Seattle City Council Sustainability & Renters' Rights Committee Special Meeting 9/24/2020

Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

Today is September 24th, 2020, and the time is 11.04 a.m.

I am Council Member Shama Sawant, the Chair of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee, and today we are joined by committee members, Council Member Peterson, Lewis and Mosqueda, thank you all for being here.

And council members Juarez and Morales had scheduling conflicts at this special meeting time and are excused.

Next week, the city council will begin deliberating the city budget for next year.

So unless a special meeting is called again, this will likely be the last meeting of this committee until December.

We will hear from two panels of speakers in today's committee meeting.

First, we will discuss with climate justice activists and organizers who are fighting for the Green New Deal and against the giant financial institutions that fund the fossil fuel infrastructure that drives climate change.

They will talk about how to get involved in the struggle for climate justice and about what they are fighting for specifically in the upcoming city budget.

Then we will hear from a panel of renters and renter rights committee, sorry, renter rights organizers about the growing movement to cancel rent, mortgage, and utility fees, and especially that includes also any debt accumulated, so no late payments for people who have lost their livelihoods in the midst of this pandemic and the recession.

As part of this item, we have a presentation that will be offered by Jonathan Rosenblum, community organizer in my office, that has been put together so that we can highlight the statistical context of the crisis that is facing renters.

Because of the schedules of several speakers and the city council's own meeting schedule, we do have a hard stop time of 1 p.m.

for today's committee meeting, so I will urge everyone's assistance in keeping to time, and I offer my apology in advance if I have to gently remind everybody.

Before we hear from our panelists, we have public comment.

Ted Verdone, policy analyst in my office who is assisting us with the committee today, will call the names.

Every speaker has two minutes, and you will have to press star six to unmute yourself when your turn comes.

Ted, you want to start reading the names?

So first up comes Jessica Scalzo, followed by Chelsea Galagos.

And you need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Jessica Scalzo.

I live in District 3 and I am just calling to encourage this committee and definitely the council to cancel rents and mortgages in Seattle because I am definitely concerned about a mass wave of evictions following the, I guess the rent freeze since the pandemic.

And also after being in all this rain this morning and the weather change, it is concerning that so many people would be evicted during this time.

And I am seeing more tents out and about as well, seeing that more people are becoming homeless.

So I'm definitely concerned about that.

And I want to encourage everyone to consider canceling rent and mortgages for people who desperately need it.

That's it.

Thank you for the time.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Gallegos.

I am the school social worker at Rainier Beach High School and representing the South End.

I have been making phone calls, tons of phone calls every single day to families checking in on them and we have so many families who are just terrified.

about what's going to happen when the eviction moratorium ends.

They're behind on rent, many of them have been unemployed due to the pandemic, really trying to make ends meet.

But everybody's asking about, you know, rent assistance, rent assistance, how can I, how can I get this debt shrunk?

And It's really just becoming very obvious that this is a systemic issue, that we shouldn't be trying to fill these little rent holes with rent assistance programs.

Rent freeze would have been the appropriate response during a pandemic rather than an eviction moratorium.

So I just wanted to really represent, we have a lot of families in the South End, many of whom are black and brown, whose entire livelihood depends on what the city council does.

when we decide to lift this eviction moratorium.

So I urge the cancellation of debt and rent forgiveness to be considered.

And if it is not considered, you can expect a mass wave of South End families prepared to fight.

Thank you.

Next up comes Laura Wright, followed by Jamie Dekic.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Laura Wright, and I work with a grassroots organization in South Seattle called Law Block.

I actually just want to reiterate what my colleague Chelsea Gallegos just stated.

We work specifically with families at Emerson Elementary and Rainier Beach High School.

And every day we have families asking about rental assistance who are just really worried sick about what's going to happen when this eviction moratorium ends.

Our families and our scholars can hardly think about learning right now when they're thinking about potential eviction and displacement.

As we know, the South End is quickly becoming gentrified, and if we do not put in place a policy that will cancel rent, you're going to see displacement of so many families, which is really a justice issue.

So we really need to take a stand right now, fight for our black and brown families.

And I would say we need to get policy in place now if we're expecting our families and our scholars to have any level of stability to be able to engage in learning for this school year.

Thank you for your time.

That's all.

Hi, my name is Jamie Potosic.

I'm a resident of Seattle 6th District and a member of Sunrise Seattle.

I'm just calling to urge this committee and the council at large to cancel rent for working people who've lost jobs and income due to the economic crisis and pandemic.

It's really time for us to come together as a community to support our neighbors, those small businesses, and individuals who've been impacted by the pandemic and the resulting recession and find themselves unable to make rent, mortgage, and utility payments.

An eviction moratorium, like other people have said, just isn't enough, and it's really only delaying the inevitable, what will be a housing crisis in the city of Seattle, the likes of which we may have never seen before.

Once the moratorium expires, our communities are faced with a wave of eviction.

I really urge you to stand up for the rights of working people in Seattle, especially brown and black communities, and move from a place of compassion by canceling that and mortgage payments for those who've lost their jobs during the pandemic.

The burden of this economic crisis should not be borne by the people at the bottom, but should be shared by all, especially those at the top who continue to profit and thrive during this time of crisis.

Thank you for your time, and I urge you to do the right thing here.

The final speaker who's present is Daniel Kavanaugh.

There are also four speakers signed up who are not present.

And please hit star six to unmute yourself.

If you're speaking, we can't hear you.

You'll need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

Am I unmuted?

Yes.

Okay, perfect.

Hey, I'm Dan.

I'm a renter in the Central District and a member of Socialist Alternative.

I'm calling to tell all the council members that they really need to support our movement's proposal to cancel rent and mortgages.

Right this year, a record-breaking number of people have been put out of work due to COVID-19.

And if it's not safe to work during a pandemic, it's not safe to be evicted and face homelessness.

And, you know, our movement won the eviction moratorium, but that just delays eviction if the bills keep piling up.

And that's why we need full cancellation of rent and mortgages during the pandemic.

And I don't want to hear council members pretending there's nothing we can do, pretending, you know, our hands are tied or that our movement is being unreasonable.

Council members have the ability to act, and people need y'all to act.

So thanks to Council Member Sawant, but to the other council members, I would say the choice you have to make in front of everyone is will you side with working class families, or will you side with predatory landlords who will kick families out of their homes just to make it quick buck?

That is our final speaker.

Okay, thank you, Jen.

Thank you to everybody.

One person who signed up to speak but wasn't on just arrived.

David Johnson.

Hi, my name is David Johnson.

I am a PCO for Seattle 32, 25, 37, at least for now, because I live with four other people, and I don't know how we're ever gonna pay rent.

Three of the people during the pandemic were unemployed.

Some of them still are, and we have back rent that's gonna be due.

And I have depleted my savings for other things, they've depleted their savings for other things, and I have no idea how, when it comes due, we're going to make that work.

So I'm going to have to find some other place to live.

And I get along well with my landlord, but he has a mortgage to pay.

And the frustrating thing is I lived there five years and besides him, I probably paid the most for that mortgage.

It's probably been $30,000.

I have nothing to show for it.

And I know there's a lot of other people that are in worse shape than I am because I've actually had a job this whole time.

But when we get to the end of this moratorium, I'm going to be look at, Looking at a debt that I can't pay that I owe in common with people who can't pay it and We need help and we need y'all to help us because We've done all the right stuff that we can do and this is bigger than us That's all I have And that is our final speaker

OK, thank you to all the speakers who offered their testimonials today.

And they were extremely important in reminding everybody who's watching this of how real of a crisis this is.

And we will come to that, of course, in a little bit for our first agenda item.

We will hear about another crisis that is right in front of us, which is the climate catastrophe.

And we will hear from climate justice activists and organizers.

The smoke-filled skies in Seattle over the last two weeks were a vivid reminder of the devastating impacts of climate change on our lives.

The smoke is now not a one-time thing.

It has become a new normal, and that is just one way that climate change is reshaping the world we live in.

The hot, drying-out season is stretching on Both ends, according to research published actually just in August during the wildfires.

Higher autumn temperatures, less precipitation, a growing delay in the onset of winter rains, all of that has led to a 20% increase in the number of autumn days ripe for burning.

So we've probably not even seen the end of it this year.

In all, the western fire season has extended by at least 84 days since the 1970s.

Cal Fire, California's fire protection service, has said publicly that it no longer considers there to be a wildfire quote-unquote season because the season is now practically the entire year and unless of Climate scientists who are studying the fire episodes on the West Coast this year are pointing out that, of course, the increase in the temperatures are going to lead to mass migration from the generally the South to the North.

And we're going to see that phenomenon within the United States as well.

But what they're pointing out is while as difficult as that crisis will be because we are going to see tens of millions of people, many of them already stricken with poverty, many of them communities of color who are already marginalized.

We're going to see that crisis because their whole lives are going to be uprooted.

But on top of that, they're pointing out that the West Coast fires are just one type of the, you know, one manifestation of the climate crisis.

We're going to see other types of crises.

In fact, they pointed out that during the same height of the wildfires on the west coast, Louisiana, the coast of Louisiana saw some of the worst hurricanes ever.

So what they're pointing out is that this crisis is so acute that simply migrating is not going to be the answer, as difficult as that will be, because the places that people migrate to will have other types of crises.

So we're seeing the climate catastrophe break out in many, many different ways.

And so it's really Just a serious reminder for us how urgent the stopping of this crisis is.

And we know that stopping climate change will require reshaping the entire infrastructure of our society.

And too often working class people are told that they need to take on shorter showers, keep the thermostat lower, or other small consumer-based sacrifices, while of course positive, are totally insufficient.

I mean, when you look at the mathematics of climate catastrophe, that is simply not the answer to address the crisis.

And it sort of misses the point about the giant fossil fuel companies and financial industries who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions and leaves working people feeling defensive and powerless and of course the climate catastrophe gets even worse.

But, and we know that working people are not empowered under capitalism to decide how our electricity is generated, how goods are manufactured, or how the resources of our society are invested.

We just saw some breakthrough investigative reporting in the last weeks which showed that since the 1970s, the oil and plastics industry has engaged in the scale of the lie that the tobacco industry engaged in decades ago, where it was a complete misinformation that plastics can even be recycled.

And so that's just yet another example of how the entire system works.

It's not like it's based on conspiracy theories.

This is the reality of the system.

And so that's why it is so important for activists to be organizing.

And those who we are fortunate to have on today's panel have been organizing for years.

And some of their concrete demands are, of course, that giant financial institutions stop investing the vast wealth of our society into fossil fuel infrastructure and they're fighting for a Green New Deal.

I just wanted to remind everyone and I hope Ted is able to put this article up just to show, just to remind people that we're not starting from scratch.

Our activists, our movements led by climate justice activists are urban native and indigenous fighters, so many of our communities of color leaders, we have been on the front lines and one of the things we have succeeded in passing is the Wells Fargo divestment ordinance that we the city council passed in 2017 and many of the panelists who are here today are actually the reason we were able to win that And I'm really proud of my office being involved in that and Socialist Alternative being involved in that and having the good fortune to sponsor that ordinance.

But of course, we knew when we passed it that that is only the first step of what we needed to achieve.

We need to get to the actual forming of a public bank.

And that's something that our activists will also be talking about today.

This discussion is scheduled to go for maybe 20-25 minutes, so I'll turn it over to the panel now.

Please introduce yourselves before you begin speaking and I'm looking forward to hearing your comments.

Do we have our speakers?

Okay.

Yep.

I'm here.

Sorry about that.

Hi everybody.

My name is Rachel Heaton.

I am a member of the Muckleshoot tribe and I'm also a descendant of the Duwamish people, the first people of the lands that we all call Seattle now.

I'm also one of the co-founders of Mazaskatalks and was part of the work that Shama was speaking of in regards to divesting from Wells Fargo.

And first of all, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all today.

I think we all come here in a number of capacities, whether it's our jobs, parents, community members.

I know I'm speaking also as a Native woman, And those waters that, you know, your offices, you know, stand on, you know, are waters that our people still live and practice cultural, you know, cultural ways out of those waterways.

And so I think it's important to recognize that In the past that we typically have not had places at the table to have these conversations to talk about things like the Green New Deal divestment, but also in the ways of decisions that are made by the city and and also what's going on with our current climate.

situation and crisis that literally affects our everyday lives.

We hear fishermen come in every day who can't feed their families because they're not able to fish.

The water's heated up so fish are not returning.

Plants are dying on embankments.

And part of what we're seeing now unfold with the political situations I think that we see is the disconnect between community and leadership.

And so I think a big part of that is a lot of us that are affected by these situations are not at the table.

And I think we're seeing that with even committees and things that are made.

I know here in the city that I live in here out here by Auburn, we see the relationships of leadership making committees and those decisions not being made with community members.

And so a lot of times also Native people are not at those tables.

So one example I wanted to talk about was our canoe journeys.

Our canoe journeys are out there on the Puget Sound.

For the last two years at this time of year, we have had raw sewage spills in those waters that have actually kept us from being able to practice our cultural ways And as a treaty tribe of these particular areas, I think part of the work that I am doing is making sure that we have a seat at these tables or that we're creating these relationships.

So one thing that we ran into last year in July of 2019 was the 3 million gallons of raw sewage going into the waters and us not being allowed to put our canoes in or some of us having to take precautions to be pulled through so that because we couldn't touch the water.

And so little by little, even with the fires that recently took place down to our canoes being in water, we're literally seeing our cultural practices being taken from us.

And so part of the work that I'm doing, that Mazaska Talks is doing, that also that you'll hear from many of the others on these panels, is making sure that we're creating these relationships and having these voices at the table versus us hearing about it after decisions are made.

So I know a big part of what I want to see is that these cultural practices continue to be understood and realizing that this climate crisis affects Native peoples first.

And so by having us at the table, it's allowing us to come to you and tell you you know, the ways that we need this help in these relationships.

And I think we'll hear more about that.

So that's it.

Great.

Thank you, Rachel.

I think I'm up next.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Selekshna.

I'm an energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, collaborator with Mazaska Talks in 350 Seattle.

I'm a resident of District 3. Thank you for having me, and I also just want to thank all the folks that gave public comment before, echo their demands to cancel rent and mortgage payments in the midst of this pandemic.

The climate crisis and structural inequities in housing have shared roots in the corporate greed of Wall Street, and today I'm going to share a bit about how the city of Seattle can push one sector of Wall Street to stop fueling climate change and violating human rights.

So as many of you know through the work on Wells Fargo, cities are tied up in fossil fuels through their dollars.

And one financial service that's often overlooked but has an outsized impact is the insurance industry.

The insurance industry is really a financial linchpin to the fossil fuel economy in two ways.

They're a major global institutional investor, second only to pension funds.

And they provide insurance for the construction and operation of fossil fuel projects.

Without it, coal plants, tar sands pipelines, fracking wells can't get finance permitted or built.

So cities, as purchasers of insurance, are actually well-placed to push the insurance industry and add their voice to a growing call for divestment across the finance sector.

And so kind of cities, counties, screening for insurance companies that have policies on fossil fuels, on human indigenous rights, is one logical step in aligning a city's financial services with its values, sustainability goals.

To date, 19 global insurers have adopted policies restricting coal insurance, and eight have limited insurance for the tar sand sector.

However, of the six insurers that Seattle has contracts with as of fall 2019, none of them have such policies.

In fact, two of Seattle's insurers, AIG and WR Berkeley, are insuring the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which would carry more than half a million barrels of dirty tar sands oil every day from Alberta down to Vancouver, significantly expanding the production of tar sands reserves and violating Indigenous rights along the route.

Given the risks posed to the Salish Sea, tribes across Washington have publicly opposed the project.

There's precedent for U.S. cities and counties pressuring insurance companies to adopt these policies, respect human rights.

In July 2018, San Francisco adopted a policy to screen their insurers for fossil fuel policies.

In June, Boulder County became the first county in the U.S. to do so.

And just yesterday, actually, I heard a talk from the Boulder County Commissioner who shared that.

As they've been implementing the policy and talking to these insurance companies, they've gotten a lot of surprise from them, which just underscores the importance of policies like these to educate the industry and demonstrate the public pressure that is needed to really push these companies to stop business as usual.

Then in April 2020, New York City sent a letter to three key companies, Liberty Mutual, AIG, and Berkshire Hathaway, calling on them to adopt policies.

So just wanted to share this.

I've actually been in talks with some of you about what a screen could look like, but we'll follow up.

And yeah, I think there's a lot of leverage that the city of Seattle has as an insurance customer to really push the sector.

and follow up on the amazing work around Wells Fargo.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm next.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

My name is Johnny Fitgrew.

I grew up in Seattle.

Seattle's been my home.

But I also recognize that that I'm also a visitor and that this is the place of the Coast Salish and the Duwamish folks and I wanna recognize that.

So yeah, so I wanted to talk about the timely relevance of this conversation.

Last weekend, we got our air quality back and I know that the wildfires are still burning right now in places in Washington, California, in Oregon.

I also want to highlight that tomorrow is actually going to be one year since the global climate strike in which millions of young people marched and striked for the climate.

And here in Seattle, there were about 10,000 people that marched from Cal Anderson to City Hall to strike for climate justice.

And it was a really cool moment to see youth-led movement and also like workers.

There were tech workers that also showed solidarity and just wanting to highlight that tomorrow is going to be one year since that climate strike happened.

You know, it's not a coincidence that the wildfires have intensified on the West and also that the hurricanes hit in the Gulf, Hurricane Sally and Hurricane Laura.

It's not a coincidence.

You know, when I was younger, you know, my schools were teaching me that these were called natural disasters.

And I'm really happy to hear that that is a term that's outdated because I think everyone knows here that there is nothing natural about these disasters.

Also, I just wanted to add that there was a report or a story that came out a week ago about one of the fires in California that was started because of a gender reveal party.

And, you know, that's unfortunate.

But I think we all know here that these extreme weather patterns are the result of the methods and how this country procures its energy.

You know, it's not It's no coincidence.

I think the digging, the burning, the dumping, using things like fracking to gain energy, that's contributing to the warmer temperatures.

That's contributing to these longer seasons of wildfires.

And so just wanting to name that.

Yeah, the extraction of how energy is procured has been absolutely contributing to what's happening out here.

And so, you know, I'm speaking as, today I'm speaking as an organizer for the Climate Justice for Black Lives.

And just like a brief background, we're a collective of black and indigenous people of color.

You know, some of us have a lot of experience, some of us are new to the movement, but we all carry our brilliance and strength from our trust with each other and also our relationships, especially because we are a black and indigenous collective.

And we kind of, We wanted to put out an event because we wanted to center the conversation between Black Lives Matter and climate justice, but also the understanding that we can't fix the climate crisis without black liberation and native sovereignty.

And for me, my personal experience, my mom has asthma and I'm sure everyone on this panel, everyone in council, there's people in our lives that have respiratory conditions.

So when COVID hit, you know, she fits the vulnerable population.

When the wildfire smoke, you know, trailed into the area, she also fits a vulnerable population.

And I just say all that to say is this, like, pattern of multiple crises, that's something that Native folks, something that Black folks and people of color have to face.

And so, you know, Climate Justice for Black Lives, like, we are, you know, we are understanding that this crisis is now.

There are folks who have been experiencing this for years and there's areas like outside of the outside of America where like islands are vanishing.

And so the reality of the situation is that we really do need to.

invest in community.

And yeah, it's a really serious thing.

And I appreciate being on this panel.

And I'm here, I'm committed to fighting for climate justice, because I know that a better world is possible.

And I also recognize that, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants, that climate justice for Black lives is nothing new, and that there's folks on this panel, there's folks, you know, nationally, locally, there's like, there is such a rich history of Black and Indigenous people of color even in Seattle, you know, and just wanna recognize the work and the legacy of people that I haven't met yet, but just wanted to name that and just wanted to say thank you for all the work that everyone is doing and I hope you're taking care of yourself.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Ted will do a slide two, please.

Amitakepe, Chante, Washtay, Nape, Chiusapi, Awakianwanatana, Machiapi, Elmos, Laha, and Mataha.

Ate Waiiki, Charles Rimley, Ina Waiiki, Donna Harrison.

First of all, thank you, Council Member Sawant for opening up the space here today to talk about the serious issue of the climate crisis, as well as all the support you have given us for several years now on quite a few issues, including the Wells Fargo divestment.

Before I jump into some words on work we're involved with, just want to echo the public comments and show support for the renters and calm for the stopping the rent.

I live in district two, Beacon Hill.

And so absolutely support what those folks are calling for.

So Mazaska Talks, which was co-founded by Rachel Heaton and myself, was an outgrowth of the work we were involved with on trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We zeroed in on the financial companies and looking at who was giving the loans to energy transfer partners to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline and zeroed in on Wells Fargo in particular as one of the major funders of that pipeline.

And thanks to the support of council members Sawant, I saw council member Mesquita on here earlier for supporting the ordinance to pull the city out of the pipeline.

its relationship with Wells Fargo.

It really sparked a not only regional, national, but international movement of individuals really looking at how the financial sector is tied, or I should say divesting from the financial sector, the role it can play in addressing these pipelines and other companies.

Rachel didn't mention this, but she was a part of a delegation that actually went to Europe with other indigenous peoples, to call out European-based insurance companies, banks, and stuff like that to respect indigenous rights, to stop financing and funding the fossil fuel industry.

And so that's where Mazaskaw Talks kind of had its growth from there, where we got involved with the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion.

The Treaty Alliance is a coalition of around 150 First Nation tribal governments and several tribal governments on the U.S. side who have come together to oppose any of the proposed tar sands pipelines that the Trudeau administration has been pushing for.

We were asked to kind of bring in the divestment angle and language, which we did, and started a campaign going after several of those pipelines, of which a couple have been stopped, though we are still facing the Keystone XL pipeline.

as well as the one selection that was referencing the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which not only crosses into the Port of Vancouver, but there's one of the offshoots of that pipeline goes down just north of us into the Swinomish Territory in the town of Anacortes.

So we see a massive increase of oil tankers coming down around Vancouver Island, up the Salish Sea, and into those different ports for export of tar sands crude.

So we absolutely support any and all means going after financial companies, the banks, insurance companies to try to stop these different pipelines.

We'll jump to number four.

Slide four, please.

So locally, you know, we're big believers in that you can engage locally and to try to have an impact on the, you know, addressing the climate crisis is gonna require more than just what the city of Seattle does, but we can certainly become a model of what other jurisdictions can engage in.

And we've seen this in the past.

In 2014, council member Sawant worked with us on the indigenous people's day resolution to abolish climate stay in Seattle.

And that, movement sparked across the country and now we're up to 100 plus cities, towns and states that have passed similar abolished Columbus Day resolutions.

And again, we saw this with the divestment of Wells Fargo take off to other cities around the country and really around the world as well.

So we had to honor a few of us on here to work with Council Member O'Brien last year on Seattle's Green New Deal.

and was successful in passing both a resolution and ordinance to hopefully get Seattle to be fossil fuel free by 2030, an aggressive goal.

So that said, now is the time for those in leadership to move kind of beyond statements and really began to put money into addressing the climate crisis.

So what you see in here is some of the kind of Green New Deal budget funding kind of areas that we would like to see Seattle move into for the next year.

And the first one being funding assistance and support for electrification of homes and buildings.

One of the biggest areas of fossil fuel emissions for the city is the burning of oil and gas in homes and buildings.

And so we'd like to see assistance, especially for homes to convert off of oil and gas to 100% renewables.

Another strategy in reducing the kind of carbon footprint is funding assistance to support the weatherizations of homes and buildings.

So it's another area we'd like to see the city support.

Again, in our ordinance, we called for the establishment of a Green New Deal Oversight Board, which would be made up of 19 members, representative labor, impacted communities, environmental justice groups, tribes, to oversee some of the work going into the Green New Deal.

see that the city is living up to its commitments to reducing fossil fuel emissions.

So far, the executive branch continues to refuse the funding for the staffing of the position for the oversight board.

So we'd like to call on the city and folks to really push hard for that funding to go for the staffing position, as well as the stipends for low income and youth participation in that board.

The number five is on a call for a just transition worker program to be established for those workers who are currently in oil and gas jobs, some sort of training program to help them transition into green economy jobs.

We would not see it as equitable to simply start eliminating some of these jobs and not give our working brothers and sisters an opportunity to transition into good paying jobs within the green economy.

Ted, we can jump to number five, please.

Actually, jump down to six.

So right towards the end of Council Member O'Brien's tenure on the board, we were working on the Healthy Homes, Healthy Buildings Ordinance.

We'd like to encourage the city to pick this ordinance back up.

What it was calling for is a ban on oil and gas hookups in any new buildings.

homes or buildings in the city.

As colleague Jess is from 350 Seattle says a lot, one of the first steps addressing the climate crisis is to stop making it worse.

And so we encourage the city to pass this ordinance.

Quickly, one thing on natural gas, the city of Seattle through Puget Sound Energy gets the bulk of its natural gas out of British Columbia and Alberta.

where the majority of these fracking sites are on or next to First Nations communities.

So our native relatives to the north are suffering from the fracking that's taking place on their lands for us to heat our homes and buildings here in Seattle.

We know that the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is directly tied to these extractive sites, and that's certainly what we're seeing up in British Columbia and Alberta around these sites.

So addressing or passing this ban not only addresses the climate crisis, but it also addresses the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women.

Second thing with the burning of natural gas is that one of its main byproducts is methane.

And methane is actually a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon.

So do next slide, please, Ted.

a public bank.

We know that we need to ultimately get away from putting the city's money with any of these Wall Street banks.

So we encourage the city council to work with Senator Hasegawa, who has been working on a state public bank plan for a number of years now.

We actually got a budget plan passed last year, but it was vetoed by Governor Inslee due to COVID.

So we encourage the city to work with Hasegawa again on a budget plan so that when, if and when a state bank is established, the city of Seattle can engage in its depository services with a state bank.

We'll go ahead and jump to the last slide, Ted, and I'll wrap up here.

Just want to encourage folks to come out on October 2nd to a global day of action against the tar sands pipelines and those who are funding it or giving insurance to it.

There'll be actions.

throughout many cities, as well as some online support.

So you can go to StopTheMoneyPipeline.com to get connected with that.

And thank you for your time.

Thank you, Matt.

And I know Jess is going to speak next, but I just want to note that we are at 11.49.

And again, as I said, I apologize for the shortness of the discussion.

Of course, this is not the last discussion by any means, but I did want us to fit this in before the council goes into the budget.

And I know council members will of course have comments and questions, which I want to make a few minutes for before we go into the rental item next time.

Certainly.

Council member Sawant, am I aiming for like one minute, three minutes?

We should definitely take three minutes.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Well, I appreciate being able to follow such a rich discussion.

In some ways, I don't feel like I need a ton of time because so much has been put here already.

But hi, everyone.

My name is Jess Wallach and I'm an organizer with 350 Seattle.

We're a grassroots nonprofit based here in Seattle that's organizing folks to make systems change.

And we work really in three areas, resisting fossil fuels, holding polluters accountable and building towards the just, resilient, community centered future that we need.

And yeah, just a lot of gratitude for the folks who shared before me.

I lift up all of those priorities and also the priorities that I heard from folks in the comment period, hearing about like the need for rent cancellation, canoe journey, asthma, the powerful national solidarity organizing happening to divest from the insurance industry.

I'm thinking a lot about intersections.

And I think that's really where the work is.

And it makes me particularly excited to talk to y'all about some of our Green New Deal priorities.

Maybe pause for a second and just share a personal thing.

When I imagine our Green New Deal future, we could talk for days about policy and funding and who's getting energy from where.

But for me, it really starts with thinking about what does that future look like and feel like?

And in some ways, it's quite simple.

It's like no matter who you are, what's in your wallet, what you look like, where you live, you have a chance to be healthy.

You have a chance to play and grow and learn and work and dream of a future that feels stable and healthy and exciting.

And that feeling is what we're working towards when we talk about a Green New Deal future.

And that means addressing the systemic injustices that are keeping so many of us unstable.

That means being real about the overlapping crises we face of systemic racism, economic injustice, the climate crisis, and rooting our solutions at those intersections, transforming from the extractive economy that's treating people and the planet as if they're disposable towards a regenerative economy that roots us in place in relationships of care and an economy that's going to take care of us and future generations.

So I just have a little bit of time here today, but I want to lift up one community solution that I think is really important and exciting and accessible for Seattle in the coming years.

As you all know, the Seattle City Council committed to the goals of the Seattle for a Green New Deal campaign last year, which is to eliminate the city's climate pollution by 2030 by investing in climate solutions that are going to create good green jobs, address injustices, and make our communities healthier.

There's a lot of ways we can do that.

One of the most powerful ones is to think about how we can be building affordable housing that's coupled with transit and anti-displacement measures.

Straight up, the most effective thing that we can do per dollar spent when it comes to reducing our region's climate pollution is to build affordable housing near transit and couple it with strong anti-displacement measures, keeping people in place Making sure that they can be near their families, their jobs, and they don't have to move as we face a growing affordable housing crisis means that we have less cars on the road, and that's our region's biggest source of climate pollution.

It's also one of the most important things that we can do to take care of our people, and that I think need has never been clearer than when we've been in this pandemic.

You heard from folks about it at the beginning of this call.

in place and making sure that they can stay in their communities makes for stronger, more resilient communities, which we need when we're dealing with climate impacts like the wildfires and the smoke.

And it's also a really critical strategy for public safety.

And I think this is another moment to just lift up intersections.

Our Green New Deal work is deeply connected with racial justice.

And when we think about what it means to meet people's basic needs so that they can take care of one another, that communities can be strong and healthy, and that they don't have to depend on an extractive economy, we begin to withdraw from the systems that are destroying our planet and ripping our communities apart.

And so I think affordable housing is a much bigger conversation.

I know it's something that talked about a lot in this committee.

And as we go into budget this season, it's going to be an important priority for us in our communities.

And I look forward to talking with this committee more about it.

Thank you.

Thank you to all our panelists for this really very engaging and important presentation.

I wanted to invite council members, if you would like to speak, please indicate to me by raising your hand or sending me a message or by any of those means.

I don't see any...

Council members speaking right now.

In the meanwhile, let me go ahead and ask, actually Council Member Peterson, did you want to ask a question?

Okay, I just saw you come off video mute.

So one question I had for the panelists, and any of you can take this, is Matt mentioned, I mean, one of the slides that was one of the key slides, I think, in the presentation was the concrete tasks that the city council, the city government needs to take on in order to make specific and concrete, and not just not talking endlessly, but actually making, taking action to reduce the carbon footprint.

And just first of all, I think the point was well made that eliminating Seattle's carbon footprint by 2030, that's a tall order given how things have gone so far.

And so what will it actually take to accomplish that?

And obviously it will take concrete changes.

And one of those changes, Matt, you talked about was the weatherization and conversion of buildings to renewables.

And I think one thing that I would like you to bring out in this discussion is the jobs that could be created, and not just jobs I'm talking about unionized living wage jobs with training programs apprenticeship programs that can be created with programs like weatherization and conversion of buildings.

to clean energy and I wouldn't even say renewable because we need clean energy.

And so if you can just talk about that in general and also tie it to what is it specifically that the city council should be doing in the 2021 budget to address that?

Yeah, absolutely.

And actually, Jesse, I'm going to kick it over to you on the jobs part.

But I did want to point out before that, that when we were meeting with developing the Green New Deal, you know, labor was an essential part of that because we recognize that whether we're talking about electrification, that It's going to be workers who are going to be removing the gas and oil units and electrifying them.

So it's absolutely essential that we have the unions at the table alongside us, because I don't know how to do that stuff.

And I'm sure a lot of other folks here don't know how to do that work either.

So it's important to have their voice and experience at the table.

In terms of programs, I have seen some programs around the country that Seattle could potentially model when it comes to green jobs.

One of them actually being from back in my, where I'm from, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, one of the things that the council engaged in post that fight was to bring solar energy to a number of our district's tribal communities.

And what they did was partner with local tribal colleges to provide apprenticeships and trainings for any tribal member or folks who wanted to learn how to build solar panels, how to install solar panels, how to engage in the maintenance of solar panels.

And after the apprenticeship program, they're put to work.

And actually in that area where that pipeline was constructed, the district of Cannonball now has several solar panels up that bring energy to that particular district.

So I can imagine, I mean, Seattle has numerous colleges and tech and trade schools that we could be creative in figuring out what these various apprenticeship trade programs look like and how to engage with them.

But Jess, if you want to say any more on that or anybody else.

Thanks, Matt.

Yeah, I'll add briefly, I think the importance of collaborating with our partners in labor on developing green jobs pathways, as well as the folks who've been advocating for green jobs, like Johnny, you've been part of that work for many years now, I think there's a lot of community capacity to build these programs.

And I think that's another reason to really work closely with OSCE and the Environmental Justice Committee to get the Green New Deal Oversight Board up and running, is there's a specific role for labor and an expanded table of community partners to really help do that policy visioning and policymaking.

The other piece that I just want to add in here is a sort of expansion of when we talk about green jobs, what do we mean?

Certainly solar, building clean energy and affordable housing, particularly with strong union labor standards and project harmony agreements.

Those are really important parts of the green jobs conversation.

But there are also green jobs that don't look like construction jobs or utility jobs.

When we talk about green jobs, we just mean jobs that are low carbon and taking care of our community.

So health care workers, educators, folks who are taking care of kids, Bus drivers, these can all be green jobs.

And if we're really thinking holistically about what does it mean to take care of our communities through this crisis and build a better world on the other side, like let's be thinking about how all of those folks are part of the Green New Deal story and part of Seattle's work to a healthy climate future.

Jess, thank you so much for lifting that up.

Really wanna give credit to the beautiful work of Got Green, who've been doing a lot of work in terms of like green jobs.

And to Jess's point, the Young Leaders Committee of Got Green, like developed their own definitional term of what a green job, and it pretty much hits on a lot of the things that Jess mentioned.

A job that's good for the community, a job that pays a living wage, a job, It's carbon.

It can look in so many different ways.

We're talking outdoor educators.

It's so vast if we imagine it to be vast, because it is.

And then the other thing I want to mention is that there's already local models happening.

So the Rainier Valley Corps has a Green Pathways Fellowship Program, and it's about placing people of color in environmental organizations, and they provide a living wage.

And I think Ideally, we need more green pathways.

And I think the city should really look into modeling that fellowship program, because we know that there's folks in the city departments that are also in retirement.

We know that there's going to be a need for transition of workers.

And so, remembering that, like, to Jess and Matt's point, like, there's already, like, a legacy, there's already, like, a blueprint, and it's just a matter of, like, the city prioritizing and, yeah, like, making the investments and looking from, like, the people who are already making it happen.

And I just want to piggyback real quick on what everyone else is saying, too.

And, you know, part of that relationship building when we talk about Native communities is also the city being a model that other communities such as surrounding tribal communities have the ability to take these same models and then put them into our communities.

And as sovereign communities, we have the ability to do a lot of this work faster than I think some of us see.

and these processes.

So I think it's also that opportunity of the city being a model for our communities and then also moving those jobs further out from just Seattle, but also into when we think of the fact that there's 29 federally recognized tribes.

So that's part of that creating those partnerships and those seats at that table to have those conversations so that the work isn't just happening here, but it's creating a model.

right.

Thank you so much for your comments and I'll just make a few closing remarks but only in the spirit that we will be coming back to many of these important discussions some of them next year but some of them actually right away for the budget discussion but because we have the renters rights panel waiting to get on and because we have to end the meeting soon because the city council's meeting scheduling restrictions.

I just wanted to quickly, you know, one, really reiterate the points that were made in relation to jobs and the need for the environmental movement, environmental justice movement and climate justice movement and the labor movement to really recognize that this is actually the need to, there's a need to build one movement that is united and organized around demands that all of us need.

All of us face climate change.

As Jess was saying, it doesn't matter who you are, you're going to be impacted by climate change.

And it is in the interest of the entire labor movement to recognize this.

But we also know that there are concrete obstacles there because often we will see some leaders in the labor movement themselves unfortunately feeling beholden to the fossil fuel bosses and we need to break that link and bring the leadership in the labor movement alongside the climate justice movement and there I think the rank and file of the labor unions have a big role to play And I think a very important point that was made, I think by Jess, is that healthcare workers, educator unions, many of the other unions that may not actually represent workers in the fossil fuel sector have a big role to play in drawing in, drawing out the fossil fuel worker unions into the struggle.

And so I think that this is a very concrete thing that we need to do.

And I'm glad you all mentioned that.

I will definitely make sure that our office highlight through our social media and other media, the October 2nd action to stop the money pipeline protests, very important.

It's really crucial that the climate justice movement is pointing out that not only are we up against the fossil fuel lobby, we are up against Wall Street, because Wall Street is financing the climate destruction as you all have said, and that's why we need actions on the street.

Thank you, Johnny, for reminding us that we are at the one-year anniversary of the important strike actions.

We need continued strike actions by the community.

We also need strike actions by workers themselves.

Shutting down work whether it's the health care union or educator union or fossil fuel workers union is going to be a key component of shutting down the fossil fuel machine.

And I just wanted to highlight transit workers unions have a key role to play here.

Not only are they playing a key role in the pandemic, they are essential workers, but they are also transit workers, meaning there's a definite link to the fossil fuel sector as well.

So I think all of this is something that we need to keep thinking about.

And concretely, as I said, we will be highlighting the October 2nd protest.

We also look forward to supporting all your excellent budget demands that are starting next week.

And so please keep in touch with our office and we'll make sure, we want to make sure that through the People's Budget Movement, we are able to push for and win some concrete gains through the budget.

And last but not least, I will I also mentioned that we want to follow up on the thing that Matt mentioned in his presentation, which is the need to carry out a citywide ban on gas and oil hookups in new commercial and residential buildings.

That is a very, again, a concrete thing that the city can and should do.

And last but not least, I will say that as you all have said, affordable housing is a big component of reducing climate effects.

And that's why it was so crucial that the Black Lives Matter movement and the climate justice movement and the housing justice movement were able to win the Amazon tax victory, which, while not as big as we were pushing for, is a huge step forward.

It's a historic gain.

It's four times the tax that was repealed by the council in 2018. And the actual affordable homes that are going to be built are going to be part of the climate justice victories.

But that's not going to be enough.

We need to keep pushing forward.

I really thank all the panelists for joining us today.

And we will keep following up on these issues.

Our next item is the need to cancel rent, mortgage and utility and late payments for all the over 100,000 Seattleites and millions statewide who are facing a massive crisis because of the economic recession of capitalism coupled with the crisis of the pandemic.

We are actually having an unprecedented onslaught of crises, the pandemic, the healthcare crisis, the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and massive job and income losses.

And all of that was happening before the wildfires began on the West Coast.

But at the same time, working people and young people have also shown the impact we can have by getting organized, even in the middle of this pandemic.

Nationally, the multiracial justice for George Floyd movement has already brought millions onto the streets against racism and police violence.

And here, as I said, we won the Amazon tax for affordable housing during the justice for George Floyd movement, without which we would not have won that.

And so that's a victory that belongs to all our movements.

And locally, statewide, and nationally, renters have won a series of moratoriums on evictions, including an eviction moratorium in Seattle to the end of the year.

And many of the panelists who are going to speak now were part of the organizing we had done through the renters rights movement, including Tenants Union, Be Seattle, other organizations, and my office and Socialist Alternative, where we were able to collect over 9000 signatures very early on.

It seems like an age ago.

It was just a few months ago in early March when the pandemic began.

We collected over 9,000 signatures to a petition to cancel rent.

And because of that kind of organizing, obviously not limited to just that, you know, there was organizing statewide and nationwide, on the backs of which we were able to win these moratoriums, not just in Washington state, but in other states.

But we also know that a moratorium on evictions is not enough because, unfortunately, it nearly delays what is going to be an explosive crisis for a majority of renters and working people and that includes working in middle class homeowners and small landlords and small businesses who are also facing this crisis.

And we know there will be a tsunami of evictions once the moratoriums expire, unless we continue to get organized and build a fighting movement.

I've asked my staff, as I said, to prepare a presentation that documents the scale and scope of this crisis that we will see in a minute.

And then we will hear from the panel of renters and community activists about why there is a growing demand for canceled rent and What's really important about this is that it's not just a Seattle demand.

This is nationwide.

Renters are calling for cancel rent because we need this.

We are in crisis, as many people in public testimony said.

First, Jonathan, can you go ahead and run the slideshow for us where we will have really important statistics to ground us and why this is a crisis?

And then we will have our panelists speak.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm just getting the screen up here, if you'll bear with me.

I'm Jonathan Rosenblum, as Council Member Sawant said.

Can everybody hear me?

Can you just confirm?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great.

All right, we will go through these slides again, as Council Member Sawant mentioned, reviewing where we're at.

And in fact, we're gonna start by talking about where things were at even before COVID in our capitalist system.

Nationally, 78% of workers were living paycheck to paycheck in 2017, before the COVID crisis even hit.

More than half of minimum wage workers had to work more than one job in this country just to make ends meet.

These are national statistics.

Three out of four said they were in debt, and more than half thought they would always be in debt for their entire lives.

And again, before COVID, nearly three in five renters could not come up with $400 in an emergency.

In Seattle before COVID, nearly half of renters were officially rent burdened, in other words, paying more than 30% of their income in rent.

And rent had gone up in the last decade, 69%, more than two times the national average.

Before the COVID crisis struck, the average rent in Seattle was over $2,000 a month, meaning that a household would need an income of greater than $81,000 a year to avoid being rent burdened.

More than half of Seattle renters hit with eviction notices before COVID owed one month's rent or less.

And this is according to a study done by the King County Bar Association and Seattle Women's Commission.

And that study also find that nearly nine out of every 10 tenants who were evicted wound up on the streets and disproportionately women and people of color were those evicted.

Today, what we're seeing is record COVID unemployment, which is obviously peaked in the spring, but is leveling off at a staggering 1 million new claims of unemployment per week.

And that is steady at this point.

That is a staggering level to be at.

Today, around one third of U.S. renters, working class renters, are unable to pay the rent on time.

That figure has stayed pretty stable since May.

And housing insecurity is high, even where eviction moratoriums are in place.

Now, we know that the Seattle City Council passed a resolution back in March calling on the state to enact a moratorium.

That moratorium is in effect until mid-October.

There's a city moratorium until the end of the year, but we know that that itself does not provide housing stability, and I'll discuss that more in just a minute.

Today, Nearly half of U.S. renters and one-third of Washington state renters say it's either very likely or somewhat likely that they'll be evicted in the next two months, according to surveys by the U.S.

Census Bureau.

And to pay landlords, this is a study that was conducted by apartmentlist.com, which is a landlord association.

And what they found is that to pay landlords, renters are spending their meager savings taking on new debt and borrowing money.

This chart, along with the whole presentation, will be posted on the committee's website following this meeting, if it's not up already.

But the way you look at this chart, you can see that more than 40% of those who have fallen behind on rent have withdrawn money from personal savings.

40% have borrowed money from family and friends just to pay the bills that they needed to.

30% have sold personal assets.

nearly 30% of accumulated credit card debt.

And you'll notice at the bottom of the chart, actually a relatively small number of people have withdrawn money from their retirement accounts.

And that is because we believe very few working class people still have substantial retirement accounts to begin with.

People are going into greater debt just to try to pay the rent.

As we hear from this leader, Tara Raghavir, who's director of the Kansas City Tenants Union in Missouri, and also a national leader in the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

Every eviction is an act of violence.

And every time we're allowing an eviction to occur, she says, we're putting a landlord's profits above people's lives.

The COVID unemployment crisis is harming communities of colors disproportionately.

These are data from a couple of months ago from the US Department of Labor.

that show that black unemployment is 50% higher than white unemployment.

And unemployment is also higher in Hispanic and Asian communities as well.

Growing rent debt crisis is disproportionately harming communities of color.

We can see that communities of color are far more likely to have unpaid rent as compared to white renters.

Working class households are struggling to keep up with even basic expenses.

We can see that in the United States overall, over 30% of households reported in the last U.S.

Census survey a couple weeks ago reported difficulty paying for their usual household expenses in the last seven days.

That figure is slightly lower in Washington State, about one in every four.

But when we break it down and look at households that are under $50,000 a year in Washington State, Half of those households right now, even with the moratoriums in place, are having difficulty paying for usual household expenses.

Here's the math.

We know that there's a major economic crisis that preceded the COVID crisis for working people.

On top of that, we have the COVID crisis itself, and now we have the moratoriums, which are deferred but not forgiven expenses, And those three factors add up to a tsunami of evictions, foreclosures, and bankruptcies once the emergency declarations, once the moratoriums expire.

The Aspen Institute, which is no friend of working people, has just issued a report last month that predicts that absent strong intervention in different policies locally and around the country, They estimate that 30 to 40 million people in America could be at risk for eviction in the next several months, especially as the moratoriums expire.

What the Aspen Institute found is in this state, the tsunami is going to be about three quarters of a million households at risk of eviction once any emergency measures expire.

That's about one in every three renter households in this state.

And this is something that, of course, ordinary activists and members of the community know.

They know that through our movement, we won these moratoriums.

They are important stopgap measures, but they won't solve the mounting debt crisis that renters and working class homeowners face.

And these are just two comments that we got from the petition that Council Member Sawant mentioned that thousands of people signed in a very short order this past spring.

People know that allowing the rent debt to accrue with a moratorium will only ensure that the residents will be economically destabilized once the moratoriums expire.

And that is why we're so pleased to be working alongside state and national movements to cancel all rent, mortgages, utilities, late fees, and housing debt.

We stand in solidarity with the movement that demands that governments pass laws covering all residential renters who have suffered economically during the COVID crisis and suspend mortgage payments as well for homeowners and small landlords, people, and affordable housing providers who have suffered economically during the COVID crisis.

We know through our own experience in this city that tenants have organized, fought back, and won in recent years.

important legislation the council has passed on limiting move-in fees, limiting winter evictions, and we've also won laws blocking landlords from raising rents on renters where there are safety violations, the so-called Carl Haglund Law.

In addition, tenants have organized and won housing security at the Chateau Apartments, at the Kenton Apartments, And we know there are other struggles going on amongst Cornell and Associates tenants and so on.

What we really want to hear from the panel that follows is your own perspectives on what are you, your neighbors and your coworkers experiencing during this COVID crisis?

And what must the Seattle City Council and state government do to protect tenants from the coming eviction tsunami?

Thank you, Jonathan.

We would like the panel to get started.

All the speakers are activists who are here with us.

And yeah, let's have the first speaker and then take it from there.

And I believe that would be Maya Garfinkel.

Hello everyone.

Um, yeah, I'm Maya Garfinkel.

Um, I'm a tenant organizer with B Seattle and I'm here on behalf of the cancel rent and mortgages Washington campaign.

Um, and as Jonathan has started to lay out, um, we are experiencing a crisis which requires comparably visionary solutions.

Um, yeah.

And as Jonathan has shared 30 to 40 million renters are facing eviction across the country.

The work for housing justice has a long history in Seattle and the experiences of evictions and displacement is nothing new.

And I wanna acknowledge that and thank those who have been doing this work for decades.

After the financial crisis in 2008, we saw how thousands of people went into foreclosure and banks and mega corporations bought up housing and land for cheap.

This further drove up housing prices prices and increased displacement.

Renters know that we are in the midst of another financial crisis and that we need to fight against a repeat of 2008. After the pandemic hit, the federal government spent $6 trillion bailing out big business programs like rental assistance, which are woefully inadequate for renters just in the amount of money that they're offering.

And in King County, it's literally a lottery.

fundamentally bail out the landlords.

We think that government instead must support a people's bailout, which supports essential workers, renters, and small homeowners by not putting the burden on them to qualify and apply for rental assistance, as well as continue to face the threat of eviction and displacement and foreclosure.

We need to support undocumented renters who are not eligible for unemployment and are already at a high risk of being threatened by their landlords with ICE.

Instead of funneling our tax dollars into violent police forces, we need to invest in social housing.

The demand for cancel rent and mortgages Washington is also part of a bigger campaign that calls for permanent solutions for this permanent crisis.

This includes some demands that the city council could pass at a local level.

We need to move towards democratically controlled, publicly owned housing and land.

We need community opportunity to purchase.

We need strong rental protections like statewide rent control and passing just cause eviction protections across the state.

And the underlying goal is to defend housing as a human right.

And canceling rent during this economic and health crisis is a major part, but not the end of the fight.

And the organizing of this campaign has involved folks from across the state and the country.

The majority of Washingtonians have fewer rental protections than those of us in Seattle.

Spokane County was planning on spending their federal CARES Act money not on rental assistance, but a new jail.

For a lot of renters in rural Washington, the protections need to come from the state because their county and city lack necessary resources or political will.

So we're fighting for statewide solutions.

This campaign strives to build power together as renters at a building city and state level.

We wanna build upon relationships and share organizing strategies and common stories that renters are experiencing.

And we need to work together to push these statewide solutions and build this conversation to cancel rent and mortgages and work for permanent housing solutions.

And a couple action items for those listening.

As many people know, the current eviction moratorium is set to expire on October 15th.

And we need this extended far beyond two months.

We need this to be a long-term extension to protect renters and alongside the rest of these demands.

So if you can call the governor and assert the need for these demands.

There's also a petition that's under tinyurl.com slash cancel rent petition.

And we are having a organizing meeting on September 30th, where we're going to talk about kind of the next action that we can take and how we can show up in Washington to issue these demands.

And yeah, really looking forward to working with people more and to fight for cancel rent Washington.

Thanks so much.

Thank you so much, Maya.

Our next speaker is Julissa Sanchez, an organizer with the Tenants Union of Washington State, which has been a stalwart fighting organization for renters' rights over the years.

The Tenants Union has been a leader in the fight for rent control and other leading causes, and Julissa and other organizers are today on the front lines of helping tenants every day manage the enormous attacks they face from landlords around the state.

Welcome, Julissa.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this panel.

I am here representing the Tenants Union, but beyond that, I'm here representing the tenants that I work with every day.

In particular, the Latinx community, the immigrant community and refugee communities that I work with every day.

And as it has been stated, you know, that this housing crisis in Seattle and King County, as well as across the state, has been going on for decades.

And the federal government has disinvested in public housing and real estate investors, like myself growing up in Seattle in the Central District, have came in and gentrified that area.

that used to be a predominantly Black community with a sprinkle of Latinx communities and Asian communities.

Well, this pandemic has surely made the crisis in housing more visible.

If everybody used to argue about what renters' rights were and how we didn't need them, Last year, the fight for just cause in the city of Burien, landlords were really, sued the city because they passed a just cause and other protections in that city.

We see that, you know, the basic need for housing and renters and low income homeowners, you know, are really, you know, feeling, the burn behind all of what is going on.

Because of racist policies that have excluded Black, Latinx, and other communities of color from homeownerships, you know, renters are disproportionately from these communities and are disproportionately hurting during this housing crisis.

So as Maya has talked about the demands for the council rent and mortgages campaign, you know, the tenants and grassroots organizations across the country are working together to, you know, bring and uplift the voices and the experiences of tenants across the city, the state, the country, who are, you know, really suffering as low income people and in this global pandemic.

So for tenants rights organizations like the Tenants Union of Washington State and Blue Seattle, We talk to tenants every day who are afraid, literally like afraid, and some people, you know, they were really alleviated to know that the moratorium was extended to October 15th in August when they were panicking because they thought they were going to get evicted because they hadn't paid the rent.

Now they're alleviated until October 15th.

October 15th is a few weeks away.

And now what?

So now again, they're holding their breath to thinking, am I going to get evicted?

Am I going to be on the streets?

You know, according to the policy link, 34% of renters have been able to pay the rent.

And that's 343,000 people across the state.

And as somebody who works in the Latinx community, and as we know, many undocumented workers work in the service industry, which is the hotels and restaurants that haven't really fully opened.

And some of them are only working two to four days a week, and some of them are not getting paid.

a check large enough to pay for rent and pay for food and pay for the utilities.

And so what do they have to do?

They have to compartmentalize and they have to feed themselves and their children.

Right.

So that's what I always encourage them to do and to just document everything in writing with their landlords as to what their situation is, because really there isn't anything else to do.

We don't have any other policies or protections for tenants that are going to protect them from evictions once this moratorium ends.

And I was really, I mean, I know the good intentions behind the repayment plan, And it kind of makes a tenant a little bit feel a little bit more safe from from evictions.

But again, they're going to have to borrow money.

They're going to before this this pandemic happened.

A rent increase of $50 to $100 would leave families in dire economic situations.

Now, a repayment plan of $300 to $500 a month on top of already high rents of $1,500, where is that going to leave communities?

Where is that going to leave people?

In the streets, when we are in the middle of a global pandemic, when we already have a large a dire problem of homelessness that we need to address appropriately.

And the change in the moratorium in the state allowing landlords to give a 90 in the city of Seattle it's a 90 day notice with the intent to sell or to occupy the unit.

We have seen these given out like candy and in retaliation and retaliation is really hard to prove but the tenants know that it's a retaliation or in racism and prejudice of them owing the money back rent and not being able to pay or not being able to sign a repayment plan that is not going to fit in in people's budget and in people's income.

We have seeing landlords use threats to ICE.

We're going to call ICE if you're not paying rent.

You're going to get evicted and you're going to get deported if you're not going to pay rent.

So what do people do?

They have to borrow money.

What do people do?

They have to make things work, right?

They call Julissa, la señora de las rentas.

And I, you know, it is interesting what landlords try to do when they think that tenants don't know their rights.

So I think It's really important that the city of Seattle lets the landlords know that tenants have their rights and also have a campaign to support organizations like the Tenants Union and Be Seattle.

who are out there every day overworked.

We are helping people all across the city and the state in knowing their rights so that in asserting their rights, the landlords can know that they are messing with people who are informed of their rights because their demeanor completely changes once the tenant feels empowered and stands up for themselves.

This loophole, I think it really needs, this 90-day loophole needs to be addressed because people are still getting evicted because of it.

And we need to really get together and center what, the human rights and tenants' rights are to a home and to a safe home, because that is going to protect us from so many other things in the future, so many other social problems.

And we need to look at the budget for the city, and we need to invest in community and invest in Black, Indigenous, Latinx, people of color communities.

Thank you very much.

I think that the city of Seattle has been a model and a leader in policies and protections for tenants that other parts of the state have looked up to the city of Seattle in implementing, for example, Just Cause.

So thank you very much.

And I do hope that you do stand with us in our fight for the debt council evictions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Julissa.

That was really important, the points you made.

We know the rent crisis also affects small businesses who all too often are at the mercy of big corporate landlords.

We need to cancel rent for struggling small businesses.

We know that many businesses actually have already faced this struggle with not very happy consequences, and that really highlights that we need to, as Julissa was saying, really band together and stand with one another.

Shirley Henderson is co-owner of Squirrel Chops, a women-owned coffeehouse and hair salon located in Seattle Central District, who will share some of her thoughts with us.

Welcome, Shirley.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Solant, for having this panel and also this important fight to cancel rent.

As Councilmember Solant said, my name is Shirley Henderson and I co-own Squirrel Chops with my wife.

It's a queer-owned socialist coffee shop, Hair Salon, in the Central District, which is a neighborhood that is an epicenter of gentrification in Seattle.

And I'm here to speak to the struggle of small businesses in this city during this pandemic.

As Jonathan and other panelists have laid out already, COVID-19 has dealt a devastating blow to working folks and small businesses in Seattle and across the country.

Locally, our music venues, our mom and pop shops, and local gathering hubs have not been spared.

As others have pointed out, like most cities, Seattle was already suffering from deep income inequality.

and economic stress before the pandemic.

We were already facing a historic housing crisis with skyrocketing rents, increased cost of living and wages that have not kept pace with that.

And now in Seattle with COVID-19, we see thousands of workers forced onto unemployment and so many businesses having to close their doors, especially during the beginning of the pandemic when we had the lockdown.

This includes Andaluz and Columbia City Fitness Center in Columbia City, which were forced to close and lay off all of their employees.

And for us at Squirrel Chops, we had to shutter the salon and lay off all staff as well.

But we were able to continue to operate the coffee shop during the lockdown, which reduced hours and a takeaway window.

At Squirrel Chops, this meant that we, the owners, worked double time while ensuring there was enough sanitizer, masks, and other safety measures in place.

With the unemployment not readily available, we also had to scramble to pay furloughed staff with tips and donations from customers.

These are just a few examples of what so many small businesses are facing right now.

We as small businesses do not have the vast reserves of big business, nor have we received all the kickbacks and bailouts.

The survival statistics that I've seen are grim, with a prediction of two-thirds to 80% of small businesses nationwide not surviving this crisis.

And we know that those businesses who are most vulnerable and will be most impacted are people of color, immigrant, and female-owned businesses.

Many of us are also renters, and so we're struggling with two rents while trying to juggle keeping staff and customers safe during a pandemic.

And rent for small business is often the highest monthly expense we see.

I've heard from a lot of other small businesses that landlords have either been totally unwilling to forgive rent while the businesses are closed, or in some cases, the landlord is willing to do an abatement, which is just a way to kick the can down the road, so that when the economy gets worse, as it will, small businesses will be left to pay more in rent to catch up for the months they didn't pay, which is not feasible when your business is making little to no income.

Also for small businesses, our interests are very much tied to the interests of our employees.

And as mentioned before, many of our employees who are already struggling to afford to live in Seattle with skyrocketing rents are now hit even harder with being furloughed or laid off with the uncertainty of even being able to return to work.

And when the eviction moratorium ends, this will leave many in the service industry in fear of losing their housing.

Meanwhile, we see big business and banks getting bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, and many, like Amazon, have made record profits from COVID-19, with Bezos doubling his wealth in this period.

Let's be clear, it's this very dynamic of wealth accumulation at the top through the stripping away of the public sector, including health care and social housing, which has created and exacerbated this crisis.

And now working people, just like in 2007 and 2008, are being asked once again to bear the brunt and also pay the cost of it.

We're here today to say that those who created this crisis and have profited off of it can absolutely afford to pay for it.

Banks can afford it.

So if the city council wants to preserve the cultural and social fabric of this city, then it must cancel rent and mortgages for working people, small landlords, and small businesses without debt.

We cannot give a bailout to corporate landlords, which, given how much of property is owned by corporations, is what rent assistance effectively becomes.

We need to cancel it.

Because as I said, the cash-rich corporations can absorb the cost.

At Squirrel Chops, we stand in solidarity with those who are here on the panel and with workers across the city who are struggling to make rents.

And again, I want to say a huge thank you to Council Member Sawant and her office for pushing this fight forward and for always fighting tirelessly for the interests of working people and small businesses.

And thank you for making City Hall truly a public space.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Shirley.

Next, we have Jason Redmond, who is one of the growing number of tenant activists in Seattle.

He's a tenant in a building owned by Cornell and Associates, one of the biggest, notorious profiteering corporate landlords in Seattle.

Cornell and Associates has been in the news recently for evicting tenants and earlier this month gained additional notoriety by threatening to evict tenants who posed Black Lives Matter signs in their windows.

Welcome, Jason.

Thank you for having me.

As Council Member Salant mentioned, I'm a self-employed photographer and I live in District 6, Council Member Straus' district.

And I would like to speak about my personal experiences as a renter and the importance of assistance for renters, working-class homeowners, small business owners, and independent landlords.

Late last year, the private landlord who owned my 14-unit apartment building retired after 40 years and sold our building.

The new owners never introduced themselves.

In fact, they remained completely anonymous, probably because of what they were about to do to me and my neighbors.

The new owners hired the management company Cornell and Associates who managed 5,500 units in Seattle to handle all aspects of our building.

After some research, I discovered in an October 14th article in the Daily Journal of Commerce that our building had actually been purchased by local business owners who own copiers Northwest.

The article mentioned that after the owners sold their South Lake Union building for nearly $30 million, they were buying up investment properties like my apartment building.

Not long after, my neighbors and myself received notices that our rents were increasing.

Some, like myself, were receiving an almost 40% increase that took effect on February 1st.

As you all know, the first known case of coronavirus in our country appeared here in Washington State on January 21st when a man was admitted to a hospital in Everett.

When I appealed to Cornell and Associates about the excessive increase in rent, I had difficulty getting a quick response.

When I was finally able to speak to the person managing my building, they assured me that they had done their research on rents in my area and that they went as far as suggesting that they could have increased the rent even higher than they did to an almost 60% increase.

This, I might add, is the same company that, according to a recent article in The Stranger, is threatening to evict some tenants for having Black Lives Matter signs in their window.

As the pandemic grew, I reached out again to Cornell and Associates to inquire about rents being returned to their original amount to help us through the crisis.

Again, after some delay, they replied with an email suggesting, among other things, that we ask our parents for the money or put the rent on a credit card.

Since I do a lot of work covering local news and events, I managed to keep myself fairly busy for the first few months of the pandemic.

However, once news coverage began to shift to other parts of the country, the amount of work I received has been steadily declining.

Additionally, a large part of my income comes from covering local and national conferences, so I'm extremely worried about my future and the ability to pay my inflated rent.

Thankfully, we have protections in place to stop evictions, but for how long?

Unless we start acting now, I fear that the approaching wave of massive evictions and people who are experiencing homelessness will increase.

I'm worried about all the working class families, the renters, the homeowners, and many of whom are people of color, self-employed people like myself, and others whose jobs have been affected by the pandemic.

We need to keep putting pressure on our state and local leaders to help those who need it most, not the big banks, corporate landlords, and management companies.

We need to ask that Governor Inslee for statewide rent control and for continued assistance like canceling rent, mortgage, and utility payments for those of us who have lost jobs or significant income due to the pandemic.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks so much, Jason.

Now we have Ludella Bowen, who's a tenant activist leader in Brighton Park Tenancy Association.

Last year, Ludella and her neighbors, who are mostly senior citizens, organized and won a rent freeze from their landlord, a non-profit organization in Rainier Valley.

This was an important win, not just for the Brighton tenants, but an inspiration for all of us who are fighting the displacement of working class people, especially from black and brown communities.

Welcome Ludella.

Do we have Ludella?

Ludella, if you're speaking, I see you're still muted.

OK.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Okay, first of all, I want to thank Kshama and Jonathan and all of those that helped us to maintain that rent freeze.

And since that time with our committee, we have accomplished a whole lot here at the Brighton.

We have a new president of the board.

There have been changes made because we were having problems with gun violence through our parking lot and different things.

And Linda Johnson, has been wonderful.

We got new gates in the, uh, in the garden and she also, uh, wanted to save it when they wanted to, uh, get rid of it.

And also, uh, they put, they're putting up a security gate.

They got a security guard on the weekend.

And, but our concern is they are remodeling all of the apartments.

Then, uh, the rent is going up.

You know, my neighbor whose apartment is same as mine, is something that they're not telling us because I've been here 16 years and all of a sudden we've been fighting for these things ever since we've been here.

Security, gate lights, better cameras.

Ludella, we can't hear you anymore, sorry.

We can sort of hear you, but it's still not clear.

Okay, but anyway, I'm going to make this quick.

Everything's going fine now, but our concern is, you know, what's going to happen in January.

We did get the rent freeze, like you said, but nobody's really talking.

They're making changes, making people pay $50 one-time fee for their parking space.

We had to get registered with our to get our car with car insurance and, you know, things that we've never had to do here before.

But we're going to keep in touch and keep you updated on what's going on.

But like I said, so far, everything has been wonderful.

They have worked with us with our rent, you know, if you couldn't pay it, you know, so everything's going good here so far.

Thank you, Ludella.

And please stay in line.

We appreciate you, but we'll keep updated on what's going on quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Like I said, so far everything's good with us right now, but we're looking for a big change, but we just don't know what it is because they're not telling us.

Right, absolutely.

I think that's an important point you made, Ludella, that when working people, renters, you know, our communities fight for and win something, we can never, you know, in this system, we can never, it's never guaranteed that it will stay the same.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you're all, you and your fellow renters are absolutely right to be vigilant about that.

And we will follow up on that as well.

Thank you so much, Kshama.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

And Ludella, stay on the line just in case we have a few minutes for a little...

Okay, I sure will.

I sure will.

And now we have Sharon Crowley, who is a member and organizer with UAW 4121, the Union of Academic Student Employees and Postdocs at the University of Washington.

UAW 4121 members struggle on meager paychecks in a part of the city, being increasingly dominated by corporate landlords.

They, along with other UW workers and students, have been organizing and fighting back, and their union has played a leading role in the fight to stop evictions and cancel rent.

And in fact, The union's members also played a leading role in winning the Amazon tax as well.

Welcome, Sharon.

Hi.

Thank you so much.

My name is Sharon Crowley.

As Shama said, I'm an organizer and member of UAW Local 4121. Thanks so much for inviting me to speak today.

Our union includes over 6,000 undergraduate, graduate, and postdoc academic workers at UW.

The work that we do is central to fulfilling the University of Washington's teaching and research mission.

As we've seen this pandemic and heard today, this pandemic is having wide-reaching economic consequences with record unemployment and widespread austerity budgeting.

Our members have seen that UW, like any other large employer, will pass the austerity in its budget on to its most vulnerable workers.

That includes our members, most of whom are on fixed-term appointments.

Some of them are even having to find positions quarter by quarter.

Right now, this means they face increased uncertainty about whether their appointment will be renewed for another year or, in some cases, another quarter.

Many of our members are ineligible to receive the kinds of financial aid that are available to other workers, like unemployment and other kinds of aid from the federal government.

This is even harder for the 40% who are international scholars on visas, and their visas don't allow them to work anywhere other than at UW.

So if they lose an appointment, they're kind of stuck between that rock and that hard place.

All of our members, upon graduation or completion of their postdoc terms, face a job market with unprecedented levels of unemployment and increased precarity and scarcity of the research and teaching jobs that are central to the careers they're here to build.

Meanwhile, they're doing important research work at UW into climate change, COVID-19 processes, and possible treatments, and also the housing crisis that we all face, while also facing that housing crisis themselves.

Even before COVID-19, this crisis has been hitting our members hard for years.

Many have to live outside of Seattle or in overcrowded houses and apartments.

And like Shama indicated, At the same time, housing in the U District, which is where the majority of our members at least try to live, is being taken over by predatory corporations that are looking to profit on the backs of students by charging exorbitant rent for micro apartments and not safe conditions.

This is a huge problem.

In a housing survey we did a couple of years ago, over 80% of our members reported being rent burdened, with many paying over 50% of their income in rent.

Long before the pandemic struck, we already needed more affordable housing options.

Many of our graduate employee members are only employed for the nine month academic year, so they have to either stretch their income to cover 12 months worth of expenses, or try to find another job during the summer, a very challenging prospect during a pandemic.

So COVID-19 has definitely increased the severity of our needs for affordable housing, while also increasing the vulnerabilities we face on multiple fronts.

As Shama mentioned, our union's housing justice work group has been focusing our efforts on campaigns to increase housing affordability and accessibility in Seattle.

These are improvements that our members greatly need.

And the city council did take a huge step toward achieving some of these goals by passing a big business tax in July.

The moratorium on evictions in Washington has also been helpful to a lot of people.

However, it has done nothing to alleviate the huge burden of months' worth of back rent that people who are out of work are facing as soon as the moratorium is lifted.

This is an economic and, more importantly, a human rights disaster in the making.

Working people have been bearing the burdens of our capitalist system for way too long, and COVID has only intensified that issue.

you know, on the verge of eviction even before the pandemic hit.

I have a friend who had to break her lease and move in with friends because her landlord would not reduce her rent and was not honoring the moratorium.

And she also knew she was going to face this huge debt on the other end, as things were, and didn't want to have to accumulate any more debt.

So we all know these burdens fall heaviest on the most vulnerable among us, and that includes poor people and obviously also BIPOC people who've already been dealing with displacement in Seattle because of gentrification throughout our city.

So our local has long been committed to fighting for economic, housing, and climate justice.

In short, a Green New Deal.

Some of our most active working groups are dedicated to these issues.

Right now, canceling rent and mortgages at the city and state level is a critical part of achieving this justice, this tripartite or three-part justice.

The working people of Seattle need this relief, along with other kinds of direct financial assistance, in order to survive this pandemic without facing eviction, impoverishment, and possible homelessness.

We cannot keep shouldering the cost of capitalism while big businesses receive bailouts, earn record profits, and further enrich their CEOs and boards of directors.

Meanwhile, they pay nothing toward the costs associated with this pandemic.

So I'm urging the city council and the state of Washington, we need to take meaningful action by enacting the progressive policies and revenue streams that we need.

Now is the time, not the time, rather, for austerity budgeting.

Now is the time when we have to be bold and take progressive action now.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I wanted to thank both panels for allowing us to have such a rich discussion and yet keeping your comments so brief because we are so short on time.

But I quickly wanted to invite my fellow council members, Council Member Peterson, Council Member Lewis, if you had any questions, even though we don't have much time for discussion, I wanted to see if you had any questions or comments to make.

Sorry, Council Member Peterson, you're on mute.

I just...

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

No, I do not have any questions.

Thank you.

Okay, and Council Member...

Madam Chair, it's Council Member Lewis.

I was on mute as well, apparently.

That explains a lot.

But in any event, I don't have any questions for the panel.

I just wanna reiterate that as one of the two renters on the council, This is something I care very, very deeply about, not just the need to make sure that the economic pressures of COVID are not leading to folks getting kicked out of their homes, but that we have an equitable way to make sure that people are staying housed and that we make sure that pressure, undue pressure from landlords, too, as was alluded to earlier on, people being able to use their expressive First Amendment rights and having that preempted by a lease in terms of displaying a Black Lives Matter sign or something like that is another thing I think this council should take up.

I know that my lease, I'm reviewing it again recently, has a prohibition on that so strict that I wouldn't even be able to put a campaign sign for myself in my window, technically, though I don't know if my landlord would ever strictly enforce that.

But there's just so much work we need to do to make sure that tenants are treated fairly, equitably, and with dignity.

And I look forward to the next steps.

So, thank you.

Thank you for those comments, Council Member Lewis.

And yeah, I totally agree that that's just a gross violation of renter rights to have even that kind of political signage.

And I know When I was a renter, I knew that the landlord would not allow me to post anything political.

And I think that is a violation.

And we're seeing how both renters in their residential apartments and also workers in workplaces are now being cracked down on for displaying Black Lives Matter signage.

We just had one more worker fired, a 19-year-old worker, I don't think in Seattle, but nationwide, dozens of workers are getting fired because they're wearing cloth masks that say Black Lives Matter.

And so clearly, this is also an opportunity for renters and workers, many of whom are the same people, to fight this both against landlords and also against employing corporations.

that create this situation where they can't even express themselves to that degree and absolutely the city council should be following up on this and the renters rights committee through the chairing of my office will definitely be following up on that.

I wanted to honor the city clerk's requirement that we end the committee no later than one o'clock.

But just in closing, I want to say Maya, you know, from BC, I will talk about the need to organize renters.

And Julissa made the important point that landlord demeanor completely changes when they see a renter who is actually familiar with their own rights.

And that's why I wanted to announce that October 13th, that's a Tuesday at 7 p.m., We will have an online tenants right boot camp that my office is co-hosting with BC Seattle.

Maya will be there, Julissa I'm sure will be there.

So please make sure you join us on Tuesday, October 13th at 7 p.m.

online for a tenants rights boot camp.

We will make sure to share that link on social media and we also will be in touch with the community and the city council and our committee members, city council committee members on the next steps for helping the cancel rent movement and also seeing what points we can bring up in the people's budget movement and see what the city council can pass in the budget in the next few weeks.

And we will of course be following up with tenants associations like the Brighton Tenants Association, all the renters with the Cornell and Associates renters as Jason was just sharing so that we make sure that the city council supports these building to building struggles as well.

I want to thank you all once again, really appreciated the rich discussion and we will keep in touch and I will adjourn the meeting.

Thank you.

I had to shut the...