through healthy aging.

And we'll slow down in the deck and talk about each one in just a moment.

Some people ask, well, what does the Human Services Department do and how do you do it?

Well, we have three primary functions, although we also live in the gray, as we learned through the pandemic and other crises that are emerging.

We are a funder, so majority of our investments are procured or go through requests for proposals, and we partner with community-based organizations.

We are a convener.

We have some policy groups and advisory groups that we staff and we support, for example, the Domestic Violence Prevention Council or our Aging and Disability Services Advisory Council.

We're also a direct service provider.

You'll soon see how large or medium size our department is.

Many of our employees are direct service providers, and I think people don't realize that.

And here we are.

So our adopted budget in 2024, you can see here, is 341 million, roughly.

We have 434.25 employees, FTE, in our department.

We contract, and this is just the number of community-based organizations.

We contract with 190-plus organizations.

Some organizations have multiple contracts.

And as I said, the majority of our budget does go out into the community, and so 80%.

We have mixed fund sources.

I am not a finance person, but you could see the various fund sources, which makes our work somewhat complex because of the restrictions as well.

And how we distribute the funding in those six impact areas is demonstrated here in this attire, a donut.

chart, and you could see that the majority of the investments are going towards addressing homelessness, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

A good question, and I have heard a lot about accountability and performance metrics, and how do we know that we're making an impact?

Several years ago, city council did codify what we call results-based accountability.

And I wanna make a correction.

So this slide says SMC 3.20.030.

It should be It's all in the same area if you go and for those of you who want to read more on this.

But it does talk about the way in which we do our strategic planning and develop our framework.

And so essentially, here's the shortcut version.

Based on data, we need to be really clear about the problem we want to solve and better yet, what is the result we want to see and then we work backwards from there.

So if we want to see, for example, a reduction in gun violence, How could we measure that?

What are the strategies, whether it's evidence-based or proven, to be effective?

And what are the tools and the resources that people need in order to get there?

And we also know that there's a whole ecosystem.

The Human Services Department alone will not solve that, but we have a place in that space because people are involved.

And so we use results-based accountability as a framework for how we do our investments.

It is the way in which if you go to our website, and I encourage the viewing public to go there, our request for proposals and qualifications in the past are posted still.

When we have any of those applications and guidelines available, you will see our theory of change.

It follows this model.

And so organizations are really clear about what they're applying for, and they're really clear about our expectations of what performances need to be met.

And we do that through, as Maiko just mentioned in her OH, the Office of Housing presentation, we issue a NOFA, Notice of Funding Availability.

In the next slide, we're going to share with you some of the requests for proposals or qualifications that are currently posted on the NOFA.

We have several here.

It is subject to change.

The majority of these, as you know, these are difficult budget times.

And so the majority of these are based on fund sources that are not general funds.

And so we feel very confident.

through our state dollars or grant dollars that these are dollars that we've been allocated and we're moving forward with.

And we do have a little bit of general funds here.

We're examining the rest of our portfolio to see what else needs to be procured.

We're being very thoughtful, of course.

And so it is subject to change.

I will mention that typically when you have a request for proposal per the SMC.

We do this every four years, which means that if Council Member Morales, your organization, because you're no longer a council member and you have a nonprofit and you're going to feed people, you might apply for a RFP.

If you receive an award, you are typically then going to receive a contract for four years pending funding availability, and of course your performance.

And I mention that because the ability to have the RBA framework, that results-based accountability framework, is important that every four years we do a thoughtful, methodical process to making sure that these are the investments that we need to produce those outcomes that we desire.

But I want to make really clear that we also do monitoring.

And so we have our contracts.

We do monthly invoicing.

They have performance measures.

Every contract has performance measures that they need to report on.

Some are very straightforward, like pounds of food that's distributed.

Others are things like the number of contacts that one makes in order to get the services that they need for increased behavioral health.

And so they're different depending on the contracts.

And we have different ways in which we hold organizations accountable.

First, because we partner with our community-based organizations, it's really about partnering for success.

And so it's technical assistance, making sure that they're really clear.

We have cohorts that are meeting, info sharing, trainings.

But in the case where there are agencies that are struggling, we have lots of options to reduce funding, to reallocate funding altogether.

We have other tools in our toolkit, but we do start with partnering and ensuring that our agencies are successful.

So I know that accountability is top of mind for many, and so I just wanted to put that out there right away.

And it starts with the NOFA, but it continues through the life cycle of our funding.

I'm sorry, Director Kim.

So is that a monthly monitoring, or how often are you looking at performance metrics?

There's different layers.

And so monthly, in addition to that, we do site visits.

And so there are annual site visits.

There's a fiscal review with organizations, a threshold of a certain dollar amount and up.

We look at the organizational health, and some make it onto the list of those that we then do a deeper fiscal review.

It is also required to have organizations submit their audits.

We review that financially, and so it's the whole.

It's the, are you meeting the performance, and is your organization healthy?

Thank you.

So this is a little bit of a dizzying slide, but it's really just for illustrative purposes.

And so let me orient you and our viewing public what you're looking at.

So again, we have the six impact areas along the top in blue.

Underneath are the stated goals, so just articulating it a little bit more clearly.

And then underneath that are a sampling of programs.

And so if you can imagine these as columns.

And so for example, and I won't read the whole thing, but promoting healthy aging.

And so if we are looking at promoting healthy aging, which is the second column, you can see that we want all older adults to experience stable health so that they're able to age in place.

And I always say that's the dream.

I support my parents as well, and I'm getting older.

I hope that I have good health and am able to stay in place where I would like to age gracefully.

And then you can see some of the program areas underneath that we invest in in order to support that effort.

Now I'm going to go through a deck of slides that is going to articulate each impact area.

And then the following slide will give you a sampling of some performance metrics or some data.

And so you'll see that cadence now for the next six slides.

And so, or excuse me, 12. plus a question slide.

So the first one we're gonna start with is preparing youth for success.

So I'm just gonna do a quick highlight that we want all youth in Seattle to successfully transition to adulthood.

That makes sense.

But it's really important for me to state the next part, which is regardless of race, income, immigration status, or the neighborhood they live in.

I shouldn't have to say this, but I have to say this.

And so with that, we've got lots of different investment areas for the ways in which we're preparing youth for success, but I'm gonna do a plug here.

for our Seattle Youth Employment Program.

And I know each council office is not ready for this, but I'm gonna solicit you today too, as well as others that you know.

So this photo here is last year at a capstone event at the Summer Youth.

or excuse me, Seattle Youth Employment Program for their summer internship, and you can see many of our young people who completed the program.

And if we go to the next slide, I'll give you a little bit more of the details.

And so the impact area for our Seattle Youth Employment Program was that we had 312 youth and young adults.

They were income eligible, so this is not open to everybody, but for those who typically don't have access to these kinds of resources, to become eligible, they applied, and we had them enrolled in our internship program, and we do everything from, we have them on our payroll, we pay for their hourly wages, we make sure that they are assigned a youth development counselor so they're set up for success, and we also support the employers.

Councilmember Osaka, if you choose to have an intern, maybe this summer or next summer, we will support you through that journey.

And we encourage you to take one or two interns.

So we are right now opening up that process to recruit businesses.

We've also had foundations, city departments.

My office had interns as well.

And it really, just to level set, it's an opportunity for you to mentor young people who typically don't have access to these kinds of resources.

And so I want to encourage you and others to take that into consideration.

And we'll move to the next impact area.

Supporting affordability and livability.

We've talked a lot about this in our previous presentation.

We talk a lot about this often in different conversations.

We wanna make sure that all people living in Seattle can meet their basic needs.

And one of the ways which we do this Oftentimes, we talk about the investments through food banks or other emergency feeding.

I want to highlight, though, for the purpose of this conversation, because you will soon see the numbers of people participating in this program, is our utility discount programs.

shortcut that by saying UDP.

So our utility discount program is in partnership with Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

And you can see that the discounts are very significant, sizable.

So for those who are income eligible, they can get 60 and 50% discount respectively.

Next slide.

Dr. Kim, I just wanna interject there.

Can you tell us, I think in our, our initial conversation, you said the number of people, households participating in that program, do you know offhand?

I don't.

So one of the data points that I do wanna follow up with your committee is kind of the landscape of how many households we think is eligible for UDP based on the criteria eligibility.

But I can share with you in the next slide, the number of households that are participating.

And so we have 36,145 households that were enrolled in UDP in last year.

It's a lot of households that are benefiting.

And of that, we were able to get over 8000 new enrollees.

There's a lot of movement.

As you know, people are moving out of the area, moving in the area, having hard times.

There's layoffs and other situations during the pandemic.

It increased significantly.

We modified the program.

There was a lot of struggling families.

And so, excuse me, and households, not just families.

And so that was a really important, and it's just a good demonstration of that one Seattle approach.

There's a lot of departments working together on various programs.

I mentioned this because they do get the discounts from the two different, whether it's City Light and public utilities, but how HSD is involved is that we are the administrators, so we do the direct services because, again, we want to make sure that people have what they need in order to thrive in our community.

So we do that connection.

You would think it's super easy to enroll, but it actually takes a little bit of processing.

It's getting better.

There's automation and some other things that we're working on.

But if you're a limited English speaker or maybe not reading your even native language or looking for that paperwork, you move, you're stressed, it is really important to have somebody our employees working with you in order to get on the discount.

So that's what we offer there.

And I just want to sing the praises of that program and would really like to see us enhance the number of people that are enrolled.

I think we're below 90%, and it would be really wonderful to get to 90 at a minimum.

Thank you.

And this is for you, Council Member Morales.

And so I anticipated you may be asking a little bit about income eligibility.

And so this morning I looked at the table.

What we use is the state medium income and it's not to exceed 70%.

And so for example, a household size of four is not to exceed 85,000 a year.

And all of this is published on our website.

And just to be clear, that's different than what Michael was talking about with the HUD median income qualifications that they use.

That's right.

It is different.

And that's the tricky thing, you know, with these regulations.

And so oftentimes there is conversation, and again, we are getting better.

But if we have various benefit programs across the city, why can't we just kind of like roll into, you know, eligibleizing and getting people on all these different programs?

One of the tricky things is that there are different requirements.

And so thank you.

But I knew that question might come up.

Thanks.

All right.

We're gonna now talk about impact area in addressing homelessness.

And I will have a caveat here that HSD the Human Services Department's role has changed in the past couple years.

And so one of the ways and one of the reasons why our investment is so large in this space is because we are the contract holder for the work that is with King County.

regional homelessness authority.

And so we have not only the major contract, but we're their point of contact.

And so I always say, especially with our council colleagues, if you have any questions, if you get constituent questions or concerns, always please feel free to reach out to us.

One of the roles that we play aside from having the contract is really working in close partnership with them to get the answers you need and also to ensure that they are delivering on the work that they are charged to do.

One example of another way that we partner with King County Regional Homelessness Authority, it happened even, it's hard to believe, but just last month we had a severe weather response We're not gonna have one more hopefully this winter season because it takes a lot of resources and energy and of course we care about our unsheltered neighbors, is that we needed to activate and we launched Exhibition Hall with our partners with Seattle Center and City Hall as well and we brought in lots of people needing a warm place to be.

And so we coordinate those other departments and the resources that need to come up.

And again, I wanna thank Council Member Moore, Chair Moore for even volunteering your time.

So that was, quite an entry into your term.

And so those are some of the things that we do.

And aside from our relationship formally with KC RHA, we do play a role in the city-wide effort that many of you closely are knowing as the Unified Care Team.

And we have many departments play a role there.

Our staff are regional coordinators and are working in these neighborhood areas.

And so we play a role with that.

I believe there's two, well, one presentation that we are aligning with KCRHA, which is to come back to this committee and do a deeper dive.

And so more to come on that.

And I know that the unified care team currently led by the mayor's office will also probably be brought forward and be discussed more broadly.

But we do play a part in that.

So specifically, some highlights, and this is a little bit unusual, but again, I'm starting with the dollar amount here just because it is larger.

So we do have $135.3 million of funding.

I want to be really clear that there's various fund sources.

That's not all general funds.

In fact, you know, there are federal dollars moving over as well and other fund sources.

One of the things that we do track, and you may have heard, is that with KC RHA, they subcontract with community-based organizations.

And those organizations, while what they do is important, but one of the things that we're tracking is also that those contracts are being developed and executed on time.

And so that was really important so organizations can get paid.

And so that's something, because it was a recent transition that we were monitoring as well.

And so you could see in 2023, there were over 140 different contracts with our funds through KCRHA.

But we wanted to also highlight, and now I'm gonna hand it over to Chris and have his speaking moment.

Chris, again, is our interim director overseeing our homelessness investments, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to highlight some of the excellent work that we've recently done.

Thank you, Director Kim.

A couple great highlights of our work last year, and I think speak to the collaboration we have with the Regional Homelessness Authority, are around the siting of shelter programs and two in particular that opened last year.

One, Raven Village, that's actually operated by Chief Seattle Club, It serves about 22 units of American Indian and Alaskan Native populations, which is a real critical need as this population is disproportionately represented in the city's homelessness population.

Another great aspect of this program as well, speaking to the One Seattle approach, is the partnership that HSD had with Seattle City Light on this property.

It has actually reactivated the former Leary substation property, which had been decommissioned for about 20 years, and it was able to be opened up for this tiny house village early last year.

And then the second highlight, this picture on the left, is from the grand opening in late December of the Salmon Bay RV Village.

This is operated by the Low Income Housing Institute, and it's the first RV safe lot in multiple years.

There have been a number of programmatic challenges, siting challenges, so we're extremely thrilled to get this up and running, and even getting this program up took about 1.5 years from the announcement of the award, so quite a bit of work to get this up and running, and we're really excited to see where it goes.

Okay.

We're going to move on to our efforts around promoting public health.

You know this, some of you serve on the Board of Health, as well as just speaking to the importance of public health, mental health, well-being, substance use disorders, all of that is in this space.

There are emphasis for us to ensure that people living in Seattle experience, and this is old, okay, I inherited this, it says moderate to optimum health conditions.

I'd really like this to say that people living in Seattle experience increased health and wellness and optimal health conditions, but we're working on that.

In this space, you might be wondering why Health 99 is here.

And I had the opportunity to hear yesterday's council presentation where you had your three chiefs.

And Chief Scoggins, the data that he rolls off his head is pretty brilliant.

He went into Health 1 and Health 99, the expansion, uh in great detail secret sauce i think to the success is that the social workers the case managers that he referenced are from the human services department and so i really didn't mean to say this repeatedly but it's another example of our one seattle approach where different departments are bringing their subject matter expertise to the table and collaborating in order to jointly perform an important service.

And so that is one emphasis, and that's why we've got a photo here of Health 99, which is, just as a reminder, an expansion of Health 1, focusing specifically on overdoses and substance use distress.

Other ways in which we're promoting public health, it's not only through HealthONE.

I won't repeat the chief's statistics here.

Naloxone and Narcan are named here two different ways, but you'll know that there's a generic term and the brand term for reversing an overdose.

But also wanted to highlight there's other ways in which we support the promotion of public health.

It is primarily the function of the state and for us regionally here in the county.

So it's public health, Seattle, King County, and also King County Department of Community and Human Services.

We do have a contract similar but not quite as large with public health.

We have a contract with them in an interlocal agreement similar to that of what we have the relationship with KC RHA that I just talked more extensively about.

So we have about over $17 million investment in public health.

And you can see through our relationship with King County, the first data point here around 695 individuals who received medical care through their mobile medical clinic.

I was just looking at some information this morning and was reminded this is really focusing on, again, there's so much intersectionality of this work.

But we have these, we're investing in, through the county, these mobile medical clinics because they're focusing on our unsheltered neighbors.

And so it's really important to make sure that these services are going where people are at.

And you can see that there's lots of different types of care, including primary, all the way to naloxone training.

and some other investments.

The last one I wanted to highlight is that we're also investing in capital.

We have capital investments to ensure that more programs are being stood up in this space too.

And so we do have some community development block grants and federal funds that are going towards two different types of facilities.

And we're in the process right now.

It's not ready for public debut, but we did go through a request for qualifications process.

We have moving forward to providers.

One is focusing on that outpatient treatment.

We just need more of it.

It exists, but we need more of it.

But where there is a gap is really around this post-overdose stabilization facility.

And so when one has experienced an overdose, it's really having, and I forget what the number of hours it's limited, regulated by the state.

I think it's 23 hours, but I can follow up with more information.

Making sure that there is oversight and care for the individuals who have just experienced that overdose.

it's also a good opportunity, aside from medically ensuring that they're okay, to offer other ways, referrals to other resources as well.

Do we have a timeline for that?

The Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, is a tricky, lovely fund source where there's lots of requirements.

And so we have the proposals.

They're very clear.

We're clear on the organizations and how they want to stand things up.

But there's a lot of different technical review components with that.

And so as soon as we have more information, we'll be able to share that with you.

Everything looks good, but then it's like verifying all the various components to make sure it is eligible for CDBG.

Thank you.

Another impact area, these are not small topics, is around supporting safe communities.

We do this in three different ways.

This is another good example of how we have funding investments, the way in which we work on policy, and aligning our decision makers, as well as supporting community-based organizations who do the incredible work that they do.

You know that during the pandemic, you probably heard that there was quite an increase of family and domestic violence.

So this is the Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault does not only the funding, but some of the policy work in that space.

And on the right hand side, you'll see that we do observe in every October Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

And typically you'll see proclamations and other things coming your way.

And we would encourage you to wear purple.

And the other is around our crime survivor services.

We have direct service staff who are victim advocates.

And so for those victims who have experienced various types of crime, including sexual assault, but other types of crime, When SPD is doing their investigations, we offer the victim and or their families support through that process, the criminal legal process.

In addition, in this space, there is a volunteer program.

So there are volunteers in our community, thank you so much, who go through extensive training and go out when there's an incident of domestic family, domestic violence, and ensures that those families have the immediate services that they need, a place to stay, food, what do they need to be safe in the immediate response.

And then finally, with the community safety investments, we do have contracts with community-based organizations who are outside of the domestic violence, sexual assault space, who really focus on increasing community safety.

And so when we talk about gun violence and the impacts that it has on our communities, that's where those investments reside.

I had a question about your, sorry, the community-based...

the community safety investment.

So is there discussion happening about that body of work being transferred to care?

I think that there is an opportunity with NowCare being stood up to examine our investments and ensure that it's correctly housed.

And so I don't have information to share right now, but I do know that there's been some thoughtful conversation about ensuring that investments are rightfully aligned with mission in the correct departments.

I know that this year is more of making sure that care is strong.

I know that Chief Smith was here.

She's super focused.

And Edo, again, one Seattle.

If an investment is, whether it's with us, Department of Neighborhoods, or other spaces, I think what's most important is that, at the very least, there's cross collaboration.

There's the interdepartmental work.

But it could be that there is some movement as well.

How much is that body of work, the community safety investment programs?

Community safety...

I'll have to get back to you.

I want to say in the community safety, it's around $25 million, but I'll need to confirm that dollar amount.

I know how much we invest in the overall budget, but I think that you're kind of honing in on that third bullet, and so I can follow up with it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great question.

So I do want to do, in the performance metrics, highlight a little bit more of the community safety work.

And so I'm offering a couple data points for you, but I want to go into our partnership with the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, alphabet soup, SCSI.

And so we have here featured on the slide, the four partnering organizations that make up the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

It's led by Community Passageways, some of you know Coach Dom.

I wanna recognize this particular initiative because of the work that they've been doing and because of the recent shooting.

And I wanna acknowledge that they have been on the ground in Southwest Seattle.

They're working with the family.

They're providing safe passages.

And so what that means is just safety amongst the schools and making sure that They're present.

The Y is the leading organization.

They're happy to come back and talk more about SCSI.

In fact, we've done council presentations in the past about the model, really neighborhood-based approach for this, and it's built off of relationships and making sure that they also have some discretion.

Some of the discretion is that they can also help with things like funeral caught expenditures and other things associated when a tragic event occurs like a shooting and death.

And so those are some of the things that SCSI does.

It's way more complicated than what I just offered, but wanted you to know that they are responsive.

They also, uh, last year, you may remember the shooting at Safeway, um, uh, down in, um, the South End.

And so, um, the Boys and Girls Club, uh, just wanna also feature that, um, you know, it's not just about necessarily a response to gun violence at the time, although they do that.

There's not a lot of organizations who will go out that night and try to deescalate.

But they also recognize the importance of activating spaces and creating positive environments.

And so last year, there was some positive things happening and some gun violence that occurred.

And in fact, one of the employees at the Boys and Girls Club was shot during that time and is recovering.

But nonetheless, need to give them the proper attention exposure for the work that we do and the work that I think is important while we do some of the other important community safety work and public safety work.

So it's lots of approaches to meet the community need.

Can I say something about that?

Yeah.

I just want to thank you, Director Kim, for highlighting that work.

That shooting at Rainier Beach last year was tragic and terrible and frightening for the people who, as you say, were there trying to activate the space, trying to make sure that community has a safe place to gather and for them to be targeted and or to experience something like that was particularly ironic and frightening.

And I don't think it gets mentioned often enough, the really important work that groups like this are doing in our neighborhoods, because as you said, they have relationships, they know how to engage with folks.

They know, very often know the people who might be perpetrating some of this and what to do to try to intervene the next time.

So, yeah.

So the Southeast Safety Network at Boys and Girls Club is the organization.

And these are young people from the community who are out there every Friday afternoon.

Now they bumped it up from the late night thing, but it is important work that they're doing.

And I really appreciate you highlighting the benefit that they bring to the community.

If I could just go back for a second.

The budget for the community safety investments, actually, it's $15.9 million at the moment.

And does that all mostly go to, do we direct contract with Boys and Girls Club or the Y?

My understanding is that those, that Community Passageways contracts with those folks, so.

We started direct contracting with them.

When was that?

That was, I believe, in 2023. So you're right that Community Passageways was a leading organization and then subcontracted, but we started directly contracting with the organizations.

Like I said, there are organizations that we partner with, and to the extent that we can offer technical assistance or reduce some of the barriers so they don't have the administrative burden, we will also pick that up.

so they could do their best work and provide the services to community.

When they had a bigger contract and were subcontracting, it became clear after a while that it would be helpful for the city to contract individually with the organizations and then we could take on the administrative burden.

Right.

It's always better to contract more directly.

Just allows you to hold our contractees accountable.

I'm sorry?

Never mind.

I appreciate that change.

I didn't know that it had happened.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

And that was done in collaboration with the organizations.

And so we didn't impose that.

We agreed mutually that that's a good approach for our partnership.

I will say that budget amount too, there's the work that is happening in the community safety investment area and there is additional work in our BSL.

Going back to our budget earlier in the slides and where you will see investments such as LEED, That isn't being handled right now by the safety work because of the intersection that it has with some of the other work that we're doing around some of the housing efforts and just exploring other funding options.

And so LEED is not represented in that dollar amount.

So I just wanted to be really clear on that.

I think Council Member Wu has a question.

Yes, so looking at that wheel, it says here that you have 400 plus employees, but 80% of the budget is contracted to community-based organizations.

So are these employees actual direct employees or are they through these organizations?

Oh, the 434.25 FTE are human service department employees.

And that's such a good segue to be talking about promoting healthy aging because half of our employees are within our aging and disability services division.

Many of our employees are case managers.

And so if you wouldn't mind, I am happy to continue on with the slide.

Our division on aging and disability services, our department is designated as the AAA, also known as the Area Agency on Aging.

It's a federal designation which allows us to receive federal and state dollars to do some really important work with our aging caregivers and individuals with disabilities.

And I'll explain more about some of the important work that we're doing on the next slide.

With the designation of the AAA, we actually serve the county.

And I think that that can be a surprise to some folks, but that is the designation.

And so we serve the entire county, which is why our FTE is relatively robust.

And you can see, for example, the third bullet point is that we had in 2022, we're still reconciling 2023 numbers because we're the direct service provider here, is that we had over almost 15,000 people referred to us by the state who are Medicaid eligible for long-term care assessments.

And so what that means, I don't know if you're familiar with this space, actually, been at HSD for a little bit of time and can give you real-life examples, because I used to work in the Aging and Disability Services Division, is that the case managers will have these individuals that they're assessing, and through that assessment, they can determine what kinds of resources they can access, things like home care, adult day health, really important services in order to maintain their health and allow them to age in place, ideally.

And so those are just, you could imagine the caseload.

And so that's why we have so many FTE, but there's many more great statistics up above.

We work with just the general population, also the community living connections.

And so anyone who has questions to navigate resources, If, for example, Councilmember Nelson, you were caring for an elderly uncle and you needed some access to resources, we also have that just for the general public as well.

And so we've got lots of different things happening.

And finally, in this picture, this is another invitation.

We do have what is called, and I wanna make sure I get this name right, the age-friendly civic coffees.

So we have those regularly.

They rotate across the senior centers citywide, and it's an opportunity for community members to come out and hear about their resources, hear about important policy discussions, meet their local elected officials, and so they can raise their concerns.

And so that's an invitation for you to participate there too.

And that's some of the work that we do in promoting healthy aging.

And here's our contact information.

All right.

Well, we've been able to ask a lot of questions and I think we're short on time.

So I'm going to close it up.

Okay, quick question.

Yeah, just more of a comment, just in line with what our colleague Council Member Morales mentioned at the closing end of the last presentation.

I just want to express my, My sincere gratitude and appreciation, Director Kim, for you and your team.

Same thing for Director Winkler-Chen, who is no longer in the room.

but for the hard work you all do every single day and service to our city and your respective area.

And I recognize and acknowledge and appreciate the fact that you are all the subject matter experts in your respective fields.

And so, you know, I've always, I've long practiced an attitude of gratitude, so to speak.

And, you know, if anything, it's only gonna ramp up.

And I've been very impressed by you and everyone that I've encountered for your expertise and willingness to meet with me offline.

Thank you for that meeting earlier this week offline about this one-on-one.

I think it minimized some of the questions that I had today.

But I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside you all.

That said, I, you know, like, I view my role at its core, especially in this capacity, as a legislative oversight function.

And, you know, I'm not here to just lodge a piece of praise, slap high fives, pat each other on the back, attaboys, only.

I'm here to ask tough questions.

I'm here to initiate uncomfortable conversations, potentially.

I'm here to share my priorities.

It's important.

We heard from Chair Moore, that 90% figure, she shared a priority.

Council President and myself shared something that's important, like we need to understand benchmarking and market analysis and policy design and tweaking.

And it is up to you all, the experts, to figure out, work with the executive, because you all report to the executive.

And I know there's a lot of shared interests amongst my colleagues in this body.

to work with the executive, and also exercise appropriate checks and balances.

And this, I would respectfully submit, is one way we do that, asking these uncomfortable questions, initiating these conversations.

And I also understand and acknowledge that being sort of summoned here, even before this friendly body, it might be uncomfortable for some of you all as well.

But I appreciate you all for the work you do, and I'm looking forward to continued partnership together.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for the presentation.

It was very informative.

Lots of good work being done, and I'm really looking forward to working with your department for the rest of this year.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for your patience for sitting through a longer presentation in the beginning.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Okay.

And clerk, may we read agenda item three into the record?

Agenda item three, introduction to the Office for Civil Rights for briefing and discussion.

All right.

So thank you for our last agenda item today.

We have director Derek Wheeler Smith from our office of civil rights to walk us through an introduction to the department.

The presentation is going to walk us through.

Oh, the presentation is going to walk us through.

It's been updated since we published the agenda.

So the clerk will attach the most recent version to the agenda after the meeting today.

Thank you.

There we go.

Thank you, Council Chair Moore.

Appreciate the opportunity to come before you all today and certainly look forward to continuing to partner and continue to have impact on our great city.

Just say thank you for your patience.

I hope some of it was interesting and informative to you as well.

Absolutely.

Happy to have Deputy Director Fahima Mohammed, the Office of Civil Rights, with us today.

And thank you, Sage, for assisting us with getting set up here.

All right.

So we're going to...

basically introduce you to the work of our department, our budget, talk through some lines of business, and then share a bit about key projects for 24. Another slide.

This is our vision, values, and accountability statement.

Won't spend a ton of time here other than to say that we are certainly committed to not just having our vision, mission, and values just be something that lives on a sheet of paper, but certainly believe that it is important in terms of its impact and how we make decisions.

and view it really as a guide in the decisions that we make.

And when we feel that we're not making decisions that are in alignment, then it opens the opportunity for us to be able to have courageous conversations as a department to ensure that we keep that alignment and integrity with the work.

So I'm going to talk...

today about our four different lines of business.

We, of course, provide citywide leadership in the area of civil rights and equal opportunity.

We do that via our enforcement services to eliminate discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

We also oversee the Race and Social Justice Initiative, propose legislation and policies, and provide education and trainings.

And we'll take a closer look at each of these areas and take somewhat of a deeper dive.

Our responsibilities under the Seattle Municipal Code are to enforce Seattle civil rights laws, to oversee policies and programs to improve effects of disparate treatment and outcomes of the city's protected classes, and to consider making recommendations concerning civil rights complaints and problems that may arise in connection with city programs.

Also, lastly, to provide staff support to the Human Rights Disability LGBTQ Plus as well as the Women's Commission.

SOCR is a really small but mighty department.

At full capacity, we are a team of about 40 staff.

Right now, we have several vacancies.

Our annual budget on average is about $7.9 million from the city's general fund.

And this slide simply shows a breakdown of our budget.

As you can see, most of our fund goes towards staff salaries, followed by program expenses, as well as operating costs.

Our largest book of business is, of course, the Civil Rights Enforcement Department.

This particular division is the largest unit within our department and provides direct services around investigations, resolving discrimination, as I mentioned earlier, in housing employment, public accommodations, as well as contracting.

Certainly do some work around educating the community on civil rights protections and responsibilities.

That is certainly an area that needs some bolstering.

And when I say bolstering, I mean we need resources so that we can actually do a better job providing education.

It's hard to enforce laws that the public isn't aware of, doesn't know that certain laws exist or that there have been amendments or changes to those laws.

And so that's something certainly that we would like to see an increase around.

Continuing the work of building accountable community relationships through outreach and public engagement, promoting equal access to city services and programs, and then overseeing our testing program.

As I mentioned, we have some vacancies in our department.

One of the revolving doors that I've been able to recognize is within our enforcement department.

We actually offer the most robust investigations of all city departments.

And one of the challenges are, annually, there is a 40% retention challenge with enforcement, because while we offer the most robust, we train up our folks, and then they are unfortunately poached.

There's a large corporation, who shall remain unnamed, who has three of our staff right now.

And so, former staff, I should say.

And so, certainly, I can totally understand folks wanting to take more pay for less work.

And so we certainly are looking at pay equity challenges and see that as something that needs to be solved for and resolved.

As you can imagine, this creates significant challenges.

Kudos to our fantastic team who has been able, in the midst of all of that, to not face any backlogs.

That's just due to a significant amount of work, obviously, that this team has undertaken.

We also enforce federal laws in addition to municipal laws that state offices do not, including fair employment practices, fair chance housing, unfair public accommodations, closed captioning, all gender restroom ordinance, a ban on conversion therapy for minors.

as well as fair contracting.

In 2023, a total of 59 new cases were filed and a total of 72 cases were resolved.

The best case scenario for parties filing claims is either a settlement or reasonable cause outcome.

In 2023, we helped achieve 10 settlements and nine reasonable cause outcomes.

We offer mediation and facilitate settlement negotiations.

and have found this to be effective in terms of really being able to meet the needs of individuals that oftentimes can be specific but can be resolved in a dispute settlement, having someone to support and hold that space for them.

10% to 15% of our cases are resolved by administrative closure, which means the case was outside of our jurisdiction, the party stopped responding or chose not to pursue the case further, or decided to file with another entity.

I shared some of the common types of discrimination.

The federal law only covers eight of the 23 protected classes, but we actually offer some of the most expansive and protected classes here in the city of Seattle in the country.

Common types of discrimination include different treatment, disparate impact and harassment based on protected classes, retaliation for asserting civil rights, or simple failure just to provide reasonable accommodations.

Why don't we skip, Fahima, to the civil rights and outreach?

So as I shared, outreach is key because it's hard to prevent and address discrimination that people, when people don't know their rights and how to get help.

And this slide simply shows examples of prior public awareness campaigns that have been launched in the past.

As I shared, more funding is needed to conduct the level of outreach needed to proactively prevent discrimination.

And there are new laws that require funding for staff and as well for outreach.

I'm going to talk a little bit about our race and social justice initiative.

RSJI represents the city of Seattle's commitment to ending institutional racism.

We have spent a significant amount of time really in the process of shifting, I would say, some of the elements of our ethos.

We firmly believe that moving out of a focus that centers around what we're antithetical to and really leaning into focusing on the things that we are building that heals us is certainly more powerful.

I think focusing on building the things that heal us is more powerful than focusing on the things that we want to tear down and ultimately destroy.

And so we really see the work more so not as a battlefield, but a garden to be cultivated and Last year in 2023, an ordinance was passed to establish RSJI into the city code.

That took a significant amount of work, and we are grateful for all of the partners who were able to bridge across difference and do the work of widening the circle of human concern.

Certainly appreciate Council Member Morales and her office for all of their support in getting that over the finish line.

We serve as a convener and convene employees to advance racial equity.

We advise employees, directors, teams, departments on race and social justice issues, provide training for employees on foundational racial equity knowledge and more advanced concepts, as well as technical assistance for racial equity toolkits and racial equity in the city budgeting process.

We are extremely excited about a new program that actually launches on the 28th of this month.

and it is a race and social justice cohort model.

It's a learning cohort model that actually brings city departments together to thoughtfully collaborate.

Most often, the challenges that we are trying to solve for are incredibly complex and cannot be solved by one department, by one sector, by one community-based organization, and requires comprehensive planning and comprehensive thinking.

We believe that by getting the right people in the room and asking the right questions, that the wisdom emerges.

This also allows us to move out of silos, as oftentimes we have books of business that overlap.

And this allows us to, rather than looking at one department as having eight million and another department has 12 and another department has five and another department has seven million, we go, wait a minute, we've got $50 million to solve this really complex issue.

How do we look at the root causes?

How do we look at the gaps in service and how then do we partner and make sure that we get more people into the decision making process as most often we lack proximity to the challenges and issues that people are facing in community and it provides an opportunity for us to be able to co-create these solutions in partnership with community.

There's a change team, interdepartmental team that's going to be working together as we finalize the elements of the charter in support of the ordinance that was passed.

And this year, RSJI will be at its summit celebrating its 20th year.

So for 19 years, it was an initiative, and it will, of course, be celebrating 20 years this year.

I'm gonna talk a little bit about our policy team.

Our policy division supports innovative community-driven solutions to advance race and social justice and really bring about greater equity for all of Seattle residents.

And the program that I just talked about, really is going to have an external impact thinking about the cohort model.

That's what we want to look at are the disparate outcomes and how can we as a city have a greater impact with regards to that.

Some of our policy areas include gender justice, the criminal legal system, housing access, protecting the rights and interests of vulnerable communities, a legislative review for the Office of Intergovernmental Relations concerning issues related to civil and human rights impacting Seattle residents, And our policy team also assists with work on RETs.

We are in the process of filling some very key roles for this department, one being the director role for our policy team.

Last but not least, our Community Investments.

Our Community Investments Division oversees the development, implementation, and management of department funding processes.

There's $1 million going out via the collective network, RFP funding around community-owned responses to domestic violence.

And there's also the city's one-time $27.25 million participatory budgeting process focused on community informed strategies for community health, safety through investments in education, housing, mental health, and economic development.

There's also some standalone legislation that's being prepared to authorize this funding to implement community led PB projects that will officially roll out in the spring of 2024. As you can see, here is a slide that outlines what participatory budgeting is and the process that was undertaken to get us to the point that we're at now.

And so I'd like to take a moment just to share a little bit more about participatory budgeting, also known as PBE.

over the next few slides.

A steering committee that represents the community creates an engagement plan.

Residents basically share ideas.

We collected over 485 different ideas.

Those ideas were then developed and voted on.

And now the ideas that have been voted on and landed on are developed into feasible proposals.

So this work happens in partnership with city departments who have books of business that already overlap.

I think what we find with the six proposals that have been voted on, that these proposals do overlap with already existing bodies of work.

And so now there's this process that is undertaken with the IDT in partnership with community members to be able to identify again what the feasibility of these particular projects are.

The residents, of course, have voted on these proposals.

As I mentioned, most of them serve the community and the winning proposals are set to be funded and implemented.

Participatory budgeting is not new to Seattle.

We, of course, have had a form of participatory budgeting in our city since 2015. In 2020, the city council designated $30 million for this PB process to co-create and fund community-driven approaches to health and safety for those most impacted by systemic racism and police violence.

I know 2020 seems like a lifetime ago.

But I think that what commitment looks like is long after the emotions you had when you signed up and said you were committed to something have gone on, you're still locked in to deliver on what you committed to delivering on.

Um, City Council then allocated, uh, $2.75 million to identify a third-party administrator to develop, uh, project proposals and to run the voting process.

Uh, nearly 60 community members worked to develop proposals for which over 4,000 votes were tallied.

And OCR facilitated a request for proposal process, and winning projects were selected, um, in 2023. The next slide actually provides a list of the winning proposals that were selected by community and aligned to the Black Brilliance Research Project Report that informed this process.

PB really is a power-sharing process with community and gets more...

COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND VOICES INTO THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS.

AND CERTAINLY WE FOUND, GOT MORE FOLKS CIVICALLY ENGAGED WHO I WOULD SAY ARE GENERALLY AND TYPICALLY ON THE FRINGES OF THAT PROCESS.

COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND STAKEHOLDERS CONTINUE TO BE ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS AS WE WORK TOWARDS PREPARING PROJECTS FOR THE NEXT STEP.

which is implementation.

And departments are working together to, as I mentioned, ensure feasibility of the implementation and to maintain the intentionality by community to invest in community safety and well-being.

Our commissions.

As briefly mentioned earlier, we do provide support for four commissions that serve as resident advisory boards to the mayor, city council, and departments.

And each commission holds 21 seats, with eight seats appointed by city council.

Our commission has a long history.

Our first commission, the Human Rights Commission, was formed in 1963. Our commissions provide technical assistance to departments.

They identify support and service gaps, advocate for funding, connect community members to city leaders and staff, foster greater understanding of community needs, and host community events as well as engagement.

Some of the key projects for our department include one of the things that I did not mention earlier that has also been a historical challenge for our department is we've had a extremely outdated enforcement database that is has been outdated for a decade, but is actually in the process of being launched in partnership with our IT department.

So we are certainly excited about that as one of the key projects that we believe will continue to help our work as we continue to be efficient and effective.

We have commission appointments that will certainly come before this committee for outreach and recruitment surrounding our four commissions.

There's the implementation, of course, of the Participatory Budgeting Project, which I have to just give a shout out to our team and to our department.

OCR is not designed to be able to hold this kind of vast body of work.

When I first got in, I'm like, we don't even have a contracts person in our department.

But the team has rallied, has done a ton of fantastic work in taking this huge undertaking I certainly want to pause for the cause and salute them for all of the magnificent work that's been done.

As I mentioned, we will be celebrating 20 years this year with the RSJI summit, the launch of the RSJI cohorts, and the development of a community-informed policy agenda is the last of our key projects for 2024.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Um, are there, I think, uh, Councilmember Nelson, uh, Council President Nelson had a question.

Sure.

Could you please go back to the, uh, the PB projects page?

I...

No, the, the ones that, the winning ones.

All of the projects.

Mm-hmm.

There we go.

So I've been sort of monitoring the progress of this, um, project or this initiative, and you mentioned, you know, we committed to it, and so we're locked into, you know, we got to lock in our commitment, so we need to, I took that to mean that, you know, we have to see this through to the end, and I appreciate that.

This, the participatory budgeting process was funded with one-time federal one-time funding that I believe was a result of COVID relief funds.

And so it has been, I have been concerned about making sure that we're not setting up a whole bunch of programs that are gonna need ongoing funding because that's how we got into this operating deficit that we are in right now with a whole bunch of programs across the board.

That's one of the ways we got into this situation that we'll have to deal with this year.

So I'm concerned because a lot of these projects have, and I've told, I believe that we've communicated to your office, and I've communicated to the mayor's office, and they all know where I'm coming from, but I have said that this is a concern of mine, so whenever that legislation comes down, I will want to make sure that there is clear language that this is $27 million worth of funding, and then once it's gone, these programs sunset or something, because what I said was, I don't want council be put in the position of having to tell community that we're discontinuing these things, and I don't want to set up expectations.

So, it seems as though some of these things, some of these items have, they're programmatic, so they have ongoing needs past the dollar amount down at the bottom, potentially.

So, could you please speak to that?

What about now?

Okay, great.

Very good question.

We've been very intentional about communicating throughout the entire process about the nature of the one-time funds.

Part of our proposal development of inviting departments in to look at feasibility of the ideas and the proposals were just to consider those things.

The folks that we invited from departments, all of this work already exists in these departments with an exception of the public restroom.

And so in thinking about and ensuring feasibility, that was one of the things that we had talked about.

And so the folks that were working on in the IDT, and the feasibility ensured that we would be communicating with providers via the contract, but also thinking about ways to fund or braid funding of existing projects.

So, for example, we worked with OPCD for this Native Youth Past Present as a body of work that already existed in their department.

And they were like, we can use this $7.2 million to absorb that into existing funds that we already have so that we can make that project a bit more robust.

Thank you for that forethought.

Appreciate it.

Sorry, so clarification.

So will the department be running that program or...?

I'm confused.

It won't be a community-based organization that's awarded money to do that program?

It's yes and no, right?

When we talk about capital projects, there are departments who do that work in partnership with community.

OCR is facilitating the process.

We are in the implementation phase, and so all of this money, the majority of it would be RFP'd out by departments and we will support those efforts in communication, developing a timeline and supporting some of that.

And so that's what I meant about braiding funding, thinking about things that are already going out and ways that we can be really strategic about folding some of this work in where it makes sense.

Okay, so the CBOs that the department would be contracting with are people that might already be doing the work in some form or fashion and they're just going to expand it or get additional money to do that work?

Yeah, that is what we're hoping.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

No?

All right.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

It was very helpful.

The updated presentation, we did a pre-briefing.

And again, thank you for being willing to run through that.

But the updated slides were very informative.

So thank you for that additional effort.

And again, thank you for your patience for being here.

sitting through long presentations, but I really appreciate the work that you're doing.

You have a very important body of work.

It's a broad body of work.

And so I appreciate all the effort and I really am looking forward to working with your department and all of you over the course of this year.

So thank you.

Um, Councilmember Moore, you had asked a question in the one-on-one conversation we had around the DV and the services that we would be funding, so treatment supports, uh, for perpetrators of domestic violence.

So I just wanted to circle back, uh, to give you that response.

Okay, thank you.

Appreciate that.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Um, so with, uh, no further questions, we are adjourned at 1157. That concludes the first meeting of the Health and Human Services Committee.

Thank you.