Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committee 9-18-2026

Good afternoon.

The September 18th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 2.04 p.m.

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

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Hollingsworth?

Present.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Vice Chair Lin?

Here.

Chair Foster?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Council member Juarez has been excused from today's meeting.

All right.

I know we have a packed chamber here today and a couple of items on our agenda.

I'm going to be holding my chair's report on the two substantive policy items until later on, because we also have several exciting appointments to get through.

So I'll provide those after a public comment.

Also colleagues, I want to inform you that Nyray Petty has asked not to be moved forward to an appointment on the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

If there is no objection, agenda item five will be removed from the agenda.

All right, hearing no objection, the agenda is amended to remove agenda item five and the revised agenda is adopted.

I also wanna express my appreciation to our facilities and security staff here today.

I know we usually give you a heads up, we're gonna have a packed chamber and thank you all for adopting so quickly and accommodating everyone.

We really appreciate you.

With that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We currently have 50 in-person speakers and there are two remote speakers.

Okay, fantastic.

With 50 in-person, or excuse me, 52 speakers, each speaker will have one minute.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered.

We will begin with in-person speakers and then move to remote speakers.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds of their time is left.

Speakers mics will be muted if they do not enter comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speakers on the list.

The first speaker is Keith Weir followed by Willow Stordahl and then Ben Mitchell.

Good afternoon, Chair Foster and members of the committee.

My name is Keith Weir.

For the record, I'm a 27-year union electrician with the IBEW Local 46. I'm here today to speak on the MHA.

It's sad that the state of Seattle and the state of Washington right now that the words affordable in housing and affordable in education cannot coexist.

It's getting out of hand.

Anything we can do to drive the cost of housing down and help promote good jobs for people.

I stood a five-year apprenticeship as an inside electrician.

Currently, I have members on our out-of-work list, 1,023 people who need a job today.

I have apprentices on the out-of-work list who have been out of work for four, five, six months.

That means unemployment is gone, health insurance is gone, they need jobs now.

So we're here to support you in any way we can.

jobs now.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Willow Stewarden followed by Ben Mitchell.

Hi.

My name is Wilma Stordahl, and I'm a resident of West Seattle and a project manager at Green Effects.

Green Effects is a landscape construction company, and our affordable housing projects include Midtown, Grand Street Commons, Leahy Nesbitt, Leahy New Hope, the Yesler blocks, and many others.

We have seen a steady drop in construction in the past five years.

Since 2021, green effects sales have decreased by 39%.

That means we've experienced permanent layoffs and reduced work hours, and most of those individuals are also the primary breadwinners in their homes.

I'm here to ask you to approve the MHA legislation.

Seattle needs more housing to make it more affordable.

Let's get our people back to work.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And just as a reminder, oh, we can do that.

Just so you know, when the chime goes off, you've still got 10 seconds left.

That's OK.

And if you don't get a chance to get through all your comments, you can place them in the little bin up there.

and our next speaker's Ben Mitchell, followed by Billy Hetherington and then Mariana Haig.

Thanks.

Hi, council members.

Happy Friday.

My name's Ben Mitchell.

I live in South Beacon Hill, District 2, and I'm a member for Seattle as well.

I'm here to support the MHA accelerator and to oppose the companion resolution.

The evidence on inclusionary zoning, including our own MHA program, is clear.

It shrinks housing supply and raises prices.

So thank you for the MHA pause.

Please pass it.

But expanding MHA to residential zones, as the resolution intends, would undo that progress one step forward, one step back.

Real affordability comes from more supply.

MHA does produce subsidized units, but pays for them by taxing nearby new construction, and that's backwards.

It would be like taxing bookstores to fund libraries because we were concerned about the cost of books.

That would be ridiculous.

Subsidized housing should be funded like parks through general tax revenue, not a tax on housing.

Please move the accelerator forward and don't follow through on the resolution.

We'll just ask the folks to hold applause so we can get through everyone.

Our next speaker is Billy Hetherington followed by Mariana Haik and then Patrick Foley.

Good afternoon Chair Foster and members of the committee.

My name is Billy Heatherington and I'm here today representing the membership of Local 242. Seattle has a housing production problem and we need to be honest about why this is happening.

Projects that were financially viable years ago are now stalled because of high interest rates, rising material costs, and increasing regulatory expenses.

That is why I support Councilmember Foster's MHA Accelerator today.

This is not an elimination of MHA.

It is not a retreat from Seattle's commitment to affordable housing.

There is an important economic reality here.

When construction stops, MHA revenue stops too.

Seattle needs both market-rate housing and subsidized affordable housing.

These should not be competing priorities.

and every project that moves forward means construction jobs, wages spent in our communities, additional tax revenue, and more customers for our neighborhood businesses.

I also appreciate that the proposal deadlines and incentives for the projects can actually move into construction while encouraging two-bedroom homes that can better serve families.

So thank you and vote yes on the proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mariana Haik, followed by Tetrick Foley, and then Emily Thompson.

All right.

Am I ready?

Good morning, council members.

My name is Mariana Haik.

I'm the political representative for the North Coast States Carpenters Union, and I have the honor of representing over 57,000 members.

I'm here to emphasize the excitement of the MHA Accelerator and the opportunity to create jobs for our membership.

because as you may know and if you've heard, the out-of-work lists are high and there's nothing a carpenter loves more than a hammer in their hand.

I will also add we are working alongside the developers and builders we represent and those present today to ensure these projects move forward with responsible contractors.

I want to especially thank you Councilmember Foster and the team for making sure the carpenters are part of the conversation and we look forward to more discussion as this unfolds and identifying how we can best collaborate and share resources, so thank you.

Speaker is Patrick Foley followed by Emily Thompson and then Blake Harper.

I want to start by thanking Councilmember Foster for her leadership in bringing this MHA legislation forward for consideration.

I'm a builder in Seattle of housing, and I want to give you all a real-world example of what this legislation means.

With interest rates ticking up, this is more important than ever.

One of my partners has been preparing for several years a 22-story student housing tower project in the University District called B45 at 45th and Brooklyn.

and the project is scheduled to start soon.

With this legislation, it will.

Lee Scratcher-Lewis is the contractor.

It's going to be 100% union labor, and that means hundreds of good-paying construction jobs over the next two years, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, laborers, and many others.

is another important part of the story that I think is particularly important.

A large portion of the capital invested in B45 comes from a union pension fund.

So that means that there's retirement capital that goes for these workers, and the success of this project is very important.

So we have other projects that are ready to move forward this year for another 510 units if the legislation's passed.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Emily Thompson, followed by Blake Harper, and then Christian Gunter.

Good afternoon.

I'm Emily Thompson, an affordable housing advocate, urbanist, member for Seattle, and D2 voter.

Councilmember Foster's proposal is a practical, time-limited response that takes action to help the housing crisis.

To address housing affordability, Seattle needs both market rate and subsidized affordable housing.

These housing types should not be treated as competing priorities.

The potential impact of the MHA Accelerator is the bang for your buck.

We'll see impact on stabilizing rents, while the other regulatory reform you've passed regarding renters will help improve transparency and stability for renters.

At best, they nibble around the edges of affordability.

The data is irrefutable that in the last 10 years, the volume of units produced impacted our housing markets through rent stabilizing and even dropping.

Let's do more of what we know works and generate some MHA payment for affordable housing.

I thank Council Member Foster for her leadership and urge you to pass this legislation.

The SDCI dashboard shows that in July, the city received no application, no permits for apartment buildings.

MHA didn't cause the building to slow down, but it can solve for it right now.

Our next speaker is Blake Harper followed by Christian Gunter and then Jason Hewitt.

I'm going to have you hold on one second.

I'm going to tell you guys something.

We're going to try to make sure that we have folks line up so when Sage is calling out the names, if we can hold the applause so people can hear their names and line up to come up to the mic, that would be super helpful.

Look, if somebody drops a dime and you got a clap, I get it, but I want to make sure people can hear their names being called.

Thank you.

So my name is Blake.

I rent in Mount Baker Ridge.

I'm here as a member of 4SEATL.

I want to express support for the MHA accelerator, but I am a little concerned about the resolution.

I just went through a search for a new rental.

I'm really excited about the place I found.

I am concerned that if the resolution went forward, there would not be as many townhomes in neighborhood residential areas that I could look to rent.

It was really, really helpful when I went through my rental search to know that those townhomes were available in quiet neighborhoods that felt safe for me and my partner.

And I'm just concerned that if the resolution went forward, there wouldn't be as much construction of those.

And I just want folks to remember that those townhomes serve renters too.

They're more affordable.

They mostly are renting at like 3.8 for a three- It helps a lot more than renting a single-family home, which is like 4K, 5K.

So keep that in mind.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Christian Gunter followed by Jason Hewitt and then Louis Urbina.

Thanks, Chair Foster and members of the City Council.

My name is Christian Gunter.

I'm a resident of District 4, and I work for Alexandria Real Estate.

And we're here in support of the MHL Accelerator, which we think is a really important step to reduce meaningful material barriers to the creation of new supply of housing.

We have two projects right now that are financially unfeasible without the housing housing without the MHA Accelerator, one in Belltown and one in Lower Queen Anne.

And so we urge the council support.

You can't control interest rates or construction costs, but you can take this meaningful step to make housing supply real and help our projects move forward.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Jason Hewitt, followed by Louis Urbina and then Courtney Martinez.

Good afternoon, council members.

I'm Jason Hewitt with the UAE Local 32 Plumbers, Pipefitters, and HVAC service techs representing more than 4,000 members

to express...

We'll restart your time.

Give us one second.

Here today to express my support for MHA Accelerator program.

We presented to you today, we strongly believe Seattle needs more affordable housing, so working people have the ability to live closer to where they work.

This program is more about housing.

It also creates opportunities for workers, contractors, and businesses.

Our construction industry has faced significant challenges over the last several years.

Today we've got 72 plumbers and nine plumber apprentices out of work.

and another 50 plumbers that are working out of state because there simply isn't enough work in the region.

Some have been waiting for two to three years.

Skilled licensed tradespeople who want to work, support their families, and contribute to our communities.

The adjustments to the MHA program can help improve that.

means more family wage jobs here in Seattle, more economic activity in our communities, and more skilled workforce available to help build the housing our region needs.

For our members, this is about more than construction project or policy change.

It's about the opportunity to work in their community, provide for their families, and build a future here at home.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Luis Urbina, then Courtney Martinez, and David Trivet.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Luis Urbina Jr.

I'm a labor reformer for Compass Construction.

I just want to say that we are proud of the work we do building houses in Seattle, but we need projects to build.

I came here today because I want to keep working in the city, and I want the people on my crew to continue to work, so please move this legislation forward.

Thank you.

Next is Courtney Martinez, then David Trivette and Ryan Ames.

Hi, my name is Courtney Martinez, and I'm a logistics supervisor for Compass General Construction.

I took time away from the job today because this decision matters to me personally.

I'm a single mom, I work construction, and we're running out of projects.

So without a project, layoffs start.

Building more housing is important for Seattle, and keeping construction workers employed is important to our families.

Thank you for listening to us today.

Thank you.

Next is David Trevette, then Ryan Ames and David Niemann.

Good afternoon, Council members.

I'm David Trivet and I am a carpenter for Compass Construction and I am here in support of the MHA legislation.

And I just want you to know that I have a wife and three kids and they expect they depend on me to have a job and to be able to provide for them.

And that's that's why I'm asking for this.

We need jobs.

We need to be able to provide for our families.

and let's get this legislation moving forward.

Thanks.

Next is David Neiman and Steve Bennett and Frank Stout.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Ryan Ames.

I am a resident of Seattle, District 5, and one of the owners of Compass Construction.

I'm here today on behalf of and in support of all of my employees, our employees, and hundreds of tradespeople that work alongside us.

to really promote this accelerator program.

This year, Compass, we have finished four projects in the city of Seattle, and we've started no new projects in Seattle, really no new projects anywhere.

We know of four very specific projects, that would be starting in short order if this legislation was passed.

And so I'm here to really encourage you guys to make a quick decision and get this passed because it really is going to mean protection of jobs for our employees and our partners.

Thank you very much.

This is David Neiman, then Steve Bennett and Frank Stauf.

Hi, David Nieman.

I am an architect and sometime housing developer here in Seattle.

I've been working here for the better part of 35 years.

When a client walks into my office with the desire to build housing and a piece of property and the will to go forward, these days I start that conversation with the absolute certainty that I can get them a permit, I can design their building, and they can build it.

And when they do that, they will lose money.

and that is an unprecedented situation that I've never seen before in my career.

When MHA was passed, we were a growing city, we were booming.

Investor capital was flowing into Seattle and people believed in this city as a place to place their money.

That world is gone and we need to adjust to the new economic reality and find a way to make projects viable again so that we can get people back to work.

Thank you.

Next is Steve Bennett and Frank Stauff and Brandon Houghton.

My name is Steve Bennett.

I work for Compass and- Just make sure you're speaking into the mic.

I'll reset your timer, but that way we can hear you.

My name is Steve Bennett.

I work for Compass and we work on apartment projects here in Seattle.

I took time off today because construction jobs matter to me and my family and our company.

I'm asking you to pass the MHA legislation so more housing projects can get moving and people can get back to work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Frank Stauff, Brandon Houghton, and Lavelle Flemon.

And just one second, just a reminder.

These mics can move, and it's so strange that you've just got to get them closer than you think.

So just feel a little uncomfortable, and you've got it in the right spot.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Frank Stauff with Compass Construction.

and I'm not a policy expert but I'm just here to simply point out that each multi-family project produces about 100 to 150 jobs per day during peak construction activities so depending on how many projects are in the pipeline that could be released fairly quickly I've heard 30, 40, 50 the math is substantial so we're talking three to four or five thousand jobs of people just like out here that took their time to show up today, left the job, jobs are shut down early.

This really matters, and it's a way to make an impact immediately, as well as the additional housing that's created.

So thank you for considering suspending the MHA feed.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next is Brandon Fulton, and Ray Connell.

Good afternoon.

I'm Brandon Houghton.

I'm a superintendent in multifamily construction here in Seattle.

I'm here because I believe that we need to build more housing, including affordable housing.

But right now, with the high rates, rising material, and labor costs, and this fee, it's making it harder for projects to get off the ground.

When a project does not pencil, It does not get built.

And when it does not get built, the city doesn't receive any revenue from the MHA.

We don't create housing, and people in the construction industry lose their jobs.

As a superintendent, I can probably weather a slowdown better than many of the people here.

The laborers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and subcontractors are the people that will fill it first.

These people are the people that need those paychecks to keep their families in their homes.

How affordable is housing if you don't have a job?

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Lavelle Fleman.

I'm one of the people seeking an appointment today's agenda, and I thank you for considering my application to serve on the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

I'm seeking disappointment because I believe Seattle's strength comes through its diversity and we all share a responsibility to ensure that every person, regardless of status, has unhindered access to opportunity, safety, and justice.

I want to bring my lived experience to help address challenges faced by marginalized communities and support policies that uphold human rights for all.

Serving on the Seattle Human Rights Commission would allow me to combine my professional expertise with my passion for public service and help build a inclusive and equitable Seattle for current and future generations.

I look forward to working with this committee, the Seattle Office for Civil Rights Council, the Mayor's Office, and the City of Seattle in that effort.

Thank you for your consideration and for allowing me this chance to introduce myself to you.

Thank you.

We look forward to your appointment later on today.

Thank you for that.

Next is Ray Connell, then Parker Nicholson and Monte Anderson.

Good afternoon.

Ray Connell.

I'm a local housing developer in Seattle.

And I'm supportive of the Accelerator Ordinance, but I also want to express my gratitude as a native son of the South End for the considerations you made to protect and prevent displacement in South End and CD.

So thank you.

Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

Next is Parker Nicholson, Monty Anderson, Ian Morrison.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Parker Nicholson.

I'm here representing Legacy Partners, a long-standing 50-year developer in the city, built over 4,000 housing units.

We have a project, 170 units in the Fremont neighborhood.

I scoured the capital markets.

I have one pension fund out of New York.

needs to hit a 6% return on cost for their pensioners to fund our project.

They need this fee to pass to have that project start.

I could start it as soon as November 1st if we can get this legislation passed.

So I would just encourage you all.

We have tariffs.

We have interest rates rising.

We have a lot of confluences that are against building housing in the city.

Let's eliminate the barrier in front of us here to allow housing to go forward.

Thank you so much.

Next is Monte Anderson, Ian Morrison, Vitality Gusteo.

Hello.

Thank you for having this today.

My name is Monte Anderson with the Seattle Building Trades.

We support MHA Accelerator because it's about jobs and getting housing moving.

We want to thank Chair Foster for your leadership and I'd also like to thank all the construction workers that are here today showing up, standing up for your job.

Congratulations.

I think we ought to commend everybody in this room for taking the time to come down here today.

As we move into this, I want to make clear that one thing that's important to union labor is we love the fact that we're going to accelerate this stuff, but we want to be clear, along with this responsibility with this MHA holiday, we're going to expect that we're going to have a little more eyes on the job site around wage theft, about worker misclassification, and on these larger tower projects, we're going to have hopefully some good labor agreements The city has good agreements with labor.

We would like to see these reflected on these sites too.

So we lift all boats here in the Seattle area.

So thanks once again, and thanks again, Council Member Foster for all your work.

Thank you.

Next is Ian Morrison, Vitaly Gusteo, Logan Schmidt.

Thank you, council members.

Ian Morrison, land use attorney at McCullough Hill, and also one of the co-founders of Seattle Housing Roundtable, which is a coalition of many of these housing builders, contractors, labor partners, through architects and others through this.

And I have three messages for you.

Number one, thank you.

Thank you for the council and the city's leadership.

We are in a housing crisis.

As you've heard from folks across the spectrum, we need more housing of all shapes, sizes, and affordability levels.

And so thank you for taking the time to move with the urgency to bring this MHA Accelerator forward.

Number two, we recognize that this is a short-term, temporary measure.

And we will continue to be in partnership with our affordable housing friends and allies to look at making sure that Seattle is a world-class leader with a durable, long-term, inclusionary zoning framework that makes sure that we can continue to build market-rate housing, townhomes, for sale product, and also make sure that our affordable housing friends and partners have the revenue sources they need to continue to be successful.

Because this is something that we would ask for the council and the city's leadership on, and then carry the conversation forward so that we can have a durable, long-term inclusionary zoning, but we need to act down.

So please pass the MHA Accelerator.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Gaetali Gostello, Logan Schmidt, Holly Golden.

Good afternoon.

My name is Vitaly Guzzalo.

I'm with Green City Homes.

And we're mostly townhome developers in Seattle.

And we've been building in Seattle for the last 15 years.

So in 2017, we had a dream that we're going to grow our company to build 200 to 300 townhome units within the city.

And that was before the MHA was introduced originally.

When MHA was introduced, that plan shifted a little bit.

We started expanding outside of Seattle, and now we're building more outside of Seattle than in Seattle, and a big portion of that was an MHA that was introduced before COVID hit.

So that has a real impact on us as builders within Seattle.

We have shifted our strategies over the years.

And yeah, we got a little bit more far to build when the MHA was introduced.

But nobody wants to buy four-story townhomes.

We're sitting in a lot of them.

We can't move them, because people don't want to live in a four-story unit.

But that was the only way for us to make it work.

Right now, we're looking at a lot of projects.

We can pencil them.

I have 50 units that are sitting, and we can we're not going to move forward with them.

So please pass the accelerator, and also do not expand into neighborhood zoning, please, because those are going to have the same effect on us.

Thank you.

Next is Logan Schmidt, Holly Golden, Mackenzie Dahr.

Good afternoon, Chair, Foster, and Committee.

Logan Schmidt with the Master Builders Association, representing more than 2,400 home builders who are working to make homeownership a reality here in Seattle.

Building housing has never been harder, with high interest rates, rising construction costs.

And this year alone, I mean, the city itself is contributing to that.

SDCI permit fees went up 18%.

SDCs are contributing $10,000 to $15,000 per door.

We have new SDOT street tree fees that are rolling out in two weeks.

And so it's important that we look at all avenues to ensure that we are not increasing to that list of costs that are felt by both the market and the affordable side.

The accelerator is a short-term solution.

We also need long-term recalibration, and that doesn't mean supporting a resolution that expands the current MHA framework.

And the city's own consultants, including Burke, have warned against expanding MHA into neighborhood residential.

We're all here today to provide housing in Seattle.

And it's very important that we don't look at this moment as pitting affordable and market against each other.

Thank you.

Holly Golden, Mackenzie Dahr, Andrea,

Good afternoon, council members.

I'm Holly Golden, a land use attorney at Hillis Clark and one of the co-founders of the Seattle Housing Roundtable.

In those roles, I've got a front row seat, two fluctuations in permit volume, and it's bleak right now.

That makes me worried about long-term housing affordability, and frankly, it makes me worried about how much more work I'm doing on the east side of the lake instead of Seattle these days.

Councilmember Foster has shown true leadership in recognizing the urgency of this challenge.

The MHA proposal is a pragmatic, temporary solution to get shovels in the ground right away.

The holiday will give us time to roll up our sleeves and work on a long-term MHA recalibration to create a more sustainable program.

And the companion resolution urges considerations that we always anticipated as part of this work.

Please support the MHA Accelerator.

It will send a signal that Seattle is open for housing investment, create new jobs, generate revenue in taxes and permit fees, and importantly, build more housing.

Thanks.

Mackenzie Dahr, Andrea Helios, Brittany Kane.

My name is Mackenzie Dar.

I'm a Ballard resident and a multifamily developer.

I'm currently working to finance three projects in downtown and northwest Seattle.

Our project budgets are being squeezed by rising interest rates, tariffs, fuel costs, utility costs, municipal fees, and evolving operational regulations.

Even with these increasing costs, MHA fees represent approximately 5% of our total project budgets, ranging from $21,000 to $30,000 per unit.

These fees are high enough that adjusting just this fee can be the difference between a project that starts and one that is shelved.

If we can get these projects financed, they will bring nearly 600 new homes to Seattle, including more than 100 affordable homes.

If we are not able to finance these projects, the sites will remain surface parking and dilapidated office buildings.

I take pride in being a housing provider, and I want to bring more housing to my community.

But today, I'm not sure that any of these projects are financially feasible.

I encourage you to support housing production by supporting a temporary reduction in MHA fees.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Andrea Ornelius, Brittany Kane, Jason Hewitt.

We're just gonna be at ease for just a second, clerk.

We're ready to begin when you are Andrea we're ready when you are

Hi, council members.

My name is Andrea Ornelas.

I'm a Parallana Local 242 member, and our union represents more than 6,000 working people in King County.

I'm here today to speak in support of the council's consideration of the MHA acceleration legislation.

Seattle needs more housing, and Seattle needs good construction careers.

If we can get projects moving that are ready to go, we can put people to work, we can build housing while creating good-paying construction careers, and supporting families like mine.

Seattle may not control interest rates or financial markets, but we can look at the costs and barriers we control locally and ask, what can we do right now to get housing built and get people working?

So on behalf of myself and my fellow Lionel Local 2 members across King County and alongside the MLK endorsement of MHA, I appreciate your consideration of this legislation and the urging of the passing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Brittany Cain followed by Jason Hewitt.

Actually not Jason, we've already done you.

So we'll go Brittany and then I'll figure out who's next.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Brittany Kane and I'm a business agent with the Masons and Placers Local 528. I'm here in support of the proposed MHA accelerator ordinance.

As you can see by the turnout, construction workers are unemployed at high numbers due to the low number of available projects within the city.

This legislation will immediately make it easier for developers to build new, much needed housing while simultaneously employing our skilled trades people.

As someone who has both lived and worked in South Seattle, I also appreciate the consideration in the proposed ordinance to increase housing production while being thoughtful about about how and where growth occurs.

The MHA enables construction, which would otherwise not be built, and will provide revenue to support public priorities and generate economic activity.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration on this matter, as well as employment and housing opportunities for those that live and work within this great city.

Thank you.

And then our now, our next speaker is Chris Walter, Martha Johnson, and, is it, .

Hello, Council.

Good afternoon, members of the Housing Committee.

I'm Chris Walter, and I'm here on behalf of Seattle YIMBY.

Chair Foster, thank you so much for bringing the MHA Housing Accelerator back.

It's a really important step on housing affordability in Seattle.

But I also want to talk about cost, because while this legislation is doing something on cost, it's also going to increase fees in the future.

I really want to put that in context.

So I'm just going to rattle off a bunch of fees that have been added in the last three years.

So I'm just going to go for it.

Seattle City Light, underground power, $30,000 to $100,000.

SPU's new water system development charge, $20,000.

SPU's new wastewater charge, $7,000.

SPU's new hard surface fee, $5,000.

SDCI just got an 18% fee increase last year.

Kind of the message here is like, Seattle City Council is the only body in the city that can turn that cost dial back.

You guys are the only ones that can do it.

If we want an affordability agenda in Seattle, it's you guys right here.

Cut costs, waive fees, deliver housing faster.

No new fees, just new homes.

No new fees, just new homes.

Thank you so much.

Next is Marta Johnson, Lenny Spoiler, and Nick Cunningham.

Hello all, thanks for being here.

My name's Marta, I'm a renter in Fremont and also a member of FORCE Seattle.

I'm here to encourage you to move the MHA accelerator forward while cautioning exploration of the companion resolution.

We need to make it easier for all types of housing to be built and expanding MHA into the neighborhood residential would make it more difficult to build townhomes, forms of housing that many of my friends have relied on for years.

As prices go up and up, now is the time to take action to build more housing and create good paying union jobs.

It's awesome to see all the union workers out here.

I love Seattle and I want more people, young people like myself, to be able to enjoy this city and afford it for years to come.

Thanks so much.

All right, next, and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name.

It looks like Lenise Euler.

or Candace?

Lance, sorry about that.

All right, Lance, then Nick Cunningham and Jeremy Pariah.

I am Lance Euler, principal of Christopher Jones Architects, a Seattle residential design firm.

And prior to MHA, townhouse projects in LR zones were 90% of our work.

Now it's about 5% of our work.

Almost every project we've designed in MHA zones over the last few years have either been canceled, put up for sale, or is currently on hold with nothing new on the horizon.

We recommend that MHA be eliminated, especially for small projects.

In lieu of that, a 90% reduction would be best, but we do not feel that a 60% reduction would move the needle for our clients who are already struggling to make projects pencil without MHA.

We have watched as MHA has crippled housing production in Seattle's LR and RSL zones.

We do not want to see the same happen in the NR zones.

Do not make an already difficult situation worse by imposing MHA on the NR zones.

Please do not move forward with a study to burden the city with a fix that has been proven not to work.

You cannot collect MHA fees for projects that are not built.

Thank you.

It says Nick Cunningham, Jeremy Rira, and Darlin Puzmi.

Good afternoon.

I'm Nick Cunningham with Compass Construction and I'm in favor of the MHA Accelerator.

I would just like to echo what so many others have said today.

We desperately need housing and we desperately need these jobs and this legislation can make a big impact on both of those fronts.

Thank you.

Next is Jeremy Pereira, Darlin Postma, Logan Bowers.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jeremy.

I'm a roofer.

I want to thank Council Member Foster for putting forth this MHA accelerator.

And my message is pretty simple.

You can't have affordable housing if you don't have enough housing.

Supply and demand is a simple economic principle.

If there isn't enough housing and there's more demand, then the price of housing goes up.

So I would strongly encourage you to take a good hard look at this accelerator and move it forward and get all these people back to work.

Next is Darren Postma, Logan Bowers, Ben Merritt.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Darren Postma with Venture General Contracting here in Seattle.

I'm here just to show support for our employees and Seattle's construction workers.

We desperately need housing, affordable, and market rate, and we need jobs, and construction provides great paying jobs for a lot of people, and we see all of our compatriots out here, and we're here in support of them.

Thank you.

Logan Bowers, Ben Meritz, Evan Kasaguma.

Hello, my name is Logan Bowers.

I'm a resident of D3.

I'm here to support the MHA Accelerator and oppose the companion IZ fees in NRZone.

I think everyone in this room knows that MHA is a regressive tax on the poor and middle class.

It hurts anyone who's renting or wants to buy a home, and I think every last builder in the city showed up to tell you that it's job poison, and I echo that as well.

Surely, since we're here and experts, we've seen the UCLA study that shows for every MHA unit you build, you kill five market rate units.

90% of the people in the city live in market rate units, so you are hurting nearly everyone when you dial that knob up.

So we're here because we need a break from a destructive tax, and we're pairing it with a proposal for a new destructive tax.

So my question to you is like, for real?

I mean, come on.

If we put a known bad tax on the NR zones, you'll be screwing over every middle class and poor family in the city.

So please be looking out for us, your constituents.

Thank you.

Next is Ben Meritz, Evan Kasuguma, Dave Knight.

Thank you.

My name is Ben Maritz.

I call myself a housing developer, and it's an honor for me to be in the room with all these people that are the ones that actually do the housing development.

We do both market rate and affordable development, and I'd like to take us back to 2017 or 16 and 15 when MHA was was developed as a policy to increase housing in Seattle.

It was meant to be a grand bargain that would allow both more affordable and market rate development to continue.

That was a very finely crafted trade-off that was made under the circumstances of that time.

The circumstances today are very, very different.

And so it's appropriate for us to revisit it and rebalance, as we will have to do again in the future.

Hopefully in two or three years, we'll be in a different environment again, and we can get back a different balance.

But as of this moment, I really applaud you for your leadership of taking this difficult decision to open this up again and get it back to where we need to be to be able to build housing.

Thank you.

Next is Evan Kosaguma, David Knight, and then Eddie Diaz.

Hi, Evan Kosaguma with Ryan Companies and also a resident of Portage Bay.

I'm here to thank you for your support, particularly Council Member Foster and your leadership showing here to push this legislation forward.

Our company has two projects totaling about 400 units, of which 100 will be affordable, one in Greenwood, one in South Lake Union.

Put simply, with current conditions right now, we can't move those projects forward.

If this passes, we will be able to move those projects forward.

It's pretty simple and a big part of the reason is because of capital and what it means for projects like ours and most of the projects that are in the pipeline.

We depend on capital.

Right now, capital is not looking at Seattle favorably.

This is a great moment and a great opportunity with your leadership to send a message to capital that pushes these projects forward, that Seattle's open for business, and Seattle is pro-housing.

Thank you very much.

Next is David Knight, Eddie Diaz, and Lydia Tissinam.

Dave Knight with Timber Lane Partners, a local Seattle-based apartment owner developer, and just wanted to voice my support for the accelerator and what everybody has said here, that it really does impact directly and immediately jobs in the architecture, engineering, construction world, and creates housing, which we need so desperately.

accelerator would move forward close to 500 units directly for projects that we are involved with.

So please show your support, move this forward.

Thank you.

Next is Eddie Diaz followed by, I believe it's Lydia Zinman and then Ryan Donahue.

Hi, good afternoon council members.

My name is Eddie.

I'm a senior at the University of Washington studying construction management, and I'm an employee at Compass Construction.

So for the better part of a decade, I believe the tax levied against developers in the city has resulted in fewer new housing in the city and has been slow in accomplishing the original goals of the program.

There is currently an undersupply of every kind of housing in the city, including affordable units, thereby increasing the cost of living across the city for the people who this program was initially created to protect.

On top of this, thousands of construction jobs around us are being impacted.

Working people all around you are not getting the opportunities that they should until construction is able to resume at full capacity.

We're asking for you to vote yes on today's proposal and be partners in accomplishing the original objectives of this program together.

Thank you.

Next, it's Ladea Zinman, a tradesman electric.

Again, I apologize for mispronouncing your name.

and then Ryan Donahue and Scott Lean.

Good afternoon.

My name is Leda.

I work for Tradesman Electric, and I'm here today because I personally support the proposed MHA legislation.

This legislation matters to me, not just as a woman, as someone who lives and works in this community, but as a person who cares deeply about the people around me.

I'm asking you to please move forward this approving this legislation as quickly as possible.

The impact reached beyond the city of Seattle, It affects me, my co-workers, my family, and the community we all share.

I truly believe that moving this legislation forward is an important step and hope you'll take my support and take support of others like me into consideration.

Thank you for listening and thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Next is Ryan Donohue, Scott Lean, and Kevin Gee.

Sorry, no worries.

Well, just give us a second and we'll reset your time.

Hi, Ryan.

Good to see you.

I figured.

All good.

Good afternoon, Chair Foster and members of the committee.

As you know, my name is Ryan Donahue.

I'm the Vice President of Advocacy over at Habitat for Humanity, Seattle King and Kittitas counties.

I'm here today to talk about the MHA reduction bill.

We have some concerns about it in its current form.

However, we do hope to work with you to help address them and make the bill better.

Last year we built and sold more than 50 homes, this year more than 80. The vast majority right here in Seattle funded primarily with MHA dollars.

That's real families in real houses here in Seattle today because of the MHA.

We want to help improve this proposal into something that brings much more housing online while also protecting much needed affordable housing funding.

but there's no plan right now for what happens if that doesn't work.

This rests on an assumption that cheaper fees will unlock enough building to replace the revenue that we'd be giving.

If that assumption fails, nothing here backfills these dollars.

That puts the risk on affordable housing, not on anything else.

Please don't make it harder to build affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Scott Lean, Kevin G., Alicia Ruiz.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Scott Lee, and I'm a local developer here in Seattle.

I live here, I develop here, and I want to keep being a Seattle-focused developer, but that's become a lot harder to do in the last several years, and we've had to focus our time elsewhere.

In Seattle, we have 732 units in our pipeline across four projects, and all four projects are sitting on the shelf currently.

When the MHA waiver was first floated, we had capital ready to commit.

When the deal fell through, it not only hurt the economics, obviously, but it confirmed doubts that capital already had about investing in Seattle.

MHA fee reduction and reform can be the difference between a deal that pencils and one that doesn't.

I'm asking you to support a temporary waiver of the MHA fee.

By passing this, you will both move projects into construction, employ a lot of skilled people, and signal to the capital markets that Seattle is a business friendly climate.

Thank you.

Next is Kevin Gee, Alicia Ruiz and Paul Williams.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kevin, and I'm speaking as a member of 4 Seattle and a lifelong resident of District 2. The housing accelerator is a step in the right direction, but we should consider phasing out the regressive MHA fee entirely in the future.

Funding affordable housing through taxing housing construction is backward and counterproductive to the city's goals.

the city must consider a more sustainable funding structure for the affordable housing mandate that does not price out all the housing constructors that you see here.

Thank you.

Next is Alicia Ruiz, Paul Williams, and Tyler Hutchinson.

Good afternoon, Chair Foster and members of the committee.

My name is Alicia Ruiz, testifying today on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, Seattle King and Kittitas counties in support of the resolution.

As the Council develops this legislation, we'd ask to keep one principle central.

The fee structure should reward building to maximum allowed density, not discourage it.

Under a well-designed framework, a property owner who builds a single detached home should pay a higher fee than one who builds several units on the same lot, because more units delivered means more housing supply of all types.

We're not asking the council to make this harder on our market rate partners.

We're asking for an incentive that works with them, where building to maximum density is also the path to the lowest fee per home.

That's how neighborhood residential zones actually meet the housing need identified in the One Seattle Plan.

We support the resolution.

Thank you.

Next is Paul Williams, Tyler Hutchinson, Alexandra Johnson.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Paul Williams.

I'm a 40-year resident in Seattle, Rainier Valley, and a Rainier Beach High School graduate, and I'm an organizer with Smart Local 66. I'm here today in support of the mandatory MHA Accelerator.

Our members installed HVAC systems, metal roofing and metal siding in the Seattle area and they see the housing crisis from both sides.

Seattle needs more homes that working people can afford and our region needs projects moving so local residents can build careers in the skilled trades.

High interest rates, rising construction costs, and declining permit activity are leaving viable projects stalled, including student housing and other multifamily projects that could be creating homes and jobs right now.

This proposal gives the city a practical way to help ready projects move from paper to construction.

The incentive is also tied to action.

A project must take progress.

Smart Local 66 wants student housing and other ready projects to begin construction as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Tyler Hutchinson, Alexandra Johnson, Sarah Clark.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Tyler Hutchinson and I'm here to voice my support for the proposed or the MHA's legislation.

I support this legislation because I care about the future of this community and the people who call it home.

The decisions made here don't just affect Seattle as a city, they affect real people, including our families, our workplaces and our neighbors.

I hope you'll take that into consideration and move this legislation forward as soon as possible.

I believe it's an important step for our community and I encourage you to approve it.

Thank you for hearing my perspective and for taking the opportunity to consider my support.

Thank you.

Next is Alexandra Johnson, Sarah Clark, Cliff Cawthorn.

Hi, council members.

Thank you for your time today.

My name's Alexandra.

I do climate justice policy work in the Duwamish Valley, so South Park and Georgetown.

First of all, we reached out personally.

I won't dwell on it, but South Park and Georgetown are currently not excluded, even though they are two of the highest risk displacement neighborhoods in the city.

Please correct that.

and then secondly, reducing the city's only housing affordability program is the wrong lever to remove.

MHA by the city's own study was three to five percent of total developer costs and permitting design reviews including delays from the city were nine to 11 percent.

rather than committing to reforming internal systems and prioritizing progressive recalibrations of MHA, very similar to what the mayor's task force on housing will commit to solving, the city is choosing the least equitable route in a verified ineffective route by the city's own analysis that these projects that are apparently stalled, we have not seen the data that they would actually move forward should those MHA fees be reduced.

We would love to work together let's please be inclusive about who you're listening to and listen as well to affordable housing and anti-displacement experts in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Sarah Clark, then Cliff Cawthorn, then we will move to online speakers.

Good afternoon, Chair Foster and members of the Housing Committee.

For the record, I'm Sarah Clark and I'm here today testifying on behalf of the over 2,600 members of the Seattle Metro Chamber.

We really appreciate all the work that's gone into developing this MHA Accelerator and want to thank Council Member Foster for bringing this forward this year.

Seattle is amid a severe housing production slowdown during an unprecedented housing crisis.

That is not good, we need more units.

The proposed accelerator is a practical tool that will get projects moving again and it recognizes the current economic realities that the city is facing by offering a meaningful opportunity to unlock housing production and add much needed jobs across our city.

concerns about the companion resolution and just urge council to work to recalibrate an MHA before expanding into new zones.

And with that, we'll thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Our final in-person speaker is Cliff Cawthorn.

Then we will move to remote speakers, starting with Patrick Taylor.

Hey, all.

Good afternoon, Councilmember Foster and Housing Committee members.

For record, my name's Cliff Cawthon, and I'm here today not in professional capacity but in personal capacity.

I'm opposed to a new accelerator proposal in its current form.

While I support the goal of increasing housing production, there's more to consider.

I support the intention of the carve out for sensitive areas and also the special stipulation to stir development amongst legacy homeowners.

I think that there's definitely good intention there, but a broad vacation of MHA fees at this level simply gives away too much deeply needed affordable housing revenue that service workers, medical workers and other families need, especially at this time.

Eliminating revenue for affordable housing during a budget crisis at the state and local levels with a federal withdrawal and a tax on working families is just not the way to go.

We need to carefully explore any recalibration of MHA and a variety of alternatives, which many have already named.

I just ask that you respect the spirit of this grand bargain that was negotiated in good faith and that we work for alternative solutions.

So please consider many of the alternatives that have been named here today.

Thank you very much.

Right, we will now move to remote speakers.

The first is Patrick Taylor.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt that you have been unmuted.

The next speakers will be Cordell Fisher, then Ruby Holland.

Patrick, can you hear us?

If you press star six.

Hi, my name is Patrick Taylor.

I live in beautiful North Beacon Hill.

I'm speaking only for myself.

I'm calling today in support of Councilmember Foster's thoughtful and temporary MHA Accelerator.

It can unlock housing production that will benefit our city in many ways, from forestalling future rent hikes, to providing permit fees and much-needed tax revenue, to employing tradespeople and putting money in the pockets of the folks who depend on the spending of those workers.

It's a good policy that the Council should pass as soon as possible.

I also want to address the conflict embedded in this package.

It recognizes that MHA is hurting home building, yet it proposes to expand into the NR zones that have been producing some of the most affordable homeownership opportunities, depressing new homes in our minority-rich neighborhoods, and the effects of recent zoning changes have even been felt.

It says new housing is good for our city, but it treats it as toxic waste that the South End must be protected from, that some places should get new homes, new jobs, new services, improved sidewalks and new street trees, but others should be denied these benefits.

I urge the Council to take a consistent, pro-housing view and not to continue our city's pattern of tying every effort to promote new homes with a policy to discourage them at the same time.

Thank you for your time and service to our city.

Thank you.

Next is Cordell Fisher, Ruby Holland, Po-Lipe.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

My name is Cordell Fisher.

I'm the Secretary Treasurer of BAC Local One, Washington, Alaska.

I want to start by explaining why we're Local 1. Our union has been representing skilled craft workers in this region since 1889. For more than 135 years, generations of our members have helped build Seattle, from the historic pavers of Pioneer Square to the countertops that you eat your food on every day.

Our work is everywhere in this city, and we're proud of that history, and we want our members to continue building Seattle for generations to come.

That's why I'm here today in support of the MHA Accelerator legislation.

Seattle needs more housing.

and our construction workforce needs opportunities to build it.

But there's another side of this issue that is especially important to us.

The men and women who build this city should also have the opportunity to live in or near the communities they work.

The rising cost of housing is making that increasingly difficult for working families.

Moving more housing projects forward means more homes, but it also means more construction jobs, apprentice opportunities, and pathways in the family's sustaining careers.

Thank you for your consideration.

Appreciate your time.

Next, Ruby Holland, Pauli Pei, and Harrison Jerome.

MHA started as a lie of affordability and a scam with Bulkern and City Hall to get minority and working class lots for millionaires and billionaire recruits.

The master builders went along with the scheme to get MHA passed until into law in 2019. But when Harold took office as mayor, they asked to be relieved of MHA fees.

Meanwhile, legacy black homeowners were charged extortionate MHA fees to build on their own property.

A lawsuit in 2023 forced Harold to admit MHA was a deal with major players, including real estate developers, who could afford an upfront cost and pass them on to luxury clients.

Last week, the master builders wrote an article stating that fees are preventing them from building.

The MHA lie that harmed the working class homeowner is now harming the same ones who created- And our next speaker is Poli Pei, and our final speaker will be Harrison Jerome.

Hello, Chair Foster and members of the committee.

Poe here from the Washington Housing Alliance, here to express concerns over rolling back even temporarily the MHA program.

Affordable housing is under attack from the federal government right now, and we need the city and broader region to do all it can to protect and expand funding for affordable homes.

Also, we have a lot of concern that this proposal will accelerate displacement, especially for renters living in rent-stabilized apartments, which this policy may incentivize the teardown of.

with replacement of apartments without rent stabilization and with rents that are far, far out of reach of struggling Seattle renters.

We urge you to instead pause this conversation for deeper stakeholder engagement and look at other methods of spurring development in ways that won't risk affordable housing funds and that won't risk displacement or the loss of rent stabilized homes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Harrison Drome and our final speaker will be David Haynes.

Hi, afternoon Councilmembers.

I'd like to thank Councilmember Foster for moving on this.

I'm here to support the MHA reform and to speak against the accompanying resolution expanding MHA into more areas of Seattle.

This legislation is critical so we can truly say that immigrants, LGBTQ people fleeing red states, and everyone fleeing climate change are welcome.

But if we continue to keep policies like MHA that prevent us from building enough housing so that the only people who can actually live here are those who bought homes in the 90s or renters with a tech job, those words do not matter.

MHA is a tax on renters to pay for affordable housing.

It's made my rent higher.

It's one of the worst ways to pay for it.

The affordable housing projects MHA pays for are great, but isn't it a little weird that we only have money for it when market-rate housing is being built?

Don't we want affordable housing being built even when permits are down?

Disaffordable housing should be paid for by taxes on the rich instead of taxing something we know we need more of.

It just seems like it kind of came about by the idea of it's a tax on housing to pay for housing.

It just makes sense.

Well, it's not elegant.

It's backwards.

It's like paying for food support by taxing avocados.

They're both food.

It just makes sense.

So with that, I'd like to thank Council Member Foster for recognizing the problem and working to fix it.

But do not vote for the accompanying resolution.

Thank you.

Our final remote speaker is David Haynes.

Hi, thank you.

City Hall has been backstabbing the working class and we can solve the problem by purging the restrictions and the sabotaging efforts of the landlords.

And we can go back to the grand bargain that weaponized against real developers.

Remember when City Hall was shaken down by a couple like belligerent protesters claiming that they didn't want the first, second or third floor of an affordable housing unit building when they wanted the top floor.

and instead of incentivizing the developers to go eight to 12 stories, council put restrictions on real developers and then weaponized the MHAP.

They said, you can't go higher than six stories, but if you don't put affordable housing in those six stories, we're going to tax you.

And then we're going to hire unqualified nonprofits who get all this budgetary allocation for affordable housing from the city and the county in different budgets and different committee oversights.

So getting rid of the MHAP fund is only part of it.

at least the part about the nonprofits that are unqualified to build and to build higher than six stories and to have them.

If anyone has additional comments, you can always email those or add them in the box here.

Clerk, are there any more registered speakers?

There are no additional registered speakers.

Okay, thank you so much to all of our public commenters.

I appreciate folks coming down in person and online and just showing up to share your perspective.

We really appreciate it.

And thank you to the clerk for managing the public comment period.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

And as a reminder, again, we have a couple items of business before we get to what most folks were commenting on today.

Will the clerk please read items one through three into the record?

Agenda items one through three, appointments 03645 through 03647. Appointments of Wubat Beratu, Clover Thurk, and Sunari Marshall to the Housing Levy Oversight Committee for briefing discussion and a possible vote.

Thank you so much.

And we are joined from, we are joined from, we are joined by Nathan Antonio from the Office of Housing.

Please begin once you are ready.

Great.

Can everyone hear me okay?

Perfect.

Yeah.

Awesome.

All right, well, good afternoon Chair Foster and members of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee.

As you already stated, I'm Nathan Antonio.

I'm an analyst in the Office of Housing and I staff the Housing Levy Oversight Committee.

I'm pleased to present three new prospective members for your consideration to join the committee.

The Oversight Committee's primary function is to advise on the development of policies related to the implementation of housing levy programs and to oversee reporting on housing levy outcomes and performance.

While committee members serve without compensation, they provide invaluable insight and expertise to inform the ongoing implementation and monitoring of the 2023 housing levy, as well as other related matters and Office of Housing activities.

Members are selected for their knowledge and representation of sectors implicated in levy efforts and impacted by its outcomes.

The 13-member committee includes staff representatives from the mayor's office and city council, in addition to 11 other members representing fields from affordable housing finance, compliance, development, homelessness services, public health, home ownership, and more.

I'll segue now to introduce the member candidates for consideration, beginning with the mayor's designated representative to the oversight committee.

That person being Sonari Marshall.

Sonari is an Executive Operations Manager in the Office of Mayor Katie B. Wilson.

In her current role, she works closely with the Office of Housing, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, Office of Planning and Community Development, and the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Prior to joining the city, Sonari held numerous roles in King County's Housing and Community Development Division, including Director, Deputy Director, and Policy Manager.

Across those roles, she oversaw division work to advance affordable housing development, stability, and policy and planning.

Sonori spent the early part of her career working on housing and community development, sustainable communities, climate resilience, and social equity issues with the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. Next, I'll speak on Wubet Biratu.

Wubet is the Director of Asset Management and Compliance at the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, a role she has held since 2021. Working closely with the executive director and executive team, Wubet helps advance strategic mission-driven goals that support long-term sustainability of housing created with tax-exempt bonds and low-income housing tax credits.

She leads a team of 15 responsible for compliance and asset management across the agency's multi-family portfolio while strengthening policies, partnerships, and practices within LIHTC and bond-financed housing programs.

all with a strong focus on people-centered outcomes.

WUBET has 17 years, over 17 years, of experience in the affordable housing sector in Washington as well as Oregon.

And then last but not least, Clover Thirk is a program manager in the Healthcare for the Homeless Network at Public Health Seattle and King County, where she has worked since 2022. She has over 20 years of experience in public, private, and non-profit sectors, managing public investments, complex government contracts, and cross-sector partnerships that expand equitable access to medical and behavioral health, housing, and safety net services for historically underserved communities.

In her current role with public health, Clover works at the intersection of housing, homelessness and clinical services, bringing together multidisciplinary providers and community partners across King County to improve care coordination, address systemic barriers, strengthen accountability and advance shared medical and behavioral health and service delivery goals.

Her work has included convening housing health outreach team providers, strengthening coordination of care, leading statewide partnerships to expand equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, and helping community organizations navigate complex federal requirements and public funding processes.

I'll just also note that both WUBET and Clover are filling council-appointed positions.

I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them, and we appreciate your consideration.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for that walkthrough, Nathan, of these fantastic potential appointees.

Colleagues, any questions before we move on for a vote approving these appointees on the housing levy?

All right, not seeing any questions, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03645 through 03647, appointments to the Housing Levy Oversight Committee.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, it is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any further comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointments?

Yes.

President Hollingsworth.

Aye.

Yes.

Councilmember Lin.

Yes.

Vice Chair Rink.

Yes.

Chair Foster.

Yes.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and none opposed.

Fantastic.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the October 20th, 2026 Seattle City Council meeting.

We will now move on.

Thank you so much, Nathan.

We will now move on to our next item of business, items four.

Will the clerk please read item four through 13 and to the record.

Agenda item four, appointment 03621, appointment of Justice Jeeves to the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

Agenda items six and seven, appointment 03622 and 03644, the appointments of Jesse Benviste and Jackie Lust to the Seattle Disability Commission.

Agenda items eight through 12, appointment 03648, 03649, 03654, 03655 and 03656, the appointments of Virginia Martin, to the Seattle Women's Commission, agenda item 13, appointment 03655 to the appointments of Lavelle Fleman to the Seattle Human Rights Commission, all for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you so much.

And we are now joined at the table by Meredith Stone from the Seattle Office of Civil Rights.

Please introduce your, well, I introduced you.

Please begin when ready.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Again, I'm Meredith Stone.

I'm the Commission's Division Manager at the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, and I'm just here to represent our four commissions housed in our office, the Disability Commission, Human Rights Commission, LGBTQ Commission, and the Women's Commission.

Just a quick overview of how the applicants come our way.

It's a variety of ways, through word of mouth, commission events, and directly through our online portal.

Interview panels consist of staff and commissioners who make recommendations, which we then move forward to the appointing party.

Once reviewed, recommended applicants then moved to committee consideration, which brings us here today.

As Sage just mentioned, we have nine applicants under consideration today, representing all four of the SOCR commissions.

We're excited for their interest and commitment to serving Seattle's communities, and I just want to thank you, as always, for your support of our commissions.

And that's all I have today without going through each one, but I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much.

And I'll just start with expressing my appreciation to your work and the Office of Civil Rights.

You all have a lot of commissions and you do a great job staying on top of it and finding us really smart, interesting, well qualified people from all around the city to represent us on commissions.

And I think this slate represents that ongoing high standard that your office brings.

So thank you for that.

Colleagues, any questions for Meredith?

Okay, seeing no questions, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03621, 03622, 03644, 03648, 03649, 03650, 03654, 03655, and 03656, appointments to the LGBTQ Commission, Seattle Disability Commission, Seattle Women's Commission, and Seattle Human Rights Commission.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right, it is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any further comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm appointments.

Council President Hollingsworth, Council Member Lin, Vice Chair Rink, Chair Foster, I'm sure there are four votes in favor and none opposed.

All right, fantastic.

The motion carries the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the October 20th, 2026 City Council meeting.

Thank you again, Meredith, for all of your work.

Okay, we will now move on to items 14 and 15. Will the clerk please read the items into the record?

Agenda item 14 mandatory housing affordability accelerator draft ordinance and agenda item 15 neighborhood residential inclusionary requirement draft resolution for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Okay, so I would like to invite up to the committee table, Ketel Friedman and Jen Labreck from Council Central Staff, who will be providing an overview of the MHA Accelerator Draft Ordinance and Resolution that we will be discussing today.

We will also be joined online by Mike Wilkerson, the Director of Economic Research at Eco Northwest.

Colleagues, my intention today is to go through the presentations altogether and then pause for questions from you all at the end.

And before we do that, I'll just offer a few comments and reflections.

Again, I'll express my gratitude to all of the folks who showed up today to express their feedback during the public comment period.

I am really excited for today's discussion on both the housing accelerator legislation, as well as the accompanying resolution that I'm bringing forward.

We will, oh, I already did that.

All right.

As our city continues to grow, we know that the growth management plan estimates that we need to build more than 112,000 homes across all income levels by 2044 to ensure that families can afford to live here.

At the same time, as we look across what's happening in our country, the high interest rates and rising inflation that we are facing is making it hard for both our market rate and affordable housing developers to build.

And as chair of this committee, I believe we need to use all the tools at our disposal in order to achieve our housing production goals.

As we will shortly hear, we are seeing a decrease in new building permits.

We are seeing that especially for multifamily housing.

And as a result, simultaneously MHA revenue becomes unstable and declines.

we know that the MHA revenue only comes in when those new projects are moving forward.

At the same time, our recent increases in zoning capacity and neighborhood residential zones mean that the types of projects that were being built in low rise zones can now be built in NR where there's no inclusionary zoning requirement.

And the permit data suggests projects are moving out of LR.

I believe that MHA is an important tool for creating affordable housing and it was never intended to be static.

As my office worked to craft this legislation and I engaged with community leaders, I've had four guiding principles in mind.

One, expanding the supply of housing in order to keep rents stable and to prevent them from rapidly increasing.

Two, to maintain funding for affordable housing that is essential to ensuring all residents at all income levels can afford to live here in Seattle.

Three, protecting the long-term viability of MHA.

And four, preventing displacement of marginalized communities, particularly in high-risk displacement areas.

The legislation that we're discussing today balances these goals by creating a temporary time-bound reduction in MHA fees in order to spur new housing production while other market conditions outside of the city's control are making it harder to build.

Spurring new projects to move forward will bring an increase in significant revenue through MHA fees even at a reduced percentage, as well as create construction jobs as we heard so much of from folks here today.

We know that we face a serious budget deficit in the city and we know that these projects will bring in sales tax revenue, B&O taxes and others that'll help our city budget.

One of the things that's critical to me is that the MHA Accelerator seeks to incentivize the types of new family size units that the city needs.

We've structured this in such a way that projects that aren't currently in our development pipeline will be required to provide at least 25% of their units as two bedrooms or more.

I know that's important as somebody who increasingly sees families struggling to find places to live here in Seattle.

and lastly we'll be encouraging housing development in areas with lower risk of displacement and reducing the displacement pressure through some of the carve outs that we've designed in the accelerator.

The other piece of legislation that we're discussing today is an accompanying resolution.

From my perspective, I know that with the zoning capacity increases, we see townhouses and hopefully soon stacked flats in the neighborhood residential zone.

And these are a critical part of our housing construction and part of our housing goals and needs.

I also believe that we need to ensure that we have inclusionary approach all across the city.

That might need to look different and the resolution that we are bringing forward takes that under consideration.

If designed correctly, inclusionary requirements in neighborhood residential zones could serve as an important tool for the city to ensure that development in our neighborhood residential zones addresses affordable housing needs and incentivizes density.

We still have additional work to do on the policy development there, and that's why we were discussing this today as a resolution rather than an ordinance.

With those remarks, I will have some further questions later, but I'm gonna hand it over to Ketel and Jen.

When you are ready, please begin.

Oh, I apologize.

I believe I see a hand from Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

I know this is out of order, but I was just wondering if I could say a brief remark before we jump to the presentation, just because I'm not sure everybody's gonna stick around.

I'm hoping they do, but I just wanted to say a few words, if that's okay.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you for bringing this forward.

I just want to say an enormous gratitude for everybody who came down here, who took time off of work to be here today.

We talk a lot about developers or landlords, and we don't talk enough about people that do the hard work of building homes.

that make it possible for everyday families to live here, who work in the hot summers, in the cold, wet winters, who are doing backbreaking, dangerous work, and whose families' livelihoods are at risk when we see construction slowing down.

and it is incredibly powerful and inspiring to hear from you all and for you to be here today.

It's also a little bit depressing because I don't want you all to be here.

I want you to be out there making money, building homes, and doing the hard work.

And I just want to just sort of acknowledge it's rare to see so many folks who build housing every day and pack the chambers like this today.

And it is just really powerful.

And I just wanna acknowledge that.

Thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that, Council Member Lynn.

Okay, we're gonna turn it to Jen and Ketel in a second, but now I'm just gonna say, so I get to serve as a citywide council member, but council member Eddie Lynn is my council member in district two, and I'm so proud to serve alongside you because you are somebody who has not just the brains, but the heart, and I appreciate that every day.

Thank you, Eddie.

All right, guys.

We're gonna hand it over to Jen and Ketel.

Thank you so much.

Ketel Freeman, council central staff.

Hello, Jennifer LeBrec, city council central staff.

So, as Councilmember Foster mentioned, this is an initial briefing today on two pieces of legislation that the Council will be considering at the end of this year and early in 2027. Jen and I are going to talk a little bit about mandatory housing affordability, remind Councilmembers of the legislative history what the program requires, some outcomes from that program.

We'll also talk a little bit about some recent permitting trends, and then I believe we're going to hear from Professor Wilkerson and then finally, I will describe the legislation that the Council will be considering later this year.

Do I have that round of show correct?

Okay.

So mandatory housing affordability, what is it and where did it come from?

As you heard today, There are some references to the Grand Bargain.

The Grand Bargain was a Murray administration-era deal whereby the city agreed to a framework for implementing an inclusionary zoning program with fees and other requirements based on the estimated value of a development capacity increase.

There are some exceptions depending on parts of town.

Part of that bargain was that a lawsuit against the city was dropped and the city moved forward with some framework legislation The grand bargain dates from 2015. The framework legislation also dates from that year.

There was a framework initially established for commercial development in 2015 and then for residential development in 2016. They're known sort of in the vernacular as MHAC for commercial and MHAR for residential.

The legislation that we'll be talking about later touches on MHAR and not on MHAC.

So, as you would imagine, with a framework whereby an affordable housing obligation would come with increases in development capacity, the framework, once established, was followed by some implementing up zones.

In 2017, there's an up zone of the University District Regional Center, the Downtown and South Lake Union Regional Centers, the Central Area, the Chinatown ID, and Uptown, and then in 2019, citywide up zones occurred as well as the up zone at the Northgate Urban Center.

So by the end of 2019, MHA was fully implemented in the places where the Grand Bargain contemplated that it would be implemented, and that's mostly in the city's planning geographies where we contemplate a lot of future residential and employment growth and also in multifamily and commercial zones outside of those areas.

So what is the MHA regulatory obligation?

what's required under MHA.

So if a project is subject to MHA, is in a zone where MHA applies, a developer must choose to either provide units on-site that are affordable at prescribed levels or make an end-lieu fee payment.

The payment and performance amount is somewhat complex.

We'll talk about this here in a minute, but it depends on the amount of development capacity that was granted through the initial up zones and the part of town, the market area where the development occurs.

The fees are automatically adjusted for inflation, so they're much higher now than they were when initially implemented.

And except for very small units, dwelling units that are created either through performance or payment have to be affordable to households at up to 60% of AMI and up to 80% of AMI for owned units.

So rented units are 60% of AMI, owned units are 80% of AMI.

Just sort of for reference here, 60% of AMI in 2026 for a one-person household is about $70,000 a year, and 80% of AMI also for a one-person household in 2026 is about $92,000 a year.

So the next few slides illustrate how MHA was implemented and detail some of the complexities that have to do with the different fees.

This slide sort of shows what initial MHA implementation would have looked like in a standard MHA bump, as it was known at the time, so not a significant development capacity increase, but just the basic development capacity increase.

and a NC, a neighborhood commercial 65 zone, an additional floor was added with the capacity to, with the additional height to accommodate, additional height and floor area to accommodate that capacity.

The value of the up zone was based on that additional floor area that was granted in green that you see up there.

And this is again the complexity of MHA.

The amount, your MHA obligation depends on where your development is in the city.

Sort of in the right-up hand, there's sort of the map and the right-hand corner shows the different market areas that still apply today.

These market areas have changed somewhat since initial frameworks were established, but there are lower market areas and a lower fee obligation where there's yellow.

A medium market area is in sort of a relatively medium, sort of moderate requirement where things are green and a higher requirement where things are shown in purple up there on the map.

and downtown was treated somewhat differently which is why it's shown in brown.

On the other map you can see sort of the relative amount of increases that were granted through MHA.

The lighter pink shows where there's just a standard MHA bump and where there is a darker color there was a larger increase in development capacity and hence a greater affordable housing obligation.

So Jen's gonna talk a little bit about outcomes here.

All right, so the table that we are looking at here shows both payment and performance outcomes associated with MHA since program inception.

I think there's a lot going on in this slide here, but I'll say that there have been 5,247 units, affordable units that have been produced or are in the pipeline due to MHA.

So that's either an operation been placed in service or in the pipeline.

MHA funded means that OH awarded MHA revenue that was generated through MHA to affordable housing projects and those have, through that award have either been built or are being developed and performance means that the developer has chosen the performance option.

The overall goal for MHA, which was set, sort of not codified, but I believe established in resolution, was 6,000 units for MHA.

So that you can see, as of the end of 2025, we had 5,247 units, so well on the way to that goal.

Just want to add a little bit of detail here too.

The majority of the projects have chosen payment over performance.

I think it's a bit of a misnomer.

Sometimes people say that payment and performance was anticipated to be 50-50, but it was never really anticipated that smaller projects would choose the performance option, and the majority of projects are smaller projects.

I also wanna know that we've achieved probably more ownership performance projects than ever envisioned at the beginning of the program.

So this slide shows the in-lieu payments that have been received since inception.

MHA revenue does fluctuate with the real estate market.

It is definitely tied to what is happening in the overall market.

We can see that revenue peaked at 77 million in 2022. when the real estate market was very hot and dipped to a low of 24 million in 2024. It is also hard sometimes to assess exact trends because sometimes a small number of projects, a handful of projects can contribute a significant amount of money to a project, which is what we saw happen in 2025. A couple other things to note here.

Since 2021, that brown bar on the bottom which is low-rise zones has been pretty steady in the $20 million range and that's the revenue that's being produced out of projects in low-rise zones but as I believe Councilmember Foster mentioned in her comments you know we may see that change as development has we have increased capacity in neighborhood residential zones which don't have MHA and there is some signs that that type of low-rise development is moving more into NR zones and out of LR zones Oh, and I did just wanna add for those who are curious that we do have 2026 figures as of July, 2026. And so far as of July, 2026, there had been about $10.5 million of MHA receivables or receipts.

I won't say a lot about this slide.

I think it's fairly self-explanatory.

This shows sort of the distribution of both payment and performance projects throughout the city has been fairly well distributed throughout the city.

And if you go to the next slide, Ketel, this is just something, the prior slide was showing projects that were completed that have been placed in service.

And this is really the same data, but for projects that are in the pipeline.

and I will, oh, one more slide for me.

So this chart here has a lot going on in it, but I think what's important to know is that the county-wide planning policies now contain a total number of units, including by affordability levels, that King County needs to produce and that this is driven by state legislation that requires counties to identify their overall housing needs by income band and then allocate those housing needs to each individual jurisdiction within the county.

These are the needs that are in the countywide planning policies and I'll just note that the needs are high and that, well, Certainly the city has made some progress towards meeting these year over year.

The overall progress is modest compared to the overall need.

And I'll stop there.

So a little bit here on permitting trends.

I think Councilmember Foster alluded to this earlier on.

Generally speaking, applications are declining.

There are fewer applications this year than there have been in years past.

There's a pretty big spike in development in 2020 that coincides with a change to construction codes, most notably the electrical codes.

And we're working through, in some ways, the applications that came in that year.

So that's why you'll see, for example, that issuance and completions have more or less remained steady since about 2022. With declining permit applications, we can expect in future years that there will be fewer projects issued and completions occurring in the city.

And a little bit more information on what has been developed recently.

This is for the years 2016 to 2022. I don't think it's known to most people who are sort of following residential real estate development trends in the city that most of the development in the last a handful of years has been in the zero bedroom to one bedroom category.

That's most of what has been built.

One thing that is, this is an image, a figure from the housing element, not the housing element, the housing appendix to the comprehensive plan, which is sort of a wealth of information.

And one thing that's identified in the housing appendix is the need for the city to provide additional housing that is suitable for folks who have a hard time finding housing now, including families and folks with disabilities.

You can see that there hasn't been much two-plus bedroom development in the years 2016 to 2022. To the extent that it has been happening, it's largely been happening in a townhouse product type.

And I think that is it for us now.

We'll turn it over to...

Okay.

All right.

So Professor Wilkerson, we're going to turn it over to you online.

Thank you so much Jen and Kittle for that first half of your presentation and then as we get Mike's slides pulled up, we will be turning back to central staff at the end of this presentation.

Mike Wilkerson, Chair Foster members of committee.

Mike Wilkerson, For the record, my name is Mike Wilkerson, I'm the Director of Economic Research at ECO Northwest.

Mike Wilkerson, Apologies, my travel schedule did not allow for me to be there in person today, but this is an important topic and I'm happy to be here in a remote capacity.

Mike Wilkerson, I'm gonna kill camera here and pull up my slides.

So, as you mentioned, I also serve in a capacity as a professor.

I teach in the real estate development program and the master's program at Portland State University, and I'm an applied researcher in public policy working with jurisdictions across the country in all matters including mandatory and voluntary inclusionary housing policies and work with the Urban Land Institute to author a report called the Economics of Inclusionary Housing.

Today I'm going to focus my remarks largely on specifically how does building more housing impact affordability, but certainly happy to take questions as it relates to the policies in question today.

So to begin with, I think as any economist would look at a question, the building blocks are going to be supply and demand.

and understanding in the case of housing that supply is the number of units, that's relatively straightforward, demand is the number of households.

And here what we can look at is the top 50 largest metros across the country and what that ratio looks like in Seattle sitting at near the bottom of those top 50 markets, well below the US average of 1.11, which would effectively be equivalent to 11% additional units compared to households.

That is an overly simplistic approach because it doesn't fail to account for specific market variations.

And so because of that, we've created a methodology in partnership with Up for Growth called housing under production.

And it's more nuanced in that it looks at demand as both households, but also households that haven't formed or households that are doubled up because housing is expensive.

And when you include missing households plus households, you can then think about what an appropriate target vacancy rate is, which is let's say 5%.

From there you'd want to look at supply and really the key on supply is you want to look at units that are available for year-round occupancy.

So in order to do that you start with all housing units, you remove second and vacation homes and then you remove uninhabitable units which we define as not having indoor plumbing or kitchens and when you do that you're left with a modified number of units which you can then compare.

When you look at that, we can do that across the country.

In the case here, we can look at the Seattle Metro.

Under production today is below the peak.

The peak was in 2018, it was about 85,000 units.

You could think about that as about 5.2% of the supply of existing units.

And as we saw, huge amounts of production in the city and in the region, caused under production to decrease.

It is still very substantial at about 73,000 units across the region or about 4.2% of units.

So from there we can move into how does producing more housing slow specifically rental growth rates and the first thing to just note is if we use the lens of housing under production we can look at all 300 metros across the country and the severity of their under production as a percentage of their stock compared to what median rents are and what we find is statistical significance and that for every percentage point of under production and again Seattle's in that four percentage range is about $46 in terms of increased rent at the median.

And so from Seattle's perspective, solving under production would meaningfully reduce rents potentially up to $175 a month at the median level.

From there, we can move into how much housing has Seattle been building.

And this is quarterly looking at deliveries compared to the U.S.

And we can see on a quarterly basis, Seattle has been delivering at roughly double the rate nationally.

And that dotted line is the 75th percentile of all places and in many quarters above that 70th percentile.

what that consistent delivery has allowed is rent to increase less than the national average at all levels of affordability and so here we're pulling in CoStar data four and five star properties are the highest rent we have three star that are mid-market and then two star our workforce and we can see at all levels that benefit exists and The benefit grows as we move down the affordability ladder.

And so this is really a case in point showing when you deliver consistently housing, rents slow.

I think the question is, how much has production slowed?

and we saw some helpful graphics from staff.

What I've gone and done here is compared that to Washington state and the US as a total.

And so if we start with the 12 months trailing multifamily permits, and here this is measured as five plus units, At the end of 2024, relative to today, Seattle is permitting on a 12-month basis 26% fewer multifamily permits than they did.

If you contrast that to the entire state of Washington that's inclusive of Seattle, the state is up 31% and nationally is up 10%.

And so this isn't to be able to say specifically this is because of MHA.

There are lots of conditions.

However, if we look at markets being somewhat similar in the state of Washington, we can see there's a large deviation between the amount of permitting that's happening for multifamily in Seattle versus the rest of the state.

Moving in now into a little bit of a technical piece, this is some forthcoming research that we've been working on looking at specifically, how does housing production impact affordability?

And the answer is it's in two ways.

One in the short run, which is zero to two years, and it has two mechanisms by which production directly relates to housing rental rates.

the first is elasticity which is a fancy economics term for saying how responsive is supply to new demand and that's the shortest run impact almost immediate as those units are delivered and then we have a vacancy chain and vacancy chain is more of a up to two year process where when a new unit is delivered the first person that occupies that unit generally comes from another unit inside the city that then frees up that unit and that continues to cascade down many many rounds and the result of that is typically freeing up units that are more affordable through that process.

and then the second piece is long run and this is up to 20 years and the term is filtering which effectively is buildings that are newly built become gradually more affordable in real terms or in AMI as a measurement and we can look at that specifically so the first piece again is narrowing in on the short run and here we can create a model that says for every one percent that you increase the housing supply and what does that do in the short run and over the first couple quarters you can see rents decrease and continue to decrease up until about a year or a year and a half out and the benefit for every one percent of production is about 1% and this specifically is looking at on the new units that are delivered which are again these four and five star tier properties.

For reference about 80% of all units built in the city are four and five units.

So this is the vast majority of units as CoStar tracks them.

What we can then do is look at two things.

One, how does that production at the high end make its way into the three star and the two star properties?

And the answer is the magnitude is almost the same in the mid properties.

And so over the course of the first two years, those benefits that accrue to the highest priced properties also accrue to those mid properties.

and about 60% of that or 0.6% accrues to that workforce category.

And so you get benefits for any basically housing unit you build filters down in the short run across units.

The second we can look at is how much housing you build matters.

And so here the dark bars are an average of top 50 metros and the lighter bars are the bottom 50 metros.

And what you can see is in the places that are delivering the highest supply, rents decrease more than they do in the low supply metros.

And you can think about that as a ratio or an amplification factor.

And this is key to note that places that consistently build more housing, those short-run benefits amplify at all levels of affordability.

The last piece I'll mention is the long run effects, which is again here is filtering.

You can observe this in every single market across the country.

What each dot here is, is one building at a point in time, looking at the year it was built and what it's renting for.

And that slope is negative in every single place that we have studied this.

In the case of Seattle, it's declining by about 9% a decade.

and the key here is understanding that those benefits accrue gradually over time but that they do have a limit and the key with filtering is at times when the market doesn't deliver enough units the rate of filtering can be very slow and as markets increase vacancy the rates of filtering in terms of AMI can increase The key is how far down the affordability ladder they can go and the answer is somewhere in the in the amount of 50% or 45% of area median income is about the floor.

And so if units come in at 80% or 90% of AMI over the course of numbers of years and decades, that depreciation effect happens and that is the long term benefit to continuing to build housing.

So, in summary, I think affordability to note is a two-part equation.

We spend a lot of time talking about the supply side, but incomes are an important part of closing any gaps.

I think you heard today in public testimony, producing additional housing units is a benefit to the regional economy, and so it goes beyond just the benefits that accrue to renters, there's also broader economic development benefits.

I think the last points are a unit of housing at any level of affordability produces public benefits and that is sometimes often misconstrued and increasing the production of housing has short-run benefits and we can measure those they have long-run benefits we can measure those so cumulatively we can understand what the possibility frontier is in terms of if we took housing production let's say and increased it by two percent that might reduce rents 2% a year in the short run and then have lasting effects into the long run.

And markets that build consistently increase those transmission mechanisms and generate more broad-based benefits.

So with that, I will stop sharing my screen and turn it back over if there are any specific questions.

OK.

Colleagues, Chair Foster had to step out for a minute, so she asked if I could take over chairing.

And I think we're going to move on to questions, if you have any.

Yes, please, Council Member Rankin.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mike, for the presentation.

I really appreciate the takeaway slide, honestly, just to kind of really distill what are kind of those main points to focus on here.

And I will also take this as an opportunity before I get into questions to thank everyone who's turned out today.

I really appreciate seeing these chambers packed with hardworking folks who have built our city.

So truly thank you for being here, thank you for your testimony, and excited to dig into this policy.

And I know she stepped away for a moment, but thank you to Chair Foster for bringing forward this for our discussion for committee today.

I'm actually gonna dig in first on the central staff presentation, if I may.

Taking us first to slide four, I'm wondering if, This should be a slide that includes a map, and I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about what considerations were taken into consideration with these differing levels on the map historically, and what do those indicators tell us now about where the MHA area levels may need to change?

Yeah, so let's see here.

So here we are on page four.

Maybe I'll make my screen a little bit bigger view.

Just historically, in the initial implementation of MHA, one factor that the council at the time considered was the displacement characteristics of a neighborhood.

So generally speaking, more more development capacity was added in places where there was less displacement risk and higher access to opportunity.

So I'll just maybe direct you to say Roosevelt, for example, or Wallingford and Fremont, you see sort of darker shades of pink there.

There were greater up zones that occurred in those neighborhoods because they are sort of lower, relatively speaking, lower risk of displacement and higher access to opportunity in those neighborhoods.

By contrast, say South Park and Reno Beach, for example, They just got the standard MHA bump, the M bump.

There was still some development capacity added, but less was added there because of the displacement risk.

In terms of the market areas on the map, the market areas were based on a resource that's not available anymore.

Dupree and Scott were a local.

They had, I think, I'm not sure if they're a husband or wife, but a partner team who published a publication called The Apartment Advisor.

They've since retired, but they had divided the city and also a large part of Puget Sound into different sub-markets and provided information from a survey that they did on rents in those sub-markets.

And the boundaries that they had drawn for the apartment advisor informed the boundaries for the high, medium, and low areas for MHA when MHA was first implemented.

Obviously, those markets have changed.

So there's something that this is still the current state of regulation.

If you are in these areas, you may be charged a lower MHA fee by virtue of being in a low-cost MHA area, that may no longer be a low area for the purposes of rents that are charged, and in the future, the city may want to look at modifying some of these boundaries to see where low areas have become medium or medium areas have become high, or to come up with an alternative way of classifying things generally.

Thank you for that response, Ketel.

I'm gonna keep us moving through the presentation and now take us through to slide nine.

Wondering here, is there any consideration the state may make that MHA could be suppressing the amount of units we're obligated to plan for and build?

I don't have any knowledge of that, but I'll let Ketel respond if he has more to add.

Yeah, not to my knowledge.

I would say that the Department of Commerce published a methodology which the city and I think most other jurisdictions have used for complying with this new requirement.

This is essentially a level of service standard for housing affordability.

It's a new requirement from the state, I think it was House Bill 1220, that created this requirement.

There's a model, the model which I won't be able to describe to you with any accuracy, but among the factors in that model are sort of where development has happened in the past and what the cost of housing has been associated with that development.

Part of the modeling effort that the city did in coming up with the allocation here was looking at zone capacity and the type of the affordability of units that were developed by zone.

But to my knowledge, there's no specific kind of factor that is built into the commerce model related to fees on development, for example.

I appreciate that point.

Colleagues, I'll take just a personal moment of privilege.

I remember when these numbers came out, we were all eagerly waiting for them to understand kind of what are the growth targets that jurisdictions need to meet.

I wanna lift up some of the work that is a part of the King County Regional Affordable Housing Committee.

That is a table that includes our colleagues on King County Council that wrangled together all of our other cities around the region to try and really come up with a comprehensive approach for how we can meet our growth targets as a region across these various income levels.

And they've done good work really amplifying the need to be developing housing across these levels, really meeting those needs for 244 units.

244,000 units across our region.

And so just wanted to amplify that collaborative work happening on the county level in support of this.

And keeping us moving through this presentation, if we can go to slide 13. I believe this should be related to some of the points on displacement.

And so I'm wondering if we can pack a little bit more on the areas of high risk of displacement that would be excluded for new projects to receive the 60% reduction.

Sure.

So this is transitioning into the bills and what they do.

We're ready for that part of the conversation.

I'm happy to do it.

I'm going to pause you just for one second.

Thank you.

I apologize.

I had a, for folks who were here and saw me step up, you know when you see the missed call from school and you just got to call back.

So thank you so much Council Member Ring for that question.

I want to make sure that they get a chance to walk through, Central staff gets a chance to walk through their presentation on the bills and what they do, but then we would be happy to get to that question.

If you've got anything else on slides to date though, go for that and then we'll finish and then we'll come back.

No, I jumped the gun a little bit.

No, that's okay, I wasn't here.

Thank you for your patience.

Colleagues, and thank you so much, Vice Chair Lynn, for stepping in as I had to step off.

Colleagues, any other questions on the presentation to date?

And then we'll have central staff walk through the walkthrough of the bills themselves.

All right, so we'll hand it over to you.

Go ahead, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Just on the staff presentation, I just wanted to go back to slide six.

and just found the different trends pretty interesting.

And I think I heard you mention, but obviously it's not shown in the slide, kind of where we're at in 2026, and it's probably hard to know.

But as I look at this slide and I see different trends, to me, payments are made upon the building permits being issued.

And so that would be kind of after they've gone through the entire permitting process.

And for some of those projects, if you think about sort of like, you know, the towers or other more complex projects, those oftentimes have a longer permitting lead.

And So I just wonder, as I look at this, you know, were there things in our zoning that led to sort of...

I mean, I think it would be either changes in our zoning that led to certain projects moving forward or changes just in our development trends.

And in particular, as I look at low-rise, you know that looks pretty steady over a number of years and yet what is sort of missing from this trend or from this is the impacts of what we just passed last year which is the neighborhood residential up zone where now neighborhood residential is competing with low rise, but, you know, and we can talk about the resolution later, but neighborhood residential, which does not have any MHA, low rise does.

So we just wouldn't see the impacts of that since it was at the end of 2025 until later.

But I just, any thoughts about sort of sort of the lag in sort of our zoning changes and how those then show up with the MHA payments.

I'll offer a couple here, Jen.

You may have other thoughts about this.

I think sort of there are two, to my mind, there are two kind of workhorse zones when it comes to MHA revenue creation.

Those are the low-rise zones and also the neighborhood commercial zones.

That's where most of the MHA revenue has come from.

the purchasing power of MHA for larger projects.

The amount that you pay is not necessary.

You vest to a certain amount and you vest to an obligation.

The obligation that you have is something that you is a function of your vesting.

So for larger projects, especially projects that are subject to design review, they vest to an MHA fee pretty early on.

And so the purchasing power, and it can be a year or two years or even longer from initiation of design review to project completion, especially for larger projects downtown.

So there's some declining, the value of the MHA payments declines for those projects over time.

That's not true for projects in low rise zones.

Most of those projects don't require any kind of discretionary review by the city.

Often those projects are just getting building permits, and so they're investing to the MHA fee that is in effect at the time that they apply for their building permit.

It may take a year or so for the project to be completely out of the ground, but there's less of the sort of less revenue, less purchasing power lost for those types of projects.

I think what you were sort of wondering about potentially is will we see a decline in low rise, and this is something Jen alluded to, will we just see will we see a decline in revenue from low-rise zones in the future because you can now essentially build a low-rise product type in neighborhood residential zones?

And the answer to that is probably yes.

And it's not just because projects will shift to avoid MHA, but because that's what most of the city's zoning is.

It's neighborhood residential.

So there are just more sites there.

So whether or not a project is trying to avoid MHA, just by virtue of the fact that there'll be more sites, it's more likely that we'll see that product type develop and more of a townhouse product type developed in neighborhood residential zones, and consequently, perhaps fewer projects developed in low-rise zones.

There may be other factors that influence decisions to develop in low-rise zones.

In some low-rise zones, you can still do more, like low-rise 3 zones, and they may have other desirable attributes as well.

That type of zoning often is associated with proximity to amenities like light rail, for example.

but it is probably the case that there'll be less revenue coming from low-rise zones in the future, absent some council changes.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you so much for those questions, Councilmember Lin.

Any other questions before we go to the final portion of the slide presentation?

All right.

Back over to you, central staff.

Thank you so much.

Right, so later this year, early next year, the Council will be considering two pieces of legislation.

One is a Council bill that would increase housing supply by providing a temporary reduction in MHA obligations.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide.

And also a companion resolution that establishes the Council's intent to implement an inclusionary requirement for new market rate development in neighborhood residential zones.

We'll be developing the first piece of legislation here for the remainder of the year and hopefully have something for the committee to consider towards the end of this year and early next year.

In terms of the first bill, the Housing Accelerator Bill, eligibility is key here.

There are two categories of eligible projects.

One are currently vested projects, so if a development has a complete building permit application, or a mass use permit decision, or even if they have applied for early design guidance and followed up with a mass use permit application, they could potentially take advantage.

They would be eligible for a reduction in applicable MHA fees.

The second category of projects has to do with new projects.

So, if an applicant, and these are sort of a somewhat narrower aperture here, if an application is made for January 1st, 2028, and it's a building permit application, not a mass-to-use permit application, that would allow a project to potentially have a reduction in MHA fees, which would be different than the first category of projects.

There are certain places where this would not apply.

It would exclude non-vested projects and high-displacement risk areas.

We'll answer Council Member Rinks here's question.

in a minute about sort of where those locations would be, at least for draft purposes.

And there would also be an exception to that.

So if you are a legacy homeowner, meaning that you own a site and that site has not changed hands since 2026, and that isn't a high displacement risk area, then you also would be eligible for a reduction in your MHA obligation.

So what would the reduced obligation be?

For vested projects, it would be an 80% reduction.

So projects would pay 20% of the applicable fee.

For new projects, it would be a 60% reduction.

So projects would pay 40% of the applicable MHA fee.

And it would be whatever the MHA fee is or was at the time a project vested or made an application.

There's some accountability measures here.

The city wants to make sure that development actually occurs, and so an applicant would have to demonstrate substantial progress towards construction, and that would be done in a number of ways, but essentially it would be a requirement that excavation or foundation work began within a certain period of time.

For vested projects, that would be two years.

For the second category of projects, that would be three years.

And I should say that if substantial progress is not made, there is a penalty, and that penalty is payment of the balance of your MHA fee.

So that is the bill.

Moving on here to the resolution.

So the resolution would establish the Council's intent to create an inclusionary requirement in neighborhood residential zones with an option for either including lower-cost units or making an MHA fee payment.

It also expresses the council's intent to scale those requirements to not significantly deter development and also maintain whatever the obligation is unchanged for at least five years to provide some certainty to the market.

The draft resolution also identifies a couple of policy issues that inevitably the Council is going to have to grapple with.

One is, should additional development incentives be provided along with the inclusionary obligation, so things beyond zoning and regulatory changes beyond those that the Council made last December.

Whether to include development that is not built for rental or sale, so primarily ADUs, for example.

whether those should be included as part of the affordable housing requirement or fee requirement.

Also, whether to have higher requirements for less-tense development, to scale things, to provide an incentive for folks to take advantage of the development capacity that was added through the House Bill 1110 implementation legislation last year.

And finally, whether to allocate any amount of an MHA fee to ownership housing in the city.

It's currently the case that some MHA revenue is allocated towards ownership.

I believe it is, is it ten percent, Jen?

Five percent.

Five percent, yeah.

So a similar consideration here, but perhaps to do more because of the exclusive nature of neighborhood residential zones.

And finally, there is direction to staff to develop legislation for referral to this committee and to work in coordination with implementing city departments.

So those are the two pieces of legislation.

Okay.

Thank you so much for that walkthrough to you, both Ketel and Jen.

I'm really excited to have a discussion, colleagues, about both of these pieces of legislation.

And before we do that, I want to acknowledge two things.

I think, Ketel, I heard you say if they've owned the title since 2026, I think you meant to say 2006. Correct.

You're right.

That's okay.

Thank you for that, Ketel.

And then the only other thing I wanted to do is just acknowledge the amount of work that went into both of these proposals.

And I will say for myself, as somebody who a decade ago was a mayor's office staffer, I want to express my gratitude, especially to the staff and the mayor's office for their leadership and their work and the hours from the departments to folks like Sonari that they put into this proposal as we were working on it together this spring.

As you heard from central staff, the presentation today, we have a little bit of some changes from that present, some changes from that legislation as originally contemplated, but I do want to express my gratitude to the staff for that hard work.

I also want to express my gratitude to the mayor for her announcement of the ombudsman for the affordable housing community.

I think that's a really important role and I know we heard from some of our folks in the affordable side today about the needs there.

And I think that's gonna be a great role to help us in the affordable housing side with our permitting processes.

Colleagues, I wanna turn to you for questions that you have about the draft resolution as well as the draft ordinance.

All right, Council President Hollingsworth, please start us off.

I actually don't have any questions, but I do have a statement.

But I will pause to see if any of my colleagues had questions before.

You do have questions.

OK.

Go ahead.

Yeah, it's OK?

No, just go ahead.

I'll just say, OK, awesome.

I just didn't want to.

I don't know if it's out of order.

But first, I want to thank Councilmember Foster for your leadership on this.

And I know that these are hard conversations to have, and I appreciate you putting this forward so we can have a real discussion and I also support the goals behind the housing accelerator program that we have forward today and I support everything that we can reasonably do to get housing built in Seattle.

I also support family size housing as well because in the comp plan I put forth a ton of amendments for family size housing during that process.

and because we have not done enough in the city to incentivize two and three bedroom homes that can actually accommodate young families who want to stay and grow in this city.

So I really appreciate the intentionality behind the 25% for family housing and those pieces.

and I also support the apprenticeship opportunities that building housing will bring to these jobs as well.

I support a lot of stuff today, so this is the support train.

And protecting neighborhoods that are at high risk for displacement.

And I know that when this started, there were four things, four goals that I wanted to make sure that we protected as a city.

Number one, building more housing, all of it, all types of levels, building more housing.

keeping affordable housing in our city.

So ensuring that we had a sustainable pathway to keep funding and operations.

Number three, protecting neighborhoods with high level risk of displacement.

And also number four, incentivize family size housing as well.

and I think as we had navigated the conversation and talking to people, some of the things that I realize and wanna keep at the center of this conversation too as well is that the people, all the people that are building housing, whether it's non-profit affordable housing providers, developers, legacy homeowners, small, local, I don't want to say small, I like to use local, local builders who are building townhomes and middle-sized housing.

The common enemy has always been the city, and I'll say that publicly.

Some people might not like that, but it has been.

And I am a part of the city, the robot that everyone thinks is a city, but it's actually people and us and departments that we have, after talking to people, we had always been the common enemy.

Well, the city needs to do this.

Well, the city needs to do that.

And I'm like, yeah, the city needs to do that.

And I'm like, oh, I am the city.

and so that had been something that was like a light bulb and I know that MHA has been the center of this conversation.

and I want to be very clear about something too as well is that there have been a lot of layers in this city that has slowed down production, SPUs, City Light, the fees, SDCI and so I want to make sure that when we talk about it that MHA is not the thing that killed housing.

It's not the problem but it can be a part of the solution and that's the one thing where I think that's a big difference.

And I know this legislation is not an effort to undermine affordable housing or eliminate an important tool that helps us produce affordable units.

And there's a very thin line that you are trying to do right now with this legislation, and I see it.

I think it's a phenomenal start.

And I know that we're going to have a lot of honest conversation about why housing is not being built in our city, why it's being slowed down.

that I've seen, because everyone has the same goal.

People want to have great jobs.

People want to have housing in this city.

People want to be able to do all of that.

But the one thing that I've been very, the one thing that really stands out the most to me has been the numbers and the data and the hard facts and what I've been put in front of me, the dashboards, the figures, what the permits are telling us, the construction pipeline, the interest rate, what finance are doing.

and the city can't control a lot of this, but there are certain tools that we can control.

And I'm looking forward to navigating this with the rest of my colleagues for us to have these conversations.

And again, my four goals during this process, build more housing, all of it, keep affordable housing in our city as well to protect those sustainable pathways and funding and operations long-term.

protect neighborhoods with high level of risk or displacement, and then also incentivize family size, housing, and units.

And that's a very thin line to try to navigate.

So I really appreciate this conversation.

I appreciate the intentionality behind the bill.

and trying to balance all of those things.

It is very difficult, but I see a lot of the stuff that those four things that, you know, I just talked about being important all in these bills, or excuse me, in the bill, those types of values.

And so I'm just looking forward to working during this legislative process.

So I just wanted to say that.

Thank you, Council Member Chair Foster for your leadership on this and looking forward to continuing the conversation and supporting goals for Housing Accelerator.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council President.

I really appreciate those remarks.

Very well said and I agree with so much of it and I appreciate all of your leadership and collaboration on this project.

I will turn to see if there are questions or comments from other committee members.

and if not, Council Member Rink, we can return.

Oh, okay, I've got Eddie, I've got Council Member Lynn's hand and then we'll make sure, Council Member Rink, that we return to the question you were bringing forth earlier.

Council Member Lynn, you're recognized.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

Question and then kind of off some comments, but maybe I'll save the comments for just a little bit later, if that's okay.

I just wanna go to slide 13 and just wanted to re...

Revisit this and then maybe it's the next slide about sort of what this means.

So just want to again understand, so the permit application deadline, and I know we're looking at some timing, January 1, 2028, on the one hand, seems kind of far away, but really not that far away.

Because if we take this legislation up, either in Q4 or Q1 of 2027, the application deadline sounds like it would be potentially 12 months or less than that.

In terms of applying to be able to to get into this program.

January 1st, 2028 is the deadline.

I'll ask central staff to speak to the sort of two-tiered approach when it comes to the vested projects at 80% and the non-vested projects at 60%.

I think that might help answer your question, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you.

Sure.

So if you're currently vested, then obviously the application deadline is not a problem.

That's something you qualify and would be able to take advantage of the accelerator by virtue of having a vested project.

For new projects, that window, obviously there's a choice here for the council to make about what the right date should be.

But for larger projects, it would be potentially tight to get a complete permit application, and you would really have to start now.

And there may be projects out there that are like that that the city just does not know about.

larger mixed-use projects that are in the design phase that have not had a pre-application conference, haven't scheduled an intake appointment yet, but maybe far along.

We wouldn't necessarily know about those.

For smaller projects, it's not necessarily that uncomfortable of a window.

If you are building a townhouse development or a small apartment development and you have some certainty that the city is going to pass this legislation, then you could begin now or begin after the legislation is effective and still get an application in.

But it does tend to favor smaller projects over larger projects.

And if I may, one thing I'll just update, and I think this slide, one thing I'll add in addition to what Cato just said, is again just to reiterate for those currently vested projects, that have already completed that stage, they're going to have the 80% reduction.

And then that second bullet point for the projects that are hitting that January 28 timeline is sort of the second phase, if you will, Council Member Lynn.

And so that's the 60%, and that's where the other qualifications that you see listed there apply.

So hopefully that helps to clarify, but please continue with your questioning.

Yeah, no, thank you and just wanna make sure I understand and sort of the public understands.

So for if you're vested, there's not really this deadline because you're already vested.

And then on the next slide, you had two years to show substantial progress.

And then for non-vested, you have that deadline become vested essentially under the 60% and then you have that additional time to make substantial progress towards construction.

And I guess just part of my question and why I ask is this is a pretty...

tight, in my opinion, sort of a tight window.

It's a narrow.

And so I just want to kind of highlight that as part of this discussion.

We're talking about vested and folks that can get vested within kind of a pretty quick timeline, that this is not sort of a, you know, this is a temporary thing.

It's a slice in time.

And I just want to kind of hone in on what that slice in time is.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lin.

Any further questions?

Council Member Lin, or Vice Chair Lin, excuse me.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Lin, should we return to you and the question you had previously?

Certainly, thank you, Chair Foster.

And apologies, I had to step off for a moment, so I don't know if this was covered fully in the presentation, but I wanted to actually keep us, I believe we're on slide 13, yes.

I'm wondering if we can unpack a little bit more around the areas of high risk of displacement component that would be excluded for new projects to receive the 60% reduction.

I want to take a moment to note, Chair Foster, I appreciate your focus on anti-displacement efforts as a part of what's coming before us now, and I'm just wondering if we could spend some time unpacking that a little bit more.

Sure, so the current draft identifies the high displacement risk areas by planning geography.

So that's not actually what's represented here on this slide.

This slide shows, this is from the, has also from the housing appendix to the comprehensive plan.

This shows the displacement risk index, and it's not necessarily, it is not, it is not sort of confined to those planning geographies, but it gives you a sense about where they are.

where you see hard lines here, they mostly have to do with census tracts, not with any kind of planning geography that the city has.

So the draft bill identifies what those planning geographies would be.

That includes the International Special Review District, the Central District Urban Center, Central District South Urban Center, the Mount Baker Urban Center, the North Beacon Hill Urban Center, the Columbia City Urban Center, the Graham Urban Center, the Othello Urban Center, and the Rainier Beach Urban Center.

Development within those geographies would not be eligible for the accelerator unless it was undertaken by a legacy homeowner.

Development could happen in those areas, but they would be paying the full freight of the MHA fee.

Thank you for that.

And Chair, anything you'd like to add, just a sponsor to speak to more of the anti-displacement efforts as a part of this?

Yeah, I'm happy to.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Rank.

I think from my vantage point, this was an important part of this policy approach that we're taking here.

We know that there are a lot of projects that are currently in the pipeline that have already identified a site, know where they want to build.

but we also knew that as we're contemplating this temporary reduction and one of the goals of that temporary reduction is to ensure that we don't have a development cliff which is why we took this approach of this tiered approach with the 80% and then the 60% following and given that we also knew that we wanted to take under consideration that some areas of the city have a higher risk for displacement pressure in those communities.

And rather than to incentivize that new pipeline activity there, we wanted to provide some guidelines which Ketel has so thoughtfully walked through.

Thank you for that response.

That's the main thing I wanted to just unpack a little bit of today.

And I'll take a moment just to comment and recognize the very careful balance that I see you're trying to strike in this legislation and voice my appreciation for that.

my just overarching point that I really admire your tenacity to push this conversation about what can we do using the tools that we have available to us on the local level to be able to really push for housing production.

We've been saying it for years, all of our studies and reports have confirmed this point that we need to be building more housing to really meet those growth targets.

I've spoken often on this dais about the climate crisis and the political dynamics happening across the country and the need to be able to accommodate for people who are moving to our region for a myriad of reasons.

and so in that spirit, I appreciate the opportunity to really dig into this policy and your willingness to push what is a challenging conversation, fully acknowledging that, a challenging conversation, but one that I think and believe that we can be able to work through together.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Rank.

Colleagues, I will check to see if you have any further questions and then I will run through just a few.

I am aware it's 422 and just a few more questions I want to make sure we highlight, but anything else from your colleagues?

All right.

Thank you so much.

Central Stafford, I want to just turn back to you quickly.

I think folks have touched on some of the components I wanted to be sure to uplift today, but I want to turn back to your slide 11. Can you just speak a little bit to what we see as the typical percentage of units that are for family size for market rate development currently in Seattle.

So, yeah, so this is, I mean, I can't actually speak to sort of what is currently available in Seattle.

This slide is just showing new development between 2016 and 2022. There is more two-plus bedroom units that are part of the city's inventory than have been developed in the last, you know, eight years or so, but this, I don't know what they are.

I'm sorry.

I think, Kito, one of the things we talked about is that we often see something closer to, I want to say we talked about 13 or 15% of buildings that are coming online having 13 or 15% of their units as family-sized housing.

Does that ring a bell?

That does.

Thank you.

Maybe I shouldn't have pointed to this slide.

So for new developments, not counting townhouses, the generally about 12 to 15% of new development in apartments has been two plus bedroom units.

Thank you.

One other point I wanted to make sure we uplift and I think Council Member Lynn, excuse me, Vice Chair Lynn, you came close to this previously, but can you just speak to the role of the foundation inspection in terms of the cutoff date and how we are using that to demonstrate substantial progress?

Yeah, and I should say that that's not the only way to demonstrate substantial progress, but it's one of them that's in there.

There are different, different phases, there are different inspections that are required at different phases of the construction process.

The foundation inspection is relatively early on, it usually precedes the framing, other inspections like that, but it is a pretty good indication that some, that a project is real, that somebody is actually going to be developing what they have pulled their permit for.

If they've gone to the expense of doing the excavation, and pouring the concrete, it's very likely that they are going to complete their project.

And that's why it's identified as a point in time where the city can feel some reassurance that the final product will be delivered.

Thank you so much for that.

Okay, that concludes the questions that I have.

Colleagues, I will turn to you just one more time to see if there are any final questions or comments before I close our committee meeting for the day.

Councilmember Lent, you're recognized.

I just wanted to provide some comments, if that's okay.

First, kind of joining in with Councilmember Lent, thank you for bringing this forward.

It is an important discussion.

It can be a difficult discussion, but we're not going to make progress if we don't lean in to these hard discussions and choices that we're going to have to make.

The other thing that I just want to speak to a little bit is just the headwinds that our development community is facing.

And one of the reasons I originally ran for office is working with our affordable housing developers for many, many years.

Two things were kind of apparent to me.

One, just how hard it is to build.

Council President Hollingsworth's point.

and how we need to get out of our own way sometimes.

And there's a lot of work to do there.

And two, there will always be an incredible need for subsidized housing, but also the market rate side is incredibly important and necessary.

It's a both and, and that we need to do more to make it possible for all types of housing.

But we can't forget the incredible importance of the market rate.

And so I appreciate the presentation by Eco Northwest today.

The other part, you know, that we've heard about is, you know, why this, why now?

And just sort of why this?

I think, you know, I just want to speak to a little bit.

There are a lot of different things that are headwinds or that the city can work on.

And I'm co-chair of the Mayor's Housing Task Force.

we're just getting going and my role there is still a little bit in flux because it's a little bit awkward being a city council member but also kind of being co-chair there so we'll figure that out but I mentioned that you know there's a lot of long-term things that we need to work on whether it's zoning Unfortunately, that's a little bit delayed with phase two.

But there is, you know, the long-term MHA recalibration I think is critical.

Looking at our other permitting requirements, whether it's the utilities, our connection fees, our street use permits, and those In the long term, those are going to make a big difference.

But those are going to take some time to do, including the permanent look at how do we make sure we are more flexible with MHA and the long-term recalibration.

I don't think anything about this precludes us continuing to work on those long-term issues, but we also have sort of immediate needs now.

And one thing that I think that we don't talk enough about, again, is the jobs side of this.

We, you know, people are worried, and I'm worried about the cliff if we don't get new ground breakings.

I mean, you know, I think jobs are wrapping up.

and where's that pipeline going?

And not only the livelihoods of our trades folks, but also, you know, I remember the last downturn and people start leaving the industry.

If they can't find a job, you've got to do something.

And we lose workforce when we don't have that steady pipeline.

So that's something I'm certainly concerned about.

A couple other things that I'm really concerned about is when people aren't pulling their building permits, paying those permit fees, that has real impacts to our permitting department.

And again, if we cut those, if we lose permit fees or if we ever lose permit staff, that is deeply concerning on many levels, including that loss of institutional knowledge.

It can be very devastating.

I also think about all the other benefits, not only the housing benefits that come from new housing of all types, but things like sales taxes.

things like real estate excise taxes all the other corollary benefits of workers coming in and buying lunches things like the you know the new sidewalks and the undergrounding of the utilities even though there's significant costs and we sort of put that on developers those are real benefits to to our city and but Some of those things we can sort of make up in the long term.

I mean, we have our long term housing goals.

But some of these things are urgent.

Again, sort of the jobs.

People need jobs now.

We're in a budget deficit.

And so it would be an incredible benefit to get those sales taxes, to get those permit fees.

And that's sort of an urgent issue.

So I just want to uplift some of those things that are part of the discussion.

Again, I don't think any of this short-term look does anything to affect the critical importance of that long-term work that we need to do of addressing our permit requirements, taking the long-term look at MHA.

Again, just want to appreciate your willingness and hard work of what you've been doing already and to bring this discussion forward.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Lynn.

I appreciate that.

Council President, you're recognized.

And I apologize, I'll be super quick.

I also wanna say that a lot of the pressures around housing, a lot of the affordable housing providers are experiencing as well.

Like we've heard from them, we've heard about them asking about what is our accelerator?

How do we get to a point where we can build housing?

Because I look at the slides, I see a lot of, we talk about housing as units, units, And then, you know, when you're talking to a lot of the affordable housing providers, we're talking about homes and how we're building like these different communities.

Not to say the developers are not, but I'm just saying like for the record, the affordable housing providers are also struggling to build here as well.

And so wanting to make sure that, you know, as we're moving forward and progressing, that we are cutting some of that red tape as well for them because we want to support building all housing.

So I just wanted to just name that for the record and state that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Can I just say one more thing?

So sorry, Chair, and just reminded, you know, thank you for talking about those headwinds, because I think it would be different if we saw those headwinds turning, like, coming down, but there's nothing in the forecast that suggests those headwinds are going to get any easier, you know, interest rates.

going up, tariffs still there.

And so I think it would be different if we were like, OK, things are about to change.

Things are about to get better.

And again, thank you, Council President Hollingsworth.

There is an important aspect of this, of making sure that our affordable housing providers, that we are meeting their needs as well.

And so I think we can do both, but we just can't forget that as well.

Thank you.

Going once.

Yep.

Alright, thank you so much.

I tease colleagues.

I really appreciate you all and your expertise.

And I also want to acknowledge just one more time Council President Hollingsworth and thank you for joining as co-sponsor on the MHA Accelerator Ordinance.

I'm really grateful to have your leadership and your partnership there.

So I will close this out and say this has been a long and packed and full committee and we've heard a lot today.

But at the center of this policy, at the center of this approach, it's about making sure that Seattle stays on track.

We have an obligation for our residents to make sure that we are building enough housing so that we can meet our growth goals.

When we meet those goals, it means that people are able to stay in the city.

It means that we're able to build in a way that is dense and more affordable as we heard from the professor on with us today.

And we're taking on that approach in a way that I believe is deeply balanced to ensure that we are also considering the needs in the affordable sector.

Our affordable sector partners will continue to be incredibly important for the city.

I believe this approach also takes a balanced approach when it comes to displacement and trying to be thoughtful about the need for more housing to help bring those housing costs under control for all of us, while also honoring, responding, and carving out policy that listens to the needs of our residents who are in our highest areas of displacement pressure.

This bill is temporary.

It's an accelerator.

It's meant to jumpstart our housing production at a time when, as we have heard so much today, we face serious headwinds.

We've taken into consideration the need to ensure that we don't have a giant housing cliff by just taking into account our projects that are currently in our cycle and are currently vested.

We need to do more than that.

We need to create space for projects to continue to come online and for projects to get vested and to take advantage of this discount.

There's long-term work that needs to continue happening and thank you so much Council Member Lynn for chairing alongside the mayor and many other folks on the Mayor's Housing Task Force around production, that work is gonna be critical and necessary.

We heard a lot today about other things that come into play and we will continue to do what we can and what is under our control as city leaders to make sure that we're building a city that works for everyone.

So once again, thank you for all of our public commenters today.

Thank you again to our building staff and security who helped us manage, I want to say 150 people in council chambers today.

We really appreciate you and we could not do this work without you.

Finally, I want to share my office will continue the work on this policy and intend to bring forward both the bill and resolution in December with a possible vote as soon as early or late December or early next year.

Is there any further business to come before the committee?

Fantastic.

This concludes the special September 18th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee.

Our next scheduled meeting is on December 9th.

Thank you so much for attending.

It is 4.36 PM and we are adjourned.

Thank you.