Seattle Within Reach: Building Community Wealth

Two.

Hello, welcome everybody, and thank you for joining us for our Seattle Within Reach conversation today.

I'm Tammy Morales, City Council Member representing District 2, which includes Chinatown International District, all the way down the Rainier Valley to Rainier Beach.

This series, as you know, is about how we intentionally create well-resourced neighborhoods that are connected, that offer goods and services that people can access without having to get into a car, without having to drive to get the things that they need in their everyday life.

The idea here is really to talk about how we get there.

So this series, throughout this series, we've been talking with local and national practitioners about how we build healthy neighborhoods that really have essential goods and services within reach of every Seattle home without having to get into a car to do it.

So throughout the series, we've been focusing on particular topics.

We started with kind of the basics of the comprehensive planning process, which Seattle is engaging in right now.

For the next two years, we'll be having discussions about what that means.

We also talked about social housing.

We talked about mobility issues.

And throughout this series, which we're doing about once a month, we will be focusing on particular topics.

So if there's something that you're interested in that you think we should be addressing, please feel free to send us an email and let us know.

Today's topic is about building a shared prosperity and building community wealth.

As the representative for the CID and the South End, I know that poverty in this city, as in many cities, is racialized and has really existed in particular neighborhoods in our city through historic disinvestment in urban neighborhoods.

even as downtown, the waterfront, and other parts of the city experience really significant revitalization and reinvestment.

And so neighbors in District 2 continue to face displacement and underinvestment.

And so part of the reason for me wanting to have this series of conversations is to really start talking about how we can do things differently in the city.

And I think that means that we build capacity in our neighbors, in our neighborhoods, in our small local businesses, to really drive the kind of change that they want to see, so that we can ensure that communities of color get to benefit from the changes that we're seeing in the city and get to stay rooted in their communities without being displaced.

We know that traditionally economic development has tended to focus on how we attract outside industry to the city.

But we can, while we might be drawing jobs to our community there is also very often a risk of of those corporations leaving without notice.

It also carries a risk of the kinds of jobs being low-quality, low-wage jobs.

It could mean extracting resources from a community, really having negative impacts on air and water quality, for example, or just a loss of important tax revenue through tax breaks that are excessive and that don't really help contribute to a thriving city.

So what we're trying to talk about today is how we avoid that kind of economic development and really build community wealth.

Instead, it's about how we use our underutilized local assets to make our communities more vibrant.

It's about developing assets in such a way that wealth stays in our communities.

And our goal is really to focus on how we democratize access to wealth and power and resources so that we create resilient local economies.

We want to ensure that young people in our community, artists, caregivers, working class families, seniors, are able to stay and able to share in our city's prosperity too.

So today we're joined by a couple of folks I'm really excited about to share in this conversation and to have a really interesting discussion.

Tracy Hedden Lowe is a fellow with the Anne T.

and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro.

Prior to joining Brookings, Dr. Lowe was a senior data scientist at the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at George Washington University School of Business.

and was previously the director of research at the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

Dr. Lowe is a graduate of the DC Public Schools, holds a PhD in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And in addition to her research interest in placemaking, Dr. Lowe served two years representing Ward 1 on the Mount Rainier City Council in Prince George County, Maryland.

So happy to have her.

The other Mount Rainier.

The other Mount Rainier.

She's currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Greater Washington.

We are also joined by Juguna Gushuru, who is a lab leader at People's Economy Lab, a Seattle-based organization that works to advance the transition to a regenerative economy in Washington state by supporting the development of new economic models and new systems that center and empower Black, Indigenous, people of color.

He's passionate about implementing transformative economic development strategies that combat white supremacy, and its entrenched legacies of injustice.

Juguna's personal background and extensive experience in banking, consumer protection, and community development, make him uniquely suited to serve the needs of black and brown neighbors for true economic empowerment.

He serves on the board of directors of the Nehemiah Initiative, Urban Family, Next Cycle Washington, and One Vibe Africa.

He is also the son of two of Seattle's most renowned African community leaders and is deeply committed to advancing their legacy of service in Washington State.

And I will say that in my previous life as a food systems consultant, I worked closely with Jaguna's mom, Jambi, on how to support immigrant-owned food-related businesses.

So it's wonderful to see you both here.

Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation.

Thanks for inviting me, Council Member.

Yeah, I'm really happy to have you both here.

And just as a reminder, Zoom is a little weird.

This isn't a conversation around my kitchen table.

I wish it was.

So I want to encourage both of you, if you've got comments you want to make, follow-up questions for me or for one another, let's just try to make this as conversational as possible.

So to get us started, I have been talking a lot here about community wealth building as a way to really draw the connection between community development and land use, particularly as we start conversations about our comprehensive planning process here.

So Tracy, I know in your work you talk about transformative placemaking.

and how physical solutions alone aren't gonna address our economic challenges, that sort of ecosystem of economic challenges.

But we are interested in talking about how these things relate to the comprehensive plan.

So I think we're talking about the same thing when I talk about community wealth building, when Brookings talks about transformative placemaking.

Can you tell us a little bit about that work and what it means for the Brookings Institute?

Sure.

Yeah, so I think, you know, transformative placemaking is just our sort of million dollar word for it.

But, you know, what we're talking about in the big picture here is the fact that we all know that place matters.

And we all know that what zip code you're born in, what zip code you live in, what zip code you have your business in, we know that that location makes a difference for your personal success in life.

And that this doesn't just have to do with the bigger picture of your household, like how educated you are, or what kind of access to capital that you have, but that this environment that you're in it shapes your possibilities and it shapes your outcomes in ways that are bigger than the personal things that you have control over.

And so given that we know that place matters, it's really a problem that in the United States, we have a huge amount of place inequality that we all like, that's my kid.

We all like need and want roughly the same things from our places, but Everything is set up in the United States such that only some places are able to get what they need.

And that needs to change.

What transformative placemaking is all about at the end of the day is just creating more quality places that work for more people.

It's that simple.

So how do we do that?

How do we, I mean, you know, part of what we're talking about here in Seattle is moving away a little bit from, you know, kind of a focus on downtown and few neighborhood commercial districts toward more, you know, like nodes, commercial district nodes, and really trying to support the idea of, you know, people being able to even work in their neighborhoods, but that does mean a different kind of planning and a different kind of recruitment and attraction of businesses.

Like, how do we get there?

So, you know, there is no one answer to that question, right?

And so I wanna address like a couple kind of big picture framing things about what you said.

So the first is that I don't think that we get there through like a kind of either or like scarcity mentality of like, we need to like stop investing in downtown and start investing in neighborhoods.

It has to be both and, and we have to do both of those things differently.

So we need to ask ourselves, why doesn't downtown work for more people?

Who's benefiting from downtown investment?

How can we do that better?

How can we make downtown investment something that yields great outcomes for neighborhoods?

And then similarly, we have to do neighborhood investment differently.

We have to say, is there a way that we can do this that is, instead of being deficit-based and talking about what's wrong with neighborhoods and what they don't have, can we start from what they do have, assets that are overlooked or devalued, and say, what would happen if we just took a minute to recognize that the people in these places are assets, that there are all kinds of other social, cultural, economic, institutional assets in these places.

And what if we invested in those things and started building something around them?

It works for wealthy neighborhoods, and it can work for every kind of neighborhood.

Yeah, I think that definitely really resonates as Tracy talks about investing in local neighborhoods and communities and community institutions and recognizing the value that they present.

And a lot of the work we do, a lot of that centers around reframing what the economy is and recognizing the value that's already in community, empowering folks to have the space within this current economy to reimagine, and then really supporting them in doing the work of building new systems and institutions because the assumption is like the genius and the value and the assets are there.

But as Tracy's mentioning, there's not the same nurturing environment and community context to support their thriving as there is for other communities.

So I definitely agree that making those places where that support and that nurturing is occurring is what we need to see.

And it's not just about a lack of investment, right?

Some neighborhoods are targeted with predatory and harmful practices.

They're coded as risky in ways that may or may not really be data-driven or evidence.

And we also have to put an end to these kinds of harmful practices in order to even just start to get close to leveling the playing field.

So Tracy part of your work is also around ownership, whether commercial or residential, but your research also points out sort of what you're talking about here which is that the value of property itself is also racialized and stigmatized based on its location.

So, and, you know, that is part of what we experience here in Seattle, too.

In the South End, I know there's, you know, your own research has shown that, you know, Black-owned businesses, property in neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and brown community members are undervalued.

So can you talk a little bit about that, a little bit more about that, and then talk about what some solutions might be?

Yeah, sure.

So I think like, you know, many of us who have worked in, you know, majority black and brown communities have, we have looked around, you know, ourselves and seen, you know, things like persistent high vacancy rates or marginal or even like harmful or undesirable land uses.

We see these kinds of things, we hear these stories and, you know, we all have a strong sense like, something's going on here.

What is going on at the market level that is producing these kinds of really disparate outcomes that you just don't see universally?

And so what I did in my most recent research with my colleagues Jonathan Rothwell and Andre Perry is we looked at commercial real estate in every MSA in the United States that has at least one majority Black zip code.

We looked at asking rents, and we controlled for every variable under the sun that we could think of that is related to the drivers of asking rents.

So proximity to downtown, condition, age of the building, crime rates, you name it.

We came up with just every variable under the sun that we could control for.

And what we found is that when we hold all those other variables equal.

And the only variable that's moving around is the share of the population of a neighborhood that is Black.

What we found is that in majority Black neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are at least 50% African-American, we found that retail real estate is undervalued by about 7% across all these zip codes in all these MSAs.

And that 7% may sound like a small number, but when you are talking about properties that may be appraised for millions of dollars, this is something that really adds up and that really changes the market dynamics of a place.

Well, and even the appraisal itself, we've learned recently, is undervalued, right?

I don't have the citation, but I know that I've read recently that places are even appraised differently.

I think the article I'm referencing was mostly about homeowners, but the point still holds.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we have a lot of different hypotheses about like kind of what's driving this sort of structural bias.

Like, you know, part of it could be coming from appraisal bias in the, specifically in the context of commercial property.

You know, since the outcome variable that we were looking at in our model is asking rents, we have a more complicated hypothesis that's essentially related to segregation and like, You know, in order for a market to be totally free that assumes that every actor has perfect information.

And, but when neighborhoods are segregated, you don't know about neighborhoods that aren't like yours.

And so that can lead to market and market inefficiency like devaluation.

You know, I think there are sort of multiple vectors and types of bias that are all at work at the same time.

The issue is that the outcome for neighborhoods of color is this systemic devaluation that has impacts for what it's like to do business there, who else is doing business there, and for the opportunities to create wealth that are in that community.

You know, you've been doing lots of really interesting things, particularly in Southeast Seattle.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about both the South Seattle Community Capital Resiliency Project And the work that's happening right now with CORD and the loan fund development.

And just sort of respond to what Tracy's talking about, if these are some possible tools to help us move past that problem.

Yes, and so People's Economy Lab was engaged a few years ago to work with three local BIPOC-led CDFIs, Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, Ventures, and Homesite to develop a combined lending, access to capital, and technical assistance capacity building program that would focus on anti-displacement for businesses owned by people of color in Southeast Seattle and South Park.

And so we came on to work with those partners to assess where are the barriers to capital, what are the challenges for these communities-owned businesses, and where can these three CDFIs come together to partner to provide that access to capital and capacity building.

And so we went through a process where we engaged with them for about a nine- to 12-month process to build out a pilot project.

To use a case management approach, and to integrate the partner, the three partners into engaging businesses more deeply to sort of in partnership define their small business needs and packages of combined capital and capacity building that would help them to combat displacement.

And so we are now in the process of piloting that program with these three partners.

And we found that, although it's still in a testing phase, that it's a more responsive and sort of community centered way to define how capital and capacity building looks for our businesses, and to provide some sustained support.

for them to combat displacement and for the partners to gather information and experience around the best ways to serve their needs.

And so it's an ongoing experiment that we're continuing to conduct with the partners, but so far have seen some good results and have really focused on building the partnership and building sort of the working the working relationships between these partners and the deeper engagement with the small businesses in community.

And so we feel like this will develop, ultimately help to develop a model that can be more responsive and more scaled.

And so we're really excited about what we can develop and we'll continue to do that work through the end of this year.

Yeah, that's great.

And then, and then for the work with cord is that are they one of the partners for that as well or court is court is not a partner for the sea cat project but they are an organization that we're helping to build capacity for.

ACORD stands for Community-Owned Resource Development.

They're a group of long-time, mostly long-time community leaders, folks in real estate development, folks with government and community institutions, mostly rooted in Southeast Seattle, that came together really to address the problem of displacement, the racial wealth gap in their communities, seeing that there were not coalition that's in institutions that they felt met the full needs of the community.

CORD has come together to operate as a collective to support community development projects and to build capacity among its members and friends.

And so People's Economy Lab worked with one of CORD's leaders, Dr. Mark Jones, in the first round of our new Frontline Community Fellowship program.

And so that's where we sort of got to know CORD as an institution, supported Dr. Jones in his development and learning, and supported CORD as a coalition.

We moved on to helping court to apply for an EDI capacity building grant and continue to work with the coalition to build out its organizational structure to build out a loan fund for emerging black developers, and then to help support specific projects like right now the arch apartments acquisition and development project and so.

Cord is a really exciting model that we see as an example of how communities can come together recognizing their internal assets bringing them together and working to create that nurturing environment and nurturing network.

build beloved community, which is Cord's sort of organizing framework, can advance as much as possible.

And so that that network of expertise and of community can be built and generate progress for the community.

So these, I'm trying to, maybe I'm trying to get back to, thank you for explaining how those are working, Jakuna.

It feels to me like, These are responses to the problem that Tracy has identified.

As a result of the fact that neighborhoods have been historically under-invested in, under-resourced, we've had to create these other systems, these responses, in order to be able to increase access to capital for businesses in these neighborhoods, figure out how to help build capacity of these organizations to work together.

You know, I was on tour, I did a tour in my district last week, for example, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, there is a new apartment complex with ground floor, you know, vacant ground floor, so they're moving in two local restaurants that had previously been displaced from the neighborhood, Baja Bistro and Chebogs.

And the reason, and so, you know, there's build out that's been happening.

They've been waiting on permits for something like 18 months.

And so, you know, so the landlord, the developer has these carrying costs, but because of the relationship between the developer and the restaurants, you know, they're all from the same neighborhood.

They frequent one another's businesses.

There is a relationship there.

And so the developer is not charging rent, because he knows that the business owners are receiving any, any, you know, income right now.

And so, you know, it's, it's just an interesting example of how If this was an outside developer, for example, that wouldn't have happened, right?

They would have found somebody who could move in quickly, pay the rent, or would have just been charging rent this whole time.

And so I'm just thinking about when we're talking about shifting the way we do business in some places, I understand not everybody might be able to do that, but those relationships are so important.

And they were also brought together by the Beacon Business Alliance, who was aware of project going in, the fact that these two other businesses had been pushed out, lost their leases, and been displaced, and so was able to bring everybody back together.

And, you know, they're going to the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund for access to capital in order to be able to do all of this work.

So that's a success story.

Hopefully they'll be opening soon.

But it's one example, and we know that there are businesses getting pushed out of Seattle every day.

We know that there are entrepreneurs who don't have access to capital, who are trying to get started and are having a hard time.

I think one of the first things you said, Jaguna, was giving people the space to figure out what they want to do.

So if we are in a situation, as Tracy said, where there is historic undervaluing, of property, of businesses, of neighborhood assets, and the neighborhoods are having to respond by creating all these other systems.

How do we bridge the situation as it is, the existing conditions in planner speak, so that we can get to a place quicker where our neighbors who are trying to, not just trying to survive, but trying to thrive and build healthy, creative, innovative neighborhoods, get them there quicker.

I can jump in.

If either one of you can answer that question, that'd be great.

Council member, this is why I talk so much about ownership in my research, because that relationship that you were just describing, like, yes, the relationship is important.

The only reason the relationship exists is because of the local ownership, right?

That's like a necessary precursor to that.

I think we also have to talk about ownership just because of, I think, We will not create a new politics of revitalization, one council member at a time, as important as you are.

We create that new politics through changing who owns what.

because owning a piece of this country has always been a key fulcrum in enabling different kinds of and powerful political participation.

So for all those reasons, it's important, but strictly for what you were describing about different ways of doing business that specifically involve a different distribution of risk and reward between owner and tenant, between builder and community that describe what Jagoon was talking about when he says capacity, just to just even have the expertise, the know-how in place to be able to think of a different type of a deal that is feasible, you know, that all of that only becomes possible when ownership is localized, when everyone is in the same place and at the same table.

And so, you know, my colleague Andre Perry wrote a book a few years ago called Know Your Price.

And in that book, he had a chapter called Buy Back the Block.

He did not invent that phrase.

This is not a new phrase people been talking about that this for a long time, but in the big picture, we're throwing around all these acronyms CDF by this, you know, like, it's, but what all this is about what all this is about is what majority Carter calls reclaiming our communities.

This is about localizing ownership so that we can even begin to start to have these conversations, to build these relationships, to root these new ways of doing business.

Yeah, I definitely agree the focus on ownership is key, and the support of these networks and relationships so that they can thrive and continue and the folks within the networks can have the capacity to support community members reclaiming ownership.

and supporting them through deep engagement.

A lot of times because our community members are dealing with a myriad of challenges, even when you get ownership, right?

There are a number of challenges you're going to continue to deal with.

So we found that the things that have really been special about CORD and about some of our CDFI partners locally are that they invest in that deep engagement.

And so I think that if government and other institutional partners can sort of recognize the value that's there and support it, along with supporting reclaiming of community assets I think funds like the equitable development initiative have been tremendously valuable to community in reclaiming ownership.

But community still need that support, that robust support around them to make the most of that ownership and to deal with the challenges that come with the next phase.

So yeah, I think there are a lot of exciting opportunities in our community, a lot of exciting networks of folks that are doing the work sort of underground a little bit that I would love to see recognized more explicitly and invested in.

Yeah, I just wanna reinforce what Juguna just said.

Commercial real estate in particular, this is an incredibly niche sector.

The top 1% of owners in commercial real estate as an asset class own 81% of the non-residential real estate in the United States.

So we're talking about, Very few people these are often like family businesses, you don't no one goes to school and learns how to do commercial real estate really I'm saying that someone used to work in a school business like this is like it just even just even how to manage a commercial real estate asset, how to do a commercial real estate deal.

This is, it's not written down a ton of places.

This isn't common knowledge that everybody has.

It's really actually very few people in this business and that are good at this business and know how to make money doing it.

And frankly, one of the reasons why the sector is quite lucrative and exclusive is because of how tightly held a lot of this knowledge is.

For that to change, you know, that requires a lot of organizing and a lot of building of capacity, right?

This, the hard work that Juguna is doing, this is exactly what needs to be done in order for this, for that 81% figure I mentioned to change.

Yeah, well, it's one of the reasons I, as somebody who's, you know, trained as a planner, It's one of the reasons why I encourage more black and brown folks, honestly, particularly women, to go to planning school, to become developers, to learn.

Get that MBA.

Finance.

Because different people need to be supporting this infrastructure and helping make decisions in a different kind of way.

And that's definitely part of it.

I mean, I think even within commercial real estate, like you will hear there are, you know, like commercial real estate is just like any other sector.

There's some people in this sector who are super villains, and there's some people in the sector whose hearts are really in the right place and who want to do good things and be in community.

But that doesn't mean that they know.

How to bring about the change that needs to happen right like because, like I was saying earlier right the legacy of segregation.

Part of it is that we literally don't know each other.

Yeah, and we don't know each other's communities and we don't know each other's businesses.

You know, it takes these kinds of interventions and frameworks in order for people to even have a chance to try out something different.

And it's honestly, it's exciting to hear about all the work that's happening in Seattle, because this is light years ahead, frankly, of where most places are in terms of building out all this capacity.

So, Jaguna, I want to ask you a little bit about sort of the big picture work that people's economy lab is doing around this just transition.

So I think we're in agreement that you know the best way to ensure that people of color can stay in Seattle is to increase assets increase wealth.

I think it is important that we do what we can to facilitate community ownership.

so that commercial tenants can build ownership within their own building.

I like this, you know, in fact, I think there are some folks down in Hillman City who are trying to figure out this buy back the block idea.

And also just to provide a, you know, space for businesses to launch and grow and be able to have the kind of vibrant commercial areas throughout the city that we're looking for.

So can you talk a little bit about, as a leader in this movement, what does it mean?

How do we think about what a just transition to a regenerative economy, what that means, and what does it look like for us to start moving in that direction?

So for us, the just transition framework which was coined by movement generation is a framework for a fair shift to an economy that's ecologically sustainable, socially just and regenerative of people and planet.

And so we see the regenerative economy as economy whose pillars work towards collective and shared well-being.

It's an ultimate vision and a framework that involves a set of principles, processes, and practices to build that economic and political power to make that shift happen.

But it recognizes that the fundamental problems of our economy as we see them currently are in built that the extractive economy is functioning as it should for the enclosure of wealth and power.

These are not really problems of the thing but the thing working as it's designed to work and seeing the economy as something that we define really.

That fundamentally means the management of home, that this is not a force of nature but these are rules that we've created and structures that we've created through relationships of power and a history of our society and so we see it as within our power in that transition to rethink and reframe what the economy is and sort of recreate the fundamentals.

And so that involves really challenging basic ideas about resource extraction, exploitation of labor, and governance, which are key pillars of the economy, and reframing those things.

And so we recognize that this is a transformative vision that looks That is in opposition to the economy we have and we have to work within.

So it's going to require navigating the contradiction of working within this system where say our black indigenous and people of color in Seattle are are struggling to remain in the city to educate our kids to feed our families with healthy foods and have to work within this extractive economy.

However, in order to ultimately and fundamentally solve those problems, we have to create a different economy.

And so the just transition involves recognizing that explicitly and navigating the contradictions of that, finding ways to work on building generational wealth for our communities locally through advancing ownership, but also transitioning towards a different model of what ownership looks like.

collective ownership, democratic governance, and focus on ecological sustainability.

And so, for us, it looks like really working in deep relationship with community to recognize this framework that we see in the world.

And then to work with them on navigating the contradiction of getting towards the new economy we want to achieve, while working within the extractive economy and society that we're in.

And so, We address that by really pursuing and finding the leaders we feel like are planting the seeds of this new regenerative economy.

Folks like Dr. Mark Jones and Curtis Encord.

Folks like Ariel Bangs, a plant-based food share.

Folks in our community who are creating the models of what we see as this regenerative economy, and then providing them with funding, networks of support, and that sort of nurturing environment for them to be successful and then learning about this framework and building upon this framework together and building a movement.

And so our focus has been on supporting those leaders in their work, trying to fund and support and really work in community with them to create the models of what we feel the vision is.

It's exciting work and it feels huge.

You know, it feels huge both in terms of like what is getting accomplished, the shift, the scale and scope of the shift that is being contemplated, that is being implemented, is dramatic and really takes a rethinking about how we do everything.

And it I can imagine that it feels Sisyphean because there is so much work to do.

You've got a lot of organizations that you work with.

And as we've been talking about this work, it's becoming clear that that kind of traditional economic development framing and sector and way of doing things can be, there can be a big wall to try to hit as you're trying to do some of this work.

Can you talk a little bit about how you kind of bridge the, I don't know, maybe if it's the communication, like how do you talk about the big shifts that you're trying to make when you're engaging with the more traditional sector.

And I think what I'm really trying to understand is how, how we empower black and brown neighbors, business owners, entrepreneurs, people who want to help move in this direction.

How do we empower them to help to make the shift?

I don't know if I'm asking a real question here.

But yeah, I get what you're saying.

I think We focus on sort of serving as that connector between our communities and some of our large stakeholders like government foundations and others.

I think one of the first steps is working sort of in deep community and understanding the needs of our communities and the challenges they're facing.

Being there with them and participating in them creating solutions for their community members.

Within that process, building relationships, building trust, and identifying our shared values and then through that trust, sharing with them, how we see sort of the problem in the world in the economy.

And usually we're able to find the alignment there.

It's in different places for different people in different communities.

But once we do find that alignment.

to strategize with them on how to connect with other large stakeholders to advance the interests of their communities more immediately, but also to find ways to help move us towards the larger shift.

So maybe it's a specific issue around food equity and access to healthy food.

And so we would work towards engaging deeply with folks like Ariel of Plant-Based Food Share, folks like Living Well Kent, and Shamso down in Kent, and then identifying their needs, getting deeply engaged and learning about this framework and talking about it as we're working, we would strategize with them to connect with partners in government and in other larger institutions to serve their needs, but also to advance goals like maybe, you know, cooperative farmer networks and building more democratic access to capital that both addresses their immediate needs, but moves us towards What we're trying to see, and then as we're doing that learning not just with the community members but with our partners in government and institutions about why.

this is the best sort of path forward as we see it.

And so we feel like we're sort of working to navigate that path with the partners and to act as sort of the connector and the steward of those relationships and trying to direct them as we can, but also to, of course, allow folks to have power in those relationships.

Yeah, the relationships are key, it feels like, and that's, I mean, that sort of gets back to the conversation I had, the thing, what I was mentioning earlier with the relationships, you know, up on Beacon Hill and what was making some of that successful and a shared goal of building community assets, you know, maintaining local ownership as much as possible and figuring out how they're going to make it work.

Tracy, maybe I'll ask you that I just want to jump in and add that one other thing I find really inspiring about what you can is talking about is how it begins with being present in communities and asking them what they need and that the solutions come from people who are approximate to the problems.

These sound like, you know, woke talking points or whatever, but this is a really different way of doing economic development.

I mean, you can operationalize this into a different way of trying to do something about poverty in communities.

And actually it reminds me a lot of the story of this shopping center in Portland, Oregon that I heard a couple of years ago.

There's a nonprofit based in Portland called Mercy Corps that mainly works internationally doing anti-poverty stuff.

And they have a domestic arm as well that does some stuff in the United States.

They wanted to create some kind of investment tool for low-income people in the United States, but they didn't really know, like, what, right?

Like, if I'm going to think about investing, I guess I'm thinking about, like, putting some money in my 401k, you know, or, like, or buying stock or something.

That's, when I hear invest, that's typically the first thing I'm thinking of.

So, but they actually, they went to the, they went to a, like, a very low-income zip code in eastern Portland and just, hung out and talked to the people who live there and asked them what they wanted, what they needed, got a sense of what they could trust.

These are not people who are rushing off to buy stock, something that's invisible, that they can't see, that they don't know what it is.

And we've been working with them to try to see if that model will work here.

Yeah, and so what they came up with instead is essentially a mechanism for people who live in the CIPCO to buy shares in a local shopping center.

And so it's a kind of stock, it's a share, right?

But it's invested in something tangible that the community can see.

And what's striking about the story is not like, oh, and then they decided to invest in real estate.

I mean, like that piece is cool too, but like, it's that it began with this user centered design, which is just the fancy way of saying, it just began with asking people what they need.

And it's sometimes it's that simple to start with, but most economic development does not begin that way.

Right.

Right.

And so yeah, so this is the Community Investment Trust idea and we're, we're actually working with them to try to figure out how a model like that might work here in Seattle and have a couple of organizations that are very interested and People's Economy Lab is helping us with that as well.

So yes, so neighborhood is important, you know, this sort of relationship is really important.

And, and so I want to go back, Tracy, to this question that we kind of touched on earlier about sort of the downtown neighborhood mega region question right because we are here in Seattle, as we have our economic recovery conversations.

A lot of the, a lot of the conversation is really centered on how do we bring back downtown, how do we get people back downtown, how do we invest in downtown.

And we know that out in our neighborhoods.

There is also a need for recovery and investment and, you know, restaurants that are still struggling and small businesses that still need support.

frankly, have been pretty candid about worrying that there's gonna be too much emphasis on downtown.

So maybe you can talk a little bit about your work around mega regions, what that means for black and brown communities and how it relates to this conversation about how we do economic development differently.

Sure.

So my research on mega regions is really just about like, just looking at how growth is happening in the United States currently, like where are new jobs and new households locating?

And what I found in my research, and a lot of other people have found this too, this is not like a particularly shocking finding, is that the vast majority of new housing and new jobs are actually out in the suburbs.

Um, and that, you know, as, as explosive as the growth feels in Seattle, wait till I tell you about all the growth that's happening outside of Seattle.

And so this, this kind of like, you know, sort of explosion in the spatial scale of growth, what that means for historic urban cores is that, um, once you know, the urban core was a place where there was just a really, really high concentration of assets, of people, of jobs, of infrastructure, of institutions.

And now that concentration is dispersing.

So that leads to fragmentation.

just of all of value, of capacity, of trust, of, of, you know, institutional knowledge, like it just basically just everything is more spread out.

And when things are more spread out, there are, there's a really clear set of winners and losers in terms of how that plays out.

And You know, in order for there to be more winners and fewer losers, basically, what's required is kind of an unprecedented level of coordination, you know, across all this fragmentation.

It's just really, really hard to do because we're all physically, jurisdictionally, legally further apart than ever.

So that's what I found in my research on mega regions.

Regions are getting bigger and it's making it harder to, it's creating a coordination problem.

And you can see this with any one particular issue, whether it's like workforce development, homelessness, healthcare, housing, transportation, you know, this has implications for every sector.

So, you know, what it means for Seattle is that it's, I think it's easy to, many cities, you know, have this tension of like kind of downtown versus the neighborhoods and perceive their city politics as a trade-off between those two things.

You know, but what I see in my mega regions research is that that is, that is first off like, losing sight of this even bigger picture of like the suburbs, you know, who are not co-invested in the wellbeing of the city, in the wellbeing of an urban core, the way a downtown and its neighborhoods are.

So that's one coordination problem that needs to be addressed, but within cities, you know, I think the solution to this is, that once again, this comes down to, you could say it's a question of ownership.

Who owns downtown?

And who is benefiting from downtown prosperity?

We have to get the answer to that question.

And I think many of us can start to guess already what the answer might be when we get it.

And so how can we expand it?

How can we get downtown invested in neighborhoods and neighborhoods invested in downtown so that cities are cooperating and not competing?

Because in this kind of big fragmented landscape, that is that's something that would have strong net benefits for older neighborhoods in the urban core.

Yeah, I mean, we certainly have the suburban cities challenge as well.

Every region does.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, Seattle in King County, Seattle is is, you know, obviously the largest city, but there's lots of smaller cities that have different ideas about as a region what we should be doing.

And certainly as it relates to the comprehensive plan, you know, we are We are bound by our state growth management act to reach certain targets around you know how much housing we're going to produce how many jobs, we anticipate.

But even within those those sort of expectations, you know there's lots of different ways, people approach.

what they are planning for over the next 20, 30 years.

And the rest of us have to deal with the consequences of that.

So trying to get our city moving in the right direction is important, obviously.

I'm sorry, Jaguna, did you want to chime in on any of that?

Yeah, I think what Tracy said really resonates, especially about the dispersion of folks and the challenge around coordination.

I grew up, my parents had a store in Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle.

And so grew up in a time when it was affordable to own a business space in Seattle and sort of grew up with the benefits of my parents being able to be small business owners in Seattle.

So I've seen those opportunities become out of reach for families just like my own and so I think about the relationship we had to downtown living in South Seattle and Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach and Skyway.

having a relationship to downtown, growing up there, having my first job there, being able to watch my parents do business and participate in downtown's business ecosystem and to benefit from that in a way that's out of reach right now.

So when Trace talks about ownership, I think that really resonates with me and really understanding today where, how our communities relate to the downtown economy, and what is the best way to create pathways to being more connected, but also to understand the realities of our communities being dispersed into neighborhoods and other places outside of the city, and then have questions about, OK, then how do we use our current networks, even folks outside of the city who are still connected to neighborhoods in the city who want to come back and map out a sort of economy based on a lot of those relationships and what folks are doing right now so yeah gets a lot of my wheels turning but I think a lot about like how do we, it requires a lot of engagement to talk to people about like what are you doing right now where do you live.

When do you come into the city?

What do you get in the city?

And I think that sort of mapping and those conversations and processes are really valuable, but they are hard to write fund and to sustain.

So we'd love to see as much coordination around that as possible, right?

With government and larger institutions and community-based institutions around doing that work more continually so we can be navigating, like what is the best approach?

Yeah, I mean, that's getting my wheels spinning, too, about, you know, what what is the role of government in all of this?

You know, because we have there is a lot of work to do.

The city can't do it all.

But we do have you know, we have an office of economic development.

We have an office of planning and community development.

We have a permitting office.

We have an office of housing.

Like what what should our I guess both coordination amongst ourselves be, but to the point you're both making, how do we support, I know you're going to say invest, but how else can we be supporting this idea of really understanding how our neighbors, particularly folks who have already been pushed out of the city, but for many different reasons, you know, including trying to keep their community cohesion, still come back into the city and use city services and shop here.

How do we help find those answers so that we can better support the connection between the neighborhoods and the downtown and the way that they both get used?

I mean, I think that in addition to right the investment there's facilitating those forums and institute sort of.

those forums and relationships where we can communicate about this, like just even talking with Tracy about her research and making connections between People's Economy Lab and Brookings and others so that we can begin to build these relationships to find where like our sort of approaches align and then collaborate.

So I think the city supporting collaboration and then sustaining sort of forums for us to collaborate and work together, and as much as possible to invest and to fund the work, and then to sort of help us to hold the data, the research, and to work with community to be a part of that process of looking at what we're hearing from community members, and helping to map that out, and then to pick a path right within that map.

I feel like that's a really valuable role that government can play.

And then bringing in other actors from the private sector and foundations and others by endorsing and really championing the work.

Thank you.

As you're talking about the research and mapping the work and trying to really understand on the ground what some what kinds of things are happening.

I know Tracy is about to begin, it sounds like a cross country study on, I think some of the similar questions.

Do you wanna talk a little bit about what you're launching soon, Tracy?

Yeah, sure.

So, you know, I've heard from quite a few cities who are, you know, downtowns are really challenged in this moment, right?

Because of, the extraordinarily high concentration of office real estate that's found in a typical US downtown and the kind of multiple major intersecting trends like telework is just one of kind of multiple trends that are hitting office real estate at the same time and producing a big structural shift in demand.

So this is a, you know, You know, for people who own office buildings in a downtown, they may say like, oh, this is like a disaster.

You know, this is really bad.

But this is also like a healthy reality check.

You know, that maybe the way things were before the pandemic was not extremely resilient and that we, we need to, you know, take a look at the ecosystem, you know, in which like downtown office buildings exist and, you know, figure out a way to, you know, help that office kind of monoculture evolve into something that is useful to more people, you know, at the end of the day.

So I think that there is a conversation that cities need to have that those in the private sector that are invested in downtowns need to have.

And so I am starting a research project that's going to get a few big city US downtowns together in order to look at their kind of baseline conditions economically, socially, politically, And then, you know, in terms of infrastructure and to exchange ideas about how not to build back in the sense of like discovering a time machine to February of 2019, but how to build something new that is, that's more inclusive and that is resilient and productive.

And when are you starting that work?

As soon as I am done raising money to support it.

I'm sure Jaguna can relate to what I'm talking about.

You know, a controversial statement for, you know, women and people of color to still be making in this country is work isn't free.

I think we're all here to say it.

So I got to figure out that piece first.

But as soon as I have that piece figured out, I am hopeful that Seattle will be one place where we can have this conversation because I hear from you, but I also hear from other folks in Seattle who are just hungry and ready for this conversation, ready for something different and understanding that this is a moment in which things have to change.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's a lot happening here.

We have, as everybody is dealing with what our cities look like after the pandemic, how we recover, how we support our businesses to come back, how we make sure that workers are safe as they come back into downtown or any other indoor work environment.

certainly a lot to contemplate.

Yeah, and we talked earlier, you know, you shared that kind of one small example of like a new way of doing business, a new way of sharing risk and reward.

That was like one building, you know, one restaurant, one project, but actually we need to have that same conversation about this much bigger picture of There was a way we were doing business before the pandemic that was working for some people, but the fragility of that model has now been revealed and it is no longer viable.

We must all work together, the private sector, the public sector, and communities to create something new.

As we have those conversations, I think it's important that we center, as you've sort of been alluding to, and as Jaguna has alluded to as well, you know, my North Star, particularly given the district that I represent, is really to try to close the racial wealth gap.

The work that we do is about, you know, my office is, I sort of am guided by three principles in my office when I'm doing policy work or budget work.

And those are to repair the harm done to black and brown communities, to democratize access to power and resources, and to plan for the seventh generation.

And so that's why this work is so exciting to me because I do think that if we can figure out a shift in how we do economic development, all of those things can start to be addressed.

And so I think it's really important that we that we are.

you know, clear and overt about centering the need to reduce the racial wealth gap.

And I frankly don't think that we do center that enough, that we don't talk enough about whether it's planning or economic development, that our approaches really need to center how we address the harm done in black and brown communities.

So I would love to ask both of you how you think in your work, you know, what are some of the takeaways from the work that you've done that decision makers need to know about and that we need to keep in mind as we're trying to shift and make this framework into a new way of doing economic development.

Um, I think I probably highlight that I think one project that we're working on that aligns really well with.

Those themes is that we're doing a research and analysis project with the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods on BIPOC generational wealth building.

And we'll be doing some community participatory research with leading community organizations to really assess the experiences of our community members in communities that experience the racial wealth gap most severely.

Really, identifying their experiences with generational wealth, and it's different components and their needs around advancing towards sort of closing wealth gaps locally.

We've done that in partnership with DLN and some other consultants.

involving a BIPOC generational wealth building roundtable, various community members, leaders, and the interdepartmental team on generational wealth building.

And so, so far, where, you know, People's Economy Lab is coming from a just transition framework where, again, we see the problem requiring this being sort of a symptom of the overall extractive economy, but understanding that we need to work within the current frame to sort of get to that overall shift we're working towards.

And so we started by working with that roundtable group and our community partners to really identify What are the needs and desires of our community around generational wealth building.

And then where can we align those needs with specific strategies we can identify that would serve them, but would also align with our principles in terms of democratizing access to capital and economic power and collective ownership.

And so, I think that it's sort of our work in this area sort of embodies that balancing act right working with community and these roundtables and through this research to really identify their experiences, their needs and what they see as really necessary, understanding what we see from the research about the importance of ownership and the importance of access to these.

opportunities to generate economic power in this system with what are the opportunities to make that fundamental shift at the same time.

And so we think that that is sort of a critical approach to be able to engage and to be able to address communities needs, but at the same time to be able to experiment and prioritize elements of transformation in that process.

So we continue to do that work right now.

Um, with the round table to do the research and it'll be an ongoing process, but, um, that will inform some of the investments that the city has defined to make in things like, um, guaranteed basic income, financial literacy and other areas.

Um, and we hope to inject some of that just transition framework into some of those approaches.

Yeah, as the chair of the committee that oversees Department of Neighborhoods, I am very excited about that work on generational wealth building and how we really start to understand what's missing and how we put back together the infrastructure and the support that we need in order to make sure that people have access to ownership, access to economic development opportunities, business ownership, home ownership, And, and, and, you know, another part of what we are trying to do in my office is really reframe what we mean even by affordable housing, right so we have a lot of important affordable housing programs in the city, our office of housing, just funded another.

Well $80 million I can't remember how many units that's going to produce.

And I would love to see us also offer social housing where, you know, we don't just acquire land in the city and then sell it to a developer, but we acquire land for the purpose of affordable housing and hold it in city ownership so that we have, you know, the opportunity to really ensure the permanency of that affordability for folks.

And it would include not just rental properties, but opportunities for homeownership as well.

So I think there are lots of different ways that we could pull this thread and really start to pull together an array of opportunities to make sure that people have access to ownership in the city.

I'd like to add just one thing about closing the racial wealth gap and why it matters.

I think like, you know, you hear that phrase and it doesn't like take a rocket scientist to understand like why this matters for black people and people of color, right?

Because the idea is that they will get more wealth.

But what I'd like to emphasize is that this is actually something that's good for everybody.

Inequality is a problem that hurts everyone, and that hurts all of society.

I am not just talking about politically how it's tearing our country apart, although that is true.

And for that reason alone, I think that there is an imperative in this moment to address inequality.

we would all actually be richer, you know, quite like literally, but also in thinking, conceiving of wealth really broadly, the way you're going to describe said, like, we would all be better off in a world that had less poverty and inequality.

There are, there are literal costs to society that we all bear by allowing this system to continue to work as designed.

And that is, it's not just a tragedy, it's also inefficient, right?

What closing the racial wealth gap is not about taking what somebody else has and giving it to somebody else.

What this is about is that there are black and brown entrepreneurs who have the next cure for cancer, or a great idea for a business the next iPhone like whatever it is.

All of this potential, all of these ideas, all of these ways in which not just the entrepreneur, but whole of society could be better.

Right now, we leave all that on the table because of all of these systemic barriers to the success of BIPOC businesses and innovators.

We would all benefit simply from unleashing that and and making it happen.

I want that next cure for cancer.

I want that next iPhone.

Those would be great things for me, just to get to have.

This is a big world.

We need all hands on deck in order to address big problems like climate change.

We can't be leaving huge chunks of society not engaged in our problems because of poverty.

So this is something that we need to do, not just because it's the right thing, but just because it's the efficient thing.

We have to stop wasting so much of our own potential.

And that's one thing that hurts me about inequality is just how terrifically, terribly, tragically wasteful it is.

So, you know, there is an old school economic development case for why assets with potential should not simply be left on the table.

I could not have said that better myself.

Thank you, Tracy.

I mean, this is the crux of the matter, right?

And I've thought similar things myself.

I want to be, especially when I look at our schools, some of our South End schools that have also been sort of historically underinvested, and I think about the potential in those kids.

whose parents are working several jobs, who are living in housing that is not safe, not sanitary.

Their schools don't have enough food to feed all the kids who get free and reduced lunch.

And that is all, as you said, by design.

Those are policy decisions.

Those were decisions not to invest in those neighborhoods.

And the people who have grown up in those neighborhoods have been dealing with that for generations.

And what does it mean for who could have come out of those neighborhoods and been the next, you know, great artist or composer or, you know, physician or any, you know, the next, I don't know.

I don't know about that.

I'll take a cronut, you know, the next day.

Who knows what it is.

Yeah.

And so that is the issue.

We need to make sure that everyone in this city has access to the things that they need to thrive.

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

And that's really the point of these conversations, whether we're talking about economic development or housing or transit, because these are all components.

These are all elements of the comprehensive planning process that we are beginning.

And so I want people to understand, as we're talking about the comprehensive plan for the next two years, what does that really mean?

This is what it means.

It means that we have to think deeply about all the different elements and what needs to change about the way we've been doing business in the city and really in this country.

So that we can do it better and not build back to what we were before but build something more just and more equitable as we're as we're moving forward.

So thank you for for both of you for reminding us, you know, Paul Wellstone said, we all do better when we all do better.

That's right.

It would not just be more just and more equitable, it would also be more fruitful.

Yeah.

Okay, so I had one last question.

We've got a little bit of time.

And this really does go back to the comprehensive planning question for me.

We are, and I gave Tracy a little bit of a hint of this when we spoke yesterday, but, you know, as we are coming out of the pandemic, as we're having conversations about whether Whether everybody's going to come back to work or not how many people are going to come back to work, what does that mean for downtown, what does that mean for our neighborhoods.

You know, we are also talking about 15 minute cities we're talking about you know this sort of.

network of thriving neighborhood commercial districts that we would like to see so that everybody can can get the things that they need within their neighborhood without having to get in a car without having to come downtown, whether that's you know a pharmacy or healthcare or childcare or even their jobs.

So that's, I think, something we should be moving toward, whether or not, you know, people are going to be working from home in large numbers.

But it has raised an interesting question from some about if that's how we are moving, if that's the direction we're moving, more people will be at home, then why bother to invest in transit?

Why bother, you know, why are we building so much light rail?

Why are we worried about increasing bus service?

And so I would love your reactions to this question of, you know, why does it matter?

How do we, how, if we are building, you know, thriving neighborhoods where everybody can live and work in their neighborhood, Why bother investing in transit and public transportation?

So I'm on the board of my region's transit authority, and this is a question I'm really passionate about, but I'm gonna try to answer this real quick so that you can recommend too.

Okay.

I love the vision of a 15 minute city.

At Brookings, we talk about this, the word we like to use to talk about it is like the power of proximity.

That it's just, life is just easier when stuff is close.

It's easier, it's better.

There's a whole host of reasons.

So proximity does have a lot of power.

And I absolutely believe that you increase people's quality of life when you bring them into proximity with the things that they need.

And so let's do it.

Absolutely.

I'm totally sold.

So now let's say, OK, yeah, I am now able to simply walk, for example, for 90% of what I need.

It's a life within walking distance.

Wonderful.

I'm blessed to live in this type of neighborhood now.

But I will tell you, I will tell you what, there's this 10% of stuff that it's like, oh, that's like a pretty complicated special type of a thing.

Like, oh, I need to have an MRI or, oh, I need to meet with, you know, my friend who lives in a different neighborhood.

There are, there's that 10% of times when you still need to go somewhere else.

Am I supposed to have a car that has just sat there and done nothing?

for 90% of my life so that I can take that last 10% of trips?

I have to pay all that just so I can take that last 10% of trips?

Where is this car stored?

How am I supposed to cover that overhead in terms of the machine itself, the insurance?

That is simply not efficient.

You know, even in like this paradise of the 15 minute city there's a need to move between neighborhoods, there is a need for a regional mobility solution.

And what is efficient is for that to be a shared solution.

And that's, that's transit.

You know exactly what transit looks like how the network is designed, what the level of services, you know we have an historic transit model that's oriented around serving the journey to and from work of office workers in the downtown, that is one type of traveler, making one type of trip.

So this vision of connected 15-minute cities is this is more kinds of travelers taking more kinds of trips to and from more destinations.

But I don't think that that rules out the possibility that transit can serve those trips.

It's just that the network and the level of service within that network will look somewhat different.

But the big picture is that even once everything is within walking distance, all that means is like all that time that you used to spend traveling to do the 90% of life that's now close, that just frees up time to bop around and do other things and enjoy life more.

Demand for mobility is not the same as demand for food or whatever.

I need to eat and then when I'm full, I'm good.

but it's such a big world full of so many people and places, I can never see and touch enough of it.

So people have very, very elastic demand for mobility.

And if there's more of it, people want more of it.

And I think that understanding that already before the pandemic, the vast majority of travel in the United States was non-work travel.

And that even though that was already a big majority of travel, it was also the fastest growing category of travel.

We should not have needed a pandemic to tell us that we need a mass mobility solution that connects us all to each other.

It's hard to do this in the mega regional context.

So we're feeling our way towards something new.

It's some 15 minute, a network of 15 minute neighborhoods.

In my research, we call these activity centers, you know, to creating a region that's built around a network of these new kinds of places.

We can do it.

It's just a little bit different from the old model.

Yeah, I think that really resonates.

And, you know, similar to Tracy I really do support these 15 minute communities and would love to see those advances but yeah definitely agree that different kinds of movement are going to occur and public transit is of tremendous value.

And, you know, the ecological value there of reducing our driving is something that should be prioritized.

And as, as I'm listening to I'm thinking about how sort of creating these different types of communities requires a reframing right of how we think of communities and how we think of how travel is valuable.

And I think about the social connections that travel enables between these different neighborhoods.

That's of tremendous value.

And think about how do we need to sort of reframe that in order to make the case for transit.

That it has a new place and that we've seen an example of that during the pandemic.

But this can be sort of a new way of approaching travel and how that would the place that it has in our own economy as people right as we think of the economy is just the management of home the management of our own daily activities and movements, that's all it is.

How does that look differently in a world where you don't have to go all the way over there to work or to sustain yourselves and as individuals, how can that create more value for us right.

If I'm using less time traveling to work and I can go see things that inspire me and see people that I love.

At the same time, I can save this planet a little bit of co2 right, how is that a new valuable approach to travel and how can we create that that is something we can create.

And so I think these conversations and having that ability to imagine and sort of free ourselves from being locked into a paradigm of.

having to go downtown for work, having to think of travel like this is really empowering.

And so I think of just how we can do that with more of our community members and then connect with folks to make decisions to make those things real.

Yeah, I'm really thinking a lot.

So I also sit on the King County Board of Health.

And, you know, we are discussing just yesterday, we're just talking about the county's climate and health initiative.

And there's a lot of conversation happening around the public health impacts of the need to, you know, get people out of their cars.

You know, as a region, we're talking about regional plans for maybe not walkable cities or walkable neighborhoods in some of our suburban cities, but certainly talking about the need to invest in more bike lanes and more sidewalk infrastructure, if for no other reason than to get people more opportunity for recreation, because that is good for public health.

In addition to, you know, reducing carbon emissions and, you know, in the district I represent, which does have some air quality issues, you know, that's also connected to incidents of asthma and other health issues.

So lots of different reasons why even with our hope to move toward, you know, a network of walkable neighborhoods, we will still need a way for people to get around that is efficient and clean and hopefully more reliable than sitting in traffic for several hours, as some of us must do once in a while.

Well, we are just about out of time.

So Tracy and Jaguna, I want to thank you so much for being here, for sharing your wisdom, your experience, your research, the things that you're working on here in Seattle with community.

And our office has been working with People's Economy Lab on a couple of different things.

So I'm really excited about the opportunity to continue collaborating with you.

and really look forward to, Tracy, if you are able to come to Seattle soon, I hope we can, you know, maybe convene everybody together and start doing some of this work locally, that would be great.

I sure hope so.

So I want to thank folks who are joining us today.

We are, as I said, always looking for suggestions for other topics.

We are gonna take a break with the Seattle Within Reach conversation for August.

But if you have some ideas of what you might want us to talk about for the September episode, please do let us know.

You can send comments, questions, suggestions to Evelyn Chow on my staff.

You can also follow the Seattle within reach conversations on social media.

If you want to watch this segment again or you want to share it with somebody, you will be able to find it on my council website which is seattle.gov slash council slash Morales.

And I already said that we'll be taking a break in August, but come back in September for another episode of Seattle Within Reach.

Thanks again to Tracy and Jaguna for being here with us.

It was a great conversation and really look forward to continuing to work with you and talking with you again.

That's all we have today, everybody.

Thanks so much for joining us and we will see you next time.