Seattle City Council Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes 4/3/2025

Good afternoon.

The Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes Committee will come to order.

It is 2.04 p.m.

on April 3rd, 2025. I'm Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Nelson.

Present.

Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Councilmember Salomon.

Here.

Councilmember Rink.

Present.

Chair, there are five members present.

Wonderful.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome everyone to the second meeting on the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes.

I want to acknowledge that Council members Moore and Strauss are excused for today.

To our presenters, thank you for joining us for these critical discussions.

We appreciate your time and attention on these incredibly important issues during these incredibly uncertain times.

We have limited time today in council chambers, but please rest assured this will not be our final discussion as we continue this work moving forward.

On today's agenda, we will be hearing from housing and homelessness response stakeholders on how they're being impacted by federal policy changes, which I fear will directly impact our city and region's ability to address the housing and homelessness crisis.

Then we will have a briefing and discussion on a welcoming city resolution, which reflects the findings of last month's select committee and conversations with community about the most pressing needs facing our local immigrant community partners.

Since this committee met last month, the new administration's mass deportation agenda has only ramped up.

As a result, we are seeing more need from community members and organizations.

Some of these urgent needs include legal services for unaccompanied minors of parents who have been detained or are facing deportation proceedings.

We know at least two federal funding sources supporting these children have already been cut, the Unaccompanied Children Program and the USCIS Citizenship Grant.

Three Seattle area organizations, Kids in Need of Defense, also known as KIND, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, or NERP, who the city of Seattle contracts with and who will present to us later, and the International Rescue Committee will be directly impacted by the cut to the unaccompanied children program.

Combined, these organizations have supported over 200 Seattle unaccompanied youth with legal defense and support.

The USCIS citizenship grant funding was cut from the Neighborhood House, Refugee Women's Alliance, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, and the International Rescue Committee.

This investment covered critical work for these kids that included legal representation, case management, and support for applying and preparing for the US citizenship test.

These are Seattle kids.

And I know I'm not the only one whose heart breaks at the thought of a six-year-old needing to appear before a judge to defend themselves in immigration proceedings by themselves.

We know that we will not be able to make up every financial gap, but we must do our best to do right by them.

Additionally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that just yesterday, nearly 40 people who work for a construction roofing company were detained in Bellingham.

This comes following last week's detention of farm workers in Linden, including 25-year-old labor and immigration activist Alfredo Leilo Juarez, as well as Llewellyn Dixon, who are now being seemingly unconstitutionally detained at the detention center in Tacoma.

I mention this not just because it is cruel and possibly retaliatory action for political activism, but shows a direct line of how our immigration system is tied to every sector, including food, housing, and small businesses, just to name a few.

And we will soon hear from several of our incredible local housing and homelessness service providers on how federal changes are impacting their work.

But prior to this, I want to draw attention to a few actions that have caught the attention of my office.

Yesterday, the Trump administration once again announced but officially imposed a vast swath of new tariffs.

The National Association of Home Builders estimate that the tariffs on building and construction materials including foreign lumber, steel, aluminum, home electronics, and other major construction materials will increase the cost of homes estimated at $7,500 to $10,000.

But that number will be larger in metropolitan areas such as Seattle.

Young people already cannot afford to buy homes at the same rate as our parents and grandparents.

This is yet another setback to my generation's and the next generation's part of the American dream.

And as for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, in addition to stating that they would be reducing their workforce by 50%, which would deeply impact the office's ability to oversee and administer the Housing Choice Voucher Program and enforce fair housing laws, HUD has also announced changes and cuts to the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program.

And for context, during the Biden administration, HUD administered over 5.5 billion to approximately 1,200 communities, preserved 30,000 affordable housing units, and allocated more than $100 billion in rental assistance to 2,100 public housing agencies across our nation.

Cuts to Section 4 are already being felt locally, and I know that our panelists, including Enterprise Community Partners and Chief Seattle Club, plan to speak to those directly later in our meeting.

And lastly, just yesterday, the Region 10 Office for US Department of Health and Human Services, an office that is located in our very own Columbia Tower right here in downtown Seattle, has closed their doors with 200 staff members fired.

Simply put, the solutions to our challenges have never been simple, and they grow more complex with every passing day.

It will take all of us, every member of this body, every community leader, every resident of our neighborhoods to work together to carve a path forward to protect residents and create the future we all want to live in.

And this committee is just a part of that work.

So I wanna thank again everyone for your participation today and to anyone who's listening in.

And with that, we will now open up the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for today?

Currently we have three in-person speakers signed up and there is one remote speaker.

Each speaker will have two minutes, and we will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, could you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 30 minutes.

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

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

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

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Thank you.

The first in-person speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Yeah.

Zeheil.

Dirty damn Nazi Gestapo fascist.

Nazi pig.

And pure freaking degenerative idiotic.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

I represent, I support Trump for 10 years.

I'm a member.

I have 6,000 days of trespass and five times you prosecute me.

Guys, 20 years ago when I come here, I bring slogans.

Stop Seattle fascists with idiotic faces.

For 20 years, nothing changed.

You before idiot, you now idiot.

It never will be changed because Apple, cannot fall in too much from three.

700,000 people who live here, they're all degenerative idiots.

We're talking right now about very important point, and I want What is I be a member of this committee?

I bring one class action in 96, win housing class action.

I win another class action for $100 million against Department of Social Care Service for poor people.

I'm expert.

I have 40 years staying in this business every day.

I want to be a member of this committee.

Because you cannot be a member because there's conflict of interest.

You will be idiot here.

You will be in federal committee idiot.

This is very important.

So I want to explain to you.

Last week, Trump executive order talked.

Every government housing possibly belongs only to...

U.S. citizen.

No green card, no another document.

So, right now, we need fundamentally change this.

You want to go with federal rules?

You need doing something.

You're doing this now because you're a freaking degenerative idiot.

Viva Trump.

Viva new American revolution.

Stand up, freaking idiot.

Our next speaker will be Hallie Willis.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the policy manager for the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, and I'm a renter in District 5. I want to sincerely thank Council Member Rink for convening this committee.

It's extremely important for this body to understand the local impacts of federal policy changes and to make a plan to take care of our community before the worst comes to pass.

Today you'll hear about how federal cuts and racist policy changes will threaten our ability to house and shelter people in this city.

Frankly, losing funding would cause thousands more people to become homeless.

At the same time, we understand that you and the mayor must address a deepening budget deficit.

On top of that, the state budget will include cuts to important services, and the Trump-Musk administration is taking a sledgehammer to our federal response to housing and homelessness.

No one is coming to save us.

We need you as local lawmakers to do everything in your power to protect all Seattle residents from what's coming.

sustain our shelter and housing, prevent tenants from being evicted into homelessness, and raise the necessary local progressive revenue to do so.

We cannot accept increased homelessness that would result from federal cuts.

And we cannot expect anyone else to come to our rescue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our last in-person commenter will be Kate Rubin.

Hi, my name is Kate Rubin.

I'm a renter living in Beacon Hill, and I'm the co-executive director of Be Seattle, an organization that works to help renters stay housed and feel empowered in their housing.

We are deeply concerned about what's to come from this change in administration, and we are already seeing the impacts in other states and locally.

specifically on transgender people, on people seeking reproductive health care, and they will be coming here because we have already taken action to ensure that Seattle is safe for them.

So it is upon us to actually make sure that Seattle is safe for them.

We've heard some discussions about potentially weakening or repealing some of our renter protections, specifically the roommate ordinance.

This is an ordinance that is going to be so important as these changes happen, not just for the people who are fleeing here, but for the people who are losing their jobs.

for the people who cannot afford to stay in their apartments alone, and for parents wanting to welcome their adult children back into their households because they can't live independently.

Often when people are coming here or when they have a major life change, they don't have the amount of security and stability to get their own apartment.

So we have to create a space for them, and we've been doing that in our community.

We're all trying to figure out what we can do to help people.

But that is a major, major protection that would be so damaging and cause so much homelessness if it were repealed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And now moving to our remote speakers.

The first remote speaker is David Haynes.

David, please press star six when you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

Remember the $50 billion of the American Rescue Plan money that could have, would have, should have been used to solve the homeless crisis that ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy took back acting like he was saving money for the American taxpayer?

We still need that investment to rescue a bunch of people unnecessarily suffering delays and bad policy priorities.

If I was city council staff, I would be advising that there's more opportunity to cover the debts that are needed by convincing the president of the United States that billions of dollars could be invested to solve the homeless crisis, the housing crisis, and the public safety crisis for the innocents.

And that would include innocent migrants and their families.

Yet progressives want to misconstrue what constitutes a criminal and an illegal and scaremonger.

And yet council wants to exacerbate and divisively spew the vitriolic negativity and button push their voting blocks during an election year, wasting so much committee time and money trying to find ways to hate on the president instead of convincing him that because of all the billions of dollars that he's going to be raking in from terrorists, that it's time to solve our societal problems caused by the same progressive Democrats who and the immoral financial system that's been deregulated who unconstitutionally prioritize repeat offenders for housing.

We have an office of housing that needs to be kicked out or the Department of Justice needs to investigate them while they're on a travel junket to copycat bad policies from Baltimore and elsewhere.

And they're prioritizing services for like housing and service for repeat offenders instead of innocent homeless.

It's exacerbating the problem.

Anyway, our tax dollars are being misused, and you all could get a lot of money to alleviate the unnecessary suffering, but you want to drive to the bottom of the barrier.

There are no additional registered speakers.

We'll now proceed to our items of business.

So we will now move to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Item one, federal impact on housing and homelessness response issues panel for briefing and discussion.

And I'm going to invite our presenters for today up to the table to join us.

And so as our presenters are coming on board, they're going to introduce themselves and we'll give them a couple moments.

Wonderful.

Thank you all for being here today.

If we want to start off just going down the line, if you could please introduce yourself by stating your full name and organization into the microphone for the record, perhaps starting with Daniel.

Hi, council members.

Thanks for having this panel today.

I'm Daniel Malone, executive director of DESC.

Good afternoon, committee and chair.

I'm James Lovell.

I'm the interim CEO of Chief Seattle Club.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for having us.

I'm Jess Blanche, senior program director at Enterprise Community Partners.

Hi, council members.

My name is Naomi See and I'm a vice president of investor relations at Hunt Capital Partners.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Simon Foster.

I'm the deputy CEO of King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Thank you all again for being here.

As a part of this panel, we're going to go organization by organization, starting with one of our public partners, King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And I understand you have slides for today.

Again, good afternoon, everyone.

It's a privilege to be in front of you all today, and thank you so much for bringing us together to share with the public.

I'm going to be going over a few things this afternoon.

One is to make sure that KCRHA shares its federal budget, and two, share with you all impacts and actions that we're taking to ensure that these dollars remain here.

As you all can see, COC or HUD dollars is the third largest funding source for King County Regional Homelessness Authority, KCRHA.

receives directly from HUD $23 million.

These are extremely critical dollars.

I want to be clear, $23 million directly to KCRHA and $36 million directly to King County.

That's a total of $66 million, of which 5 million, or excuse me, about $7 million goes directly to contractors.

That includes community-based organizations such as Catholic Community Services, Downtown Emergency Services Center or DESC, and Friends of Youth.

Here's the reality.

The largest program type is permanent supportive housing with COC dollars.

Those are mostly individuals who cannot maintain housing without assistance.

HUD also provides a grant agreement when the program contract is up for renewal.

So contracting happens throughout the year.

KCRHA is actively reimbursing contracted providers currently, and we're able to currently draw down on funds from the federal system.

The bigger concern are the fiscal year 24 contracts.

The first fiscal year 24 contract renewal comes due in May.

And we have received that agreement, and it's being reviewed by our council.

It is the only grant agreement we have received thus far.

We will receive a total of 23 agreements between now and 2026. Move to the next slide here.

I'm going to talk a little bit about impact here, and I'm going to share some numbers with you all as well.

We're talking about a total number of individuals of 4,490 people.

This includes about 45% of individuals that might be impacted.

Over 2,000 people reside here in the city of Seattle.

Of the 4,490 people, 2,174 individuals are in private market units, which could be at risk of incurring late fees by their landlord, loss of subsidies, and or eviction.

2,316 individuals are in transitional housing, youth, or safe haven programs are at risk into finding themselves homeless.

And as equally important as my friends to my right and folks who are online, there are a number of contractees, folks who are frontline, who will be impacted as well.

241 employees are at risk if we lose these dollars.

We know that these individuals are on the front lines every day who come from lived experience at times.

and who are a vulnerable working population.

And so King County Regional Homeless Authority, the City of Seattle, and King County look forward to continue to work together to ensure that we maximize our efforts.

Here's what KCRHA is doing right now.

One, is that we're maximizing our federal funding through weekly drawdowns of funds for expended costs.

Two, we will continue to collaborate, as I just mentioned, with King County.

and service providers to maximize the use of existing funding effectively.

And finally, we're going to work close with our local HUD office as we do bimonthly.

I just want to finally end with this.

We've got a great staff.

We've got vulnerable populations who find themselves where they are today.

And if it weren't for King County Regional Homes 30 and the many individuals and contractees we would not be able to help them as they see where they are today.

And so I'll end with this.

These funding delays or reductions could prevent states and communities, nonprofit organizations and homeless individuals and families from receiving the critical resources needed to address the crisis on sheltered and unsheltered homelessness.

And I'm going to remind folks, as I mentioned before, KCRHA, will continue to be a guiding light, to be a partner, and an advocate for this vulnerable population.

We are committed to continue our partnership with King County, with the City of Seattle, and all of our partners throughout the community.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being here.

Colleagues, do we have any questions?

And also, I want to acknowledge, Council President, your role on KCRHA's governing committee, and I understand your leadership in that space.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

No, nothing at this point.

Thank you.

Of course, and thank you for your service to the governing committee.

I'm happy, colleagues, to allow for time right now for questions, or we can do questions as a full package once all of our presenters have gone.

We will continue on with the presentations going to Hunt Capital, and we will just have a time for questions once all of our presenters are done.

Thank you.

All right.

My name's Naomi, as I mentioned, with Hunt Capital Partners.

Hunt Capital Partners is principally a LIHTC syndicator, so a low-income housing tax credit syndicator.

And we'll get a little bit more into our role there.

So this year, we'll do about a billion in transaction volume for affordable housing projects across the country.

We also do pre-development, acquisition loans, SLP, and guarantor structures.

a lot of experience across the country just doing different strategies with affordable housing and getting it financed.

I think it's important to note that affordable housing in a lot of ways exist outside of the market, but it's still deeply tied to the market through debt structures and equity.

I'll talk a little bit about some of these market forces today that some of my colleagues will talk more through and the individual impacts on their organization.

But I think high level, it's important to note that more than any one policy, it really is just about the uncertainty in the market right now and how that translates to terms and what will be offered to our community.

I always like to joke, but it's true, and I'm sure we've all experienced it.

The worst thing you can tell a banker is we don't know, and we've been saying that a lot in different communities on different projects right now.

So the first thing I want to talk about is just tax credits, low-income housing tax credits.

If you're not familiar with how housing tax credits work, they are basically in every single subsidized housing project that there is in our community and nationally.

The majority of the portfolio of affordable housing stock has low-income housing tax credits in it, and they usually make up about 40% to 70% of the capital stack or the overall capitalization of an affordable housing project.

The way they come down, the federal government allocates these credits to the states, the states to the developers, and then the developers come to a LITEX indicator, so my role, or directly to an investor, and that investor basically offers a price per credit at a discounted rate for a dollar-to-dollar reduction on tax credits that they receive over 10 years.

I know this seems incredibly boring, but it is how affordable housing gets financed in the US.

And the majority of it, both all the way from permanent supportive housing up to about 80% AMI.

So these investors, as I mentioned, pay a discounted rate for these tax credits.

So for example, if there are $10 million of credits allocated to a property, then for a dollar-for-dollar reduction, an investor might offer to pay 90 cents on those tax credits.

As a result, $9 million comes to the project at initial capitalization for that investor to receive those tax credits.

This is important because right now the pricing for these tax credits because of federal, federal policies and a lot of the uncertainty is dropping dramatically.

And what I mean by dramatically is 10 to 15 cents on the dollar.

So years ago, you know, we were getting up to 95 cents on the dollar for tax credits in Seattle and King County.

And oftentimes at the lower tier we're seeing 75 to 80 cents.

And again, some projects will hit different veins of pricing, but we are seeing a dramatic drop in the average pricing, which of course makes it so that our gap funders have to participate, like the city of Seattle, the state, and other soft sources or subsidy sources have to participate in a lot deeper and a lot higher per unit subsidy.

So a couple of things that are causing that.

The first thing is the corporate tax rate, the anticipation of the corporate tax rate going down.

We have mostly heard the Trump administration talk about personal tax rates and how those will be affected.

But any vague discussion about corporate tax rates ultimately affects the return that investors will be expecting for tax credits.

And as a result, they will increase their expectations for return because it's based on a 21% corporate tax rate.

If that goes down to 17%, we would see pricing again drop dramatically by another 10 cents.

And right now, we're already having investors anticipate that.

The other thing that affects the initial capitalization of the deal is just underwriting standards.

So if in an uncertain market, an investor might say, you need to increase your capitalized operating reserve by another million dollars, you have to create a rental subsidy reserve.

And as well, you have to increase your guarantees, increase your cost contingency.

All of that adds to the upfront cost of the project, which of course makes it harder for our affordable housing developers to work in an environment where they can finance these housing projects, especially when they're using assumptions and soft loan, you know, expectations of soft loans that were based on other pricing.

So I think that's important to note.

before I keep boring you with tax credits and happy to take more questions because I know this is a nuanced issue.

But the other kind of market forces I want to just briefly touch on are tariffs, the cost of materials.

As many of you know, the two biggest factors in the tariffs in our housing production and what we're seeing is that 72% of imported lumber comes from Canada and 74% of imported gypsum comes from Mexico.

So any tariffs on...

even though we've seen some back and forth and any uncertainty on those materials will certainly cause fluctuations in how we finance these projects and how we underwrite the projects.

The other thing I want to talk a little bit about is just tariffs effect on interest rates.

If tariffs continue, they can impact mortgage rates by basically continuing inflation, which we know causes the Federal Reserve to increase the baseline interest rates.

rates in the SOFR, which would ultimately increase the interest rates in the market.

And then finally, I just want to say, as a whole, our affordable housing portfolio, our subsidized portfolio is important.

But we also know that supply is important, and the general housing market, and all of this with tariffs and interest rates.

continuing to go up will affect the overall supply in our market.

So a lot of headwinds, but I think we're continuing to have these conversations with sponsors, developers, banks, our regional and institutional investors, including insurance companies, regional banks, and our larger national banks.

So we'd love to keep you updated, and thanks for letting us talk today.

Thank you for being here.

I'm gonna turn it next to Jess with Enterprise Community Partners.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

Again, I'm Jess Blanche with Enterprise Community Partners.

Enterprise is a national nonprofit that exists to make a good home possible for the millions of families without one.

We support community development organizations on the ground, aggregate and invest capital for impact, advance housing policy at every level of government, and build and manage communities ourselves in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

Since 1982, we have invested $80.9 billion and created or preserved over a million homes across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, all to make home and community places of pride, power, and belonging.

I'm gonna give a bit of a state of play on the federal policy landscape today.

So there's a lot happening, surprise.

So first, the continuing resolution and the FY26 budget appropriations.

So as you all know, after some brief excitement around the Senate continuing resolution vote, the Senate passed the continuing resolution and it was signed by President Trump.

This full year CR mostly funds federal programs through the end of September at FY24 levels.

I'll talk more about the details in a few moments.

And we're now gearing up for advocacy for FY26 appropriations.

Agency staff, we're closely monitoring federal staffing changes.

Falling squarely under the category of good news, the Trump administration did just move to reinstate at least 24,000 federal probationary employees who had been recently fired after a federal judge ruled determinations illegal.

Staff from HUD and USDA are included in these reinstatements.

But we continue to hear rumors that staff, including the teams at HUD, will be downsized and Seattle's federal field offices are closing.

with the health and human services layoffs this week.

It has been reported that the staff that manages the low income home energy assistance program, LIHEAP, at the federal level have been cut.

It's too soon to say what will happen to LIHEAP funding despite the office being dismantled.

Staff are being cut, program funding is not.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said that the agency will continue to comply with statutory requirements and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress's statutory intent.

But she didn't respond to follow-up questions asking how HHS would allocate funds to states without help from staff members who have been laid off.

Washington received approximately $66.5 million in FY24 of LIHEAP funds.

These serve households with an average monthly income of at or below 150% of the federal poverty level, which is $22,590 for a household of one or $46,800 for a household of four.

As part of all of our advocacy efforts, we remain focused on ensuring Congress knows how important it is to have federal agencies fully staffed to support programs.

Moving on to recent executive orders and the Community Development Financial Institution Fund, CDFI Fund.

The president issued an EO directing the heads of the CDFI funds and six other government entities, including the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, to report which of their functions are statutorily required and therefore theoretically can't be discontinued by the administration without legislation to the Office of Management and Budget.

Members of Congress reacted with a tremendous show of bipartisan support for the CDFI fund with CDFI caucus co-chairs Crapo and Warner issuing a statement reaffirming their commitment to the program.

We're hopeful it will be safe, but we continue engaging with members on the Hill to make sure they know just how important it is to communities across the country.

There's still a lot up in the air around funding levels for the CDFI Fund.

It's a division of Treasury that manages the New Markets Tax Credit Program, capital magnet funds, and direct CDFI financial assistance and technical assistance awards, among them the Healthy Foods Finance Initiative and the continuation of the New Markets Tax Credit Program, which is currently due to sunset at the end of 2025. As a local example of the impact of those funds, the Bird Bar Place was financed with New Markets tax credits, CDFI debt, including the Healthy Foods Finance Initiative to create a substantial gut rehab of the facility to bring it up to modern standards.

On homelessness, we work with national, state, and local partners on advocacy aimed at ending homelessness.

Specifically, we're focused on securing continued investments in rental assistance, the homelessness assistance grants, and making sure Medicaid is available to be leveraged for services, and the partners have the resources, technical assistance, and services funding needed to make sure communities are places where everyone can thrive.

We expect continued shifts by the administration to federal homelessness policy, including movement toward treatment first approaches that require services and treatment as a precondition to housing.

We know that evidence-based investments in housing with services that are low barrier and proven solutions to ending homelessness.

While the overall continuing resolution funding levels remain flat from 2024 to 2025, the CR provides $168 million less than what is needed to maintain homeless services across the country due to fair market rent adjustments.

We know this will create challenges in communities.

And as we shift to FY26 advocacy, we're focused on making a strong case that increases in the homelessness assistance grants are down payment toward the future where all our communities are safer and healthier.

It's our understanding that HUD is issuing renewal of continuum of care grant agreements based on timing of operating start date.

The new provisions required of all funding recipients are vague and confusing in terms of their applicability to COC program funding.

We and our partners advise COCs and funding recipients to engage legal counsel to receive proper guidance on how to best navigate and understand your legal obligations after executing your FY 2024 grant agreement.

There are concerns that the CR did not provide sufficient funding to existing programs like rental assistance, which could cause significant negative impacts.

The amount provided for tenant-based rental assistance, also known as Section 8, for example, is $700 million short of estimated needs for the remainder of FY25, leaving 32,000 families at risk of losing rental assistance.

On the good news front, there was new legislation that was just introduced to counteract the declining number of landlords participating in the Housing Choice Voucher Program while making the program more efficient and accessible for prospective voucher holders.

It would incentivize landlords to participate in the HCV program by offering a signing bonus with units in high poverty areas, security deposit assistance to assure greater protection against damages, and bonuses to public housing authorities to recruit and retain landlords.

The bill would also increase funding to the tribal HUD-VASH program for Native American veterans, reduce inspection delays to more quickly connect landlords with voucher holding tenants, and encourage HUD to reform its PHA evaluation criteria so that it can provide more housing authorities with vouchers.

We support all of these things.

A few weeks ago, HUD issued a notice that they will be releasing all remaining emergency housing voucher funding in late April, stating that this payment would be made with the expectation that no additional funding from HUD will be forthcoming.

This final payment, HUD said, should be enough to cover rent payments for the remainder of 2025 and well into 2026, which is in stark contrast to the payment's original sunset date of 2030. As of March 19th, there are nearly 60,000 people nationwide who would be at risk of becoming homeless once this funding is exhausted years earlier than anticipated.

The Home Investment Partnership Program provides formula grants to states and localities that communities use, often in partnership with local nonprofit groups, to fund a wide range of activities, including building, buying, and or rehabilitating affordable housing for rent or home ownership, or providing direct rental assistance to low-income people.

It's the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income households.

HOME was targeted for significant cuts this year, with the House proposing only $500 million for the program.

The continuing resolution meant that HOME will continue to be funded at $1.25 billion, but we know that this is a better challenge in what is expected to be a tough year overall for appropriations.

Enterprise co-steers the Home Coalition, a group of more than 70 national organizations advocating for increased funding and modernization of the program.

And we're advocating for a modest increase to 1.5 billion, which was the previous high watermark for the program.

The Seattle Office of Housing targets home investments to a limited number of projects because additional requirements are triggered by the federal funding.

Davis-Bacon, NEPA, Uniform Relocation Act, Build America, Buy America, There's a lot of, especially around BABA, Build America, Buy America, there's a lot of uncertainty around impacts and implementation in the near term, waivers and varying agency interpretation and implementation of the program.

Housing, like overall housing and community development relies on funding award commitments being kept.

If awards are rescinded or policy changes cause delays, it can harm implicit trust in the whole system, especially from private lenders and investors as Naomi mentioned.

The Community Development Block Grant or CDBG tends to be one of the safer programs in yearly appropriations as it is seen as a valuable resource from both sides of the aisle and mayors are often more vocal against any cuts to the program.

With the CR, the program will continue to be funded at 3.3 billion.

We also sit on the CDBG coalition where we'll be advocating for 4.2 billion for the program.

As Naomi mentioned, with the low-income housing tax credit, it's currently taxapalooza at the federal government.

Senator Cantwell is lead sponsor of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, which is expected to be reintroduced next week in both the House and the Senate.

Enterprise co-chairs the action campaign with the National Council of State Housing Agencies, NCSHA, and we're trying to get the financing provisions from the AHCIA into the reconciliation tax package this year.

But practitioners, as Naomi mentioned, are beginning to experience pains from staff reductions in force and interruptions of funding from appropriated and other gap financing programs, plus market uncertainty stemming from tariffs on construction materials and appliances.

In energy.

Washington and Seattle, I'm almost done, have a long track record of combining state utility and federal resources to make the affordable housing stock more energy efficient.

We're also closely following the developments of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

This is an Inflation Reduction Act program aimed at supporting efficiency and electrification updates in the Affordable Housing Act sector.

This program, if allowed to move forward, will provide catalytic financing that will inject billions of dollars in local economic development projects to lower energy prices, make homes healthier, and reduce pollution.

As an example of local impact, $2 million is slated to go towards decarbonizing one of DESC's properties with energy efficiency measures.

Finally, section four.

The HUD Section 4 Capacity Building for Community Development and Affordable Housing Program strengthens low-income rural, native, suburban, and urban communities across the nation by providing flexible support to local nonprofit organizations to develop affordable housing, finance small businesses, revitalize commercial corridors, and help address local healthcare, childcare, education, and safety needs.

HUD section four is the only federal program that is specifically designed to increase the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations by providing them with critical capacity building funds so that they may better serve all types of communities in need.

Every $1 of Section 4 leverages more than $20 in additional public and private investments, far more than the three to one match required by law.

This is because intermediaries are uniquely able to attract significant investments.

Since 2020, Section 4 has leveraged over $11 billion in development costs alone.

In fact, Section 4 has been acknowledged by the OMB, GAO, and others as a cost-effective federal program.

For advocacy moving forward, Enterprise and our national partners are asking Congress to fund the program at 50 million in fiscal year 2026 to ensure that it can meet the increasing needs of low-income communities nationwide.

Unfortunately, due to our supposed non-compliance with the DEI executive order enterprise and our partner LISC recently received cancellation notices from HUD slash DOGE that is impacting over $60 million in competitively awarded funding.

This is impacting grantees across the United States with many organizations having to stop their projects midway through.

We are appealing the process and working closely with appropriations and our champions to undo the cancellations.

Enterprises Pacific Northwest Market covers Washington and Oregon.

Over the last 10 years, we've utilized over $5 million in HUD section four funding to support community development organizations, building their capacity as they work to strengthen their communities.

In response to our urban RFP this past autumn, we received $1.15 million in requests for grant funds where we had 800,000 to give.

We also have a rural and tribal team that runs a separate RFP for organizations serving rural communities and tribal nations.

When we received the termination notice in late February, we were on the verge of making grant awards.

and the awards we were planning to make when we received the termination would have provided nine of the Washington organizations $609,500, about two-thirds of which would have supported Seattle-based organizations, including Chief Seattle Club and DESC.

LISC Puget Sound also had $605,000 worth of Section 4 funds they were granting to local community organizations, which they've also had to cancel.

So between our two organizations, that has created a net loss of over $1.2 million in supports to local organizations serving low-income communities.

I think James is going to talk a little bit about the impact of the Section 4 cancellation on his organization.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for that thorough update.

And if I could just take one moment to correct the record to state that council member Hollingsworth is excused for today.

And I believe council member Rivera has joined us virtually.

And with that, I will turn it over to interim executive director level.

Thank you, Chair.

So again, my name is James Lovell.

I'm the interim CEO at Chief Seattle Club.

We updated our titles, I guess, back in January.

I'm enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians from Belcourt, North Dakota.

I was born and raised here in Seattle.

I grew up in West Seattle.

Now I live in SeaTac, where I serve on the City Council, so I'll just say as a fellow elected official, I empathize with the challenges that you're facing, but I also want to acknowledge the scale and spotlight on Seattle City Council is markedly different than I think many other cities nationally.

So I appreciate your efforts.

And for disclosure, I serve on the Housing Levy Oversight Committee with the Office of Housing here.

So I think before I talk about the impacts that we've had through the Section 4 cuts that Jess was just talking about with Enterprise, I'd like to make sure folks understand the context of the environment that Chief Seattle Club operates in and why Native American people are between 1% and 2% of Seattle and King County's general population.

However, in the 1950s, using the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 and tribal determination beginning in 1953, There began an era wherein the federal government resolved to terminate the special trustee relationship that tribes held with the U.S.

And this resulted in hundreds of thousands of American Indians and Alaskan Natives being moved to urban areas far from their homes and traditional lands.

Today, the Federal Office of Minority Health shares that over 80% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives live in urban areas.

And while we at Chief Seattle Club have the honor to partner with and be supported by our Coast Salish relatives, 95% of the chronically homeless people, homeless Native people in King County are from small islands in Southeast Alaska, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, Oklahoma Indian Country, and there's a few hundred of us from a near forgotten parcel of land in North Central North Dakota.

We didn't choose to come from these cities far from our home, but we are proud to be here and carry our traditions with us.

But this urbanization came with broken promises of jobs, housing, education, and dignity.

And many of our relatives were left with no recourse but to live on the streets.

And that's why Chief Seattle Club was founded in 1970, was to address the precipitous rise in street homelessness for urban Native people, and particularly urban Native people who are not from local tribes.

We've been trying to address this now for 55 years.

So while we are one to 2% of the total population, the pit in 2020 before COVID listed us as 32% of the chronically homeless people in Seattle and King County.

And I think that's one of the more shocking disparities, I think, of the disparities we see in contemporary cultural groups.

So that's the work that Chief Seattle Club does.

And beginning in 2018, 19, 20, we started a campaign where we were seeing that when Chief Seattle Club began taking public money and reporting our data and our impacts in HMIS and working with HSD at the time, and now that's transferred to KCRHA, We've seen that when there are certain communities for whom when they are housed with culturally relevant providers, they are housed more quickly, they stay housed longer, and they have far better health outcomes.

And all three of these things result in dramatically reduced costs to the public system to house folks who hit these insane disparities, right?

So it's really where the story starts here.

As Jess was talking about, there's, as I've explained, we've got these several urban Indian organizations who have endeavored to serve our people since the mass urbanization of mostly non-local Native people began in the 50s.

And we've seen that since it's Native people who have demonstrated through the data that we are able to keep other Native people housed longer and more healthily, that that's where our efforts began.

So we opened our first building in 2022, but that happened through this critical investment from HUD section four and other capacity building efforts.

The nonprofit housing system, we don't, we providers do not have an OPCD, which is I think a critical function that a place like city of Seattle has where you're doing planning and community development, you're looking at holistic data, you're looking at comprehensive plans and finding ways to be most effective with public investments.

For the housers, almost every dollar is tied up in direct services or in capital costs, and that's why you all are so great about attending our fundraisers, and we can't wait to see you at ours in October, of course.

But you know that we have to raise an incredible amount from private philanthropy and from individuals in order to make ends meet.

That's what goes into the back-end administration.

Our admin costs are often capped at 10%.

which is nowhere near enough to fund a functioning administrative effort.

So when a capacity building grant comes through, it is like giving us a boost.

It's like giving us a shot of OPCD that we can take in the morning and inoculate ourselves from a lack of planning for weeks to come, years to come.

So the HUD section through Enterprise, this grant was critical for Chief Seattle Club, and I'll share a little bit.

We applied in November of 2021, and we owned zero units of affordable housing.

We now here have – I wrote the number down because with Office of Housing funding, we are getting ready to open up our 405th unit of permanent supportive housing in four years – or three years, sorry.

2022 was when we opened our first units.

So we are now looking at five buildings.

We have two tiny house villages, including our recently reopened Eagle Village in Councilmember Solomon's district off MLK.

We have made demonstrable progress that when you have the ability to plan collectively and to build a pipeline of bringing folks through the right steps of shelter entrance into permanent supportive housing, that you can actually make a difference in the most dramatic disparities we see in any population.

It is through this work, it is through the time spent working with enterprise and being able to actually have collaborative partners, not just the funding, but also the collaborative partners to plan for what does it mean to become a hauser?

What does it mean to have a property management team, an asset management team, a real estate team?

What's the difference between all the different funding sources that Naomi just cited?

We now have LIHTC.

I was a youth development worker.

I feel like I should be talking about that stuff, and I spend about half my day talking about low-income housing tax credits.

this is not where i thought my career would go but because of the naomi's and and the justice of the world communities are able to house their people longer and with more health and faster we are getting more people off the streets more native people off the streets in seattle and king county because we have the capacity to plan for our next building we know when it's opening we know how to get folks paperwork ready because we've built an internal property management apparatus that can quickly operationalize the funding that we get through kcrha which is of course much of which comes through hsd so we're we're really um we're looking at this and we say okay we need to preserve every resource we have and every asset we have but we know we have a long way to go we know that there are over a thousand native people on the streets and we've only opened up 400 units for permanent supportive housing we need more and we cannot effectively plan for that without the critical resources that are coming from the federal government to get us into this OPCD mentality.

I'm sad to add that earlier this week we found out that the Urban Indian Health Initiative, which was funded by the CDC, has been cut by Washington State as well.

And so our ability to—we can't really predict the potency and supply of deadly opioids.

But CDC funding coming through Washington State had allowed us to plan for and prepare for pandemics such as COVID-19 and pandemics such as the opioid crisis.

When the next one hits, or as these current pandemics persist, Chief Seattle Club no longer has funded capacity to build plans for responding.

So we built for speed in our first four years, and we are now trying to build for size.

And our ability to plan and build for scale to keep addressing this problem at this pace has now just been severely hampered by these cuts, not only to the CDC, but especially to Housing and Urban Development.

Now HUD, Urban Development, I think you all know what the acronyms are.

I'm so used to having to explaining these things to lay folks, and it's nice to just be able to say HUD.

HUD is in trouble, and Chief Seattle Club is feeling it as a result of the cuts to enterprise that we were anticipating funding our capacity building work.

I could talk more about this for hours, and that's honestly, since my boss went on sabbatical in January, that's kind of been what a lot of the focus has been for all of our organizations, is the administrative capacity to speculate, to plan, to prepare for what the next executive order is going to maybe until for us has been huge.

And I want to emphasize that the dramatic reductions in staffing for federal departments has also caused critical delays in up and down the capital financing stack and the operational financing stack for providers.

And we're happy to go into more detail with that at another time.

Thank you so much interim CEO level.

It's good to see you in this capacity.

And closing us out on our panel, I'm gonna turn it over to Executive Director Daniel Malone with DESC.

Thanks a lot.

Do you have slides for me or?

Yes.

Okay, just a few.

So you have something to look at instead of my visage.

So DESC is, now I'm gonna look.

focused on a subset of people experiencing long-term homelessness, essentially people with serious behavioral health conditions like mental illness and long-time substance use disorder.

We conduct our work across a variety of different program types, most notably a significant amount of permanent supportive housing and shelter and emergency housing settings, and then we provide an array of licensed behavioral health Treatment support for people with psychiatric and substance use disorder conditions We've got about a thousand people who work at DSC ranging from doctors and nurses and social workers and peers and other social services professionals and lots of other people And this year our operating budget is about a hundred and forty million dollars Around a quarter of that is originating from federal sources.

This allows us to serve about 8,000 people over the course of a year at any given point in time.

We've got about 3,000 people who are actively receiving one or more services from us.

So the federal funds that we rely on have mostly been remarked on here in the panel today for our operations.

The biggest sources of federal funds that we rely on from the HUD continuum of care program, the Medicaid program, and rent assistance programs like Section 8 housing choice vouchers.

We have other federal sources we rely on for some of our operating expenses including the Section 4 program that was remarked on earlier and so that was something we were counting on being able to receive this year that is now apparently lost to us.

We also learned last week that some health and human services funding that we are currently receiving from the federal government to support outreach and engagement services for people with opioid use disorder through the federal government.

substance abuse block grant program has been cut effective immediately.

So that is causing us and the King County and the state healthcare authority to scramble to figure out what to do about how to manage the loss of those funds.

We also rely on federal sources for a lot of our capital needs, including the low income housing tax credit program, the CDFI fund loans, new markets tax credits, and community development block grant funds, all to help build clinics in addition to the supportive housing we operate.

So I was asked to speak about Medicaid.

If you can go to the next slide, please.

DESC's permanent supportive housing is approaching 1,900 units, as I said.

1,500 plus of those are in the buildings that you see pictured here.

All but one of those are in Seattle across every district that's represented on the committee who's here today.

We We also have a lot of scattered site housing also supported by federal funds.

The fund sources we rely on for all these supportive housing programs are the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, HUD Continuum of Care funds, Section 8 funds, and then an array of different kinds of funds from Seattle, from King County, and from the state of Washington.

But all of these programs and the people who live in them rely heavily on Medicaid funded services to support them.

So last slide, I'll just say a little bit more about the Medicaid that we rely on here.

These are the kinds of things that Medicaid funds at DESE.

This year we're anticipating reimbursement from the Medicaid program of about nine and a half million dollars for this set of services, the largest being outpatient behavioral health services that we provide that include outpatient mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, case management services.

Some of the behavioral health crisis stabilization services that we operate receives Medicaid reimbursement that includes mobile crisis response services as well as facility-based crisis stabilization services.

Some of our opioid treatment work is funded through Medicaid sources, and then a particular Medicaid funding source known as Foundational Community Supports covers some of the housing services in permanent supportive housing.

So all of those are at risk given the federal conversation about major cuts to spending, including anticipated large cuts that would be coming to the Medicaid program.

Many of the analyses that I have seen suggest that a major way that the federal government would attempt to decrease spending on Medicaid would be by essentially attacking the Medicaid expansion program and a lot of people experiencing homelessness.

receive Medicaid by virtue of being eligible through the expansion program.

The Medicaid expansion program receives the vast majority of its funding from the federal government with a much smaller state share to cover the cost of that.

So reductions in federal cost share of Medicaid expansion would result in a huge hit to the state, and the state would have to figure out how they were going to continue people on health insurance if that were to happen.

Another part of what's anticipated here is the introduction of work requirements on people who receive Medicaid through expansion purposes.

One of the, I think, most difficult parts of that is that even though the eligibility criteria to be on Medicaid through expansion is simply income-based, a lot of people who are on Medicaid through that program actually have underlying disabilities.

they just haven't been qualified onto Medicaid by virtue of having those disabilities.

Sometimes that is due to the symptoms of the disabilities themselves, that people have not gotten themselves approved under a disability determination, Instead, they're able to be on through just an income determination.

But those people, by virtue of their disabilities, will not be able to comply with work requirements, and they run the risk of losing their health insurance.

So it's a particularly insidious part of some of the changes that may be coming to us.

And I'll just stop there for now.

Thanks.

Thank you, thank you all.

And colleagues, I hope you can appreciate the expertise represented by our panel today.

This panel coming together to teach us, as well as the public, the realities about what is happening in our housing system.

I know from my office, we continue to hear that housing and homelessness is the number one issue that our residents care about.

And so we certainly wanna know and better understand these impacts that are happening so we can communicate to our constituents and continue to address housing and homelessness in our community.

And further, I hope you can appreciate, as we were assembling today's panel, we wanted to capture the many dimensions within the housing system, from touching on Medicaid reimbursement to homelessness services, funding through HUD, but also looking ahead towards housing development and our ability to restore our housing pipeline as well.

And so to that end, I hope you take advantage of their expertise today, and I will open it up for questions.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Rink.

Thank you, everyone, for coming.

I really appreciate your presentations.

For those not in briefings, I'd love to get them on paper, too, because, as you noted, it is a pretty dense topic, and to get those little pieces of information are helpful, or at least as a reference can be very helpful.

As I'm sitting here, I'm kind of reminded Recently, I was given a link to a Fox News segment with Brett Baer, where he had Elon Musk and the Doge team.

And it's really interesting to watch it, to see how they were framing everything.

And Mr. Musk was basically framing everything as waste, fraud, and abuse.

And there's tons of waste, fraud, and abuse.

But that's not really the case here.

What they're looking to do is is have a reset of the federal government and its role in our society and our nation.

And as someone who's old enough to remember the Reagan years, and there's a few others here in the audience.

Sorry, Mr. Marlone, you remember.

That was an attempt to have a major reshape of the federal government during that time period, and there was to a degree, but nothing at the scale of this.

And I think people should realize that this is at a scale that we've not seen.

You can argue since FDR or even be long before that.

And I'm also old enough, and I actually worked as a naval aide in the Clinton administration, really we should be contrasting to the Clinton administration's reinventing government initiative that was headed up by Vice President Gore, which was looking to look at wage fraud and abuse or inefficiencies and the like.

And they did it over time.

And that was part of the reason why that's the last time we've had a surplus in federal government was during the Clinton years.

And that is also a very strong contrast to what's happening right now.

There is no, they talk about scalpel, no, this is a bludgeoning of what's going on.

And I think it's important for people to understand that because I know across America, particularly in red state or red county America, they believe this is getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

And they're not going to really underappreciate and understand that it's not.

And it's at a level not seen compared to the Reagan years or not done in a professional proper way as it was during the Clinton years.

So this is going to have short-term and long-term ramifications, because you can't build back.

You have the idea of build back better.

What's happening now is going to be very difficult to undo or build back in some future time frame.

And I think we should have that mental kind of expectation that there's gonna be the short-term pieces but also the long-term pieces.

And I see this over affordable housing.

As you noted, one thing that people don't really realize is that affordable housing also has a rent role and there's challenges.

And I suspect that that's going to be hurt even more on top of what's already happening for various reasons.

And that's going to create its own crisis and on top of everything else.

As someone who's been following the Fed for a long time, even as a kid, because going back to that time period of the late 70s, in terms of high interest rates and the like, I've gained an incredible appreciation of what the Fed chair does.

Because as someone who sits on the Labor Relations Committee, the impacts of that little spike that we had a few years ago ripples through our labor contracts and the like.

And it ripples in terms of the costs and the expenses of the nonprofits and others in the housing.

And so as you see in today's news cycle, President Trump's tariff program is going to, no doubt, will have inflationary impact.

So we've come out of that.

We thought that we're settling out, ramping down.

We're going to have the inflationary impacts piece again.

And as someone who knows, again, that red state, red county, America, Ironically, they're the ones that are in most need of Medicaid.

There's an article in Cascade, I believe, PBS talking about Representative Newhouse's district in the middle of our state that is very much reliant on Medicaid.

So it's gonna be interesting what happens when that part of our country and that part of our political spectrum starts being hit.

But the Medicaid piece doesn't limit itself to red state, red county, America.

These actions are gonna have huge impacts on our West Coast blue cities is gonna have an impact on Seattle.

So listening to the presentations, those are some of the things that I was thinking about, including with that historical backdrop, and then the fact that most Americans don't understand that historical backdrop, and I don't think it serves us well that most Americans don't understand that historical backdrop.

But my question, again, with that short-term, long-term kind of context is, and I forgive because I always fall back on my military career, but the COOP idea, continuity of operations, I'm sure there must be, you kind of hinted at it at different points, but what is the short-term, long-term, because decisions will have to be made, prioritization's going to have to be made in terms of, the continuity of the operations, whether it's a government organization like KCHA or like DSSC.

So I was just curious if you can speak to your COOP plans or anticipated impacts.

And again, I recognize some of it was hinted at, but with that context and specifically related to the idea of continuity of operations, is there anything that you're looking to plan on doing and the actions that you will take?

Thank you, Chair.

I'm happy to take an initial stab at it.

I would say that planning has been extremely difficult because there are so many variables possible in terms of funds that could be cut and for what reasons and for when that could happen.

We are definitely looking at kind of potential scenarios including worst case scenarios of essentially loss of everything that we're getting through federal sources and It is very hard to come out of planning like that With the sense that we're really continuing things in any meaningful way We we're unlikely to be in the position to say that we're gonna excise a quarter of our programs and just stop operating them and channel all the resources into the remaining things because they aren't set up like that.

Like a lot of our programs are capital assets that will continue to stand and need to continue to be operated.

So I don't have specifics to offer you about what we anticipate we would cut conceivably and what we would prioritize exactly, but I'm quite sure that because 80% of our budget goes toward personnel, basically a lot of social workers, it would result in dramatic reductions in our ability to serve people and meet the needs of people who often need a very high degree of support.

So I would expect to see great increase in instability among the population that we serve.

Yeah, I completely agree with what Daniel's saying.

We've looked at it at Chief Seattle Club and really the name of the game right now is to list everything and then start speculating basically, right?

So I think everyone did this in early January.

Everyone that I know of, I was on the phone with Daniel from time to time and other providers trying to figure out What are all the federal sources?

What do we think the vulnerability is?

And we've done our best to not speculate and kind of doomsday scenario plan, because I think that's not exactly.

We don't see that happening.

There's a lot of stuff that's statutory that's going to be fairly durable, at least for some number of months.

But I think that's been one of the key things for me is to look at what...

So Chief Seattle Club, the vast majority of our staff are local funding.

It's city and county, as well as some state funding for most of our staff.

I want to highlight something Daniel said again, is that the conditions of society that have created the chronic homelessness crisis...

make it very difficult for these folks to live in a concentrated environment like one of our PSH buildings without staffing.

And so if you cut the staffing in these buildings, those conditions, the conditions we see in kind of large-scale encampments would start to replicate, I think, just because of the conditions that society has put on folks who are experiencing chronically homeless or formerly homeless.

So there's definitely—when we talk about public safety, actually, I don't think permanent supportive housing quite gets enough play in the sphere of public safety marketing.

Yes, we see police in our buildings a lot, but that's where they know where to go.

They know where there's staff they can follow up with and make sure that safety protocols are being addressed.

And that's not the case with scattered, unsheltered folks, right?

So we play a critical role in public safety for communities.

And so I think when you think of what Daniel and I are thinking about, what keeps us up at night is how do we keep our staff employed?

Because that is where safety comes from for not only the employees, but also for the folks who live in our buildings.

So as I am starting, we've kind of had this, we haven't been calling it a coop, but I'm gonna go ahead and lift that one.

But I've been thinking of it kind of in this, the Newton's cradle.

If you've ever seen those, they sit on people's desks and it's little balls that clack back and forth, right?

What I've been seeing is, as the federal funding, that the scale of federal funding cuts are going to be coming, it's like that first one that hits.

That energy is going to transfer all the way down the line, and it's going to kick something out.

And I don't think it's tethered.

I think it's just going to kick something out.

So if the federal cuts hit the city and the county hard enough that they have to start reallocating resources with things that are either council-appropriated or otherwise have some flexibility, We anticipate those are gonna have to go towards essential statutory services and that's an important thing to do.

And what is that going to mean for, I'm hesitant to name any of the things that I think have some flexibility lest it become of the bargaining chips right we are watching this is what this is one of our funding sources yes our staff are more secure because we're locally funded um but those things are not as secure as if they were a vote of the public right for example so there's there's a lot of concern about what um what kind of decisions uh electeds are going to have to make as you are looking at budget cuts due to federal impacts.

And so a part of our coup planning is the speculation around how can we make sure that our buildings stay staffed so that the people in our buildings are safe and that they remain housed.

Because like we say, there is no build back Council Member Kettle, I appreciate you bringing that.

There's no build back when someone, if we have to have a mass exit from our buildings, which seems unfathomable at this point.

So what we are expecting at some point is an interruption of the pipeline.

So to get out of a little bit of the doomsday, when you look at, I think Naomi was talking about LIHTC, if there's an interruption in LIHTC investments, if there's a change where we don't have enough low income housing tax credits available to developers, nonprofit housing developers, then you're gonna see an impact not in a month or two, but probably in next year as projects are delayed.

There are fewer tax credits available, there's less capital available, and especially two years from now and three years from now, when a lot of those projects will be through permitting and finishing up, would typically be through permitting and finishing up construction, you're going to see a lot fewer new properties opening, which means a lot of our focus is going to be on preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing and really not really adding new units to the system.

But we're going to be stuck with acquisitions, which then require some level of transformation to make them safe places for permanent supportive housing.

So I don't have an answer on what the COOP is.

I can tell you what we're speculating on and the places that we're watching most closely.

And these are grounded in, I think, fairly reasonable logic.

And it's based on the expertise, I think, of the folks to my left and certainly what Council Member Kettle was referring to you as the elder statesman of our panel.

And so certainly relying on each other as providers and our government and kind of intermediary partners especially.

That's right.

You know, let me just start with this.

KCRHA is in consistent communication as much as possible with HUD and HHS.

I'll just say this.

You know, just two weeks ago, we were in conversation with two administrators in D.C., myself and Dr. Kennison, and simply and quite frank, they don't know.

That's just the reality.

They're sitting in a very tough position, just as we are today.

They're just not aware of what tomorrow looks like or what will come down the pipeline.

What we do know, what KCRHA does know, is that we need to ensure that we are very clear on potential impacts to organizations throughout this region.

And we need to be quick to be transparent on what those impacts might be.

And that's exactly why we're here today.

So again, thank you.

Also, you know, we are working with King County and also the city of Seattle to ensure that we come up with appropriate contingency plans.

But as we all know, money is tight throughout this region, throughout the country.

And to come up with contingency plans to ensure that we are financially sustainable will be a challenge.

And so to be transparent about that is absolutely what we should be talking about.

I do want to say this.

When it comes directly to KCRHA, when we talk about the $66 million in HUD CLC funds, $4 to $5 million of that is direct admin revenue to KCRHA.

KCRHA will have a direct impact.

as all partners will if these dollars go away.

And I just want to end with this.

I wasn't able to talk on this, but I think this is certainly a question here.

A note about immigration.

KCRHA is certainly concerned about the new language in the grant agreement that we received regarding verification of immigration status.

And also, verification would be a new requirement.

And we are coordinating with King County on an appropriate response.

We do believe that immigration verification requirements are a bad policy.

The effects go beyond program applicants.

We know that immigration verification requirements have a chilling effect that extends throughout the community.

And even documented individuals are less likely to seek help if they are afraid of the repercussions to themselves, their friends, and their families.

So I want us to keep that in mind.

And KCRHA certainly keeps that in mind as we work with our partners for an appropriate response.

Thank you.

May I add one more thing?

I think from the perspective of a national intermediary, we've long been having conversations about partner stability and sustainability.

And making sure that our partners on the ground like Chief Seattle Club and DESC can still function is super important.

affordable housing providers are already struggling.

Coming back from the impacts of COVID has been really difficult, and even more so for their residents.

The impacts of job losses, inflation, health disparities, education gaps, those have all been so much harder for our low income neighbors to come back from.

And so ensuring that our partners on the ground are able to continue to operate in order to provide that housing, keeping people from ending up on the streets, is important to our entire community because what happens when those people lose their housing is we end up putting more and more burden on other public services that don't have the capacity.

Law enforcement, healthcare, behavioral health, right?

If we can keep people housed, we can keep people in a better space.

So for us, our sort of continuity of operations is really ensuring that our partners have that continuity of possibility.

Thank you all for speaking to that.

And thank you for that question.

Council member Kettle recognizing council member Saka.

Thank you, madam chair.

And just wanted to extend my own heartfelt thanks and appreciation.

to each and every one of you all for being here today, sharing your insights, your unique insights and expertise into the scope of the challenges impacting your individual organizations, the communities that you all represent and serve, and therefore the broader city of Seattle.

So the work you do every day is very important.

And I appreciate you, again, sharing your insights with us here today.

And thank you, Chair, for assembling this team of community experts.

And especially CEO Lovell.

Yeah, thank you, really appreciate your words and perspective.

Your organization obviously has a footprint in virtually all the council districts in the city of Seattle, and that's excellent, and you're also right in my own council district as well in Pioneer Square, so really appreciate you.

And last year we met.

We're about due for another one, so I'd love to come visit you all again.

And I know you're here in your role as CEO or interim CEO of your organization, but I also note that you are a council member.

You're not here in that capacity in the city of SeaTac, your official capacity, but you are a council member as well.

And so anyways, just want to say thank you for your service.

Because wherever we go, these man-made lines and boundaries, when we cross them, We're always going to be council members.

People always recognize us, right?

So in any minute, all that is to say, thank you, every last one of you.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

I appreciate that.

Colleagues, any final?

I see Council President Nelson.

Thank you.

I wasn't going to say anything.

I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed.

I mean, this, what we've discussed today feels like from, from the perspective of a, an elected official of a municipality, sort of like a global warming size problem or that scale, because there's just so much and it's impacting so many different programs, partners, et cetera, and ultimately our people.

And so, um, just trying to get my mind around it.

I could ask individual questions, like, what does the closure of this office really mean?

I mean, that's just one thing.

Okay, so they closed an office.

Does that mean all the funding associated with that office?

I mean, sometimes I just don't know where to begin, so at least I have some, well, I have some faces and some names of where to go to ask for the questions.

I did put out a release this afternoon expressing grave concern about the closure of the Department, well, the Region 10 Office of HHS, and also stating that my ongoing commitment to maintaining or at least focusing on substance use disorder treatment because sort of like, to me that seems a precursor problem because it leads to so many other issues down the line Chronic homelessness, et cetera.

It doesn't necessarily lead to it, but it feeds in, et cetera, and other health problems.

But that's just one example of something that I'm cluing into.

So I guess this is just by way of me saying I appreciate the information that you're bringing forward, and I'm hearing it.

And I see the responsibility that we have before us to make really smart decisions going forward.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And if I may, I share in that overwhelm.

There's so much to digest in all of this.

And it's gonna take everyone in this room and a lot of folks across our community working together to try and resolve these challenges.

And so certainly I share in the overwhelm and appreciate deeply the information brought forward here today.

I'd like to reflect back some of the things that I heard, highlight a few things, and then just ask a final question to close this out.

I'm really thankful to KCRHA for being a part of today's presentation.

KCRHA is really uniquely positioned given that it's a centralized and county-wide entity that has a full look at our homelessness response system.

Just want to uplift you all have a unique position having this oversight and able to really provide data about what's happening.

So appreciate the specificity of numbers that you included in your presentation.

It's poignant to me when we're talking about that KCRHA serves across the COC continuum 3,500 households and 4,490 individuals that we're talking about.

So that level of specificity is really helpful for our decision-making moving forward.

And of course, want to make sure the city remains a strong partner with KCRHA as we navigate this time.

And looking to also appreciation for Hunt Capital for being a part of the presentation.

We've already heard in community the challenges of making projects pencil in housing development.

And I mean, with what you brought forward today, I am deeply concerned that that is even a harder possibility.

I mean, quick question to that.

I mean, what can we tell our residents about the ability for building more housing in the near future?

Because it seems unlikely based on what you've shared today.

Sorry, just to clarify, how can you repeat the question?

Appreciate that.

Just looking ahead, I know so many of our residents are eager to have more affordable housing in our community, but with the realities of what's been before us, I mean, what is the likelihood of more affordable housing being able to pencil in the near term?

Yeah, no, thanks for that question.

And I think the first thing, I mean, in the spirit of being a little bit overwhelmed, I think the thing that a lot of people don't understand and I, I kind of alluded to is this is a federal source, right?

Housing tax credits are a federal source.

The majority of our subsidized housing relies on it as a federal source.

And so, you know, the low, if a local jurisdiction is 30% of the capital stack of these projects right now, right?

then that's going to significantly affect the way that we build housing and how we leverage additional sources to build housing.

So to provide a little bit of gratitude for the position that you all are in, I mean, at a certain point you are in a position to replace 70% of the capital stack of all affordable housing without us being able to leverage LIHTC in the same capacity probably.

less, obviously, if the pricing goes down.

But that's just to say, to answer your question about what we can tell people is it's complicated, it's hard to produce housing, and it requires a lot of different factors coming together to produce that housing, including reducing, as this body has tried to do, reducing regulatory barriers, creating stabilization in our existing portfolio, and ultimately increasing ways to provide for overall supply while still addressing the tranche of subsidized housing that needs to support our most vulnerable residents.

Amazing, thank you for that.

And looking to Enterprise Community Partners, Jess, you shared a ton of information and we'd love it in writing.

No, thank you for bringing it forward to us.

And I would echo what I heard, a request from Council Member Kettle, if we could get some of that in writing just for our records to understand, that would be amazing.

And then I want to thank as well our two local housing providers, homeless and service providers, and hearing from both of your presentations the variability in terms of how much some providers may be more at risk given...

just the continuity of services and dependency on federal funding, particularly around Medicaid.

And we certainly wanna avoid a situation where in any circumstance, any of our projects need to close their doors or having staff exits which could exacerbate and create more public safety challenges.

And certainly wanna make sure that we stay apprised and support.

And my final question to close us out for today is just what do you need most from the city in short term and long term?

Well, I really just appreciate you paying attention to these issues, and I will endorse the feeling of being overwhelmed by the prospect of such huge change.

I think knowing that our city leaders are grappling with what's before us and what may be coming before us, is heartening to me.

I would press you to consider what we as a community can do if the worst does come.

If we're sorta out here on our own, it seems to me that we don't really have a choice to some degree, but to figure out how we're gonna manage without the federal partnership that we've relied on for so long.

I hope that would include considering other ways we can help pay for things using local resources.

with the understanding we already have challenges with our city budget.

So I don't envy your jobs, but I appreciate you, you know, leading us and thinking hard about all these kinds of issues.

So thank you very much.

I think I probably share a lot of Daniel's sentiment.

I think what I'd recognize the powerful role that a city council has in some of your most powerful tools, legislation and budget writing.

And I think helping us find ways that, like I was saying with this idea of this Newton's Cradle, the energy is gonna transfer further down the stream, no matter what we do.

That level of federal funding that's at risk cannot simply just be absorbed without something having to go away.

And the only way to prevent that, I think is with a different revenue source.

And so there's going to have to be conversations.

I know this is happening at the state legislature.

We have to look at all the different sources we have.

I know King County is looking at this as well as they look at budget cuts as, you know, if things change at the state, then there's a new way to have revenue.

If they don't change there, we need to look at it at different levels as municipalities of, do we have to enact something at the local level?

And then of course, as we get deeper into, it's kind of November will come, October will come and you will be passing a budget and you're going to do what you always do.

You're going to reach out.

You're going to ask, you're going to look at all the challenging things that have happened over the preceding 12 months.

And this will be a unique one.

You'll probably have to have a special budget session just to kind of Brush up on what the federal impacts have been and how they've passed through to the city and City Council So say continue to reach out to community partners Intermediaries, I think carry a lot of the water for us in these conversations and being able to Get you kind of the rolled up aggregation of where they think that places are that smart investments can be made And so write good laws and pass good budgets And I think we are gonna do everything on our side to keep people safe and healthy

I think I'll add, as you have heard today, and as I'm sure you already knew, this work is really hard.

The work of serving low income communities, ensuring that people stay housed and healthy.

And if there's anything I could ask city council to do is to double down on your support for our low income neighbors, for our homeless neighbors.

now is not the time to blame anyone for how much it costs.

As we've heard, there's a lot of systemic challenges and we're being thrown a whole lot more.

Going back to what Council Member Kettle was saying, we didn't really have homelessness until the Reagan administration dismantled and deinstitutionalized folks who are suffering from a slew of issues, massive disinvestment in public housing, right?

There's so many factors that have been decades in the making and this is really accelerating that.

So all respect and understanding to your very hard jobs Please continue to fight for the people who need it the most.

Okay, so we're going to need $40 billion.

Okay.

But I think the things that we can do immediately is for federal initiatives that do feel a little bit out of the scope, putting your name on federal initiatives actually does make a big difference as local officials.

So like you mentioned the low income housing tax credit extension and addition bill, even something like that, which is bipartisan, finding ways to support that and putting your name on it.

Again, I've seen that go a long way for representatives.

The other thing that I think, just market-wise, I know that I am talking about a lot of these market forces and Wall Street and banks and stuff, but making your local jurisdiction as stable as possible in terms of underwriting deals, and I'm happy to go into specifics offline with that.

There's certainly things on the table you're already working on that help the underwriting and risk-based pricing and debt sizing.

And then the last thing is, we've seen, I kind of mentioned this, from the national perspective of seeing organizations across the nation, we've seen several pretty dramatic and horrific downfalls of permanent supportive housing and service organizations who are providing housing and services for our most vulnerable.

And so I think just to say that our organizations are our greatest asset in Seattle, we nowhere else in the country do we have organizations like we have in Seattle, like we have in Washington, and making sure that they are stable before all else so that when we come out of this, which I think we will, we still have them and they can still do the work that they want to do.

Again, I just want to emphasize there's really no organizations like this in the entire country, so supporting that work.

Listen, I've said my piece here, but I'll reiterate for everyone.

The headline for KCRHA is, We've got a 2025 problem with 2019 funding.

And it's not but.

And we as an organization must be more efficient financially than ever before.

And so we're looking at carry forward.

We've reduced carry forward significantly this year, working with HSD, working with the mayor's office, working with your budget's office as well.

This organization is being held accountable for public dollars.

That is where we are right now.

It's always been a requirement.

And people on this council have held us to that standard as well.

Thank you.

But we will hold ourselves to that standard as well, especially in times such as these.

So, thank you.

Ms. Thank you all for being here today.

We look forward to our continued work together as we navigate these challenges.

Thank you.

And we will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Item two, welcoming city resolution for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, and as some of our colleagues come up, I'll speak a little bit about what's before you all today.

Colleagues, as I mentioned in briefing earlier this week, I believe, what is time?

We would be bringing this forward to have a discussion.

This is not for action of any kind, but merely to start some of the discussion.

My office has been working alongside a number of organizations serving our immigrant neighbors, and we've wanted to pull together a resolution that speaks to and is responsive to community need.

So this was included in your packet as a draft item purely for discussion today to start the conversation.

And with that, I will turn it over to our presenters who are at the table.

If you could first please introduce yourself by stating your name and organization into the microphone for the record.

Good afternoon, my name is Jessica Castellanos, she, her, AIA.

I'm the managing director of Kids in Need of Defense's Seattle office.

Hey there, good afternoon.

My name is Tim Wharton-Hertz.

Use he, him pronouns.

I'm a directing attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

Glad to be here.

Hello, my name is Vanessa Reyes.

I use they, she pronouns, and I'm the policy manager with the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Edith Reyes, and I'm an organizer with One America.

And thank you all for being here today.

I believe Jasmine with central staff is going to kick us off with an overview and briefing on the resolution.

Jasmine Marwaha, Yes, good afternoon chair and Council members and my name is Jasmine Marwaha on your Council central staff and thanks to the chair for your flexibility and allow me to present remotely as I had an unavoidable circumstance that necessitated me being at home this afternoon.

Jasmine Marwaha, But today i'll be presenting the draft resolution reaffirming the city's commitment to being a welcoming city.

I'll begin, you can see in the presentation outline, I'll begin by very briefly touching on the background to this resolution and then go into a summary of the draft and finally touch on next steps.

So I won't belabor this background as this was all presented in extensive detail in the previous select committee.

But as a brief refresher, the council and executive have expressed support for immigrants and refugees and other vulnerable populations generally through a number of resolutions and executive orders over the years.

Most recently, the executive issued a mayoral directive on January 10th regarding federal immigration enforcement to reinforce Seattle's commitment to residents' privacy rights while complying with the clickable law.

The executive also recently issued an executive order to advance language access and accessibility, as was discussed in the previous select committee as well.

We have heard today and in the previous committee and in other forums that there's an incredible amount of volatility for community-based organizations and that there's this ever-shifting landscape.

In addition to a dramatic escalation in federal immigration enforcement and the federal cuts to services, locally our revenue landscape is also shifting and we know that we are facing a revenue shortfall for the 2025 adopted budget and beyond.

At the March 6th select committee, community organizations expressed a desire for assurances from the city that policies and investments supporting immigrants, refugees, and other vulnerable populations would continue.

So here we have this draft resolution.

uh the resolution first recognizes and reaffirms ongoing city commitment policy commitments um i've summarized them here for reference uh but in the interest of time i won't read this entire slide but um basically assures our commitment to being a welcoming and supportive city for immigrants and refugees, that we're going to make our city services accessible, that we will not ask about immigration status for those who are seeking services.

We won't make any record of immigration status, and we won't or assist with registration or surveillance programs that are inconsistent with the Constitution or U.S. law.

SPD will not enter into an agreement that will grant office or authority for federal immigration enforcement that's consistent with the state's Keep Washington Working Act.

And again, city employees won't honor requests for federal civil immigration enforcement without warrant.

Again, consistent with our current policies and law.

The draft resolution also contains requests of executive departments and the city attorney's office.

It requests that departments continue training for city employees on current policies and practices.

I believe that's in the January 10th executive directive.

So it just puts that in the resolution.

It requests the city attorney's office to implement policies that try to prevent immigration consequences for immigrants and refugees at all stages in the criminal legal process and to establish a team to monitor federal actions that may target immigrants and refugees and to prepare legal strategies in response.

It also requested that all city facilities post signage that clearly designates areas that are not open to the public in order to assist employees in implementing the mayoral directive regarding federal immigration enforcement, which said that if ICE tries to enter into a space that is not public, that they should enact protocol or implement protocols.

to contact the mayor's office, et cetera.

And so this would allow city employees to, in some cases where it's not clear where a space is private, to effectuate that directive.

It also requests an annual update from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs in consultation with communities such as contracted organizations and the Immigrant and Refugee Commission to evaluate the city's progress in implementing the resolution and other relevant policies and programs that affect immigrant refugees.

And finally, the resolution draft contains expressions of commitment to add funding for the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, $300,000 in total, to provide additional capacity for OIRA to respond to emerging needs.

It also expresses a commitment to maintain policies and investments that support the city's diverse business community, anti-displacement strategies, and the Office of Labor Standards.

Now these expressions of commitment are not legally binding, as we're just talking about a resolution here, but they would be effectuated by budget legislation or council budget actions, such as in the mid-year supplemental.

As this resolution is just in draft form, it is anticipated to be finalized and introduced in time for the next select committee meeting on May 16th, where it is planned to be discussed and possibly voted on.

That's the presentation.

Happy to take questions or defer to the chair and other folks on the panel.

Colleagues, any questions for central staff?

Hearing, not seeing any.

I will move us to our community-based partners who are here with us today.

And we called in a number of these folks.

Oh, I do see a hand from Council President Nelson.

Perhaps I can wait until the end.

I had a question about a couple sections of the resolution, but we can

Sounds good.

Thank you.

And thank you, Jasmine.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to some of our partners who have come today.

These are partners that have provided input on this resolution and also are working on the ground in this issue and can speak best to the realities of what are happening.

I'd like to start us off with Edith with One America.

I understand you have a hard stop at four, so I want to give you some time before you have to head out.

Yeah, so sorry that I have to leave at four, but if you see me walk out, that's why.

But thank you so much for having me speak today on behalf of One America.

Once again, my name is Edith Reyes.

She, her pronouns, organizer with One America.

In my role as an organizer, I'm on the ground organizing immigrants and refugees throughout Seattle.

So I'm constantly hearing from community members about the ways that the federal policies are impacting our communities.

Right now, immigrants are in fear.

ICE raids are happening around the country, here in our state, in Washington, and in Seattle.

Now more than ever, we need the leadership of you all, council members, to make Seattle a city that actively stands with immigrants and refugees.

I'll begin by stating our support for this resolution as the City of Seattle's first step towards ensuring the safety, protection, and renewed commitment to welcoming and actively supporting immigrant and refugees during a time where immigrants continue to face attacks at the national level.

as we are seeing increased ICE enforcement and various anti-immigrant policies.

This is an opportunity for Seattle to continue to be a leader at the national level as a welcoming city for immigrants and refugees.

One America extends our appreciation for the resolution as a whole, and I'll start with section four that the city reaffirms the state law, keep Washington working that prohibits local law enforcement from handing over information to federal immigration officers.

and affirming city employees will not cooperate or assist with any registration or surveillance programs or policies that target immigrants and refugees.

This section is very important.

It sends a clear message that our city will not tolerate or cooperate with federal immigration officers, which is what immigrants in Seattle need to hear right now in these moments.

It provides reassurance to our community that, for example, parents can send their children to schools without worrying about their own safety and the safety of their child's, or to be able to go to work and be able to come back home to their families, or even that immigrant college students feel safe on their campuses.

These are all precautions that immigrants are facing right now within our community.

Furthermore, taking measure to fully implement the courts open to all act and policies to protect immigrants and refugees at all stages of the criminal legal system is vital because it ensures that the courts in Seattle are for all residents regardless of status and protects the due process rights of all.

Ensuring continued advancements to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs and funding for rapid response and deportation defense is more important than ever.

The federal government is cutting funding for legal defense that impacts the work agencies and organizations do to defend immigrants.

There's a need for legal defense funding to continue to provide legal assistance to immigrants and refugees.

Additionally, the federal government is continuing to cut crucial programs that our immigrant communities rely upon on their day-to-day lives.

This makes it even more vital than ever for the City of Seattle to maintain and expand the programs provided through the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs and give our community support in these uncertain times.

It is pivotal that the City of Seattle continue to invest in deportation defense, citizenship programs, English learning, language learning, and workforce development programs and many other programs our immigrant communities utilize to thrive in a place we all call home.

And then lastly, we support labor standards for low-wage workers regardless of immigration status and the city maintaining investments in the Office of Labor Standards.

Immigrant workers form an essential part of the workforce in Seattle and should be protected at their workplace.

Immigrant workers should have access to the services the Office of Labor and Standards offers and feel safe that their information is kept private.

Workers I have spoken with are afraid to go to work because of the raids that they're hearing happening around our city.

and or are scared to use resources because of the retaliation they'll receive due to their immigration status.

One America as a whole supports the resolution, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you again for being here.

I'm going to turn it next to Weissen.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Vanessa Rodriguez, and I stand before you not just as the policy manager of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, but as someone who has witnessed the courage of families who risk everything to build lives rooted in dignity.

Last month, I shared the trends of increased detentions and deportations that our communities are facing.

Today, I ask you to listen to the heartbeats behind those numbers, the stories of parents, workers, and children who embody the resilience of our immigrant communities.

The resolution before you is not just abstract legalese.

It is a lifeline for the 35% of King County workforce who are immigrants, the dishwashers who kept restaurants running during lockdowns, the caregivers who cradle our elders' hands as memories fade, our neighbors, classmates, and coworkers.

In 2025 so far, requests that our network has received for accompaniment support have doubled, and calls to our deportation defense hotline have spiked.

Each call representing long-lasting damage, not just to one individual or one family, but to entire communities.

A report released today from the Budget and Policy Center projects that our state stands to lose $100 million per year in state and local tax revenues if just 10% of undocumented people in Washington are deported.

Yet, even as we speak, families are priced out of their homes, not just by rent hikes, but by the suffocating fear of knock on the door deportations.

Yesterday alone, 37 workers were kidnapped by ICE at their workplace while working and building the roofs that shelter us.

That's 37 families whose children came to an empty home.

37 families losing an income earner.

37 families who desperately called the Weissen deportation hotline, reporting their loved ones missing.

To truly honor Seattle's welcoming city pledge, we must move beyond words and into action that invests in human infrastructure.

The $2.8 billion paid annually by Washington's undocumented workers and taxes deserves reinvestment.

When ICE shows up at a family's home, it is vital that our community members know what their constitutional rights are and what they can do if those rights are violated.

When a father has to attend a court hearing and immigration check-ins, having the support of accompaniment provides support so that they don't have to attend such a nerve-racking experience alone.

When a mother is detained suddenly in her home, at a grocery store or at a workplace, rapid response teams can notify the rest of the family and make sure her children have somewhere safe to be.

When an asylum seeker is trying to navigate a complex legal system in a new country, legal representation could guide them through the process so they have a better chance to win their case.

When the breadwinner of a family is detained and the only option to be freed from a facility notorious for substandard conditions is by paying a $15,000 bond A community bond fund can support so the family doesn't have to decide between giving up their home or letting their loved one sit in prolonged detention.

When someone is going through one of the most terrifying experiences of their life, having a number to call where they can speak in the language they understand and receive not just accurate and vetted information, but also empathy, support, and affirmation of their humanity is invaluable.

In passing the resolution and committing to expanding investments for this work, the city is making their promise of a welcoming city a reality.

We ask that you pass this resolution with the urgency of a mother racing against the deportation clock and to fund it with the ferocity of a community that knows solidarity is the only home we cannot lose.

The time for half measures has passed.

Our communities deserve nothing less than bold, unapologetic belonging and leadership from you.

Let Seattle's legacy be one where no child memorizes an ICE hotline and where welcoming city means what it promises, not just open arms, but open futures.

Thank you.

And thank you for being here today, Weiss.

And we'll turn it next to Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

Great, thanks.

We're here continuing the overwhelm from the last panel.

There is not good news, I think, to be had.

And I think I really wanna echo a lot of what my colleagues from One America, from Weissen have said.

I can tell you we work across our state.

We have office in Seattle, our central office.

We also have an office in Tacoma, which is where the Immigration Detention Center is.

Since Inauguration Day, when there were around 800 people detained there, there's now around 1,400 people, right?

So it's a dramatic increase over the course of a few months.

Those detentions are from across our state, including from Seattle.

And so in addition to communities being under attack from immigration, the funding that supports the organization doing the representation.

In immigration proceedings, you aren't guaranteed representation, unlike in criminal legal proceedings.

And so the vast majority of people are unrepresented.

That's especially true at the detention center, where as you can imagine, if suddenly the income earner is detained and unable to work, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to afford an attorney at that time, right?

And so the vast, vast majority of people at the detention center are unrepresented.

Having an attorney makes all the difference on a case.

The data out there suggests it's, 1100% more likely to have a successful outcome on your case with an attorney versus without one.

The immigration laws are incredibly complicated and having someone by your side to navigate them is so important.

And so in addition to an environment where our communities are being picked up at a dramatically increased rate from before the inauguration, we're also at a place where the funding for this essential work is also disappearing.

That's true.

A number of the organizations get some funding through the federal government.

I know my colleague from Kind will talk more as well about this, but there's a significant amount of money that comes through the federal government to represent unaccompanied children.

That money was, that contract was ended a few weeks ago.

There's been litigation around it.

Recently a temporary restraining order was granted, That is only temporary.

And so that's a huge amount of money.

And again, what that means to bring it down to individuals is that's hundreds and hundreds of kids who are not gonna have lawyers to be at their side in court.

And so you're talking about a 10-year-old who's sitting in court representing themselves against an ICE prosecutor, a lawyer, trying to make their case for why they should be able to stay in the United States.

You know, that system is outrageous and offensive.

That is not your doing, right?

You are not responsible for that system.

However, you know, you are in a place to, like Vanessa mentioned, a place to do more than to say that Seattle is a welcoming city, but actually show that through the budget.

That is how governmental bodies can demonstrate their values is through their budget.

And this is a time, and I am fully aware that this is a tough time budget-wise for everyone, right?

And we just heard that from the previous panel on housing.

But this is a time where the city can step up and find ways to make sure to make a difference, right?

Again, that difference is incredible, right?

In terms of where are you putting money that makes a difference?

You know, the difference between, you know, a kid who has someone there who can effectively make that case.

And I will say in particular around unaccompanied children, you know, there is actually pretty powerful federal laws that offer protection for kids if they're able to access them with an attorney.

It's impossible, it's close to impossible or impossible to access without representation.

And with representation, we see incredibly high, you know, rates of success on those cases.

We're able to get kids, you know, green cards that are then able to go to school, go to college, you know, become citizens.

You know, that's what we're going for, and that's a difference that you can make.

You know, organization, you know, tends to lose over $2 million through that federal cut.

There's also other federal funding that, some of which has already been taken away for a period of time, that certainly is at risk.

So this is, you know, a dramatic need.

I also just wanna, I don't wanna undersell the other parts of the resolution.

I do think increased training is important.

We see in other parts of our state where despite it being illegal under state law, other counties and localities are starting to share information with federal law enforcement.

And so ensuring that city employees, including law enforcement are trained in what state law requires, which is not collecting or sharing that information with federal civil law enforcement.

And so I just want to end, I think, and there is so much to say, but this is This is a moment where our city can step up.

Our city has the capacity to ensure that its residents are supported through the process, that folks who go, the immigration court, we can practically see it from here, it's just down the hill, that folks going to that court aren't left alone to navigate that process.

And that if Seattle residents are taken from their families and taken to the detention center in Tacoma, that there's someone there who's going to work with them, is going to try to get them released, and who's going to be able to give them the best chance they have to get out and get back with their families.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final panelist for today is a representative from KIND.

And I know colleagues, we've heard from Weissen before, we've heard from NERD before, but this is the first time that KIND is coming before us.

And a major reason for bringing them forward today is as a result of some information we learned from the past couple weeks and we further discussed in Councilmember Rivera's committee, around the impacts to KIND and some of the cuts in federal grants, and so wanted them to be a part of the discussion for today.

And so I'll turn it over to you to share a bit more about your work.

Thank you so much.

Hello, again, I'm Jessica Castellanos, Managing Director of Kids in Need of Defense, which is KIND's Seattle office.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to tell you about the urgent needs of unaccompanied immigrant children in Seattle.

I'm here on behalf of KINDS, I'm here on behalf of the unaccompanied children that I serve and that my legal staff have been serving, but I'm also here, if I may, as a community member of Seattle.

Unaccompanied children migrate and enter the U.S. federal custody because they are alone at that time.

They're minors at that time and they are without parents and they are without guardians.

When children are released from federal custody, almost all are placed into removal proceedings, which are also known as deportation proceedings.

Data shows that immigration judges are almost 100 times more likely to grant relief for unaccompanied children with legal counsel than with those without.

Unaccompanied children are not solely at the border and in federal custody.

Most unaccompanied children are released into the community to adult caregivers while their immigration proceedings or deportation proceedings pen for many years.

These children live in Seattle.

They go to school here.

They have friends here.

They are part of our community.

On March 21st, the federal government issued a notice of near total termination for the unaccompanied children program.

KIND is one of more than 100 sub-grantees across the country of legal service providers of this contract that provides legal representation to over 26,000 unaccompanied children and youth across the country.

These are children who are in or are released from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Kind Seattle Office, despite being one of the original models that has served unaccompanied children since August of 2003, is closing next month on May 23rd.

That's my last day.

At Kind, that's the last day that the Seattle Office will remain open.

As of Monday of this week, my entire team was laid off except for three attorneys to remain for the next month to wind down cases, which means withdrawing from hundreds of children's cases and telling hundreds of children that they do not have attorneys.

Kind Seattle office serves more than 400 unaccompanied children and youth across the Pacific Northwest.

And 300 of those children are represented directly by Kind attorneys.

We are withdrawing from almost 250 children's cases.

And there's only 55 of those cases that remains that we are not withdrawing from.

And that is because of the city of Seattle.

That is because of Oira's investment in the representation of unaccompanied children and immigrants in general and of the immigrant and refugee community here.

We are not withdrawing from 55 children and youth cases because of the city of Seattle.

There are also over 60 additional clients that are eligible for the City of Seattle's legal services.

They fall within the eligibility requirements of the Legal Defense Network.

If funding is increased, which this resolution proposes to do, it's possible to also maintain representation for these children and youth.

Now more than ever, we really need local funding to continue to support the children and youth in our communities.

These are children and youth who have been abandoned, abused, and or neglected, who are fleeing terrible things in their home countries, and who have gone through so much to be here and to stay here.

And this is not the time for our community to abandon them.

And this is not even accounting for all the unaccompanied children in Washington State that are without counsel.

In fiscal year 2024, 1,460 children were released into our state.

Over 7,871 children have been released into Washington State since fiscal year 2015. Recent visits to the immigration court just down the street show staggering numbers of children released to Washington state who remain without counsel.

And without counsel, they have a slim chance in this administration with changing policies and laws to win their case and they are at risk of deportation and return back to dangerous conditions that they have fled from.

As of last year, in July of 2024, there are over 800 children and youth cases that are pending before the juvenile court.

The majority of those children and youth are unrepresented.

I would highly recommend that if you have time and interest to go and observe.

It's open court.

It's striking and it's shameful.

The end of this contract for legal services is calculated.

It's in concert with the Trump administration's other plans.

Our office's closure could not come at a worse time.

Unaccompanied children are now the focus of increased immigration enforcement activity across the nation.

Not long ago in one of Kind's field offices, 10 ICE officers came to our teen client's residence and she was directed to appear for an ICE check-in when our client's toddler was served with papers to initiate removal proceedings against her.

And I repeat, they issued removal proceedings against a one-year-old.

Our partners at NERP have other stories in Washington to share that reflect similar ICE enforcement actions.

ICE enforcement activity against children means that their legal cases become even more complex and time consuming as attorneys need to explain new risks, accompany children to ICE check-ins, and monitor the risk of detention.

In tandem, changes in immigration court practice will leave children who have pending applications for status more vulnerable to deportation.

Although this lawsuit that was referenced, which is Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto versus HHS, to challenge the termination of this legal contract was filed on March 21st, and as of April 1st through April 16th, there is a temporary restraining order in place.

This does not release federal funding to agencies like ours that have not been able to receive money for its work and support of its staff for months prior.

Many legal services agencies that receive local and state funding are still struggling and will continue to struggle and to face difficult decisions.

We do not want to see any other agencies in Washington serving children, serving the immigrant and refugee community in Seattle close.

There is no guarantee of the legal outcome of this case, and so Seattle must stand strong to not abandon its children, the immigrant community, the refugee community, nor the attorneys that are fighting right now to serve them.

Given this backdrop and the critical impact of the Legal Defense Network in securing the safety and well-being of children, we respectfully ask that Seattle continue to fund OIRA, that they continue to fund the Legal Defense Network, that they continue to push forward initiatives such as this resolution.

to sustain representation, to sustain expert attorneys.

Even with the closure of KIND Seattle office, please continue to support our partners like NERP and other legal services agencies and immigration attorneys fighting to do this work.

I am here literally fundraising on behalf of the children of our community, on behalf of my partners who are doing this work because it's so critical, it is so important.

This is not money that KIND will receive.

Thank you for your commitment to ensuring that all unaccompanied children in Seattle can remain safe and protected and that they are cared for by us.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here, Jessica, and thank you for this really important information.

I think that was important for this body to hear.

And colleagues, the panel before us is here because they have this exact kind of information, the realities of what are happening in our community.

So at this time, I welcome any questions about the work as things stand, questions about the resolution.

the resolution before you today is just for a first discussion, um, and to start our work together.

Um, and so to that extent, I'm happy to take any questions that you have.

I see a hand from council president Nelson and then council member Rivera.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here and for educating us about what, about what you do.

My question or comment is, um, about the, about the resolution specifically, which is a mix of both a statement of continued commitment on funding, but also other actions that the Council is committing to or will will do via this resolution.

So, and I just want to make sure, I don't know if our colleagues, anybody saw it, but on March, on March 11th, the City Attorney Davison's office issued a press release announcing her plan to quote, add staff positions to the City Attorney's office in response to increased workload and caused by federal executive orders and other Trump administration directives with potential impacts to Seattle, end quote.

And this is, as I said before, this is regarding Section 7 and a little bit Section 5, which Section 7 asks us to...

well, request the CAO develop a team to focus on response to federal actions within 90 days and also states our council's position on willingness to or desire to fund some additional positions.

for that work.

Anyway, so that is what the quote, I mean, that is what the press release says.

It says that, um, that she plans to add staff positions to the city attorney's office in response to increased workload caused by federal executive orders and other Trump administration directives with potential impacts to Seattle.

And then it goes on to say the requested positions will give the internal CAO federal response team more support.

The team is the result of a workflow strategy that organizes existing CAO staff into subject matter areas focusing on federal actions impacting Seattle.

The team also monitors related litigation occurring throughout the country.

We have had an executive session with members of the City Attorney's Office, so we have a sense of what they are doing already.

And I bring this to our attention because I want to make sure that this resolution doesn't imply that Council is not aware of actions that are already being taken.

But also, more to the point, it's important that our public knows that some things are already happening.

I don't want to misinform them that we are, that we're calling for actions that through a resolution, which is not binding, that are actually happening right now because we, it's not that we're, it's, you know, there's always more to be done and there are more resources that could go for more work, et cetera.

But I also recognize that for anyone listening, we're not coming up with some of these ideas on our own in this resolution that some of these things are already happening.

And I know this only because I contributed a quote to that press release saying, I support these staff positions.

So this is just one aspect of this resolution.

I haven't matched the calls for action or requests in each section to what executive departments might be doing.

But I want to make sure that the finished product of this resolution also acknowledges work that is happening now so it doesn't look as though there hasn't already been preparation from the other branches of government, meaning the executive and the city attorney's office.

It's important for people, for the public, and especially our vulnerable communities to know what is already happening, not just on their behalf, but to keep all of our residents and our critical infrastructure as safe as possible.

So that's all I wanted to note.

Thank you.

Certainly, thank you for that council president.

And I know in the process of stakeholding this as well, some of the recommendations we got on the resolution from community partners, We were pleased to reflect back to them and say, actually, this is already happening and we want to make sure it's maintained.

And so I know we, with the language in this section, we reached out to the city attorney's office for continued feedback and we were waiting to get some of that feedback, but certainly feedback received on that matter.

And we will continue to work with the CAO to make sure that the language is authentic to the work and still reflective of the work ahead of us.

So thank you for that.

Thanks.

Council member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here.

I will just say that, as I've said before, these actions of the Trump administration are hateful, irresponsible, disgusting.

There's no other way to say it.

And it's just plain not okay.

Particularly all the actions that have been coming out of the federal government are not okay.

But this piece about unaccompanied minors is especially troubling because these are children who are seeking asylum in this country and are unaccompanied.

unaccompanied.

I will say you all may be aware that I've been working with Director Hamdi Mohammed from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, which you noted, OIRA.

We say both.

So I wanted to acknowledge that I have been in contact with her and she's been giving me information, given all of us information that I've shared with colleagues.

I know she's been in close contact with all of you.

And so I have a number of questions that I've posed to her.

I know that she will be getting responses to related to some of the things that you've raised today.

And in the interest of time, I will follow up with Director Muhammad about some of these items that you raised.

But one thing I will ask now is, Jessica, you mentioned Um, the office is closing.

So are those cases transferring over to NERP?

Did I understand that correctly or are they getting parceled out or how is this?

Uh, I just want to clarify something you said.

Sure.

Um, and I think right now we're working on that.

We've met with, um, with the city and I've also spoken with NERP.

So we're doing the best that we can to ensure that those children have counsel that remains.

That's great to hear.

And also, you know, I had questions about those minors that are in Seattle, just questions about the state and what they're able to help with and our county partners as well.

I know there are a lot of folks working on this and I want to make sure that we have the full information and the most up-to-date information because As I've said earlier, and you all have also indicated in one form or another, there's a lot of chaos happening and a lot of uncertainties, and we heard that from the other panel as well.

And so I want to make sure we have the most current information and we know what is needed.

We have a proper landscape of what is needed.

So I want to again thank you here.

I will be following up with Director Mohammed.

amazing in this and just steadfast in her work around this, as you all know, because you get to work with her.

We're lucky to have her at the city.

And like I said, I'll be following up with her to get more information about some of the work that you just raised today.

But thank you for being here and for sharing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I mean, just, just to add to that, right?

Like I think we're, everyone is trying to do our best right in, in what is a terrible situation, you know, Like I said, we also lost over $2 million in funding for all of our positions representing unaccompanied children, right?

And we're doing our best with our reserves to cover that funding as long as we can, right?

But that's where stepping up, certainly everyone wants to do what we can to try to cover all of the cases that that kind has been representing.

but that also includes, right, trying to figure out how we can continue our work as well, right?

So, you know, again, I think that question actually emphasizes, you know, sort of the importance of this, right?

This is, you know, it isn't that there's other money, right?

And I will say, right, like, the state budget, right, doesn't, you know, doesn't increase their money for legal defense funding, right?

So, you know, there isn't money coming from the state on this, or new money coming from the state on this, right?

So, So I do hope, I think that there can be ways that we're continuing.

I like the idea of collaborating across the different levels of government to try to find ways to fund this sort of just oh-so-important work.

So thanks for that question.

And thank you.

I mean, I do want to flag, I mean, we all know we have a budget deficit.

The county has a budget deficit.

The state has a budget deficit.

So I think there's strength in numbers and all of us working together to see what we can do.

It's not for lack of wanting to, so wanted to make that clear.

And then it's just the reality of each of the branches of government at this, you know, state, county, city are grappling with the budget deficits.

I did have another question, which I was going to follow up with Director Muhammad about, Pro bono, I mean, we have various legal organizations and associations like the bar association, the state bar, the county bar, and then specialty bar associations.

Are they able to help?

I'm just trying to get a lay of the land and how we can all work together to, you know, to address these, you know, really important serious issues.

And I'm happy to speak on that.

So KIND's original model is really leveraging pro bono resources.

And that, you know, it goes only so far, to be honest.

We are trying our best to do that, but that also requires funding of the staff who are creating the materials, mentoring the attorneys, doing the outreach, intaking the children in ORR facilities.

and making sure we have all the information to place and properly mentor those cases.

And also the Trump administration, they issued an executive order with a massive chilling effect on any sort of immigration pro bono work.

And so it's starting to feel personal for me.

I have at least three EOs that apply to me. specifically, which means I'm probably doing something right.

But that's to say there's a massive chilling effect across law firms in terms of what's going on.

And there's a separate sort of what's going on here with Perkins Coie and EOs that are directed at specific law firms.

But there is a separate entire EO dedicated to to looking at and creating a chilling effect of taking any immigration pro bono matters.

So I will say pro bono is great, pro bono is there.

It is not the be all and end all.

People and children in particular need a continuation of direct legal service providers carrying their cases, which pen for years.

And they also need the social services in tandem with that.

Yeah.

The need is great for sure.

Thank you, Jessica.

That's all, Chair.

I'll be following up.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

In the flurry of all the executive orders, I completely miss that there are executive orders on pro bono work.

Could you just expand that out a little bit, what that is?

Maybe that's a follow-up discussion, but that is certainly news to me.

Sure, there is an executive order, and I'm going off memory, so forgive me, but it details sort of, you know, attorneys bringing fraudulent claims, you know, I'm sort of like, I don't know if they want to...

immigration work.

I don't think necessarily just about pro bono work.

I mean, it attacks sort of all immigration lawyers, I think, but saying that they're rife with fraud and abuse and lying and all these other things, right?

And so I think Jessica's right.

In combination with executive orders attacking firms that provide representation for causes against this administration, federal administration, in addition to executive orders specifically attacking immigration attorneys, there is a strong confluence of things that are dissuading attorneys from taking on pro bono representation.

Again, we still have many great pro bonos, and we're really glad for that.

And we're proud that there are many attorneys who are willing to stand up.

And the state bar has put out statements standing up for the practice of law and the ability to represent people no matter what their positions are.

And I think that's really important, but it has had a chilling effect.

And it's true in the reproductive rights space and other spaces, obviously trans rights, in the legal world as well, and in the healthcare world.

And also the DEI um, programs.

I mean, all of this is taking, um, it's just having huge impacts.

Um, so yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

And before continuing on, I want to publicly recognize council president Nelson, um, was excused starting at 4 PM and want to express my appreciation to her for hanging on a bit longer, especially to hear today's presentation.

and glad that she was a part of it.

Collees, any additional questions?

I know I have a couple of questions for our panelists today, but any final questions?

Thank you.

I hope that we can work together to get this resolution to a place where we can get it across the finish line.

I know one thing that sets this resolution apart is the inclusion and discussion of funding and making some initial commitments to expanding funding, understanding we're entering into a very challenging funding environment, but I think we can all recognize the need I know when we were engaging with community-based organizations, certainly the proposed number was much higher probably to fully address the need.

We're talking millions.

But what has been put forward in this resolution is $300,000.

And so looking at expanding funding to OIRA and specifically to a legal defense fund were some initial steps that felt particularly reasonable and to meet the moment.

And so from your perspective, panelists, what could $300,000 do?

Knowing that it's a minor step, but if you could color that a little bit, and could you speak to more, again, just the broader need to fully address specifically if we wanted to focus on unaccompanied minor legal work, what would we need to be able to fully address the need that's there?

I mean, I can get very granular.

300,000 is a little more than two FTE to represent the full additional 60 children or more that need representation right there.

I think that money going to an organization such as NERP to continue the work is essential.

But I don't want to speak for NERP as well.

I think there's a lot that that money can do.

But right now we do have many children in our community that are going to be without counsel in active removal proceedings in multiple venues in state court and immigration court who are in desperate need of counsel.

I think that's a good, you know, that's a good sort of, I think, rough picture of what, you know, again, it's 150 sort of to the Legal Defense Fund and 150 to our, so, but yeah, I think 300 would, I think that's about right, sort of those 60 cases.

which isn't all of the kids, right?

I mean, those were the kids that KIND has been representing, right?

But I think that's a great place to start, right?

And again, I think you're right to acknowledge that this is a start, right?

Not sort of the end.

And I do also want to acknowledge, I mean, the Legal Defense Network has already been doing important work.

But again, I think even in tough budget times, this is a time to step up.

And I think whether it's focusing on unaccompanied children or satellites who end up at the detention center, there is a huge need.

The key is ensuring that there is that expansion and the ability to represent folks who are otherwise sitting in detention away from their families without representation, who are unaccompanied kids, who just need someone to be with them to fight their case through court and get them the stability that they've been lacking for so long.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I can share a little bit about with WISEN, and I don't know, I'm not much of a numbers person, but some of the things that that funding can support, our work with the hotline to provide language access and information and materials to folks who call, not just in Seattle, across the whole state, but many folks who are in King County and in Seattle.

to report when there is immigration activity, when there is a family member who's been detained.

Oftentimes they don't know what's happened.

They call us for support.

We're able to help them.

We file referrals to NERP so that they can get an intake and start getting that assistance.

We also help them navigate the online system to find where their family member is. if they've already been sent out of state at another detention center, connecting them to other resources there as well.

And the different materials trainings that we do in person and virtually for volunteers and for community members, on Know Your Rights and also on different ways to support when communities are being impacted, either during active activity or afterwards, what are the needs of the families and communities to be able to get that support, to have, we operate a bond fund for folks who are in detention and have that opportunity to be released.

Those are some of the key supports that I spoke about and that really do make a difference for someone.

It is the legal services, but it's also all of this additional need that goes alongside it when someone's family members is detained, when their children don't know where their parents went, when they don't have that information, We also meet and we flag every call that we get if there seems to be a violation of keep Washington working.

We flag it for our partners.

We meet regularly with the attorney general's office to share when are these violations occurring so that they can do their work as well to make sure our state laws are being followed and doing that advocacy work to ensure that the system and that our values in our state are here to protect and actually working to protect our community members.

That work is so important, right?

And I will say, in particular, as other federal funding sources are at risk, You know, I think it's sort of hard to believe, right?

But in, you know, in our country, you can, you know, you can sort of be disappeared off the street, right?

And so it can be very hard to figure out where your loved ones are.

You know, they get picked up by ICE.

You know, maybe they just don't come home at the end of the day.

You don't know what's happened, right?

And so, you know, the ability to call the hotline and get support and then get a referral to us is incredibly important, right?

So, yeah, the work that YSEN does is especially valuable.

Thank you all.

Colleagues, any final questions for our panel for today or any questions at this time on the resolution?

Well, in that case, I will take a moment to just close us out on this item.

I hope everyone sees that this is a start of a critical discussion on this resolution.

I certainly want to make sure that each office has input on this moving forward, but I think we can agree that there's certainly some amazing things this resolution could accomplish and some additional steps.

This is a reaffirmation of commitments that Seattle has made historically, and I think it's important to note that these are our Seattle values about protecting and standing by our immigrant community.

And so I certainly welcome each office.

I'm looking forward to working with you all on getting this resolution across the finish line, welcome any amendments or changes.

So certainly just want to make sure we're doing that work together as we're meeting our community's needs during this tremendously challenging time.

And I'd close this out by saying, you know, budgets are a moral document.

It's a statement of values and we're gonna have to continue to grapple with this as a body.

And to that end, thank you all, our panel for today, for the work you've done for our communities.

It cannot be appreciated enough and we look forward to working with you in the months to come as we navigate this time.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much.

Chair, I do have a question for you actually.

I'm trying to, so I understand you have the resolution and I don't want to leave the impression.

I think you all know how budget processes work and at what point in the year, you know, we're not in the budget process at the moment.

So, I wanna make sure we are level setting expectations just based on what we're able to do.

This is very stressful and I don't want you all or the public to think that we're able to do something today.

And Jasmine, if you have any information about the conversations you've had with the central budget office or you chair for that matter.

I just want to make sure that we're not setting up expectations that we can't meet today just by the reality of the budget processes.

Appreciate that council member Rivera and if central staff is still on the line invite you to jump in I think what we're trying to do in this moment and full recognition that these are very abnormal times and in recognition we have a normal budget process it'll be coming up the mid-year supplemental but this resolution would provide an opportunity for us as council to be able to state an initial commitment to be increasing investments in this area and And I think in this moment that has some amount of value.

And so would look forward to working with each office to see if we can be able to maintain that commitment and recognition that there is high community need.

And with that central thing that I'd like to speak on, I don't know if Jasmine's still on the line.

I'm here, yes.

Hi.

I would say that, yeah, the mid-year supplemental would be the most likely, you know, next and best opportunity to be able to actually allocate funding and effectuate that commitment that's in the draft resolution to add more, to add the $300,000 to OIRA.

Thank you for that, Jasmine.

And that would be, Jasmine, we'd have to review the current budget and see what we're, we would redirect funding?

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just don't want to leave the impression because this is so stressful.

I want folks to be aware of how the processes go.

I don't want to add more stress to an already stressful situation.

So thank you.

And thank you, Jasmine, for answering that.

I will just add that while understanding the budget process is not something where today you're gonna sign a big check for us and we're gonna walk out the door, having a stated commitment from the council gives us, as you can imagine, we're in a swirl of uncertainty in our own budget processes.

having the ability to understand that there is an upcoming commitment, that is actually really helpful for us in planning our own work and our ability to step out and say, okay, we're gonna take on some additional work now because we know that money is coming in.

So again, I appreciate that this isn't an immediate fix, but that sort of certainty of future funding is actually something that could really impact our ability to take on work now if we know that money is coming in the future.

So just wanted to add that in.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And if there are no further comments, then I will say thank you again to our panel and for the work that you do and excited for our continued work together.

And we have reached the end of today's agenda.

Anything for the good of the order?

Any final business?

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

It is 4.46 PM.

Thank you all.