Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Committee 91919

Good morning, everyone.

Today is Thursday, September 19, 2019. The Special Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 9.05.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee, and soon I will be joined by our council colleagues.

I'll introduce them as they come in.

Today we have five items on today's agenda, and really today is all about housing.

We have the confirmation, potential confirmation, of Emily Alvarado, who has been nominated to serve as our new Office of Housing Director.

Two new appointments and three reappointments to the Seattle Housing Authority Commission.

We'll also have a briefing and possible vote on the MFTE, or the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption Program, and a presentation from the Office of Housing that's been long awaited, excited to hear from the Race and Social Justice Initiative team.

And lastly, a vote on the repeal of the original Hotel Employees' Health and Safety Ordinance, simply because we passed the four ordinances to replace that last week.

Actually, earlier this week, on Monday.

It's been a long week, everyone.

So thank you so much for joining us, and sorry for a slight delay in our start time.

We do have eight folks signed up to testify, and we'll have two minutes on the clock.

Thank you all for being here on our Everything Housing Related agenda.

The first three people that we have is Paul Lambros, Derek Lum, and Michael Winkler-Chin.

And before we do that, I'm sorry, let me just do a little formality.

Sorry about that, Paul.

Seeing no objection to today's agenda, no objection, today's agenda is adopted, and now we'll move into public testimony.

Again, thanks for commenting on everything related to today's agenda or our work product for the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

Now let's turn to Paul.

Thanks for being here, Paul.

Good morning, council members.

Good morning.

And just pull it a little closer if you can.

Thank you.

My name is Paul Ambrose.

I'm the CEO of Plymouth Housing, and I'm here to enthusiastically support the confirmation of Emily Alvarado.

I've known Emily for many, many years through her work with the Housing Development Consortium and then her work at the Office of Housing, and she is a true advocate for affordable housing.

Plymouth's mission is to provide permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless individuals.

I know homelessness is a priority for Emily, and she's shown that over the years.

Emily is a champion also of racial equity, which I think is really important in affordable housing and during our homeless crisis.

The committee, she's also a collaborative person working with all of us in the nonprofit community.

And I know that she'll be successful in working with other departments in the city and the county and the state.

So I just want to enthusiastically support her confirmation.

It's a great find.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Derek Lum?

Hi, Derek.

Welcome.

Hello.

Hello, Councilmember.

So anyway, my name is Derek.

I'm from interim CDA, and we are coming to comment on MFT legislation.

So we have been serving the International District Committee and other communities for over 50 years.

We believe the MFT program is a key part of addressing our city's affordable housing crisis and encourage its passage.

We are specifically encouraged by many of the mayor's amendments to the legislation, including limiting of rental rates and furthering fair housing through infertive marketing.

These amendments ensure communities like those we serve will not be surprised by sudden sharp increases in NFT rental prices, and will help communities like ours hear about NFT opportunities.

We are also encouraged by the council member's amendments that would lower the AMI affordabilities for studios and one bedroom units, and to make sure those units are comparable to market rate units.

However, we do not want there to be any confusion.

The MFT program serves people whose incomes fall between 49,497,750 primarily.

98% of the MFT units will fall between 65% AMI and 90% AMI.

86% are skewed or one bedrooms.

These are mostly middle income people and 34% of the people in the CID live at or below the federal poverty level.

A proliferation of empty units in the international district or much of the south end would be gentrification and would lead to displacement as new residents change the business environment with new habits and signals are sent to landlords that they can ask for more rent.

Please keep this in mind when debating housing legislation.

I encourage the state to do more to address the issues of displacement and gentrification.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and I'd love to have your written comments if you feel comfortable leaving those.

I appreciate your detailed recommendations there.

The next person that we have is Maiko Winkler-Chin, McKenzie Chase, followed by Emily Mennetti.

Hi, Maiko.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council Member.

How are you?

I'm good, thanks.

I have my notes, sorry.

Great.

I'm Michael Winkler-Chin with the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, and I'm here in strong support of Emily Alvarado's confirmation.

I have known Emily since she worked at the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County a bajillion years ago.

and we are lucky to have her back in Seattle.

We are a community development corporation and are one of the stakeholders within the large bucket of people who work with the Office of Housing.

The things I like about Emily, one is her passion.

And I think that's super important because the job that she's about to step into is a tough one.

And we need someone who at her core wants to do this and believes that the provision of affordable housing is a right.

Second, her values.

She's in the work because she knows housing helps with greater equity issues, especially ones that the city is trying to make better.

The third thing is that she's super smart, strategic, and that she's practical.

She manages and balances both the theoretical and the reality well, because there is a balance that needs to be had.

I told her this before, but I will let you know.

When I appreciate Emily the best is when we disagree on things, which is kind of rare for me, that I actually appreciate somebody who disagrees with me a lot.

And the reason being is that she hears me, she understands my position, she clearly states her position and explains why, and then we work through options that best meet our what we both need.

And so I really appreciate her collaboration, both with myself, other people that work in my industry, and with other departments.

And so thank you, and I think you guys have made a fine choice, so just go for it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Micah.

McKenzie, welcome on up.

Anybody there?

Give me a quick second.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, Council Member Musqueda.

My name is Mackenzie Chase, and I'm here on behalf of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the 2,600 employers we represent.

I'm here to talk about the Multifamily Tax Exemption, MFTE.

This is the most successful program we have in Seattle for creating new middle-income housing units.

I urge you to pass the legislation with the AMI as transmitted, 65% for studios and 75% for one bedrooms.

If we lower the AMI or create too many barriers to participation, we will reduce the number of middle income units and we know that we need housing for that missing middle of folks who don't qualify for affordable housing but can't afford market rate units.

We all know that we need additional housing for folks who fall into the middle income bracket, and if we need more time to discuss this and think about the levels of participation and benchmarks for success, then let's take the time to do that.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mackenzie.

Emily Manetti, followed by Dale Bright, and then Jill Fleming.

Good morning, my name is Emily Minetti and I'm from the Downtown Seattle Association.

DSA is a proud member of Seattle for Everyone and we are here to ask that you renew MFTE without changing the AMI level or with the wage amendment that was just released yesterday afternoon.

MFTE has to date been the city's most successful and prolific source of new middle-income restricted units.

Lowering the AMI threshold for MFTE units on the heels of the newly adopted MHA requirements will reduce participation in the program.

Please keep the AMI thresholds as transmitted, 65% for studios, 75% for one bedrooms, or we would request that the committee table action on the MFT renewal ordinance to facilitate more collaboration with the nonprofit and private developer communities.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thanks.

Dale Bright, we'll come on up and then Jill Fleming.

Hi, Dale.

Good morning, committee.

Morning, Council Member Mosqueda.

I'm sorry.

One second.

I don't know how to turn that off.

Does anybody else?

This is all on Seattle Channel.

Look at me running.

Let's see what I can do here.

Sorry.

Where's your walker?

Look at that.

Multitasking.

All right.

Okay, Dale.

Sorry about that.

You've got all the time in the world.

That's okay.

We're here today to congratulate Emily Alvarado.

You're going to be a great asset for the city.

It's been nice working with you the last three years.

It's gonna be nice running with you at Office of Housing.

We're here really about the concerns around the MFTE program, and I think you've addressed some of them.

You've got us down the road a little ways.

but I do believe we need to look at putting prevailing wage and apprenticeship standards on anything that receives a public subsidy.

This is basically taking from other programs, bond issues and levies that we have approved, voter approved levies and bond issues and taking that money and applying it to housing, which it hasn't been voted on by the voters and it has nothing in the way of prevailing wage or apprenticeship.

This is really concerning to me, but thank you for listening to us and allow us time to perhaps maneuver a little bit down on Olympia But I do have a little bit of problem with taking from other things that we have voted on, things we've worked on, veterans housing, and a lot of other issues and giving it to developers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dale.

And then Jill Fleming.

Good morning.

I'm Jill Fleming.

I'm Deputy Director at Capitol Hill Housing.

I'm here to support the confirmation of Emily Alvarado, as my esteemed colleagues have called out her many positive qualities.

We just support her confirmation as a strong leader for the Office of Housing, who is passionate about affordable housing.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

That concludes everybody who has signed up.

Is there anybody else who'd like to testify today?

Come on up.

It was, we made it look so enticing.

Thank you for being here.

And just state your name for the record and I'll go ahead and get recorded.

Hello, my name is Jesse Scott Candle with Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters.

Thank you for the changes that you added.

We have talked about this multiple times about not having a tracking mechanism in basically a tax break for large corporations, buildings in Seattle.

I do agree with what Dale Bright did say, that there is no regulation requiring apprenticeship utilization and prevailing wage.

I was discussing this with multiple people around the city of Seattle recently, and they were kind of shocked that we're giving taxpayer money away and not requiring prevailing wage.

You know, it's a large amount of money that the city is losing.

But at the same time, we are here to help the homeless population and the distressed population.

So I think there's a balance that we need to look at.

And with this, I'm in favor of it.

I just, I'm glad that we put something for a tracking mechanism in it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you for testifying.

We got you recorded here for the record as well.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Going once, twice.

All right.

Thank you all for being here.

That will conclude today's public testimony.

And we do have a message from some of our council colleagues.

They are on their way and would like to be part of the discussion.

And while we don't have all of the folks who are here to sign up for the Seattle Housing Authority appointments, I thought we'd go ahead and start with item number two and then go to item number one, if that sounds okay with folks.

But if you don't mind reading into the record, item number two, and then we'll go back to item number one.

Agenda item number two, Seattle Housing Authority Commission appointments for briefing and discussion.

Welcome, and if you want to introduce yourself for the record, that would be great.

I'm Andrew Lofton, Executive Director of Seattle Housing Authority.

Excellent.

Thank you for being here, Andrew.

And I know that some of this was put together relatively quickly, so we appreciate both you waiting for these appointments to come forward and reappointments to come onto our agenda.

As you've seen, we've had a packed agenda over the last few months.

I'm very excited about the five individuals who are interested in being part of the Seattle Housing Authority.

efforts and we really do try to encourage folks to come if they're new but I know with timing the two new appointments weren't able to come.

We have three reappointments that we're considering today and we really appreciate you being here to walk us through the credentials.

All of our council colleagues also received their materials and their backgrounds and appreciate their interest in continuing to serve and serving for the first time.

So if you could please walk us through the individuals that we have in front of us.

The two new appointments is Twyla?

Yes.

Twyla Miner and Michael Diaz and then the reappointments are Robert Crutchfield, Paul Parcel and Gerald Smiley.

If you would like to walk us through some of the things that really stood out to you and why you think that these individuals are important one by one and then we'll just consider them all together potentially.

Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank the council member for accommodating the appointments.

I know your schedule is very busy and this was really difficult to get on the schedule so we really appreciate that.

I will just say on the reappointments, starting with Paul Purcell who has been A new appointment to the board has been a considerable asset because of his background in affordable housing development, and he has been engaged all through the authorities' business and has been just a real asset to the board of commissioners themselves.

In addition, Robert Crutchfield, also an appointment, has been tremendously valuable in our work in race and social justice.

background in criminology and social behavioral work has brought a new perspective to the authority, and we've learned and used his expertise quite a bit in our race and social justice efforts, not only for our staff, but for our residents as well.

And Gerald Smiley has been a representation of the labor community and has been extremely helpful in the work that we've been doing with our Section 3 program and making sure that we are identifying apprenticeship opportunities for residents and work opportunities for residents in our JobLink program.

The two new individuals that are coming before the committee, again, I apologize that they couldn't make it.

One of them could not get excused from their employment, and the other had a conflict that couldn't be moved this morning.

I will mention just briefly, first of all, Twyla Minor, she's a resident of Denny Regrade, I mean, excuse me, the Denny Terrace community.

She is very popular in the building itself, has been a long-term resident, and I will just read for you her personal statement of why she wants to be included on the board.

Twyla says, thank you for this consideration.

As a resident of Denny Terrace and the broader community, I take great interest in the well-being of my neighbors.

As resident commissioner, I will represent my community with care and hopefully influence measures to positively affect the people SHA serves.

I am flattered and grateful for this opportunity to include my voice in SHA's leadership.

Similarly, Michael Diaz, also a resident, the two new commissioner nominations are both for SHA resident members on the board.

Michael Diaz also is a resident of University House.

He has previously worked with the Plymouth Housing Group.

During his time at Plymouth, Michael was in charge of the rental office and supervised a small staff.

Michael also contributed a statement that I will read into the record as well.

Michael says, I am honored to be recommended for appointment to the SHA's Board of Commissioners.

I believe my appointment to resident commissioner will be helpful to the Housing Authority, and I am interested in supporting the welfare of my neighbors and other SHA residents.

voice on our board is extremely critical for us.

We believe that they bring a unique perspective that helps keep us grounded in what's really important in how we do our work and for who we do our work.

So we're excited that both Twyla and Michael are interested in being on the board and obviously support their nomination.

Excellent.

Well, again, we have two reappointments and three new appointments.

The new appointments, Twyla Minor and Michael Diaz, and reappointments of Robert Crutchfield, Paul Parcel, and Gerald Smiley.

I want to thank the folks who've already served and want to serve again.

That's, I think, a nod to all the important work that you do at SHA and the work that committee is considering.

I also think that the individuals that you've talked about adding really do provide a great diverse perspective and will help to make sure that we're grounding our policy decisions in real lived experience.

It's been impressive to see their credentials outlined in the packet that we received as well.

And while they're not here, I think you represented them well with their statements, so we really appreciate that.

Any questions at all for the Seattle Housing Authority Commission appointments that have been described?

Thank you so much, Andrew, for all your work.

Thank you.

Andrew, is there anything that you want to flag for us that are like one or two of the biggest items that you believe the Seattle Housing Authority Commission will be taking on in 2020 so that we can sort of start anticipating some of the recommendations or policy discussions that may be coming from that body?

Yeah, I think we are excited about 2020. We launched an acquisition and preservation program at the Seattle Housing Authority this year, and we'll be continuing that into next year, in which we are acquiring properties to keep them affordable.

And our focus will be on properties that have larger bedroom sizes and in areas of high opportunity.

So we anticipate we'll be bringing forth more of those opportunities.

We've closed on a couple of, three properties already this year.

Our board had asked us to acquire up to 500 units.

By mid-2020, we will have achieved that goal.

And we will probably want to work more in tandem with the city on other opportunities that may become available that we can identify properties that we can potentially add to our inventory that will maintain and sustain their affordability into the future.

Excellent, excellent.

And we're really excited about the acquisition component that SHA has been leading on.

We helped to include additional language, I think, for Director for Office of Housing.

And as we do so, we also know that acquisition alone and additional subsidies alone for the existing housing stock are not enough.

So we look forward to working with you to build the housing that we know our communities need, that workers need, that families need, and not just for the population that's here, but the population that's coming.

So look forward to your continued engagement with us as we continue to push for the capital, the construction of additional affordable units.

And it is so exciting to, for example, drive up Yesler and see the way in which you've taken very low rise apartments and multifamily structures and turn them into more dense opportunities that really are inclusive of both mixed income, but also mixed use.

We saw a childcare facility there across the street from a playground that has a water park and a place for kids to play on soccer fields and during unstructured time, that's important for the community.

as well as individuals who live there.

So look forward to working with you so that we can get more of those types of denser, higher, bigger complexes in.

And that shouldn't scare people, because it still has setbacks, and it's right by bike lanes, and it's right by transit, and it's right by parks.

And you can do both density and livability at the same time.

And I think you all have shown what that looks like, especially at the Yesler example.

So thank you for all your work.

Thank you.

We appreciate it, and we're looking forward to more opportunities.

Great, let us know when we can come tour with you anytime.

It was a pleasure to do that earlier this year and happy to meet your new appointees when they come forward.

Just for the record, we're gonna not vote today in committee due to the timing of when these got included on our agenda.

What we need to do is make a motion on Monday to include these five individuals.

We will plan to work with the council president and make sure that they do get on our agenda for Monday and then we will be voting on them there.

They do not have to be present to win, but we will definitely make the motion and include them in the agenda on Monday.

And having seen their credentials on paper and having you testify to their experience, I don't see any problems.

So looking forward to celebrating that with you on Monday.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And again, thank you for your accommodation.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

So we will go back to item number one.

And if you could read item one into the record, the folks who are here to join us for the discussion and potential confirmation of Emily Alvarado for the Office of Housing Director, please join us at the table.

Agenda item number one, appointment of Emily Alvarado as Director of the Office of Housing for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

So, Council Member Baggio, thank you so much for joining us.

I know you wanted to be part of this discussion, and we have had the pleasure of working with Emily Alvarado in her past roles.

As you know, she served as the Interim Executive Director of the Office of Housing for the last several months, and prior to that, she really had a critical role with working with the city council as we've been talking about developing some of the key policies that this committee has taken on, the administration and finance plan, our moral compass document that we talk about, the disposition policies that we passed last year, and our ongoing desire to see housing as a core element of how we create more stability for workers and stability for health.

of our population, so we're excited about this discussion today, and I'll say a few more minutes, or a few more comments in a minute, but just by way of introduction, you need no introduction, but it would be great to have Deputy Mayor Mosley walk us through a little bit about the process that you went through.

Thank you for engaging in a robust process.

We understand there was a lot of community stakeholders involved, and then Emily, we'll turn it over to you, and we'll have you talk a little bit about sort of your vision, and we have your questions that you completed from our questionnaire from City Council and we'll walk through some additional questions that the Council has.

Thanks for being here Deputy Mayor Mosley.

Thank you very much Council Member Mosqueda, Council Member Bagshaw.

I'm very very pleased to be here and to present to you the Mayor's nominee for the Director of the Office of Housing, Emily Alvarado.

We did have a very comprehensive search committee that involved 12 community members and stakeholders active in housing issues, including Andrew Lofton, Paul Ambrose, and Mariko Wicker-Chin.

The committee was chaired by Colleen Echo-Hawk of the Seattle Club.

Chief Seattle Club and Marty Kostra from the Housing Development Corporation.

We had 95 people who applied, so it was a good candidate pool.

The committee interviewed eight people through, in a two-day, over a two-day period of process.

Five of those names were forwarded to the mayor for her consideration and The mayor interviewed all five and then interviewed a second time with two of the candidates and obviously including Emily.

So the mayor gave serious consideration to the nomination and we're very, very pleased to bring Emily's name forward.

So I just jotted down a few words that make me, when I think of Emily, and many of them have already been spoken here this morning with the testimony, but I first met Emily when I was, back when I thought I was retired, and I served on the HALA committee, and Emily was one of the staff people.

that assisted us community volunteers in that process.

And she was definitely one of the person, probably one of the key people that I would approach when.

things were being talked about that I wasn't sure I understood very, very well.

And Emily was very helpful in helping to guide me through that.

And since that time and since being, working very closely with Emily in the last two years in my role and her role at the Office of Housing, the words that kind of, passion is one of the words that comes to me.

It's not just a, it's a passion for housing, it's a passion for people, It's a passion for social and racial justice.

It's a passion for the work that she's been doing over many, many years.

She's also, as I think some of the other folks have mentioned, a person who is very collaborative.

She's a problem solver.

She likes to get things done.

and realizes in getting things done you have to collaborate with a lot of people.

I'm sure you'll hear that when when she talks here in a moment in her statement because that's one of the traits that I think is is most forthcoming.

And finally she is a really creative innovative thinker.

I mean she doesn't just approach things from this is the way we have to do it.

She approaches things from here's the goal.

How do we get to that goal.

And so it's my pleasure to present to you Emily Alvarado and look forward to working with her.

Emily, welcome.

I'd love to hear a little bit more about both your experience from 2014 to 2019 as the Manager of Policy and Equitable Development at the Office of Housing, how that gave you a preview into some of the things you may want to do in this new role as Director, some of the challenges that you see ahead, and as Deputy Mayor Mosley mentioned, I think As you and I've had the chance to only work together for about two years, what you've seen from me is really trying to push the limits on what we currently do and think outside of the box.

And sometimes, you know, that might be uncomfortable, but as Deputy Mayor Mosley said, you often think about how do we get to yes, and that's Council Member Bagshaw's and mine favorite saying, tell us how to get to yes.

So what are some of the things that you would like to do, the challenges that you see, and how do you envision getting to yes on some of the real policy changes that we need?

Well, thank you very much, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you, Councilmember Bagshaw.

Thanks to Deputy Mayor Mosley for introducing me.

And of course, thanks to Mayor Durkin for nominating me to be Director of the Office of Housing.

I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself that gives context to the questions that you just laid out.

I was born in a multiracial household in a multiethnic and socioeconomically diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

Both of my parents are public school educators, so I both know the importance and value of inclusive communities, and I also deeply believe that public servants can help produce equitable outcomes for a city.

As other people have said, I'm also passionate about housing.

Housing really is a basic human need.

But it's so much more than that.

For seniors, it's the way to live with dignity, to age with dignity.

For people experiencing chronic homelessness, it's the end to homelessness and the connection to critical social services.

For low-wage working people, housing dictates your commute, and it dictates how much time you have left over to spend with your children.

And for children, housing is the launching pad for success, and it determines what your neighborhood's school is.

And so when we make investments in housing and when we do housing policy, we're helping many individuals and households, but we're also helping the city at large because we're making health care policy and education policy We're building economic resilience and climate resilience for our city.

I also believe that housing is really critical urban infrastructure.

And if it is left to the market alone, it will be infrastructure for only some, for the wealthy and the privileged.

And I believe that we can build housing infrastructure that's rooted in equity and inclusion for generations to come.

You know, we need housing for people who are on SSI.

We need housing for people who are exiting homelessness, for people making the $15 minimum wage that puts them between 30% and 50% of area median income.

We need housing for middle-income teachers and healthcare workers.

We need housing for single individuals and families, and for multi-generational families that will have 10 members to their household.

We need housing for Native Americans whose land we sit on, And for third generation Seattleites who may have seen the boom in the economy but might not be sharing in that prosperity.

And we need housing for new people like me who came here for school or for work and for immigrants and refugees.

And so we can build all of that housing, but to get there we need resources, We need more innovation.

We need more creativity.

And as has been mentioned before, we need more strategic partnerships.

So I would prioritize four things coming in as director in this challenging time when we have a significant deficit of affordable housing that we're building off of and we have a lot of growth and a gap between rents and incomes.

And the four things I would focus on, first, advancing racial equity.

Our housing policy in America has been rooted in racism.

and we need to make sure that our housing policy moving forward is about advancing racial equity.

Second, we need to continue and scale up our investments in housing for low-income households.

These are the households that are least served by the market and have the most demonstrated need.

Three, we need to promote middle-income housing.

We're a growing city, we have more people coming here, and we should have collaborative ways to identify strategies so that people of all incomes can call Seattle home.

And four, we need to address displacement.

It's something I'm very passionate about and I think it's our core duty under Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

Displacement is our generation's fair housing issue.

and we need to disrupt it with all of our tools.

So we can do this together.

We can make those impacts in housing.

We cannot do it alone.

We need community.

We need nonprofit organizations, our affordable housing developers.

We need the county and the state, and we need the federal government to step up again and stop with its abandonment of low-income housing and reinvigorate their investment in supporting low-income people.

And I look forward to doing that collaborative and important work as the next Director of the Office of Housing, and I welcome any specific questions you have.

Well, that was impressive, inspiring, and I'm ready to pull out my ballot and see if you're on it.

Very, very exciting to be able to hear both the words from you and also to know that when we've had the chance to work together, you've lived those words.

And I think...

As we are in challenging times right now with growing income inequality, the highest rates of homelessness we've seen, the fact that the homelessness number doesn't even reflect the number of folks living in unstable housing situations, and the kind of projections on the horizon in terms of the decline of affordable housing especially in market rate housing for folks 0 to 30 percent of their median income which is your second bullet point and then 30 to 60 percent which is your third bullet point.

We have a lot of work to do together and I really love that you both know the policy well, you understand the importance of leveraging and probably in this day and age what's most important as well is that you know the community partners.

Council Member Bagshaw, there was four folks who came to testify in support of Emily Alvarado's confirmation and they come from a lot of our trusted community partners.

For example, Plymouth Housing, Skipta, PDA, the folks from Capitol Hill Housing, and more I believe the laborers 242 also commented on them so a really robust set of stakeholders that are here this morning but have also written into our office and I think that level of community support is really important as we think about leveraging not just funding and including labor standards and making sure that there's the ability for folks who are currently at risk of displacement to be able to stay in this city, but also to make sure that we are doing this quickly and we're not wasting any time.

So it to me means a lot that you have community partners who are backing you.

I'm happy that the process helped, I think, bring that priority to the surface as well.

It sounds like through some of our community partners who were part of your robust engagement on the consideration of this director, That means a lot.

So I look forward to asking some questions, but I'll turn it over to Council Member Bagshaw to see what she has.

Thank you.

I have no questions, Emily.

But I do want to say how much I appreciate the work that you and I have been able to do together over the past few years.

And I was thrilled to pieces when I heard that you were going to be the appointee.

And I'll tell you the reasons that I really appreciate you.

I've been in many public hearings and many public meetings where you have been put on the firing line and you're up front with a lot of people who may or may not agree with the position we were taking or the direction or impact on their neighborhood.

And you have stood there with the most articulate way of speaking, but also accepting those slings and arrows that were coming at you without wavering.

And I've always been very impressed by that and just how clear you are in your thinking and your ability to talk to this council.

Me personally, it's meant a great deal.

And I just wanna say thank you, frankly, that you did that robust process.

So she had to face the 95 other people that were there.

Never did I doubt for a second that she wouldn't have been the best candidate, but it helps to be able to say, you went through the process, you walked it, And you prevailed.

And I am really happy.

It was funny, when we first heard it on the council about, I don't know, a week or so ago, you could just see the smiles with everybody around the table.

So it's great to have that kind of a relationship going in.

I appreciate the four points you raised.

For me, it is all about housing.

And something that you and I have talked about many times is that the solution to homelessness is, guess what?

More housing.

I believe that you're just the absolute right person to do this, and I completely support your appointment.

Thank you very much.

It's been great collaborating with you over the last few years.

So I do have a few questions.

One is, we've heard from some of our community partners around their appreciation for the language that this committee has continued to elevate in the Office of Housing Policies around community preference and affirmative marketing.

And also, I think there are still barriers in how organizations can help either get the resources they need or the technical assistance that they need to get folks back into the community or make sure that folks aren't displaced.

So that's the first question.

And then the second question I want to ask you, if you don't mind if I lay them out together.

The second question is, we have been unapologetically attempting to make sure that at every single piece of legislation that we have, labor standards are included.

High labor standards are included as we use public dollars to build affordable housing and mixed income housing and also recognizing that we want to create opportunities for folks to live in those homes who are working in this city.

It is important that we're using those public dollars to the best public good and I believe that that includes high labor standards including prevailing wage and apprenticeship standards.

So Yes, there are some limitations that are imposed on us that need to be changed at the state level.

We look forward to working with you on that, too.

But do you have other thoughts, given some of our lessons learned on the K site and other examples that you think are good examples of where we can marry a commitment to building affordable housing, being good stewards of the public dollar, and promoting high labor standards, including prevailing wage, in our city through public projects?

Thank you for those questions.

So the first question I think was around several things.

One is really what does it mean to address displacement from housing policy and investments and how do we make sure that our investments are community driven by those who are most impacted by displacement, particularly communities of color and low income communities.

And so I think there are several things that we can do.

One is we need to advance as many policies as we can to hone our investments and have strong outcomes.

Community preference work was one of those policies.

And to be clear on that, that was something that the community brought to our office, that I heard was a community priority.

We identified, elevated it to the mayor.

The mayor expressed support and we were able to make immediate progress.

So I think that's the path for moving forward on a lot of the work related to displacement and community-driven outcomes.

Also, there's the question about when communities and new community organizations want to own and operate housing.

How do they get into that space?

And increasingly we see community-based organizations who are interested in being housing providers, and we have funded some of those groups over the last few years.

Chief Seattle Club, a good example, a great and important opportunity to have a Native American-led and focused organization being able to serve their people on their land.

You know, we have application.

We just went to the groundbreaking of Filipino Community Village yesterday.

Another opportunity.

That building was done in partnership between the Filipino Community Organization and Beacon Development.

So there are partnership opportunities that we can continue to foster.

And I would have an open door policy to having community organizations come in We can provide technical assistance, we can provide support, and let's see how we can advance folks' vision.

I will say one other thing, though, which I said in my written answer, and that is that supporting organizations through single developments can't be enough, right?

These developments, our affordable housing investments are designed to last for at least 50 years.

So we need to support organization, community organizational health, so that they can continue to steward these assets for a long time.

And we're staying just on the first question, right?

And then we'll get to the labor question.

Absolutely.

Go ahead and take both.

Yeah, go ahead.

And then I have just questions about something you had raised about trying some pilots.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

So I'd like to go into that.

So, on the second question on labor, I strongly believe that affordable housing has to be a vehicle for many public benefits.

And labor equity outcomes must be one of those public benefits.

And I think the office has already included in its policies some explicit policy goals and requirements to achieve those outcomes, including, for example, in our subsidized housing, having construction workers be paid prevailing wages.

I think also we need to look at the folks that provide the critical social services and resident services inside the building and make sure that they, too, have labor equity supports through wages and other kinds of support.

So I'm committed to continuing to look at what that means.

I know that council has asked us to report back on potential data that we could share about what the labor equity outcomes look like already in the investments that we make.

And I'm committed to looking at that data, seeing what it says, partnering with unions, with developers, and with others to see what other opportunities are out there.

That's great.

I'm not sure I heard anybody talk about apprentices and the kind of internships that we have seen and great opportunities for people to be included.

And just this last week when our former speaker, Frank Chopp, was with us, about the pilot program that we're going to be conducting at Magnuson Park.

I'm very excited to see what kind of opportunities that we can develop there.

Our Seattle Conservation Corps is an example of people that are returning to the workforce.

Some of them have been released from prison.

Others have just been struggling in other ways, but are now employed.

One of the things that our good friend Dale Bright had mentioned previously is that having those internship opportunities and then to be able to live there.

You've been somebody who participated having an apprenticeship or early internship or pre-apprenticeship programs, I think are invaluable for what we're trying to do.

So maybe you could just please use that example as a springboard.

What else can we do?

Are there modular opportunities, things that we can get people inside?

Yeah, I mean, I think we are going to need to look at more innovations and creativity at the same time that we continue to scale up what we know has been successful.

And so at Sandpoint, we did an exciting partnership where we didn't have to make an investment, but we could facilitate through a lease change for low-cost cottages to be put in place using community colleges and training centers as the way in which those were developed.

The K site is another pilot where we piloted on public land implementation of a community workforce agreement and we're waiting for the data and the evaluation to come back from that so we can say what were the labor equity outcomes, what were any cost implications if those existed, and what can we do moving forward.

So I think that pilots are a way that we can test out new concepts and continue to think through how we have cost savings, more public benefits, sometimes those are in tension with one another, but really exploring what we're able to get out.

That's great, and on that case site in particular, I want to appreciate you again for your vision of working with the community.

The Uptown Community Alliance were They were just dogged about wanting to make sure that we had low income and more affordable housing in their neighborhood.

And of course, we're trying to be responsive to when opportunities open that we jump on those for more housing.

But in that particular case, you blended what the neighborhood wanted.

So that and our art and culture overlay, fabulous opportunity to combine those things.

In your questionnaire, we asked about your vision of engaging and working collaboratively with council.

I think that on the case side example, we also saw you work doggedly to try to include some of the priorities that came from council, specifically me.

And, you know, on behalf of the housing committee and the labor committee, what we've tried to do in this body is bring together labor priorities in every piece of legislation that we have.

And I think in our initial conversations around including labor standards on K-site, there was some resistance, not from you, but there was resistance to, hey, this is pretty baked.

We're ready to go.

It's, you know, not great timing to try to include this language.

And we were adamant that we had to see this, especially in a public good, in a public piece of property.

And you helped to work with us to make sure that the language both was workable and met the goals of our office and labor and I think the full committee.

So I think that's a great example of both listening to community needs, listening to council needs, and also being driven by your mission at the Office of Housing and in the executives branch to bring forward a productive piece of policy that met all those goals.

It's not an easy dance as we've all experienced and appreciate your work especially on that case site with the labor standards so that we could highlight how this could potentially be successful in the future.

Any other questions?

We could spend all day singing your praises.

But I do want to acknowledge something that I didn't know before, that you were a Gates Scholar at the UW Law School.

For people who may not know what that means, it is a big deal.

And to be awarded one of those public sector scholarships, and it was full tuition.

And I think you got some additional support from that.

That is a real statement, not only on your intelligence, but your character, and that's pretty great.

Thank you.

It was really an honor to receive that scholarship, which was created for Bill Gates Sr.' 's 80th birthday present, and it was a really way to encourage people to get into or stay into public service, something that I never doubted that I would be in, but I'm grateful for that.

Yes, great.

Very good.

Any additional comments, Deputy Mayor Mosley?

No, I think you've seen the reason the mayor picked Emily.

Yeah, excellent.

So seeing no other comments, I would like to move the committee recommend passage of the appointment of Emily Alvarado as the Director of the Office of Housing.

Second, with pleasure.

Any other additional comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

Everybody in the audience raise your hand too.

Excellent, yay.

Well, this is a wonderful welcome to your new role.

We look forward to the official confirmation, which would come before full council on September 23rd.

Of course, we'd love to see you.

You're not required to be there, but if you're there, we'd love to have you maybe make a few remarks and look forward to seeing you if you're going to be there on the 23rd at 2 p.m.

Huge thank you to the folks who came to testify.

The diverse set of speakers this morning was really a testament to all the work that you've done already in this city.

Looking forward to working with you more.

Thank you very much.

I look forward to continuing to work with you.

Just a quick question.

Are you planning to stay for the MFTE discussion?

I will be in and out, but Jennifer Labreck from our office will be answering questions.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Well done.

Well, thank you again, Deputy Mayor Mosley, and please pass on our appreciation to the mayor.

Thank you.

Great, so we will be moving to item number three, which has been teed up as the MFTE discussion, and Farida is going to read into the record item number three.

We're going to have at the table Tracy Ratcliffe, Ali Panucci from central staff, and welcome.

Yeah, Jennifer, thank you for being here.

Agenda item number three, council bill 119615, an ordinance relating to the multifamily housing property tax exemption program for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

And if you could read your names into the record, and then we'll go ahead and get started.

Sure.

Tracy Ressive, Council Central Staff.

Jennifer Labreck, Office of Housing.

Allie Panucci, Council Central Staff.

Excellent.

So, Council Member Bagshaw, you may have caught it this morning.

I know you were here and watching online.

There was a few folks who did testify.

We want to appreciate their testimony.

There is a strong message coming from Labor that they appreciate the amendments that we will talk about here soon that we were able to get in.

There was a few concerns raised from the Downtown Seattle Association and the Chamber about AMI potential changes.

And I think that the conversation that we'll have at the table today will build on the discussion that we had last committee meeting.

We are really excited, I think, about some of the potential amendments that are being included today.

And I think it's important to clarify the record on how those will affect the program and potential development of affordable housing.

So I know our team is prepared to do that.

And also just want to say for the record, this is the third time the multifamily tax exemption or MFT has been discussed in our committee.

We have had a briefing on August 1st and then again September 11th.

So today we're going to revisit the amendments that Tracy discussed at last committee's meeting and discuss a few additional possible amendments that you also heard of.

If our friends from labor are still here, they had talked about that in their public testimony.

some additional amendments that we'd like to see included before we move forward.

Recognizing that this is the third time we've heard it, I'll go ahead and let central staff and the team at OH walk through the presentation and then I may have some additional comments afterwards.

Can I throw something in at the front end and then maybe you can just include this in your conversation.

So I I will say that I've not been as deeply engaged in this particular issue as some others.

So I'd love to have you talk about this and the fact that you, this is like you said, the third time that we've had this in this committee.

So the question that came to me last night was a question that said that there are some concerns about multiple locations in which it would need to be amended.

That I believe they're talking about the particular legislation.

but also there is some concern about, let's see if I can just even understand this.

Council Member Baggio, do you mind if we, as you're pulling that up, if we start with the presentation and then if the questions aren't answered, we'll let's go ahead.

Oh, I guess it's just lowering the AMI limit.

I think that's the major thing.

So I apologize, but if you could just explain.

what the impact's going to be, how it's going to impact developers and builders and people who are going to live there, be very helpful to understand.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that'll be really good clarification because it's going to be shockingly minor.

No, you're great.

All the questions are good.

Yes, go ahead, Tracy.

Wonderful.

Okay, so just to remind the public, not that all the folks here in the table and in the room likely know about the MFTE program, It is a 12-year tax exemption that's provided from property taxes for rental and home ownership projects that include a certain percentage of units with specific affordability requirements.

Affordability levels do vary by the size of the unit and rental versus home ownership projects.

The exemption applies to all of the units in a project, both affordable and market rate and related spaces, but does not include the land or non-residential improvements.

So the first set of amendments that we'll talk about are the amendments that the executive had proposed that are incorporated in the substitute that is before you today.

So the first would impose a some requirements around the area median income and the rental rates that are tied to those median income for affordable MFT units.

And it will just not permit those rates and the income levels to go down from year to year.

And also puts a cap on an increase of not more than 4.5% from year to year.

And this is really trying to address what have been some fairly significant fluctuations during our particularly robust economic time in terms of the AMI that has then had impacts on the rental rates for affordable units because those are tied to the AMI.

So we're just kind of putting some boundaries around those decreases or increases.

and we think have reached a balance for all parties concerned in terms of those boundaries.

The next is that there is specific language added that has affirming, furthering fair housing, affirmatively furthering fair housing as a specific purpose of this program.

And to bolster that, it also does require developers of these projects to implement an affirmative housing plan, marketing plan that's approved by the Office of Housing.

The next is it does extend the deadline for submittal of a completed application for developers who want to participate in the program.

They now can apply up to six months prior to completion of a project.

And that's as demonstrated by the issuance of a temporary certificate of occupancy, et cetera.

Currently, MFP applications actually have to be submitted prior to the issuance of the first building permit.

So we're giving them a lot more time to decide as they move down through the project development process whether they want to participate in the program.

In terms of being able to extend their application, there's a deadline by which they have to kind of finish up the work and actually begin to participate in the program.

We've extended that to a 60-day timeline.

now from the expiration of the conditional certificate.

And then finally we have the mayor's office appropriately modifies the expiration date for the program and changes it to December 31st, 2023, which extends it another four years.

Moving to the proposed amendments that Council Member Mosqueda had included in the bill as introduced and that we discussed last year.

Last week, sorry, last year, last week.

Feels like it's been a year.

So the first is modifications to the affordability levels.

She did include a change that would change studios from a 65% of AMI to 60% of AMI, so a 5% drop.

That amounts to about $100 per unit per month.

When you look at the difference between the rent for 65% of AMI and 60% of AMI.

And we also decreased the AMI for the one bedrooms from 75% to 70% of AMI.

Once again, representing about $100 difference between the 70% and the 75% affordability level.

And I think it's important for background to talk about where that analysis came from.

We didn't just pull this number out because 60 sounded like a round number.

It is well informed by some of the data that we pulled together.

So I'm looking at our team here.

Allie, it looks like you're teed up to talk about the analysis that was done.

And if you could talk a little bit about the impact that we have potentially seen in terms of whether or not that would have an impact on the developer market, how many units would be created, et cetera.

Great, thank you.

So we looked at a number of data points.

So similar to the analysis that the executive does in looking at this program, we are really looking at the public benefit and the incentive to the developer to participate.

So we are essentially looking at the rent foregone that the developer is giving up by having these units with lower rents in their building versus the tax incentive that they achieve.

And because this is in a a voluntary program, there needs to be a reason to participate.

So in general, you are looking for sort of a balance between that rent foregone and the tax incentive gained, and it probably needs to be greater than one, right?

So they are getting a a bit more of a tax incentive is greater than the rent foregone.

So we looked at that at the levels that the executive proposed maintaining the current affordability levels, and then looked at what happens when we modify them slightly for the studios and one bedrooms, which are the units that have the greatest participation in this program.

And we found that that change is relatively minor, that there is still a significant benefit for the developer to participate in this program.

And then we also looked at the investment outcomes and found that it still appears to be profitable for a developer to participate in this program.

And so one of the things that is also included in the legislation is that the Office of Housing reports annually on project participation, number of units, and all of that type of thing.

And we added some language in the amendments to ask that the Office of Housing uses the information they're collecting and reporting on in that annual report to make recommendations to adjust the program.

So if we did, in fact, see that these changes were significantly decreasing participation in the program, the council would have the opportunity to adjust the area median income or other components of the program.

But in trying to bring down the levels of affordability, what we're really looking at here is maintaining the types of households we're seeing.

And so while we have seen area median incomes going up, particularly because people at the highest end of the spectrum are earning more.

A lot of the lower income families who were, you know, 65% AMI last year would be 60% AMI this year.

If you look at 2018, the income for a two-person household in 2018 at 65% AMI in 2019, they're closer to 60% AMI.

So it's trying to balance who we're serving and ensuring that there's still an incentive for developers to participate.

So let me put a fine point on that last comment that you made, Ali, about sort of the way in which income inequality has skewed our AMI understanding.

If that's a crude way or a fair way to put it, let me know.

I think that that's an important element.

And then I want to go back to the comment that you made that there's relatively minor change, if at all, for any of the developers.

So let's go back to that in a second.

But Council Member Beksha, as we've talked about in the Select Committee on Housing and Affordability Issues, we know that there's been an increase in the population at the highest income levels here.

And when we see more and more individuals able to move to the city and potentially purchase a home, ideally, you know, we would see the overall income of the city grow.

But what we've actually seen is as the average income grows in the city, it's because there's more individuals now earning a higher wage over six figures, for example, at the highest end.

And the individuals at the lower end of the income spectrum, have not actually seen an increase in their wages.

So as Ali pointed out, somebody who used to be at 65% of the area median income is now actually earning that same wage at 60% of the area median income.

If we're trying to be intentional about who we're serving with these dollars, recognizing the public good aspect of it, it is a relatively minor change when you think about the AMI threshold.

And in theory, it is the same type of folks, the same working family folks that we're trying to serve.

Ideally, we would be directing these dollars, in my opinion, ideally, we would be directing these dollars to the lowest income, but we have a huge portion of the population who is working families and still barely able to afford to live in this city.

So I believe that what we're doing here through MFT is still a valuable tool in keeping it directed at working families, middle-income families at 60% AMI and below, we're still serving that population that last year or the year prior was at 65% AMI.

So I think that's an important aspect for folks to consider as we think about how our area median income has changed over the last few years, especially the last six years.

We now see over 52% of the wages in this city going to just 20% of the population.

That's something that was not the case six years ago.

So it's, in one aspect, a way for us to maintain our goals originally set out in MFT.

And then Ali, I think Council Member Baxhaw had the same question that I had at the beginning, which is we really want to underscore and clarify how these potential changes from, for example, 65 to 60% AMI would, if at all, affect developer participation based on the data, not based on like anecdotes, right?

But based on the data that we saw from the materials that you pulled together.

and welcome to the table Erin House who's been working closely with central staff as well.

So to put a sort of more a finer point on that if you look at the sort of annual tax savings per unit that a developer would receive and the annual rent lost per unit with the rent restricted units and note that these numbers are Citywide averages and numbers vary project to project and location to location, but in looking at the analysis in general, for a developer participating in the program that is providing 20% of their units at MFTE, the annual developer benefit per unit is around $1,180.

So $1,180 per unit is what they, after you take their tax savings, the rent loss, they are gaining, you know, they're still receiving that benefit.

With the bill as introduced with the lower AMI units, it's closer to $1,000.

So it's about $180 difference per unit, but they are still receiving about $1,000 per unit benefit annually.

So quick math, help me with the delta.

My goal on all this is we need MFTE to be working.

And I want to be able to point to it and say, it's worked for the last couple of decades.

We need to do more, not less.

So in your analysis, do we end up at the end of the day saying, developers are going to continue to want to utilize this program?

Or have we gone too far in the numbers?

Because I agree with her, we need more units at zero to 30. We know that's going to make a huge difference.

And if this is filling middle income, that's good too, because we need it.

We need every tool.

What do we think in terms of whether the developers will continue to be incentivized.

I think our analysis suggests there's still a benefit to developers to participate.

We couldn't possibly predict every developer's decision, but we think the changes are minor enough that we'll continue to see similar participation in the project, but we won't know until the rules are in place and projects start start applying and again if we saw a decrease the council has the ability they do not have to wait until the program expires in four years to adjust those but we think that these adjustments are small enough and continue to provide a benefit to developers that participation will continue.

And maybe Council Member Mosqueda and Erin, thank you both for all your hard work on this.

Just tell me how we think this is going to be coming forward.

So if the community is saying either it's not working as well or we think it should be different, what is the opportunity?

You're going to be here and I'm respectful that you're going to be leading this charge, what does that look like?

And how do we make those decisions?

I think that if, so the Office of Housing reports twice a year on the general participation in the project.

And as the current chair and whoever is the future chair of the housing committee, That will be information provided to them and the Office of Housing, as was just demonstrated in the previous conversation, has a good relationship with the council and has the opportunity to report outside of those formal reporting areas.

If they are seeing a significant drop in participation and believe that it is due to these adjustments in the area median income, the council can consider adjusting those.

Now, what is difficult is there are a variety of factors that could impact participation including changes in the market.

And so they all have to take a look at the big picture and try to understand what is impacting it and we can make adjustments in the future.

So there's opportunities to amend the legislation at the councils.

And midstream, we're anticipating it could be a year from now if you looked at it and you clearly had data to support the decision to go up or down.

We could make that.

in a year.

We don't have to wait for five.

Correct.

And remind us of when those two reports come in biannually.

They come in in March.

I think we are proposing a change in the reporting schedule and we will be submitting report in September, which is really a pipeline report to report on what we're seeing in terms of applications and pending applications, which is our first indication if things are changing.

We can compare that against past application rates to see if we've seen some kind of change in program usage or uptick.

And then we have an annual report that's submitted in March, which provides a more extensive amount of information.

which is a pipeline update, but also reports on the value of the tax exemption overall and things like that.

So there's two opportunities to sort of monitor what impact the legislation might have on participation in the program.

Excellent.

Really important questions, and I know that what we try to do is make data-informed decisions.

We hear a lot of anecdotes that resonate with us on council and I think when we heard initially about how do we scale the MFT program, if at all, the question was what is possible to make sure that there's still an incentive to build affordable housing and that it could potentially result in more affordable units being on the market because this is a carrot, this is not a stick, it's a big carrot as you've heard from our labor partners.

In some realms people do want us to be using these public dollars for other use.

This is an exemption from a tax that we would have otherwise be getting in revenue and in theory we could be using those dollars for other public benefits.

So as we think about how this policy is rolled out, how the carrot remains in place and really directing our public dollars and incentives to building affordable units and making sure more people can stay in those units for longer periods of time.

There was a lot of things that I wanted to do in this legislation that we also know require state action.

I would love for you to talk a little bit about some of the labor pieces that are included if we want to add anything else to that and also maybe some of the things that really do require state action.

So if we can just continue on, we will get to that actually.

That's okay, it's not a problem.

So let's just move on to the next item, next change that was included in the bill as it was introduced.

And that is to modify the affordability levels for a small efficiency dwelling units only.

So if we have a building that has only CDs in it, we are going to allow them to actually change the MI level.

to 50% of AMI.

For those buildings that have a mix of CDUs and other unit sizes, they would stay at what is the current requirement, which is 40% of AMI.

So this is in response directly to developers raising a concern that that 40% level for all CD building or unit buildings was too low.

And so we're trying to bump it up a little bit and think that that comes close to kind of approximating again, this balance between what the market rents might be and trying to get some affordability and public benefit out of it.

The next would be to increase the two plus bedroom set aside requirement.

So currently, if you have a certain percentage of two bedroom units in your projects that are, you get to only have to have your affordability level of units set aside at 20% of the total project.

So 20% of the units in the project would have to be those affordable units.

If you don't have, I think it's 4%, or actually it's a number now of two plus bedrooms in your project.

then you actually have to have 25% of your total projects as affordable units.

We have looked at the data and believe that we actually can increase the required two bedroom set aside to being 8%.

It currently now is about 4%.

So.

Can you, and this is on the fly, but assume we've got a hundred units.

So describe that again.

That would be eight units have to be set aside as two bedroom units versus four.

Right.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah, if it's a hundred units, it would be eight.

And four right now.

Correct.

Four have to be set aside as two percent.

And in your modeling, have you looked at these CDUs, how that would be impacted?

Because I think these, the smaller units can be extraordinarily helpful for very low income and how that raising it between 40 to 50%, what kind of an impact that would have on the incentive to develop these?

So these are sort of two separate questions.

So the changes related to CDUs are really CDU only buildings.

So 100% of the unit are small efficiency dwelling units.

In those cases now, under the mayor's proposal and under council member Mosquito's, excuse me, bill is introduced, would require that 25% of those CDUs are affordable because you only get the reduction to 20% of units if you have a minimum number of two-bedroom units.

So that doesn't change.

What changed related to CDUs was allowing those units, those 25% of the CDUs to be affordable to households making 50% of AMI rather than 40% of AMI.

that was intended to make it more, to provide more of an incentive to developers to participate if they were building CEDU only buildings.

In buildings that are providing a mix of unit types, which is the majority of projects that we see participating in the program, the requirement would be you can still provide CEDUs and some of those CEDUs would be the MFTE units.

But if you have at least 8% of the total units in the building as two bedroom, two or more bedroom units, then you only have to provide 20 20 percent of the total units as affordable and those 20 percent would be would represent a mix of unit types and so the requirements are that if you're providing you know all sorts of unit types in the building that the MFTE units are similar in size and type of unit so if you know it would be some C2, some one bedroom, some two two-bedroom units, that type of thing.

What we saw in looking at the data is that most projects that are participating in the program are meeting the requirement to provide the minimum number of two-bedroom units.

So they're able to provide only the 20% of MFTE units.

And what we saw even further is that of those projects that get that reduced set-aside, most of them are providing more than 4% and more than 8%.

And that's where we were looking at an opportunity to continue one of the goals that this council has been bringing forward in many of their programs that came up a lot in the discussions of the mandatory housing affordability and other land use changes was opportunities to provide incentives or requirements to provide more family size unit and buildings.

And so this change is really along furthering that goal.

Just on for a definitional purpose, I think there's a difference between CEDU and STUDIO.

Are you using them interchangeably?

No, they are different.

And I don't know if I have the language in front of me, but small efficiency dwelling units are a specific unit type that are defined in the land use code and have different development standards.

And those regulations were changed a number of years ago by this council, but it requires a certain amount of, floor area that is smaller than a studio, it must have a bathroom and some sort of kitchen features, like a small refrigerator and a sink and that type of thing.

Thanks.

Good question.

Anything else to add on that?

Yes, so the final amendment that you had incorporated in your bill as introduced was to expand the comparability requirements of affordable units.

There are already existing requirements in the program that had to do, generally speaking, with comparability of the affordable units again to the market rate units.

Your proposal just added some more specifics regarding number and size of bedrooms and bathrooms in that unit area, access to amenity areas, functionality, and the distribution of units in the building.

So just adding a few more specifics about what does comparability look like between the MFT units and the affordability units.

I don't even wanna go through that.

So Tracy just went through the changes that were made to the program prior to introduction.

So those changes are included in the bill as introduced.

I'm going to walk through a few additional changes that Council Member Mosqueda asked us to bring forward for discussion that are included in the substitute bill that's attached in attachment one to the memo.

They're all in one substitute to allow the vote on the package of amendments.

The first amendment is related to the annual reporting requirements.

The amendment moves the requirements for the annual report on the MFT program to a new standalone section and adds a requirement that the report includes information on the value of the tax exemption granted.

any changes in the housing market and changes to state law related to the MFTE program and labor standards that could inform recommendations from the Office of Housing on how to modify.

So this is getting to your previous question, Council Member Bagshaw, it's more explicit.

The Office of Housing does this work, much of this work anyways, but this is an explicit ask that they look at that information and make recommendations to the council on any adjustments that are needed to the, to the program.

The next amendment, which is related to the annual reporting requirements, would require data collection on construction wages, apprenticeship utilization, number of workers completing pre-apprenticeship programs, and workers participating in mentoring or other training programs.

This would be included in the annual report and could inform future discussions about modifications to the MFTE program to advance labor equity goals.

As Council Member Mosqueda referenced, she asked us to look at how, if we introduced requirements for some of these things at this point, it might impact program participation.

And based on the data we had available, it looked like incorporating these changes now may have significant impacts on program participation.

And so this amendment is really about getting more information and more data about what's actually happening on these programs, what the wage data looks like, so we can have a better informed decision about trying to incorporate some of these labor equity goals in future iterations of the program.

Timing on those, when, were these new like since our last meeting?

Yeah, I think it's important to clarify that because some misinformation was shared during public testimony.

The ones that folks spoke about that they were concerned about were actually released when the legislation was introduced in this committee.

So, for example, that includes the affordability requirements in the first half of the conversation that we've had so far.

Those were all already part of the discussion.

There was four amendments that we just walked through that Ali walked us through.

And for example, on the distribution requirements within the high-rise buildings, that's something that really came to us from the developer community and folks had been talking about that.

in concept for the last few weeks.

The data collection on labor equity goals is something that we've been discussing in concept as well.

As you can see, this is a collection of ideas that we've been talking about publicly, but also wanted to make sure that we were building on past discussions that we've had.

Again, for example, the type of information that we're seeking to gather from K-site We talked about that at last week's committee meeting.

So these two are ones that really were published yesterday, but the rest of them, including the affordability requirements, which seems to be what folks were commenting on, those have been available for the last few weeks and actually were part of the original publication of the language as amended when introduced in this committee.

It's not accurate to say that those were shared yesterday, but specific to items two and three, yes, in theory those were shared yesterday according to our rules, but also were also part of the conversation in a broader sense with some stakeholders and are not specific to the issues that were raised during public testimony.

I will just also acknowledge for the record I would have loved to do more on the labor standards component here And I appreciate the data driven approach that we've taken on every single piece of legislation including this one, and I think that there is a desire for us to be very clear in our legislative intent and my legislative intent here is to make sure that these public dollars that are being used as tax incentives or sorry tax exemptions are truly being used to incentivize the development of affordable housing and make sure that more folks are able to live in the city.

I think that we've seen in many cases many of the developers taking the opportunity to use MFTE under the statement that they're creating affordable housing on-site because they're getting MFTE dollars.

I think the questions that have been raised is, is that enough?

Are we getting enough of a public benefit back from the MFTE dollars?

And part of what I'd love to see is prevailing wage requirements included on-site and tied into MFTE tax exemptions, and I understand that's something that has to be discussed at the state level.

We've talked to our Office of Intergovernmental Relations folks and have put on the radar that this is clearly something that has come up multiple years in a row, but something that we want to be explicitly clear about.

We have every four years an opportunity for us to really robustly look at the MFTE program, and while we can't take on this element, it appears at the city level.

Could you talk a little bit more about the state requirements around prevailing wage and I guess the limitations that we may have here at the city.

So some of the language in the annual reporting section talks about if there are changes at the state level to the MFT program or labor standards, that that again is something that OH will come and report on at the annual reporting period and can make recommendations at that annual reporting time about any changes that the council would want to consider.

And frankly, We track those changes as well that are going on at the state.

And so if we see things happening, we don't have to wait for OH to come into us and say, oh, the state's made this change, and we want to know.

We can actually generate that desire to make a change as well on our own in case people are worried that.

You know, we are just waiting for the executive to deliver to us needed changes.

We monitor what's going on at the state level.

So if we see some changes that permit us to make some changes, we have the ability ourselves to analyze and decide do we want to make some changes to mirror what happens at the state level.

So just a quick question on that.

What do we anticipate the changes to be based upon what we're hearing and what intergovernment relations is doing?

I defer to conversations that our friends in the Building Construction Trades, Laborers 242, Northwest Carpenters have been involved in and have raised in public testimony.

I know that as a general principle, When we use public dollars, we want those to be going to good living wage jobs and promoting prevailing wage.

Working with our union partners, we've seen the ability for public dollars to go into good public works programs, and I think that in If you consider the fact that this tax exemption is in essence not allowing a certain revenue stream back to the city, the question is what does the city get for it?

And if we're able to train folks in good living wage jobs with high labor standards and making sure that those public dollars are truly being used as an incentive to build affordable housing and create good living wage jobs, then that's the right balance.

I think that the desire would be to see prevailing wage applied to MFTE programs, and that would be the public policy change the state would be considering And I know Office of Intergovernmental Relations is looking into what that policy is, but our friends from the labor community have been advocating for that for a while.

So I wouldn't be surprised if it came back next year.

And I think what the language that you see in the amended version here anticipates is that if that policy change happens, we at City Council get ample time to discuss how that would be applied to the city.

and take into consideration any changes at the state level, which we'd obviously have to do anyways, but it puts a nice marker on the books for the city to come back and say, now's the time for us to revisit how this affects us.

But it's more prospective looking and assumes that there will be a conversation in the future that we should be prepared to have as well.

Great.

And I really want to appreciate the fact that our labor partners have been working with us, but also with the business community, because we know that if they're getting fair wages, they can stay here in the city with us.

And also, I just so respect their ability in terms of how they are working on a first class job to take care of these.

I think the units are maybe difficult to build.

in a financially reasonable way.

At least I hear that there are $330,000 a piece.

And I just really want to acknowledge that having people who want to be on those jobs, I think it's really important.

So thank you for that.

Can I just ask one question?

Now, my understanding, and if I'm just completely off, feel free to jump in here.

But my understanding is on the MFTE program that the city doesn't lose money on that.

It's just the tax is redistributed.

Actually, that's not the case.

Typically, I think it's about a, is it about a 50, 40s?

Has it been historically a 50, 40 split?

So there is a portion, depending on when the assessor goes out and identifies a project as eligible for the program, that the tax that would be collected is either essentially foregone.

In other words, it isn't paid on that project and it can be a whole project amount or it can be partial project until the expiration of the property tax at 12 years.

And in the other case, when the assessor hits the assessment, if it's before the property has, I think, actually formally been recognized at the property tax exemption, they actually can incorporate the value of that project.

And that then gets shifted to other property tax owners.

So it is a mix of rent that is actually foregone.

We do not see it for a 12-year period.

And then actually amount of tax that gets shifted to other property tax owners.

And it really has to do with the assessor and the way that they go out.

And when they assess properties that are participating in the property, we don't have control over it.

They actually don't.

We've had lots of conversations with them over the years about, is there a way for us to?

And there's not.

There is just a timing that they do in terms of how they go out and do their assessment and identification of projects that we can't manipulate in any way.

And I think historically, it's been about a 50-40 or 60-40, 50-50 split in terms of what's been forgotten and what's been able to be shifted to other property owners.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

Are there any more framing comments?

And Erin, if you have anything, you're also welcome to chime in.

Any other framing comments on these issues before we go into final questions?

There were actually two more.

I'm so sorry.

That's OK.

Just really only one that's most important, I think, to talk about.

And that's the high-rise one.

Yeah, there's one amendment that you actually summarized in general, but I hadn't actually spoke to, which is related to the MFT unit distribution requirements for high-rise construction.

As introduced, as Tracy went over, there are requirements for distribution and comparability requirements for MFT units in buildings.

This amendment would require that the Office of Housing develop by rule criteria to provide greater flexibility for the distribution requirements MFTE units in high-rise buildings that for purposes of this amendment is defined as buildings over 95 feet in height.

And so they will look at that those specific project types and come up with some criteria to understand how those requirements could be applied differently to those buildings to address concerns about the different the variability in rents and high-rise buildings due to view-related premiums, essentially, but also trying to hold to the requirements and values that have been incorporated into affordable housing programs in the city that the affordable units are mixed in and are similar and have the same amenities as other units in the building.

So just so I understand, let's say we've got a 10 stories or less.

This would not apply.

But taller than 100 feet, I said 95 feet, but taller than 10 stories more or less, then at that point, the upper levels can be reserved for a higher market rate rent and it would be distributed, let's say, but the a hundred feet and below.

Yeah.

And that is where I think that, you know, if it's, if we're talking about a 400 foot building, I don't think we have had the time to really understand where the, where the level should be.

Is it the top 10 floors should be our sort of the premium views and MFT units should be distributed throughout the, you know, bottom 300 feet of the building or where that line should be.

And we need to look both at how the project will work with these requirements, but also that it doesn't result in the bottom five floors being all MFTE units and then the rest of the building being market rate units.

And so that is why looking at this, there's more time needed to develop this specific criteria and where that threshold should be.

Great, I appreciate that.

I think it's a rational and reasonable approach.

I really don't want to end up with, you know, the poor door where people come in and you're expected to be somewhere on the, you know, the alley side and floors one and two.

So we are talking about giving the Office of Housing that flexibility to be able to figure out how they're going to be distributed, but still giving a developer an opportunity to say these floors and up, like you said, the view premium that they won't lose on those upper floors.

Do I have that more or less summarized correctly?

Yeah, it gives Office of Housing the flexibility to create the criteria and determine where, because it's, you know, the tax benefit applies to the entire building, so we want to make sure we're balancing the public benefit with the incentive provided to the developer.

And I think this ties into number one on the slide as well.

As we have incorporated additional changes into the data that will be reported from Office of Housing back to us, one of the things that's really critical that you'll see in the amendments we've made is an equity element.

We want to know, for example, the demographic data of the residents that we're serving with the MFTE program, the MFT units, and where those units are at.

Who we're serving and making sure that there's truly a racial equity Element to the program as as well as I think a economic justice Analysis as well, so we'll get additional data back and part of what I'd love to work with office of housing on is is how we are infusing what we'll hear from in a second our racial justice commitments into the public policies that we believe forthcoming.

So RSJI will be presenting here in a few minutes, but we also know that it's important to apply that RSJI lens to this policy specifically, but to all policies at Office of Housing.

So it'll be something that I'll be looking forward to including in the report back as well.

How are we doing with implementing this specific policy?

The policy recommendation as a standalone, I don't have a concern with because I think trying to find that right balance, as you talked about, is important.

And I have the confidence that the Office of Housing will be working with key stakeholders to make sure that we have an equitable policy to be applied for this specific amendment.

So I was happy to include it and also know that there's additional work to be done, as Ali mentioned, and look forward to getting the update on what the exact language of the public policy will be.

Erin, you did a wonderful little one pager and I want to say thank you for that.

I just want to ask if these numbers are correct, because what I had heard, and just yesterday, so in the last 24 hours, that some are concerned about the impact on the dollar amounts that they would lose if we raised or lowered the threshold.

And I'm looking at these numbers, and I'm seeing a difference of $1.

between 2018 and 2019, that currently in a studio at 65% AMI, 2018 data, average rent is $1,141.

So it's $1141.

And then as proposed, if we reduced it to 60% AMI, using the 2019 data, it's 1140, a delta of a dollar.

So can you talk about that?

Because I mean, if that's accurate, I don't see where the concern lies with the emails that I received last night.

Exactly.

And I think that's an excellent question.

And Erin, who's lead in our office on housing and development issues, has been highlighting that for me, too.

So I think that's an important clarification.

Anyone is welcome to speak to it.

And Erin, we love having you at the table.

So you're welcome to as well.

So I think what they're saying is that when they look at the 2018 figures, but then look at what the 2019 figures would be, that there's a difference between the 2018 rent levels and the 2019 levels.

So that's where you get that $100 difference if you were to look at for, so they are saying, make apples to apples comparisons.

Don't look at 2018 rent figures and then compare it to what it would be in 2019. They say, look at it 2018 rent levels and then 2019 levels.

So if we wanna do an apples to apples comparison like that, and I think that's a fair way to look at it, then when I look at the difference between a 65% of AMI rent for a studio, it would be $1,235.

Yes, and we're proposing, no, on a monthly basis, so $1,235 a month for that unit.

If we go down to 60%, it's $1,140.

So we're talking about $105 difference between the rent for a 65% unit versus a 60%, $100 a month difference.

And likewise for going from the 75% to 70%.

So it's 12, I mean, annually, $1,200.

annually, and the tax benefit is?

It's about $187 difference.

So I think here we were looking at, when I was talking about like a 65% household in 2018 and a 60%, it really depends on the lens and who you are looking at.

So one is looking at how the households will be impacted who are participating in this program.

And in this case, it's that dollar difference in rent between 2018 and 20 different.

versus how much rent the developer is collecting.

And that's about $105 difference.

So it's really trying to balance that the developer is still getting a benefit.

There is a tax benefit.

It is about $180 difference between the two proposals.

But it is serving households whose incomes have not increased over the years, right?

And so somebody who could have applied for a studio at 65% AMI is now, if their income didn't change, they're making 60% AMI, so a rent that's affordable to them should be pegged to that level.

And so it's trying to balance that there's still a benefit to the developer, but we are serving households that the program was intended to serve.

I think that is absolutely correct.

If we want to just underscore the numbers that you pointed at to identify where that math came from, I still think it's an apples to apples comparison.

Erin, do you want to sort of help us understand the math that went into the calculation that Council Member Bagshaw and I have also seen as well?

Sure, and I think, so we're looking at 2018 income and rent limits.

and 2018 AMI levels, and then 2019 AMI levels, plus the proposed changes.

And so there's a lot of different variables that we're looking at.

The reason that the 2018 income and rent levels come into play is because much of the concern we heard was around pipeline projects, projects that are already in planning, and now this shifts the calculus for them.

My understanding was that it was likely that the performers would be based on 2018 rent levels.

And so that's where you get that dollar difference saying, well, if you're basing your project on the 2018 metrics, what we are proposing really is $1 off of that for studios and $15 off of that for one bedrooms in terms of rent collected.

And so that's where I think

How do those compare?

What you are arguing and what Ali was saying, can you bring those together for me?

I don't think we are saying the same thing.

I think what Erin is suggesting is if you are developer, and you are planning to build a project, and you are making assumptions about how much rent you will be able to collect, and you were doing that last January, you were looking at the rent levels and AMI levels that were published for 2018. And so if a person is suggesting that this change significantly impacts those outcomes, I think Aaron is just noting that the difference is $1.

in rent, right?

And so the numbers, if you were planning on being able to collect $1,141 in rent for a studio, you will be able to collect $1,140 with the 2019 numbers with the adjustment that this legislation would introduce.

So that takes into account that we would be going from 65% to 60 AMI?

Right.

Very helpful.

I appreciate you walking us through that because we've both been receiving questions about that, so that's very helpful.

I know that this is a balance, right?

This is a delicate balance that we're trying to both incentivize the creation of housing, ensure that that housing does get developed and that we have more units online.

And as you've heard that we're doing so with the public dollar and the public trust in mind.

So I am happy to bring this forward with the amendments that we've included in here and also recognize there's gonna be more conversations to come.

I think this isn't the first time we've heard questions raised about what is the right balance.

And at the state level, we've talked for a long time about what are those additional incentives that could potentially be included for labor.

But I appreciate that in the eight amendments that we've talked about, four of them last week and four this week, that what we've done is to try to include feedback from the developer community, the nonprofit community, including developers as well, community advocates for affordable housing, and our labor partners.

And so I think what you see in front of us is an attempt to move forward with the renewal and include some of our values and a little bit of a placeholder for future discussions.

And I know that it's something that folks are going to continue to analyze and research and part of that's because we put some language in there to require that analysis come back.

But that's how I'm feeling about these four various, these eight elements.

So do I understand correctly that if something's in the pipeline right now, that they've been applied for our permits, that this new language doesn't apply to projects that are already in the pipeline.

So one concern I heard was...

I think it depends how you, so let's just define pipeline for a moment.

Projects vest under the current MFTE requirements at the time that they submit their application.

If a project has submitted an MFTE application to the Office of Housing before the new program goes into effect, they will vest under the old program.

And the effective date will be?

It will be the standard effective date, so 30 days after the mayor signs the bill.

Any value of putting an effective date 1st of January, assuming that she signs it?

I haven't heard anybody ask for that.

I would be concerned that folks may, you know, try to see that date and expedite projects that really, as we're saying, really are not going to make a significant impact on both the incentive for the developer or the affordability elements dramatically.

If we were making more robust changes as I had considered and wanted to give folks some time to consider what that looks like in terms of their application or not, I might be more interested in that.

But I haven't heard any feedback from folks.

And frankly, the data that we've seen, I think, and the levers that we're talking about playing with have a relatively small impact on the program.

I think that the 30-day timeframe is still reasonable.

So I also, and again, Erin, thank you for this.

I just would like to highlight things that you've heard and have already included in your legislation.

So if I miss anything, let me know.

But I'm always concerned when people say, well, we didn't know about this, or we didn't have time.

And if you've had three committee meetings on this, we've already talked about.

a modification to the affordability level for the CEDU only building.

I've heard that that's something that incorporated comments from our friends in the building community.

Also hearing about these annual reporting requirements, which gives us the ability to look at the value and whether or not the program's working and we can change it midstream, which I think is really important that we don't have a, you know, a five-year window that we're stuck under.

I'm also hearing that the MFTE unit distribution requirements for high rise buildings was something that some of our builder friends said was important to them, allowed them to get higher rents for the higher floors to offset some of the lower rents that they would receive.

And that we feel that that's an appropriate thing to look at through rulemaking.

And then these, some of the technical and clarifying amendments, is there anything else that we need to hear about that?

I think that there are some things that were incorporated into the bill as proposed by the executive that responded to concerns from the development community.

One of them, I think, is the timing of the application, for example.

So I think there are a number of things that, again, as Councilmember Esqueda said, trying to balance the various interests.

What is your what's your plan?

I would love to consider a motion on this if it pleases the committee that given the robust conversations we've had with stakeholders the third time in committee I would love to entertain a motion to get this thing out of here.

And so when do you think full council will look at that?

We will we will be bringing it planning to bring it forward to the full council on the 23rd which has been the date that we have also told all of the stakeholders as well if it was to move out of this committee.

The desire would be to bring the amended bill to full council on Monday.

So is that when the mayor is giving her budget speech to us?

I think of the 23rd.

The morning of the 23rd.

So I think the mayor's speech is at 11 a.m.

if I remember correctly and then this wouldn't come until 2 p.m.

that day.

So there's not a conflict with that.

Yeah.

And I will also commit that I am still hoping that we can move it out of committee today.

If there's major questions that come up, I'm happy to work with you.

And I know Aaron's been deep in the weeds on this as well as you can tell our central staff and OH to answer any of the questions that have come forward.

I do feel like this conversation has been very helpful again for the third time.

We are by all means very interested in building, building, building affordable housing, making sure that there's high labor standards, and creating density in the city.

So I don't think there's a disconnect in terms of goals.

And I do think that for our friends that we've been working with across the stakeholder spectrum, we've asked folks to Keep an open mind because there are elements in here that we have included from all sides and also recognizing we're going to have a lot of time to come back twice a year, if not more, to think about possible changes that we would like to see.

Again, if I were to have a magic wand, there's a lot of things that I would love to do to change the thresholds to make sure that that affordability element was really something that we could see scoped, and at the same time, when we look at where folks are struggling to live in the city, we do know that it's up to 60% AMI, and trying to figure out that right balance, I think, is what this piece of legislation has attempted to accomplish here.

So, I think something that you and I have talked about many times, and as we go through budget, I think it's going to be really important, and that's to focus some of our investments, more of our investments on the 0 to 30%.

that in order for people to get housed, that's an area that we're going to really need to focus on more than we have in the past.

I think one request I would have, and I will support moving this out today, if we could hold it until the 30th.

And that would just give me another week to talk with people.

And I don't imagine that those who are unhappy are going to be happy or those that are already happy are going to be too concerned about that.

But it would give us just a little bit more time to address that.

OK.

So just process-wise, when we move this out of committee, we bring it to full council.

If I say the 23rd, we can always move it to the 30th.

Is that correct?

Yes, even up to the time that you have it in front of you at full council next Monday.

Because what I'd love to do is sort of keep the window open.

We haven't been receiving a ton of pushback on the timing per se, given that this has been something that we have initially briefed folks on August 1st on.

I think that the policy questions that have been put together are pretty narrow.

So I would like to move it out with a goal of having having that discussion on the 23rd, and then as I saw Councilmember, I should say Council President Harold do the other day in his committee, stay open to the conversation around moving the date if needed, because if we do get some questions that we can't answer by Monday, I'm happy to get it as always.

Fair.

Okay.

Okay.

Good.

And, you know, for the folks who've been writing us and that, you know, from folks from labor who wanted more language, folks from the developer community who are It's still asking questions about the threshold.

We continue to try to respond to those in real time immediately.

So do send your questions to us.

We'll be happy to answer those.

But I do appreciate the analysis, the data-driven analysis that has helped to inform these thresholds that we have put together.

And just want to make sure that folks know this wasn't done in haste.

This wasn't done very quickly overnight.

This was really a long process that frankly central staff encouraged us to do before going down the route of making any changes so that we knew what that right balance was and I want to discourage folks from thinking that any of this was just sort of made up on a whim.

This has really been informed by a long process.

So we do have the data to back it up, and happy to, I think, share that information with folks who are continuing to ask questions.

But it is not everything I would like, and I'm sure that it is You know, in theory, a little scary to think about potential changes in the future, but if you think about the levers that we're using and the small impact that this is having at this point, I do think that the fears that we're hearing are not necessarily founded in the data that we've seen.

That's very valuable and I just want to signal to anybody who has remaining concerns, let us know.

I also would love to have the concerns based in the facts that you've put forward and not hyperbole or based out of a fear that there's change, it's not going to be good.

And one last thing, maybe you can talk about this public benefit.

We always talk about public benefit.

This one's a major policy.

Can anyone just describe what the public benefits are?

in this program?

I think it's obvious, but I'd love to hear.

Well, I think you have the affordable units that we're trying to achieve with this program, first and foremost.

I think some of the new things are the affirmative efforts to further fair housing, and that having an explicit goal as part of the program now, and now a plan that will be required to back that up, I think is another really good public benefit that you can point to.

I think those are the two key that I can think of.

Yeah, I think primarily it's the affordable units in mixed income projects that get distributed throughout the city and continue sort of OH's commitment to ensuring that affordable units are provided in all of our neighborhoods.

I appreciate that.

And I would just second that by saying, yes, spread throughout the city and often hundreds of dollars below market rate rent in those buildings.

And I know you've brought this point up many, many times, but wages aren't going up as fast as rents, not by a long shot.

And for those who are struggling to be able to find housing and to afford something that they can live in, either individuals or families, it's, I think, a real critical thing that we're looking at.

So thank you for that.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

And Erin, thank you for all your hard work, too.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And you know, as we think about our committee meeting tomorrow, we also know that when there is an $100 increase in the cost of rent, there's about a 15% correlation in homelessness increase as well.

So I think that all the work that we're doing is tied together and look forward to continuing to find more ways to keep those rents down or at least stable.

given that we have not enough housing stock out there.

That's what we're trying to accomplish here.

So thanks to everybody, you know, as we've done with most of our legislation, not everybody got everything that they wanted, but we are trying to find that right balance.

So thanks to the stakeholders who've been weighing in and really thanks to Central Staff and Office of Housing for your work to do that early analysis with us so that we could be prepared to answer these questions on the why, why some of these levers are being chosen.

and thank you Erin House for joining us at the table and your work with this in our office.

So thanks for raising those issues and we'll stay in touch over the next few days.

At this point I would like to go ahead and move the committee recommends passage of amended, do I need to amend the bill?

Substitute, I think you want to say the proposed substitute that is in front of you.

I move to amend Council Bill 119615 by substituting version D4 for version D3A.

Second.

Wonderful.

Any comments?

No more.

Okay.

All those in favor of substituting version D4 for version D3A, say aye.

Aye.

Wonderful.

Any opposed?

None.

Okay, great.

So now we've substituted Council Bill 119615. At this point, I'd like to move that we, the committee recommends passage of amended Council Bill 119615 out of committee to full council.

Second.

Any additional comments?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Okay great.

So we have now moved the motion and the committee has recommended passage of amended council bill 119615 that will be considered on September 23rd in full council unless we decide to hold it and consider it at a future date.

Appreciate the conversation and if we are able to move on Monday.

I think that would be great for us to be able to get this off our plate before we head into budget.

And I really appreciate all of the work that you have done on this to help raise these questions and make sure that it's truly workable.

Yes.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you, friends, for continuing to stay with us and for your public testimony today.

Thanks for joining us for that item.

Let's move into our fourth item of business, which is the Race and Social Justice Initiative presentation from our friends from the Office of Housing and Farideh, if you could read that into the record.

Look who it is, the recently confirmed Emily Alvarado in our committee.

Welcome.

Thank you for joining us in your new official capacity, which is what a committee approved director of Office of Housing.

Very nice.

Yes.

Agenda item number four, Office of Housing, Race and Social Justice Initiative presentation for briefing and discussion.

Welcome, why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves and then we'll get started and I think we have a presentation as well.

Hello, I'm Stephanie Velasco in the Office of Housing.

Charles Mason from the Office of Housing.

My name is Soko Don, Office of Housing.

Emily Alvarado, Office of Housing.

Excellent.

Well, welcome.

We have a presentation from you, and we know that the folks within the Office of Housing from your Race and Social Justice Change Team have been very busy working on this, so we're really excited to have you.

Why don't you go ahead and walk us through some of the elements that you've been considering, and I think the committee-confirmed director outlined very nicely in her opening comments the true essence of what you do.

Housing is a race and social justice tool.

It is a stabilizer.

It is an equalizer.

And without applying a race and social justice analysis to the work that you do every day, we would not be undoing historic wrongs, righting the past public policies that were rated and rooted in racism redlining and segregation as principles and so everything that the Office of Housing does in my opinion is a policy opportunity for us to right those historic wrongs and really look forward to hearing from the change team on how you're applying race and social justice initiative to your everyday work.

So just to open us up, we're really excited to present our 2019 RSJI annual report to council.

As I did mention earlier, one of my priorities as director would be to focus on our effort to advance racial equity.

But my absolute privilege is that I'm not going at that alone at all.

We have a deeply committed change team in the Office of Housing who really lead such tremendous work.

And so I get the privilege to just completely turn it over to them to share the RSJI work underway at the Office of Housing.

So I'm just going to hand a couple of these.

These are hot off the press, our RSGI newsletter.

We'll refer to those a little bit later in the presentation.

But thank you, council members, for having us here to speak this morning.

Just to give you a brief overview of what our presentation is going to look like.

First, we're going to talk a little bit about that demographic data that really does provide context for why leading with race is so important to the Office of Housing's work.

Next, a little overview of the work that the Office of Housing's change team has done over the past year.

And then lastly, and really the meat of the presentation, is we'll be talking about the office-wide policies and programmatic work that ties the city's overall, that ties into the city's overall race and social justice goals, particularly around anti-displacement.

So, as Councilmember Mosqueda helped us open here, centering communities of color and leading it with race are really essential values to the Office of Housing's work.

As you know, people of color, particularly black African American folks, disproportionately experience severe housing cost burden, which means that homeowners and renters of color are spending more than half of their incomes on housing at higher rates than white homeowners and renters.

Not captured here, just before we leave this slide, is that Native and Indigenous folks also are experiencing severe housing cost burden at, again, disproportionately high rates.

And so given this demonstrated need for affordable housing, particularly amongst communities of color, we're looking here at the race and ethnicity demographics that the Office of Housing collects for city-funded affordable housing.

So you can see there on the left are those demographics for OH-funded rental housing.

And then on the right is actually the breakdown for the whole population of Seattle.

And as you can see, people of color make up about 34% of Seattle's overall population.

So that's a pie chart on the right.

Whereas people of color actually make up 59% of residents in OH funded rental housing.

Yep.

And for our homeownership programs, that kind of trend keeps, where we're seeing 53% of low-income homeowners that are assisted through a home repair program were people of color.

And also, first-time homebuyers receiving purchase assistance, that was at 38% people of color.

So the question here, does the pie chart on the left that includes the race and ethnicity of residents for office of housing funded affordable housing, did you say that includes home ownership, housing efforts, and rental housing?

Yeah, so thank you for the question.

The pie chart on the left is just for rental housing, actually.

So if you can see there, you have to do a little bit of math, but 59% of everything that's not blue there in that left-hand chart is showing renters of color in OH rental housing.

And then for our home ownership programs, at least through the home repair program, that number is about 53%.

For first time home buyer assistance, that's 38% people of color.

OK.

Could you go back one slide real quick?

Sure.

So as we look at this, I think that that's an important pie chart that we just saw, but I also want to make sure that folks in the viewing audience and on Seattle Channel know, when we talk about the need to build more affordable units and the work that Office of Housing does, as you can see from this chart, it is important for us to think about building more affordable rental units, but it's also, I think, an element of equity, both in terms of social justice equity and creating equity in our pocketbooks to create more home ownership opportunities.

And you can see the gray bar chart here, right, shows the disparity that individuals from communities of color experience when it comes to home ownership.

So the dual role that Office of Housing is playing on both rental unit creation and creating more affordable first-time home buyer options is really highlighted here.

Is that a correct assessment of this slide?

Yes, that's right.

And we actually will be talking a little bit more about the homeownership work that we're doing later in the presentation.

Thank you for that.

All right, so now that we've talked a little bit about who lives in OH funded housing, we're looking here at the businesses that help our office do this work.

So the table you can see reflects contractors that OH has worked with directly over the past year.

through purchasing, consulting, and our weatherization program.

And you can see here that we're doing well as an office on our WMBIE goals.

Two other points just to mention here is as Office of Housing Investments are spurring employment opportunities through the projects that we fund, OH staff is also encouraging our housing partners, developers, and their contractors to increase their utilization of women and minority-owned businesses.

So that's through our lending team that Charles is a part of, and then also the asset management staff is encouraging property managers to use Wimby firms as they're doing their site inspection reports.

So now I'm going to pass it off to Charles to talk about the change team's work this year.

Great, thank you.

So as Stephanie mentioned, the majority of this presentation, we kind of focus on the external work that our office is doing.

Wanted to take a second to acknowledge some of the internal work that staff has been doing.

And over the past year, the change team has grown to 14 members, which is roughly 30% of our office, covering almost all of the teams at the Office of Housing.

So we're really excited about that.

This is really important to the office because having a larger change team has enabled staff to connect with RSGI work even if they're not directly facing the public at times.

So we've done this through providing staff an opportunity to create training.

So we're looking at coordinating a training with the People's Institute in the near future.

We have also fielded events where we've taken staff to tour the redlining exhibit at the Wing Luke Museum.

And lastly, we've created this newsletter, as you see here, which keeps the entire office up to date on RSGI information as it's happening.

And if you notice on the back, we've also included a copy of the continuum on becoming an anti-racist multicultural organization.

which we use as the basis for a lot of our trainings and kind of a benchmark as we move forward with RSGI trainings in the future.

And so, on this final note, this kind of internal efforts and giving everyone the opportunity to do RSGI work really help focus and kind of empower us to do RSGI work externally.

This is a very good document.

I haven't seen this before.

And I'm just glancing at it right now, but I'm very impressed with just the simple language.

I think it's really important.

Because we can get tripped up ourselves just because we sometimes speak in code.

It may mean something to the internals, but people that are looking from the outside at us are like, what are you talking about?

So this is really helpful.

Thank you.

All right, so now this is the part of the presentation.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I just have a quick question about that.

So one of the things that continues to come up for me when we get presentations from race and social justice change teams is how do you do this work and also your existing work?

And are you compensated for this time?

Obviously it's during work, but then is there any sort of recognition that you are also then taking on additional work as you're doing the RSGI efforts?

I assume your daily work continues to go on.

So how is that recognized?

And I think it's important because we often ask, especially communities of color and community partners to be part of our city efforts, you know, on the external world, and we struggle with compensating folks for that time and expertise.

So how do we do that internally?

I would just add that Being able to have 14 new members to the change team has drastically helped lighten the load so that people can still focus on their day-to-day jobs while also feeling empowered to be able to continue to do this work because of the help from fellow staffs.

Great.

And I'll add a little bit to that is just from the management and all the way down, there's a lot of support from individual supervisors and really just from the office as a whole for this work to be done and for it to get done.

So I think people really make this work a priority at kind of a similar level as the other work that they're doing.

So we really try not to look at it Here's our regular work, and then here's our RSGI work.

It's really all a part of what we do.

And that's what's exciting to me about what you're presenting here is that it's integrated.

And it becomes seamless.

And that's what we're trying to do.

It's not an overlay or something unusual.

It's that we're really incorporating the values that you're talking about and the policies that we've been talking about into your work.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

So speaking to that integration, here we're going to start talking about really the policy and programmatic work that our office does that really ties that racial equity lens to what we're actually doing.

So we, OH staff, has actually come to this table a couple times over the past year to talk about community preference and affirmative marketing, as these were major focus areas in our last update to the Housing Levy Administrative and Financial Plan, or as Councilmember Mosqueda called it, the moral compass that guides our office's funding decisions.

So here, just to give you a quick update on where we are in that process of developing the guideline that affordable housing providers can use if they choose to implement community preference in their buildings located in areas at high risk of displacement.

So you can see here kind of what we've been doing over the past year.

As you know, we've been working also with the Office for Civil Rights, the City Attorney's Office, and the folks at the Equitable Development Initiative over in OPCD over the past year to develop a draft guideline which we plan to release by the end of this year.

And also, I want to acknowledge that the great affordable housing providers and community advocates who've attended our workshops and really have helped to drive this process through their feedback and advocacy.

Can you name some of those organizations?

Sure.

Actually, a lot of them were here in the room earlier.

So we've had folks from Skipta, Interim, Capitol Hill Housing, Chief Seattle Club, Community House, really it's a broad range of our housing providers over, and you can see here we had a community workshop in February that was attended by about 60 folks, and then a stakeholder roundtable where we really brought together those housing providers who have projects coming up soon that they may be interested in using this community preference for.

And so just before we leave this slide, I want to just, it bears repeating that successful implementation of community preference relies on robust affirmative marketing efforts.

Any kind of preference, no matter how carefully crafted, is unlikely to achieve its intended outcomes without that really time and resource intensive upfront work of reaching out to communities that may not otherwise hear about or feel welcome to apply.

So that kind of work, and it takes a lot of time and resources, like I said, but really is what will make a community preference happen.

OK.

And so before I hand off the mic here, I just want to do a little introduction.

You may recall from our presentation last year that based on a policy question related to community preference and affirmative marketing,

In your final presentation on the draft guideline, one thing I'd love to see in that is how we can ensure that the community that has the roots in the neighborhood, the organizations that have the trust in the community that's at risk of being in displacement, are able to be in the driver's seat for spearheading affirmative marketing and community preference policies.

For example, one of the things that I heard from LGBTQ allyship was specifically around how can organizations that are representative of the community that is at risk of being displaced have access to resources or policy decision, final decisions about what affirmative marketing and community preference should be versus, let's say, a well-intended developer.

And even our well-intended nonprofit developers who may be providing an incredible asset to the community by helping to create affordable housing, but aren't necessarily the individuals from the community at risk of being displaced.

So would love to hear more, you know, for example, how are we giving the tools to Africatown, to LGBTQ allyship, to the folks from the Little Saigon.

I'm just, you know, by way of example to show where those organizations and those trusted partners have been able to influence the final outreach and implementation of affirmative marketing and community preference.

And then if you have recommendations for what we may need to consider doing, which is potential dollars or policy decisions about how they can get included at the table so that it's not tokenized.

That would be super helpful to see in your final release.

Great.

Thank you.

We look forward to sharing that with you.

Thank you.

So before I hand this off, like I was saying from last year's presentation, we talked about a racial equity toolkit that we completed and some feedback that we'd heard from community-based organizations.

And we were able to put that feedback in the toolkit into actually hiring an entirely new staff position that focuses specifically on community outreach for homeownership, preservation, and stabilization programs.

And here to talk to you today about that is Sokha Dhan.

Hello.

The Office of Housing's Homeownership Stabilization Programs helps income-qualified homeowners make critical repairs to their homes, increase energy efficiency, and avoid foreclosure so they can remain in a safe, efficient, and affordable home, ultimately to work against displacement.

Our community engagement and outreach strategy uses a neighborhood-based approach that is centered on community partnerships.

For example, this past year, we released a community engagement RFP where we selected the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle to work with us to increase community awareness and increase the number of successful applications for our home repair, our weatherization program, and our new livable space pilot program as well.

At the Office of Housing, we identify opportunities to increase equity and access to our programs.

That means in my position, I'm actively developing relationships with community members, neighborhood-based organizations like nonprofits and local schools, and working with community members in order to provide one-on-one application assistance.

I'm also engaging with community builders to provide interpretation and translation at our events, and helping build trust in our system, in particular, for communities of color.

The programs in the Office of Housing are also evolving to meet the greater needs of income qualified homeowners and renters in our city.

This year we launched the Weatherization Plus Health Program.

The picture on the screen actually is an event we had at Seattle Housing Authority property where we had 70 plus members of the community attend to connect with King County Public Health to assist households with family members living with asthma.

Additionally, we just relaunched the oil to electric program to significantly reduce the utility burden of income qualified homeowners and help fight environmental injustice.

In addition to that, we also just launched our livable space pilot, which is really an expansion of our home repair program to allow for these loans to be used to increase livable space at a 0% interest rate as well.

And tell me a little bit more about that, livable space.

You're talking about expanding a single family home.

What's included in that?

Yeah, so the livable space is really an expansion of our home repair program.

It's $45,000, 0% interest rate to increase livable space.

So it would be for a completion of a livable space, an example would be an unfinished basement, completing that.

In the Office of Housing, we would serve as the project managers for that project.

As you may remember, that livable space pilot came out of some racial equity work around accessory dwelling units and recognizing that our former home repair program focused specifically on emergency health and safety repairs, but there were needs that low income households had to make more space in their home available for more household members or other people, and this expanded to meet that need.

And will it expand to detached accessory dwelling units as well?

It does.

Well done.

Oh, it does not.

It's attached.

Not so well done.

I looked back for the cheat sheet.

So attached.

So if it's a garage, if it's the basement, if it's something that qualifies, but if somebody wants to do it detached, it doesn't.

Correct.

And can that be something we could look at again?

Absolutely.

We'll keep looking at that.

That'd be great.

I'm just going to piggyback on that because I think from a race and social justice perspective as well, we've been talking this morning about how do we best use those public dollars.

And one of the things as it relates to ADUs and DADUs is whether or not the city finances the ability for somebody to build an accessory dwelling unit or a detached dwelling unit.

What I've seen in Portland, for example, from their city council members that I've met with, is a private finance model that allows for individuals to have access to capital to build those important gentle infill options, but doesn't detract from the public dollars that are so limited in our city.

And so one of the things that I would be interested in looking at in the future is how do we replicate what the city of Portland has done with their private finance model that doesn't get, by the way, that doesn't have anything to do with sort of the predatory nature that some private finance models can do, but is truly incentivizing people to build affordable housing options in their backyards through detached dwelling unit, attached dwelling units, but doesn't detract from the very few resources that we have to build some of the amazing examples that you've seen from the Office of Housing for Affordable Units.

So that I think is another example of us trying to be smart with the public dollar and also look to other sources when possible to complement what we're trying to do at the city.

So I'll just want to flag that for you because I think it's also tied into raising social justice.

We don't want to take money from the very few programs that are really directed at the chart that we saw earlier, which is our lowest income communities of color, and figure out, in addition to that, how do we help get the supply up for these gentle infill options.

Good, I like your term there.

And I do want to recognize Portland's done some remarkable things.

And I always feel like we're a step or two behind them.

But they have worked with, I think it's their Fred Meyer Foundation that's provided money.

And I'm not sure if it's matching or if they were just paying for the full pilot.

But it encouraged people.

with your general infield idea to increase the number of people, whether it's their family member or whether it's somebody that is willing just to move into a new neighborhood, it just increases the supply in a way we need to do.

One more tool.

And then on the other side of the spectrum, We have organizations from Portland, like Community Partners, I believe is their name, that have looked at the kind of higher rise options for more affordable units.

So we have great density options in our downtown core and some more density options in urban centers throughout the city.

But as we think about how do we build the supply that we need, we can't possibly do it just with add-oos and dad-oos.

Absolutely.

Small tool.

Right.

So let's learn from Portland on both sides of the spectrum.

Yeah.

Sorry, guys, we really love to get into these details.

So continuing kind of on the theme of homeownership and direct community outreach and engagement, OH has been working with Sound Transit and Puget Sound SAGE to connect with communities in Southeast Seattle around potential homeownership opportunities on surplus land around the light rail stations.

Really, we want to make sure that these developments end up being culturally relevant to the residents who are there.

The second point here is just an update on Yakima and Othello Square, which are homeownership projects funded in 2017 and 2018. And as those developments are coming to fruition, here are a couple updates about them.

These projects have expressed interest in using community preference, which really actually looks quite different for homeownership than it does for rental housing.

In particular, there has to be an emphasis on ensuring that the pool of buyers are both qualified and ready to purchase a home.

And so on that front, the Community Ownership Capacity Building Grant, for which council provided funds last year, has helped support both of these projects, including the Yakima Home Buyer Club, which really focuses on home buyer readiness.

Next slide.

And so here just to wrap up, looking ahead to OH's RSGI work as we wrap up 2019 and head into 2020, you can see here the four toolkits our office either has completed or will be completing.

One that I really want to highlight here is focused on the application for our weatherization program.

Following a workshop in the Duwamish Valley, OH staff received feedback.

that that application was too complex and actually created a barrier for many households to apply.

And so based on that community feedback and using a racial equity lens, OH staff was able to reduce those barriers for the oil to electric conversion program that Soka talked about earlier.

And then finally, just a couple of pieces of upcoming work.

Given how much of our office's work actually depends on census data, we're going to be supporting the city's outreach efforts between now and next year to make sure that that data is really complete as possible.

And then one other quick mention before we wrap up here is actually kind of hearkening back to what was referenced earlier is this pilot program that we're working on developing that would assist low and moderate income homeowners interested in building ADUs.

So we're doing that stakeholder engagement now to create a loan product that will hopefully make that opportunity accessible to a wider range of homeowners.

Could we ask for folks to take a look at that Portland model to see kind of a comparison between using public funds versus what Portland has done and how you all think that that mirrors the RSJI values?

The last thing I would suggest is your comment about census really does tie back to the community preference and affirmative marketing policies.

My understanding again from conversations with stakeholders is that We look at past census data to think about who we need to do outreach to for communities that have potentially already been displaced or at risk of displacement.

And given the undercount of individuals from the LGBTQ community, Asian Pacific Islander, African American, Latino community, Alaska Native population, every single minority you can think of, including folks who are from the foster care system and more likely to end up homeless.

I would love to see some recommendations for how the community preference and affirmative marketing policies don't rely on census data to determine who needs to come back to the neighborhood or be protected from displacement.

Given the disparity we already know exists within the census data that we have, we're gonna try our best this next year to get our folks accurately counted, but we know that there are historic undercounts and we have maps, as you know, that can show us where we have the highest risk of undercount.

So with that in mind, sort of the institutionalized way in which the census has undercounted various at-risk communities of displacement, how do we use other tools and potential partners to affirmatively market new rental units and affordable housing options and to think about ways in which those community partners on the ground have better access to getting the message out to those at risk of displacement instead of just relying on census for community preference.

I do have a question, but first of all, Stephanie, Carl, Soka, thank you so much for being here today.

Do you have some records of members in the Filipino community that would be interested in talking with us about a potential project in Pioneer Square?

Because I want to make sure we've reached out to them and have involvement of people who want to be included.

We've got names of folks that have been engaged over the last couple of years, some more or less interested in this project going forward, but I'd love to have some names of people who are really engaged in that particular community.

And I'm talking, of course, about my favorite cannery building.

We've made movement here in the last few days.

We would be happy to follow up with some suggestions.

contacts for you.

Excellent.

And we're reaching out to Department of Neighborhoods as well.

And I'm asking the mayor's office because she was just opening up, I think in the last day or two, the building down that's going to be the Filipino Community Center.

Exciting about it.

But I want to reach out, make sure that they're included and helping us identify what's culturally relevant in this building.

Good.

Thank you.

Oh, I don't have any more questions.

Okay.

Do you have any more questions?

No.

Thank you so much.

This has been really exciting and I know it's long overdue, so thank you for all of your work on this.

Please thank the 14 members of the change team and do keep in touch with us with your new leadership.

We're excited to see what comes in 2020 and looking forward to working with you.

You all know how to reach out to us directly.

And if there's things that you'd like to put on our radar, we are here to serve.

So thanks to the RSJI team and for all the work that you do and for the outward facing policies that you bring into the community.

I think the RSJI principles are really evident in the policies that you put out on a daily basis.

So thank you for the work that you do.

And look forward to celebrating you all in 2020 when we can think about items on the horizon and new projects.

Great, good for you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good to see you as always.

And you know, as they're leaving, I just want to acknowledge this is, this and what they've done is real.

And I think this is, you know, the gold standard we're looking for.

And I want to acknowledge that Robert Nelums and his group, I thought were superior as was FAS with Calvin going.

So I think the directors are taking it a whole other layer and ratcheting up.

what people are doing in their department.

So anyway, thank you.

Very meaningful.

Thank you.

Excellent.

So we are right on track to finish up very briefly here.

We have one sort of technical thing we have to do, which is consider item number five on our agenda, which is going back to the hotel worker legislation to basically do some cleanup given the passage of our bills, plural, last week in committee and to all of us this week on Monday.

We do want to clean up the code so that the past legislation is no longer in the books if that's an appropriate way to say it and we are joined at the table by Dan Eater and Farideh.

If you could read into the record item number five, that would be excellent.

Agenda item number five, Council Bill...

Agenda item number five, Council Bill 119654, an ordinance relating to hotel employees health and safety for briefing and discussion and possible vote.

Dan, it wouldn't be a Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee without you.

So thank you for being here yet again.

My pleasure.

And for all of your past work with us.

It's been a, we called it a labor of love because it took us about nine months of community engagement and then council discussion.

So nine months, get it?

Yeah, I got it.

So we want to just thank you again.

And Karina's not here because she's representing us as well at the Labor Management Leadership Committee discussion right now, which I really appreciate.

But thanks to both of you.

And today we're here for some cleanup.

So why don't you walk us through what we're doing and the why.

Sure, happy to do that.

Dan Eater, Council Central staff.

Council Bill 119654, as the Chair mentioned, would repeal Chapter 1425 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

This would, as the Chair mentioned, take off of the books, as it were, those particular protections for employees that were established in Initiative 124. The bill on today's agenda eliminates those now outdated SMC provisions because the full council passed a new iteration of those employee protections earlier this week.

So while the legislation of Initiative 124 is on the books, and while those protections aren't in place given the court's pending ruling, the reality is we cannot have two potential pieces of legislation that are in some elements conflicting.

I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to ask you this in advance, so do tell me if you want to take it offline or if you have an immediate answer.

No pressure either way, but given that the mayor has yet to sign the four pieces of legislation, do we run any risk with repealing this original ordinance that's currently on the books?

The expectation is that the legislation will be signed into law.

The mayor issued a press release commending the council's action.

Council's action was unanimous.

I guess there is theoretically a risk that there could be a change from the indicated and anticipated course of actions to sign those bills into law.

That is a fairly minimal risk in my humble estimation.

And if the bills are signed before the repeal legislation gets to full counsel, then that even theoretical risk will have been eliminated.

And we do want to thank the executive.

Mayor Durkan has issued a statement supporting our legislation and her team has been good to work with.

So I think that the support from council and the executive is that we have harmony in City Hall here, and that's not, I don't think that's a concern.

I guess the question I was wondering, is there a legal reason to wait?

But it does seem like a cleaner way for us to make sure that the executive, when she signs the legislation that we've sent up for her consideration on those four elements, has a clean slate and that this is no longer in the books.

Is that accurate?

Okay.

And lastly, we also know that many elements of the legislation that we passed last week and then final confirmation on Monday, we have pushed out the implementation date per some of the suggestions from the industry.

We do have, I think it's a July 2020 implementation date anyways, whether or not we did this this week or next week, wouldn't in theory matter for our new legislation given the new deadline for implementation for many of those elements.

So I feel comfortable with doing this if you do as well.

And you're an attorney, so I'm excited about this.

And we've talked a lot.

So any other questions?

No, I'm good.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119654. Second.

Any other comments?

None.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Okay, we have unanimously passed Council Bill 119654 out of committee.

We will bring this forward for the Council's consideration on September 23rd for a vote.

And again, thank you for all your work on this.

This is the last effort here.

And we will have a next committee meeting on Tuesday, September 24th at 2 p.m.

I know you have a meeting that day at 4 p.m., is that correct?

Yes.

Hey, Dan.

Thanks.

Thank you, Dan.

So we will be meeting right before your committee meeting.

I promise we will be done on time and give you and your team a chance to get in from one meeting to the next.

I know it'll be great.

So on September 24th at 2 p.m.

we have City Light focused items.

City Light Review Panel Commission reappointment.

That's Leon Garnett.

We have the Northwest Seattle property sale.

We have the rate pilot discussion and possible vote.

Burien and BPA rates.

Northern Grid, which is our regional planning organization.

emergency low-income assistance program and I just want to thank the director Deborah Smith the CEO of Seattle City Lights she's been working with us to issue some clarification in the guidance that's or I should say the notification that has been going out to customers about potential overdue bills We've received a lot of calls and concerns about threats of shutoff and we want to work to make sure that folks understand all of their rights and the avenues for repayment and that folks know that they have an opportunity to take any of those avenues and that shutoff is not going to happen.

This is a public utility.

We want to lift up the public options that we have included as a city-owned utility to make sure that we're really thinking about the equity elements and how we communicate with folks so their office has been great to work with us on how we change some of that narrative and I'd love for us to add that to the agenda just a brief update from them on how they're doing with changing some of those policies so that we're responsive to some of the concerns that have come in around the type of communication they've received.

It matters that type of communication so we don't cause fear.

Right, no kidding.

People have enough difficulties than getting something unclear from the city that is putting them on the red alert.

I want to acknowledge the work you're doing here and also Debra Smith, hello.

People in Seattle City Light have been really grateful that People are actually listening to this and helping us.

So many thanks.

And thanks to all the folks that have reached out to us with some of their stories.

And we know that's the tip of the iceberg.

So we want to be responsive.

So that'll be our City Light meeting.

And that'll be the last meeting of the year.

And thank you, Council Member Baggio, for everything here today.

Thank you, Farideh.

We'll go ahead and adjourn.

And we'll see you all on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

September 24th.

Thank you for your robust discussion today.