Sustainability & Renters' Rights Committee 5/20/22

Recording.

Thank you, son.

Good morning, everyone.

This is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee of the Seattle City Council.

Today is Friday, May 20th, 2022, and the time is 9.30 a.m.

I am the chair of the committee, Council Member Kshama Sawant.

Would the chair, Ted Verdone, from my office please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Juarez?

For present.

Thank you, Ted.

Welcome all members of the committee, and also welcome to council members mosquito and Peterson who will be joining us today at the committee as sponsors of either legislation or amendments to legislation.

We have three items on today's agenda.

First, the committee will discuss and vote on a bill sponsored by Councilmember Peterson to add information about rent charged to the information that landlords are required to report under the Rental Registration and Inspections Ordinance.

Council Member Peterson also has an amendment to that bill to clarify how it will be enforced.

Next, the committee will discuss and vote on a bill sponsored by my office in response to a Court of Appeals decision that objected to one small part of Seattle's six-month eviction defense.

That ordinance requires renters to attest that they have suffered financial hardship in order to be eligible to use that defense against eviction.

And the Court of Appeals objected to the mechanics of that attestation, specifically that there is not language giving landlords the ability to rebut the claim that renters face financial hardship.

I want to be clear that the six month eviction defense is still in effect because the city has appealed the Court of Appeals decision.

However, out of an abundance of caution and particularly to avoid confusion, my office is sponsoring this bill to respond to the Court of Appeals concerns.

There are two ways to address the Code of Appeals decision.

The city council could add a line explaining how landlords can rebut renters' claims on financial hardship, or the council could simply remove the requirement that renters have faced financial hardship, the requirement that renters have to claim that, so that there is no claim to rebut.

As I have argued repeatedly in the past, I strongly prefer that we have no elements of means testing, however minor, in renter's rights legislation.

And so I strongly prefer the second option.

It should be a given that if a renter is in eviction court, they have suffered financial hardship because nobody in their right mind would be in eviction court out of choice.

And that simply doesn't happen.

Why else would they be there other than if they had financial hardship?

So requiring that they declare financial hardship, particularly if their landlords start challenging those claims, drags renters through a humiliating process.

that in reality has a chilling effect, preventing the very people this eviction defense was intended to help in the first place from using it.

And in fact, there is a lot of documentary evidence to show how the court process overwhelmingly is imbalanced towards protecting landlords just because they feel that landlords are much more equipped and much more experienced in dealing with legal processes.

My office has discussed with the Housing Justice Project who defend renters in eviction court.

And in reality, this eviction defense is rarely needed right now, because both renters and landlords usually prefer a different eviction defense that is connected to rental assistance funds to pay off back rent, but those programs are currently only funded to the end of June.

Hopefully they will be extended.

But in the meantime, this bill will clarify the next line of defense for renters.

Because legislation requires 30 days after signature by the mayor to go into effect, if this bill is passed, I intend to move to suspend the rules to have it appear on Tuesday next week's city council agenda rather than the following week as would typically happen for legislation voted out of a Friday committee.

As I said, there are two ways that this bill could have responded to the court of appeals concern.

The bill I have proposed responds by eliminating the need for any means test by the renter.

I understand council member Mosqueda has prepared an amendment to instead use the other approach, adding a line about how landlords can rebut renters at the stations.

Our final agenda item today is a report from the Office of Sustainability and Environment on their work in the recent social justice report.

Before we begin the agenda items, we of course have public comment.

We have, I believe, 11 people, 12 people now signed up for, no, 11 people signed up for public comment.

And because some members of the committee, city council members have scheduling restrictions, I am, going to have speakers have one minute each, not two minutes.

Apologies for that in advance, but we want to make sure that we have council members here for as much of the committee as possible.

So public comment speakers will have one minute each.

I will read out the names.

When I call out your name, you will be prompted to unmute yourself.

When you hear that prompt, please hit star six on your phone to unmute yourself and then begin speaking.

Our first three speakers who are showing as present are Jennifer Lekish, Candice Chevalier, and Bruce Becker.

There is an Anthony Jacob who has signed up who is showing as not present.

Anthony, if you can hear this, then just know you're showing up as not present.

Go ahead, Jennifer Lekish.

Jennifer, you're muted.

If you hit star six, you can unmute yourself.

Jennifer, you're still showing up as muted.

So if you hit star six on your phone.

Jennifer, I'll just move on and I'll come back to you and see if that works then.

Anthony Jacob is still showing as not present.

Next, we have Candace Chevalier, Bruce Becker, sorry, and Marilyn Yim.

Go ahead, Candace, before you go, I just wanted to recognize for the record, we have been joined by Council President Juarez, who is also a member of the committee.

Go ahead, Candace.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you madam chair, this is Candace Chevalier.

I would like to urge you to vote no on Council Bill 120330 and 120325. I want to mention I actually represent a lot of apartment owners in the sale of their buildings and I can see how these regulations really affect their decision to sell versus continue to own the property.

So this kind of reporting, I think, would be really onerous on the smaller landlord, which has that naturally occurring affordable housing that we so value in our city.

I also wanted to add, though, there's some talk about using the local research university for some of the research that is thought to be conducted and data to be gathered.

I actually started a company called Commercial Analytics which was intended to replace the void left by Dupre and Scott.

And so wanted to make sure that the council is aware that there is an existing system that could be used in order to collect this data.

And feel free to contact me if you'd like more information.

I sent a written email as well.

Next is Bruce Becker followed by Marilyn Yim.

The speaker after Marilyn is Rachel Ramseur, but Rachel you're showing up as not present.

And then after that is Tram Tran Larson.

Go ahead, Bruce Becker.

Thank you for letting me have an opportunity to speak.

My name is Bruce Becker.

I'm encouraging you to vote against both of these council bills, 12330 and 12325. First of all, the first one that eliminates the need for a tenant to show financial need to avoid paying rent, it just doesn't make any sense, really.

It's much better to have them, if the tenant can't pay, they should be able to claim, I can't pay, and this is why.

And if a landlord can rebut that successfully, that's good, that's what a judge is for.

The problem with this is that it opens up what it basically means is that tenants no longer need to pay rent to avoid the act of eviction.

The other bill also presents a problem with this recording.

These are the kinds of things that are driving small landlords like me out of Seattle.

And this is a real problem because we provide the low...

Marilyn Yim followed by Tram Tran Larson and then Kate Martin.

Go ahead, Marilyn.

Good morning, I'm speaking in opposition to the two council bills before you today.

In January 2020, OPCD's housing choices report found that two thirds of renters prefer renting one to four unit properties and three quarters of respondents want city policy to encourage more of these options.

Yet since then, the city has lost 11% of its rental housing, 94% of which is those very same properties the majority of renters prefer.

That same report cautioned against the kind of data gathering that council bill 120325 proposes.

This shows a real disconnect between the city's policies and actual outcomes for both renters and small mom and pop providers.

City council actions such as those considered today are driving out the very properties that most city residents want more of.

And you're not collecting data to figure out why this is happening.

Now you want to suspend rental payments indefinitely with no additional rental assistance when there are housing providers owed 50 to $100,000 right now.

We keep trying to tell you why mom and pops are stuck because of harsh legislation yet you keep ignoring and alienating us.

with today being the latest example.

Please get out of your office, talk to stakeholders and stop passing laws that make the housing crisis worse.

Thank you.

We now have Rachel Ramseur showing us present.

So go ahead, Rachel.

And after that, Tram.

Hi, I just wanted to call in and express the fact that I am considered a small landlord here and I do have two properties that recently became vacant.

And just the idea of extending this moratorium puts me in a position where I will probably be choosing to sell my property as opposed to renting them out again, because I cannot afford to not receive rental or rent from my tenants.

So I hope that you do consider how this affects small landlords and small property owners.

Next is Tram Tran-Larson followed by Kate Martin and then Gordon Haggerty.

Go ahead, Tram.

Good morning.

My name is Tram Tran-Larson and I'm the Community Engagement Manager at the Housing Justice Project.

On behalf of HJP, we support council members to launch proposed ordinance to amend the language in the COVID-related defense to eviction to address the issue raised by the Court of Appeals.

This is a relatively minor fix.

Tenants are still struggling to pay rent as hours and wages are still fluctuating with the rising COVID cases.

The largest rental assistance program has closed to new applications, leaving tenants with few resources.

They're not just refusing to pay rent.

We also support Council Member Peterson's ordinance that expands the collection of information Landlords claim that they are selling their properties, but we don't actually have any evidence that supports their claim, aside from misinterpretation of the little information that's there.

Therefore, it is beneficial to know what the housing inventory looks like, what actions the city needs to take to preserve its current affordable housing supply, and address the gaps that exist.

Thank you.

Next is Kate Martin followed by Gordon Haggerty.

And the speaker after Gordon is Daniel Bannon, but Daniel is showing as not present.

And after that is Kay Fon.

Go ahead, Kate Martin.

Thank you.

I'd like to just make a few comments to my opposition to extending the moratorium on evictions.

I'm a small landlord running a shared house that I own.

I have very affordable rents, and it put me in a terrible position to not be able to rent rooms because of the idea of a rent strike going on.

As you know, in New York City, they ended the rent, the eviction moratorium a long time ago.

It separated the wheat from the chaff, it separated the rent strikers from the people that legitimately needed help, and it has not caused a tsunami of anything to happen in the United States' largest city.

So I ask you to please consider that ending that right now.

We've lost over 5,000 small landlord housing options because of the risk that we face to have squad strikers in our homes and our apartments.

It's completely unsustainable and I'm asking you to end it now.

Thank you.

Gordon Haggerty followed by Kay Font and then Angie Gerald.

Go ahead, Gordon.

Hello.

This is Gordon Haggerty, and I've been a small housing provider for over 50 years now and have had great success with tenant relations, and have not had to do evictions we've been able to work this out.

what you are doing and I'm speaking in opposition to both of these council bills and I'll send written comments in more detail too but I just got to say I'm strongly opposed and concerned to both of these is adding extra burdens on housing providers.

It's affecting our affordability to be able to continue to provide housing here and I want to say that you have lost housing units, your own Rio records show that, that you're going the wrong direction with this and you're going to be even going further with that.

So if you want to destroy private rental housing in Seattle, continue to do what you're doing because you're doing a great job of it, but you're going to regret it and you're not helping the people that you're

K Font followed by Angie Gerald and then Jennifer like a ship Jennifer's available go ahead K font.

Kate you're still muted if you hit star set there you go.

I couldn't hi, can you hear me.

Yes.

Thank you.

My name is Kay Font.

I've been a small landlord for 15 years.

I wanted to say, City Council, thank you for hearing my comments.

I'm speaking out against CB 120330, an ordinance relating to just cause eviction, changing the terms of certain eviction defenses and amending sections 22.205.090, et cetera, of the Seattle Municipal Code.

In REJ versus Seattle, the city was found negligent in providing due process to landlords because it didn't allow landlords to test the veracity of a tenant's self-certification of hardship.

The city has appealed the decision and is now challenging the decision by fast-tracking this legislation through a vote.

I acknowledge that the eviction process is hard on both tenants and landlords.

This is the key, acknowledging both parties.

Both parties have responsibilities to maintain housing.

The landlord must provide a safe, kept unit that is in good working order.

The tenant...

Angie Gerald, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Angie and my husband and I are small landlords in Ballard.

I'm calling to ask that city council vote no on both items today.

Seattle is experiencing a great loss of small rental properties, which is directly related to the tsunami of legislation that council has turned out in the last five years without any collaboration or input from small rental property owners to provide a large proportion of affordable rental housing in Seattle, especially a family size housing.

Council funded a small landlord stakeholder group which SDCI has not been able to implement yet.

Council also funded a new rental housing study, which has not begun to happen yet.

You're developing policies in an echo chamber.

Please include stakeholders before developing or passing any new rental regulations.

Thank you.

There are two more speakers who are showing us present and haven't spoken yet.

So let's see if they are able to speak.

Jennifer Lekish and then Daniel Bannon.

Go ahead, Jennifer.

Jennifer is still muted.

Jennifer, can you press star six?

It just prompted me to unmute.

This is Daniel.

Go ahead, Daniel.

OK, thank you.

My name is Daniel Bannon, calling in on behalf of the Rental Housing Association of Washington.

We represent over 5,000 small housing providers across the state, many of which are in Seattle.

I'm here today to urge you to vote no on both CB120325 and CB120330.

DB 120325 puts an unnecessary burden on every housing provider in the city to provide private information to the city.

Mandatory participation has already been shown to result in inaccurate and unreliable data.

Mandating housing providers to provide their private information to a third party as part of RIO with unknown certification and management procedures only adds unnecessary costs to housing providers while the city claims to care about affordable housing.

The city should focus on partnering with the industry and funding research projects rather than passing impossible to enforce mandates that will, according to research faculty, produce meaningless data.

Please stop passing legislation that harms housing providers when we have the desire to work together to solve our issues.

Moving on to CB.

So last try for Jennifer Lekesh, are you able to unmute yourself by pressing star six?

She's still muted.

Okay.

Well, that unfortunately is not working so we all the other speakers have spoken.

and Anthony Jacob is still showing not present.

So I will go ahead and close public comment and begin our agenda items.

Our first agenda item is the bill from Council Member Peterson's office to include information about rent in the information landlords need to report under the Rental Registration and Inspections Ordinance.

I'll just read the title of the bill for the record and then turn the floor over to Council Member Peterson.

We're also joined by Asha Venkatraman from Council Central Staff.

Council Bill 120325, an ordinance relating to housing and displacement mitigation, expanding the information required for submission under the Rental Registration Inspection Ordinance for rental housing units requiring submission of rental housing related information and amending chapter 22.214 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Council Member Peterson, welcome.

Thank you, Chair Sawant.

Thank you for having me here as a guest to the Renters' Rights Committee to discuss this bill, which is Council Bill 120325. I was back at your committee in March discussing a substantially similar bill, and central staff will discuss today a couple of changes that have been made since then.

But hopefully this has given folks a lot of time to think about this bill and the need for additional information.

I believe efficiently fill the long standing gap and data for Seattle's rental housing inventory, so that we finally get the detailed information we need for well informed policymaking about affordable housing.

Seattle's Rental Housing Registration and Inspection Ordinance, adopted several years ago, as we know, already requires landlords to submit a list of their rental units.

And this bill would simply have property owners include that list, along with rental rates, square footage, vacancy information, to a research university to compile and analyze this important data.

No personal information would be provided.

Over the past several years, city government has lacked the level of detail needed to understand much information about Seattle's housing inventory including non-subsidized housing that happens to have below market rents or more affordable rents.

We don't know exactly where that housing is and we need to know that as we make decisions such as updating our comprehensive plan Which we're going to be doing very shortly.

We've tried to get this information in other ways.

We had a statement of legislative intent back in November of 2020 got a response from the executive on that, which was.

which indicated that there was still a gap in the data, so we proposed this as a solution.

I know that smaller landlords are upset about this because they've been subjected to a lot of regulatory changes over the past few years, yet I believe we have a compelling need for this data.

So we know and understand our city's housing inventory as we approach these big decisions, such as the comprehensive plan, we really want to do more to prevent displacement, prevent economic displacement of existing residents and we need to understand where this below market housing exists.

I think that central staff has done a great job working with my team.

I really want to thank Councilor Swanson and her committee clerk for accommodating us here today.

But maybe turning it over to central staff to talk through the details of the bill would be helpful.

Morning Council members, I'm Asha Venkatraman with Council Central staff.

Thanks Council Member Peterson, as you just indicated we're talking about Council Bill 120325. We previously discussed Council Bill 120284 in this committee on March 18. So I'll just go through a short description of the differences between those two bills, and then talk through some issues for the council members to consider, and then talk about potential amendments and next steps.

So Council Bill 120284, and generally, conceptually, the intent of both that bill and Council Bill 120325, which is in front of you today, would require landlords to submit rent and rental housing information to a research university and to certify to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections that it had done so through a certification through the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance existing process.

It contemplates that a executive department, so either SDCI, the office of planning and community development or OPCD or the office of housing as the most likely candidates would contract with the research university to have this information analyzed and then get analysis back to the city about displacement risks and the rental market, rental housing market.

So between the time we discussed Council Bill 120284 and today, a couple changes to the bill were incorporated, some of which required a title change, which is why there's a new council bill in front of you.

So there are a couple changes.

One is the dates for submission of this information by landlords was originally slated for information about, rental information about February was due March 31st.

And instead that due date has shifted to rental information about the month of March being pushed out to, excuse me, for submission to April 15th.

And then, originally, information about lives rent and rental housing units was due by August, and that shifted to information about September is now due October 15. Additionally, we had added the name of the property owner and the address of the property to the list of information to be submitted.

That was inadvertently left off of the original draft and added the need for analysis of the rental market housing conditions to the analysis of displacement risks to make sure that both of those issues were covered.

In addition, this bill adds a sunset provision that basically requires the information to be submitted up until the next time the Seattle Comprehensive Plan is updated and adopted, or at the end of 2025, whichever one is later.

Those are the majority of the changes in this new bill.

I'll go through and talk about some of the issues that we did discuss during the last committee meeting, but continue to apply to this new council bill.

One of those is that SUCI will require some time to update its IT system to be able to track compliance effectively.

In addition, whatever department decides to contract with the research university will require some time to be able to negotiate a project scope, select the research university through a procurement process and finalize it so the property owners know to whom they are submitting the information requested.

One of the issues that we discussed at the last committee meeting also concerned the funding that would be needed to support this program.

So both funding for the contract itself, as well as additional staff for SDCI to be able to monitor compliance in conversations with the executive.

It doesn't appear that there are existing funds that they would be able to use to absorb these costs, so the council may want to consider either adding funds in a supplemental budget or And during the 2023 budget process this fall, that could be complicated just because of the general fund expenditures outpacing general fund revenues or projected general fund revenues and because the departments are being asked to identify reductions.

And so council may want to consider how that might impact when this program could go into effect.

Additionally, so those are the those are the issues that we talked through at the last committee meeting with this new bill, there are a few other issues that I wanted to flag for the committee.

One of those issues is concerns timing.

So right now, the bill is slated to go into effect 30 days after signature by the mayor, which is the regular timing for any council bill.

The challenge is that a research university would need to have the infrastructure in place to be able to collect this information, or if it doesn't have the infrastructure in place, have some other way for property owners to be able to submit this information to them.

at the time the bill is effective and the first due date goes into place.

The complication is that without knowing who the contract will be awarded to, it's not clear at this time whether the university would be able to submit that, excuse me, to receive that information right away.

And so committee members may want to consider whether to push the effectiveness of some of these provisions until after a contract is executed.

One minor issue in the list of information that is to be submitted is that it requires information sufficient to ascertain the current housing costs.

Given that that formulation is just a little bit vague, it may be more useful and straightforward to property owners to know what they need to submit by just saying that they need to submit just the current housing costs rather than information sufficient to ascertain it.

Third, the sunset provisions that are currently in the legislation apply to the major new section that requires submission of the information to the university.

That sunset provision only applies to that new section, and so council members may want to consider adding the sunset provision to the other changes in the bill that require certification submission to SDCI on a particular schedule so that all of these provisions expire at the same time and there aren't inadvertently code sections left referring to requirements that no longer exist.

Attached to my memo is also additional feedback for the committee's consideration that came from the executive.

I won't go through those in detail, but some of the issues that I already described are reflected there, including the pieces about the need to update IT infrastructure and the funding issue that I previously identified.

I'll pause here just real quick before I move into potential amendments to see if there are any questions about what I've raised thus far.

Council Member Nelson.

You're still muted, Council Member.

Could you clarify what you mean by housing costs?

Is that the rent being charged or the cost of the landlord to provide it, which would include like the mortgage or whatever?

Sure.

Yes, it's basically the rent being charged.

The term housing costs is defined in the code and it reflects the state definition of housing costs.

So the intent is to be more or less globally the rent charged.

Thank you.

I don't see anyone else with questions.

OK.

In that case, I will move into potential amendments.

So Councilmember Peterson has authored and Councilmember Morales plans to sponsor a one amendment for the committee's consideration today.

That amendment would adjust the enforcement provisions in the bill for these new requirements.

any violations of Rio are subject to, excuse me, any violations or failure to comply with Rio are subject to cumulative civil penalties of $150 per day for the first 10 days of a violation and then $500 per day for each day thereafter.

The proposed amendment would exempt violations of these new provisions from that scheme and instead subject them to lower level of violations.

So we're looking at $500 for the first violation and up to $1,000 for each subsequent violation within a three year period.

These penalties were modeled after the rental agreement regulations that are in Chapter 7.24 that seemed more appropriate for violations of reporting.

The Rio scheme is My understanding is that it's intended to deal with if there are things like housing code violations, things that are continuing for a long period of time when it comes to people's housing quality.

And so making that change would put these reporting requirements in line with the rental agreement regulation requirements in Chapter 7. That is the only proposed amendment at this time.

And so I will turn it back over to Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

That was excellent.

As always, Asha, appreciate that.

And Council Member Sawant, I'm happy to answer any questions from colleagues as is Asha.

And really appreciate Council Member Rallis putting the amendment forward since I'm not on the committee.

Thank you, Asha.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Did any Council Members have any further questions or comments in general or about the amendment?

Just keeping in mind that the bill has not been moved yet, which I will do if Council Members feel prepared to vote, but just wanted to open it up for further discussion first.

Chair.

Go ahead.

Yeah, so I, I realized the amendment hasn't been moved.

I did want to just speak to why I'm agreeing to co sponsor this, if this is the right time.

Yeah.

Okay, sorry.

So, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson for asking me to partner with you on this I've agreed to sponsor this really because the fact is that right now we don't have a real method for data collection.

And so no real way to determine the rate at which rent is increasing in the city we know that it's increasing, and we know that even in the last six months rents have skyrocketed, but we don't have any real accurate way to collect that data.

I think puts us at an extreme disadvantage.

So my hope is that with this data collection provided to the city as policymakers, it'll allow us to get a better sense of really how massive the need is for more homes that are more affordable to people of all incomes in the city.

I think this would really illustrate the need for policies and programs that can help keep currently affordable rents affordable, but can also really help center the need for more, you know, publicly owned homes and more production that we are trying to get out the door so that our neighbors don't get pushed out continue to get pushed out of the city so I think it's a really simple tool that can aid us as a council in making decisions about our programs and policies.

And I think our counterparts in the executive branch as well.

And my hope is that it can help renters in Seattle stay in Seattle.

So thank you for the opportunity.

And I'm probably going to have to switch to my phone now, but I look forward to working with you all.

So just, yeah, again, I wanted to invite any other council members to speak.

Just to clarify again, whether you want to speak to the bill as a whole or about the amendment that has been discussed, either way is fine.

Just, yeah, just let me know.

Go ahead, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I share Council Member Peterson's desire for more information about the housing stock that's provided by small housing providers.

And I'm concerned because the 2020 annual, the Rio 2020 annual report did say that our stock was down about 14% from the previous year.

So, you know, I want to know That's important for us to know as we're going forward with any kind of decisions around landlord tenant issues.

And also if we want to figure out what is really happening with this disappearance of those units or those properties from the list.

But anyway, I am concerned, however, that this legislation places an additional burden on small landlords because the stated purpose or the goal from the sponsor, Council Member Peterson, is to help us make land use decisions during the comp plan amendment process in 2024. And so I think that burdening small landlords in order to get to that goal is unnecessary.

In case people weren't following the previous iterations, I think that we should just let folks know that This council bill would require landlords to produce information about the net rentable square footage, the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, the information sufficient to ascertain the total net monthly residential rent charged, including but not limited to total monthly residential rent being charged or to be charged if vacant.

as well as the amount and identity of utilities paid by the owner, including the rent charge and is subject to a rental agreement, the current length of the term of the rental agreement.

Well, there was a background memo basically saying that landlords typically produce rent rolls on a monthly basis for their own internal bookkeeping to monitor and fill vacancies and to determine rental revenue for management and tax purposes.

But most small landlords, actually don't do this.

I mean, they don't have to put down that much information.

And usually they're, you know, they record their revenue on their tax forms once a year.

So I do believe that this would be a big job to do twice a year.

And it's the wrong tool for the information that we're trying to get.

So We are trying to use this information to further the goal of anti displacement, although I just heard Councilmember Morales say that this information could be used to to monitor rent increases so that is a different purpose, that's a different use of this data.

But we don't do that.

We don't ask other small business owners for this kind of detailed information.

For example, we don't ask all produce vendors to submit the kinds of vegetables they sell and the prices they charge just to identify food deserts across our city and prevent their spread.

So, I mean, the information that we're asking for is proprietary.

And although it's an anonymized analysis, we're still asking for the names, those names are of the property owners and that's disclosable.

So anyway, I think that for these reasons and also per the amendment, I would support this amendment if this legislation is going to go forward, because it is a little bit better than than what was originally planned.

But I still do think that those fines are are are too much for landlords who are really struggling to deal with, you know, the impacts of the pandemic on on their businesses.

So in any case, those are my reasons for not favoring this bill.

Thank you.

Did any other council members, committee members want to?

I mean, I do have some points, but I'll wait to see if council member Lewis or council president Juarez wanted to speak.

Council member Peterson, did you want to respond first to any of the things that have come up?

Thank you, Chair Sawant.

Just appreciate the critique.

I just, I don't know if the grocery store analogy works since the current prices of those products are publicly available and whereas we don't know what the current contract rents are in apartment projects.

So that's just my only comment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

I mean, first of all, I think comparing housing, which is the biggest ticket item in terms of what people have to spend on given their limited incomes, working people to vegetables is just ridiculous in my view, but also it does not work because the prices of vegetables are publicly known.

And the problem here is that the price of housing is not known.

But in addition to that, I just wanted to say just overall, I support this bill.

It will be good to have more data about the rent that landlords charge.

I also think that it is ironic that in public comment, these supposed small landlords simultaneously claim that they charge low rent and objected to actually disclosing the rent they charge, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Because if you are charging low rent, why would you not want it to be known?

Or why would you object to having to disclose that.

And this claim seems to be from landlords that they provide low-rent housing and that is why they refuse to disclose the rent, but we should just trust them because it's low.

Well, that's not acceptable.

And landlords and Councilmember Nelson both called us a burden.

This happened in the last time we discussed this bill as well.

I just don't understand how it is a burden to disclose the amount of rent charge I mean that seems to be like the most basic form of information that landlord should be.

required to share.

In fact, it's a bit strange when we found out that that's not already a requirement.

And furthermore, if you're a small landlord who supposedly owns one or two rental properties, it should be even easier if you're just reporting a couple of numbers.

So it's just, it's just us.

It's just not a good argument that that somehow that's a burden that's not, how can that be a burden, there should be some other reason why you would oppose this.

And also I just wanted to say you know week after week we hear.

completely unfounded claims from landlords who say they are charging low rent, but they're leaving the market, they're going to sell their property and leave the market.

We hear this in every public comment in the Renters Rights Committee, because they say They claim owners burden regulatory burdens from the city.

And that's why they're leaving the market but that's just not supported by the data at all I mean there's, it's completely speculative this claim that renters rights are are more reporting or.

Increased protection for renters is driving small landlords out of the market.

That's complete speculation.

Property values are skyrocketing.

That's something that's been well documented.

So the question really is, are these landlords who they claim to be selling?

I mean, if they're selling, are they selling because they don't want to comply with basic laws?

Are they selling because property values have gone through the roof and they can cash in on their property like never before?

It's just a suspicious claim to say that regulatory burden is making that or reporting requirements is making you do that.

We should also make sure to mention that a lot of corporate entities are divided up into small LLCs, and each of these LLCs then claims to be representing a small landlord interest.

I think that also is a factor here when people are speaking, are they actually small landlords?

Who are the small landlords who are speaking up?

And we've seen people from corporations like Windermere speak as representatives of small landlords as well.

So I think those points have to be noted.

I see Council Member Nelson, your Zoom hand is up again.

So go ahead.

I get that my vegetable analogy might not have been apt.

However, the rents that are being charged are also available kind of when you're looking for units.

But the point is, the purpose of this is to prevent displacement when we go to make land use decisions and increasing heights in certain areas, et cetera.

That is the reason for the, I mean the stated reason for this, this piece of legislation, I think there's a better way of getting around that we could simply ask somebody to perform the kind of analysis that to pray and Scott we're doing.

you know, generate a scope of work for that for that contract and have that information to inform our land use decisions.

Instead, what I'm hearing, it's pretty clear that this information is going to be used for other political purposes, such as rent control.

And and so let's so let's just be frank about the fact that This information is going to be, I think, burdensome to collect because we're not just talking about what do you charge for your units?

It's that whole list of other things that I mentioned.

Thank you.

I'll just go ahead and say, oh, go ahead, Council President Juarez, you should go ahead and definitely Council Member Peterson, I'll give you the last word, of course, since it's your bill, but I'll, after Council Member Juarez speaks, I'll make a comment and I'll move the bill.

If Council Members feel ready to vote on it, then I'll move it, but if you don't feel ready to vote on it and if Council Member Peterson, you prefer to hold it, either way, just let me know so I know whether to move it or not.

Go ahead, Council President Juarez.

Thank you.

I'm sorry for not using a little chat hand.

I couldn't find it so I'm not going to worry about it so I'm not going to be supporting this in this in its format and I'll tell you why I'm kind of split down the middle but one of the things that I took refuge in making sure I understood.

was the information we got from the University of Washington from James Young, the director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research.

And for me, besides Asha's great work, it carried a lot of weight about that you definitely need this program, but I don't think you should mandate participation.

That's the concern I have.

And I am gonna come to a little bit to the defense of council member Nelson.

I think that you have regulatory burdens and then you have regulatory burdens.

And it has to have a direct nexus to the intent.

And right now, the regulatory burden, when I looked up the definition of housing costs under 22.204.090, that's a lot of information to be providing two times a year that you would require, because the marketplace changes.

In this current form, I like the recommendations that the Washington Center for the Real Estate Research put forward.

And also a lot of the information is proprietary because whether we like it or not, we are in a capitalist society, which is very competitive in the marketplace.

So I can understand why landlords don't wanna share that.

I get that.

Everything else that I see in Council Peterson's bill about the information that, I gotta find it real quick.

that Council Member Nelson talked about the list under the 22-214-040 about the list of all rental housing units, whether it's vacant or occupied, the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, a lot of that information that I don't find that really intrusive.

But I would definitely support what the center put forward and maybe workshopping this a little bit more, but I am not prepared today to vote yes on this.

I would hate for this to go forward.

I mean, just go down on a no vote or people abstaining.

And I'm gonna, this is just a little side note in regards to everything.

It's not helpful when I get seven emails before nine o'clock to try to figure out how we're gonna vote on these two items.

I know it's not everyone's fault, but that's not helpful.

I'm trying to get through all the new amendments I counted them up six amendments before nine o'clock today and is still trying to work out the other amendments.

So I cannot support in its current form what I'm looking at today regarding council bill, the proposed council bill 120325. So thank you.

Thank you Council President Juarez for weighing in.

I just on the question of letting a landlord corporation collect the data instead of the city, I completely disagree with that.

I mean, that basically amounts to letting the landlord corporations choose what data we can have publicly.

And I think that the data itself will be objectively collected because it will be collected not from the interest of any given corporation.

But such data, a lot of such data exists in the public realm.

So, I mean, just the way Council Member Nelson is talking about it, she makes it sound like it's unusual.

There's nothing unusual about having data in the public realm.

And ultimately, corporations use the data, working people also use the data.

That's not, the data collectors don't make those decisions.

The data collection process itself will be objective.

So I'm not exactly clear what the concern is, because there's nothing unusual about that.

And as I said, I'm prepared to vote today, but clearly Council President Juarez indicated that she would prefer that we not vote, or at least implied that, and also that if it were moved today, she would vote no.

Um, it's not time sensitive legislation exactly.

So I come from previous and I will let you weigh in on this.

Thank you, Chair.

So what?

Well, in essence, this bill has been with the committee for the last two months, and the two changes that have been made have actually reduced its scope.

We put a sunset clause in and we've reduced the enforcement.

So that's really what's before you.

So I know Councilor Morales has a scheduling conflict.

So to the extent that she's still here to move my amendment to reduce the enforcement, I'm fine having a vote today.

Okay, thank you.

That's very helpful.

So I will go ahead, because Council Member Peterson is not a member of this committee, I will go ahead and move Council Bill 120325 on his behalf.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

The bill has been moved and seconded and is now before the committee.

We need to move the amendment, amendment one.

So Council Member Morales, I will open the floor to you.

I will second it.

So the amendment has been moved and seconded.

Please, clerk, will you call the roll on amendment one?

Council Member Sawant?

Yes, sorry, no, no.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Four in favor, one opposed.

Amendment one, passed.

Okay, so the amendment has passed.

And so the council bill 120325 as amended is now before the committee for a vote.

Are there any final comments before the vote roll is called?

I don't see any comments forthcoming.

So clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

No.

Council Member Juarez?

No.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Three in favor, two opposed.

Thank you, Council Member- Oh, sorry.

Sorry, go ahead.

So that passes as amended with the do pass recommendation to the city council.

Great.

And it goes to the city council on May 31.

Okay.

Thank you Ted and thank you Council Members for that discussion and Council Member Peterson thank you for being here and thank you Council Member Morales.

Okay and thank you Asha as well.

The next agenda item is the legislation from my office amending the six-month eviction defense in response to a recent decision by the Court of Appeals I will read the bill into the record now.

Council Bill 120330, an ordinance relating to just cause evictions, changing the terms of certain eviction defenses and amending sections 22.205.090 and 22.205.100 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Asha Venkatraman is still here from City Council Central Staff and will present the legislation.

Go ahead, Asha.

Thanks, Council Member Salanda, Asha Venkatraman, Council Central staff.

The bill in front of you, Council Bill 120330, amends Seattle Municipal Code Sections 22205, 090, and 100. 090 is a defense put into place several years ago that would allow a tenant to assert the defense during the eviction moratorium and six months after the eviction moratorium expired.

That is, in fact, because the moratorium, the city moratorium expired at the end of February, the defense would be in effect up through the end of August.

As has been discussed, this excuse me, this defense was challenged and was in litigation in RHA versus Seattle.

The Court of Appeals issued its decision on the procedural due process part of this legislation and ruled that it needed to be more clear that a landlord has the opportunity to rebut a assertion of financial hardship that a tenant was self-certifying at the time.

So in response, this piece of legislation removes the requirement to prove financial hardship from both 22-205-090, as well as 100. And so rather than, as council member Salas discussed earlier in the committee meeting, rather than add the ability for a landlord to rebut the assertion of financial hardship, removes the requirement to prove financial hardship altogether.

That is the crux of the changes that this bill would make.

Because of the Let me back up.

At the moment, the Housing Justice Project, who provides advocacy for tenants in court against eviction, has been using the rental assistance that is under contract through the county that is available to them to use for tenants.

That contract is expected to end on June 30th, and it's not clear whether there will be any extension or If there are any actual rental assistance funds left the housing justice project does not administer any of the city's rental assistance funds, though it does have a contract with the city to advocate for tenants in general.

Because of the expiration on of that contract on June 30. the ability of the attorneys to use rental assistance in trying to decrease the likelihood of eviction for tenants ends, leaving this defense in effect essentially for July and August.

Due to the practicality of using the defense without making the change that is contemplated either in this bill or the amendment to this bill, eviction defense attorneys are less likely to be able to assert the defense, which is the reason for this bill moving forward.

And so if it passes out of committee today, with the suspension of the rules, it can go in front of the full council for consideration this coming Tuesday, which would allow the mayor sufficient amount of time to sign if he so chooses to have it be in effect by June 30th.

I will turn it back over to you, Councilmember Selle.

Thank you, Asha.

I don't have anything to add at this moment because I already made my comments in the chair's remarks and I don't want to just repeat them, but I want to see what comes up here.

So Council President Juarez, go ahead.

I just have a procedural question.

From the information that we got, Asha, so I know that the Court of Appeals ruled on the due process issue, and then we filed a motion to reconsider on April 8th.

So is that the last stop on the litigation train, April 8th, the motion to reconsider in the Court of Appeals?

Yes, as far as I know, that is the last thing that's happened.

So that's been pending since April 8th.

Okay, thank you.

Any other committee members?

Council Member Nelson, go ahead.

I believe council was unnecessarily rushed to consider this legislation today, and in doing so makes no sense before our executive session on Monday, which I understand some council members are waiting for before they put forward amendments.

And I say unnecessarily because it's supposedly being driven by the June 30th termination of the county's contract with the Housing Justice Project, but that contract's gonna end anyway because that's when the state's rental assistance funding will end.

So the end of that contract is, to me, immaterial to this defense.

And moreover, SDCI also has an ongoing contract with HJP, I believe, and their advocates and tenants advocating for themselves can still avail themselves of this defense, regardless of the June 30th contract expiration.

So this defense is still on the books during the city's appeal of the ruling in RHA's favor.

which found the defense unconstitutional for denying landlords the due process to challenge the tenant's self-certification of inability to pay rent.

And that's why I voted against walking this on because I understood that the June 30th date was irrelevant to the continued use of this defense while our motion for reconsideration is still pending.

And also because it's my understanding that taking legislative action to amend the six month defense to fix the deficit identified by the Court of Appeals would likely moot any effort by the city to appeal to the Court of Appeals decision to the Washington Supreme Court in hopes of obtaining a more favorable statement of due process law.

And the stakes are pretty high here because the court's decision on that claim, I understand, you know, could impact future legislative efforts in this realm.

So in other words, fixing the defense, I believe, could impact our current motion of reconsideration in a negative way.

Nevertheless, we were presented with two options for fixing the six-month defense should we decide to go that route anyway.

And we were strongly advised in favor of the option that retains the requirement for tenant self-certification of financial hardship, but makes clear that the landlord has the opportunity to rebut the tenant's showing.

And that's what my amendment does if we discuss that it resolves the debt, the defect identified by the Court of Appeals without inviting the argument that not requiring the tenant to demonstrate hardship constitutes an independent defect.

The other option of removing the requirement for showing of for showing of hardship.

which this legislation does, increases legal risk that the six-month defense will be successfully challenged and begs the question, why don't we just extend protections to all tenants regardless of the ability to pay?

And so it basically guts the rationale of the six-month defense And there's already a paper trail showing why we put the hardship requirement in there anyway, because of contract clause concern.

So instead of fixing the defense and protecting ourselves against claims that we're denying landlords due process, we're doubling down and taking a far riskier path of exposing the city to potential contract clause violation suits.

And I just don't see why we would do that.

Asha, go ahead.

Hi, just a couple points of clarity.

I won't speak to the legal risk piece.

I just wanted to clarify that the contract the city has with the Housing Justice Project, as you mentioned, Council Member Nelson, is to provide eviction defense services.

I just wanted to make clear it's not the same as the contract that we have with that the Housing Justice Project has with the county, as that is specifically about distributing rental assistance, this contract does not distribute any rental assistance.

And so the contract ending on June 30th with the county is the end of that, the rental assistance piece being available.

The only other thing I wanted to clarify is that some of the reason for making these changes is the understanding that we have from the eviction defense attorneys that without the use of rental assistance, the ability to use this defense without making a legislative fix could be compromised since judges may be likely to look at the Court of Appeals decision as persuasive, even though it's technically not final and binding.

So judges could be making their own decisions about how the existing law violates procedural due process.

And so I just wanted to make that clear for committee members.

Thank you so much, Asha, that was extremely helpful clarification.

And I was just going to add to what you said, Asha, that on the whole, it's the, I mean, I felt like the way Council Member Nelson was describing is the exact opposite of it, which is that right now, and as Housing Justice Project has informed us many times, Right now, renters are using the HAP contract, and this is like a secondary line of defense, what this bill constitutes or the area that this bill is in.

But in fact, that contract and starting July 1st, starting July on, you know, in June.

So starting July 1st, actually this defense, line of defense becomes more important.

And for all the clarifying reasons that Arshad described, it's actually important that this bill is passed soon.

And as far as the claim from Council Member Nelson, that somehow the motion for reconsideration will be affected adversely, Yeah, I mean, Aisha, I understand you did not speak to this, but I have not heard that claim at all.

So I mean, I can't really speak to that.

But as far as why this bill removes any requirements for reporting from renters is because statistical evidence overwhelmingly from throughout the country and, in fact, internationally, shows that actually means testing not only hurts working people and the poorest and the lowest income people, also it doesn't work.

It never works in the way that it's supposedly intended because it actually creates complications.

And so in the spirit of the position that my office has had all along, there's nothing inconsistent with what we've done.

we are advocating that we remove the means testing requirement entirely.

And I can tell you, after having succeeded our office and the renters rights struggle in the last eight years, after having succeeded in winning bill after bill for renters rights, despite the opposition of many council members, we have, Every time a bill has passed, we have heard from council members, oh, that will create legal risk.

This will create legal risk.

There's nothing that we have passed that supposedly does not create legal risk.

But the overwhelming majority of renters' rights stance, the $15 minimum wage stance, everything was, you know, basically the sky was going to fall down if you passed anything progressive.

So I don't, unless there are specific concerns, then that is the general thing that we hear all the time.

I think it is important to do it very thoughtfully and carefully and strategically.

But I believe this bill fulfills all those general requirements.

And central staff have had time to really think about this and work on this.

So I don't see any specific concerns that are justified, but of course I understand the political differences.

I appreciate council members speaking about them openly.

Are there any other comments just in terms of the discussion portion?

We will of course move to amendments after the bill is moved.

But is there any general comment from other council members?

I don't see anything, so I will go ahead and move Council Bill 120330. Do you have a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

The bill has been moved and seconded.

And I just wanted to say, I will be supporting this bill with or without the amendment because preventing any confusion about renters having access to this defense against eviction is the priority.

However, all means testing in my view is just based on statistical evidence is deeply invasive and humiliating.

So I will be voting no on the amendment, but But I will make the space available for council members for moving any amendments.

Council Member Lewis, did you want to move something?

No, Council Member Swann, not at this time.

Okay, thank you.

I don't think that there are any amendments then.

Oh, Council Member Nelson, go ahead.

Please unmute yourself.

Thank you.

I move the amendment distributed this morning to council members and submitted to central staff on Wednesday for preparation for this committee meeting, which essentially retains the requirement for, for a statement of hardship, and then also goes ahead and includes language saying that landlords have the ability to rebut that showing so I will have Asha please walk us through that.

Yes, I have a second to my second.

Thanks.

I shared my screen, so hopefully you can see it.

What this amendment would do, it strikes two of the recitals here that are specific to the way that Council Member Solon's bill is crafted.

And what it does is restore much of the text, as you'll see in the dashed underline in red, that was struck in Council Member Solon's bill.

It restores that text and adds the requirement here that the, sorry, not the requirement, excuse me, the presumption that the tenants, about a tenant submission of a declaration or self-certification of financial hardship, and explicitly states that the landlord may revoke that presumption.

And it does so both for 090 and for, Section 22 205 100. The last the last piece of that is some of our silence bill had adjusted the notice language to reflect how that bill would have changed the defense and amendment would just restore that on this language to how it has originally been stated in the code.

The bill has been moved and seconded and also explained.

Are there any comments?

I mean, sorry, the amendment has been moved and seconded and has been described by Asha.

Are there any other comments on the amendment?

Council Member Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

So I had originally intended to bring this amendment forward in partnership with Council Member Mosqueda for consideration today.

We ultimately decided the sequencing would be better to consider this amendment after having an executive session on the legislation early next week in the event that this bill is moved from committee today.

I appreciate Council Member Nelson bringing it forward for the discussion today anyway.

I think it's good to air these issues and have them discussed.

But given my conversation on the preferred sequencing of Council Member Scata, who's the author, I'm going to be abstaining on this amendment and likely the underlying legislation today.

though I do think the public and the committee will benefit from talking about the issues raised in this.

And indeed that earlier conversation with Asha started that conversation too.

So in any event, those are my comments on the amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson, is that your hand up or is that from, go ahead.

I appreciate the difficulty in the sequencing, and that is precisely why I'm concerned that we did rush this on.

And let me be clear, passing this quickly so that it's done by June 30th would be a convenience for the advocates that are using this defense.

It's not necessary, but it would be a convenience because it's more clear.

But I'm talking about protecting our city here.

I am fine waiting.

We should not vote on that.

Anyway, the point is one more week to simply discuss this and have it heard.

Discussing in executive session what the pros and cons are, the risks, et cetera, is a good idea.

But I just want it to be clear that we have to think about, never mind, anyway, Thank you very much.

I am retaining the amendment on the table.

I just wanted to clarify overall that, as the Housing Justice Project speaker, Tram Larson, and also as Arsha described, there's really not, this bill is not that complicated.

And I don't see a reason to not work on this day, it's been moved and seconded so we will be having a vote but of course, the city council vote will be after the executive sessions and, and.

At the city council meeting, there's space for amendments and council members can bring amendments there, can vote either way on amendments.

So that discussion can happen.

There's nothing that will stop that discussion from happening.

So I don't...

I don't agree with Council Member Nelson presenting this issue as if, if this bill was voted on in committee today, somehow that would be a hindrance for all that discussion to happen.

It won't.

The executive session will still happen and city council members can still weigh in on different sides of it and bring amendments and vote on the amendments as they see fit after all of that, after all of the insights have been gleaned that council members want to from the executive session.

So just want to clarify in terms of process, none of that will be hindered.

And in my view, the bill itself is not that complicated.

So rather than prolong the discussion here, I think it makes sense to go ahead and take a vote on this and then move forward based on what happens at the city council meeting.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the amendment first.

The amendment that was presented by Council Member Nelson and was seconded by President Juarez.

Council Member Sawant?

No.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

And Council Member Lewis?

Abstain.

two in favor, one against, and one abstaining, so amendment passed.

Okay, and then now the underlying bill as amended.

Ted, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Abstain.

Council Member Juarez?

No.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Two in favor, one against, one abstaining.

So that passes with the do pass recommendation.

Thank you, Ted.

Thank you, council members, for the discussion.

And thank you, Asha, for all the clarification.

As I said before, the bill will be placed.

Ted, correct me if I'm wrong.

The bill will be placed on the May 24th city council agenda.

I wish to change my vote if that's possible.

I don't know if that is possible.

Is that possible?

We've got Linda Barron from the clerk's office here who may be able to help answer that.

Well, just explain the process.

Is what's going before full council then the amended bill?

Yes.

But that was going to happen regardless of the vote.

That's just the process.

That's why I was clarifying that regardless of the committee recommendation, the bill goes to the city council.

All right, I will, I'm just gonna keep my abstention.

Okay, I see your hand up, go ahead.

So based on the vote, there's a recommendation from the committee to pass the bill as amended.

So the bill as amended in kind of simple terms, simply adds that landlords can rebut the assertion, the assertion from from rectors of financial hardship.

So as of now, what the bill does is simply add that opportunity for landlords to rebut That bill, as amended, has a due pass recommendation from the committee and is going to the City Council.

And now Council Member Sawant has the opportunity to make the motion to suspend the rules for it to be on the May 24th committee meeting agenda instead of the May 31st, based on the timeline that was discussed.

Right, so what I was doing at that time when, before this discussion started, I was, if there are no objections, I was going to suspend the rules to allow the bill to be placed on the May 24th city council agenda so that there is time for all that discussion.

And don't see any objections.

So the bill goes to the May 24th city council agenda.

So hopefully that was all with due process.

I see Asha nodding throughout, so hopefully we're good.

Okay, thank you so much, Asha.

Thank you, council members.

We are now on item number three, which is our final item, which is the Office of Sustainability and Environments, RSGI, the Race and Social Justice Initiative report.

So I will invite the speakers for this agenda item.

Welcome.

So please introduce yourself for the record and then take it away.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

I am Jessen Farrell.

Interim Director at the Office of Sustainability and we appreciate the time today to present our work and report on our RSGI work.

And before I really dive into our presentation, I just want to acknowledge that I'm going to be doing a lot of the speaking today, but that really OSC staff has done so much great work over the last year and I just really want to acknowledge them because they are Really doing great work.

So we are going to jump in.

And this is my first presentation in front of the council.

So I don't know if I should share my screen or if that happens through another mechanism.

I think you should share.

I'll share my screen.

Yeah, that should work.

Usually that works.

OK, let's do that then.

Okay.

Great.

Okay, so the agenda for this presentation is we'll do a very short overview of OSE.

We will then jump into our RSGI accomplishments in 2021. We'll do a deep dive on two of the RETs that we did this year, and then we will talk about what we will be doing over the next year, what we're looking forward to.

So, a very brief overview of OSE.

Whoops, I lost that.

Sorry about that.

So we are, our work is centered around advancing environmental justice and sustainability.

And that really falls into three broad streams of work.

So the first one is implementing a Green New Deal for Seattle by working with city departments and community to build a diverse green economy that invests in and supports overburdened communities.

The second work that we do is focusing on reducing carbon pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings and transportation while supporting a just transition to a clean energy future.

And we also build healthy and resilient communities that can adapt to the impacts of climate change and have equitable access to green spaces and healthy, culturally relevant food.

And all of our work is grounded in the equity and environment agenda, which was a community developed agenda to ensure that everyone benefits from environmental progress in our city.

And for the purposes of this presentation, we're going to organize it into five sections, environmental justice leadership, community investments, service equity, policy and planning, and racial equity learning.

So the first area that I'm going to focus on is environmental justice leadership, and that is really bringing and centering environmental justice communities to shape city policy and play a meaningful role in decision making.

And this really manifests itself in the three boards and committees that we support, the Green New Deal Oversight Board, the Environmental Justice Committee, and the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board.

And one of the real accomplishments this year was launching the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

Thank you to Council for your leadership on this.

And of course, this board is about connecting frontline communities and city and shaping policy programs, investments that reduce climate pollution, create jobs, and advance an equitable transition from fossil fuels by prioritizing communities most harmed by economic, racial, and environmental injustices.

And this year, the board established a vision, values, and goals.

It is in the midst of creating its budget recommendations for 2022 and 2023. And once that work is concluded, it will dive into creating a work plan for 2023 and 2024. Next, I'll talk a little bit about the Environmental Justice Committee.

This has been providing frontline community leadership since 2017. And there are a number of ways that they engage in OSC's work, but I'll highlight two of them.

OSC is in concert with community members and other departments is updating the food action plan and the environmental justice committee created food justice principles at the outset of this process to help shape the engagement and ultimately the product of the Food Action Plan.

Secondly, it engaged in equitable approaches to road pricing policies.

And we'll be talking about all of this in later meetings over the course of the year, both of these efforts.

And then thirdly, our Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, that really impacts a variety of the ways we engage on food justice, but in particular, also the food action plan and approaches to food access through our early learning programs.

So those are some of the ways that environmental justice leadership shapes city policy.

So these next three sides are going to be about direct community investments.

The first one is the Environmental Justice Fund.

Really, our approach broadly, not just through the Environmental Justice Fund, but throughout all of the investments that we make in Seattle are made with deep partnership to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color communities.

And that is absolutely the case with the Environmental Justice Fund.

We received 46 proposals this year.

totaling $2.5 million and were able to award $750,000 to community-based organizations.

And you can see a whole list here of EJ Fund grantees.

The second way we invest, directly invest in communities is through individual, some of our programs that benefit individuals and community partners.

And there are a bunch of different things that happened this year.

You can see a number of bullets.

I'm going to hit a couple of those, and then we'll talk a little bit about more of them later in the presentation.

We wrapped up COVID emergency grocery voucher program, which distributed $25 million in benefits to 14,000 people, 70% of whom were BIPOC between March 2020 and April 2021. And we enrolled 12,000 Seattle households to receive $5.2 million in fresh bucks vouchers and 75% of those enrollees are from RSJ priority communities.

And that is a direct outcome of our partnership with 12 BIPOC led community organizations and seven community health systems that are rooted in BIPOC communities and immigrant and refugee communities.

This also was the case with our climate programming.

For example, we provided 100% paid oil-to-heat pump conversion for 15 low-income households in partnership with the Office of Housing.

We provided internships and learning opportunities via benchmarking and tune-ups in partnership with South Seattle College and advanced the Duwamish Valley Action Plan priorities through cross-departmental efforts and investments in affordable housing, access to open space, and community health.

And so this next slide is an overview of how all of our grants, contracts, and purchasing reflects this priority of centering racial equity.

And so I'm gonna draw your attention to the pie chart and just kind of talk through some of the different colors.

So you can see the purple, 11% of our 4.3 million in expenditures goes to WMBI, owned businesses.

And of course, these are the ones that are formally registered with the city or with the state as as WMB.

The blue, however, is our EJ fund.

And so that's another significant chunk of money that goes to BIPOC-led organizations.

School Food Program, that goes that is our partnership with Seattle Public Schools to create culturally relevant, fresh, healthy foods in schools.

And I would point out that the team within SPS is a BIPOC-led team.

Freshbucks program and partners.

I talked a little bit about that already.

And then community support and outreach.

And that's also those organizations that are helping connect community members to our Freshbucks program.

The next area I'm going to talk about is service equity.

So these are some of our programs that are intended to support access, particularly around our decarbonization programs and our food policy programs.

So we are ensuring that our programs reach BIPOC businesses and individuals and mitigating unintended consequences.

And I'll highlight a couple of specific ways we do that.

Number one, we, through our municipal energy efficiency program, we are prioritizing those community-owned buildings or those buildings that have community-based organizations as tenants.

And an example of that is the South Park Neighborhood Center for prioritizing our energy improvements.

We also are doing that with our prioritized energy regulation outreach and providing technical assistance in those priority neighborhoods based on OPCD's RSE index.

I'll also highlight some of the ways our program service equity impacts our food policy work.

So, for example, we transit we're transitioning fresh bucks paper vouchers to e-benefits and we went through a RET a RET process for that so that we could really carefully design that program.

And then also in our recruitment of new retailers, so that we're expanding fresh bucks programs to BIPOC to own grocers in our community.

These next two slides are about policy and planning.

And the overall point I would make is that racial equity infuses all of our policy and planning work, whether we are doing a formal RET, Racial Equity Toolkit Analysis, or not.

And so the first slide is actually about how we are using racial equity to inform policy and planning, even when we're not doing a RET on that particular project.

program.

So our food action plan, we are using a racial equity, we are leading with racial equity on that.

And part of that includes deep engagement with the Environmental Justice Committee, and then also other BIPOC food and environmental justice leaders.

As we are looking at how to continue to decarbonize buildings, we are working in tandem with affordable housing advocates and community service serving buildings to make sure that we are creating technical assistance and resources that meets their needs and keeps housing affordable and also prioritizes those buildings for transition.

And we are deploying the first in the nation incentive program to convert drayage diesel trucks to electrification.

And so we're engaging with the East African community to make sure that equity is leading that work.

So those are a few examples of how, even when we're not doing a RET, this is really an important part of what we're doing.

We did conduct four racial equity toolkits this year.

We did one on our FreshBucks e-benefit transition.

We did one on road pricing for equitable mobility.

We did one on carbon-based building performance standards, and we did one on Seattle Clean Buildings Accelerators.

We are now going to do a deep dive on the FreshBucks RET and on the Carbon-Based Building Performance Standards RET.

So I'm going to turn it over to Robin, who is going to talk us through the FreshBucks eBenefits transition.

Thank you, Jessen.

So hi, I'm Robin Kumar, and I am the FreshBucks Program Manager.

So I'll talk a little bit about our, the RET that we did around FreshBooks electronic benefits last year.

So we made this transition from paper vouchers to electronic benefits late last year, and the toolkit that we conducted in advance of launching the electronic benefit platform was really focused on how to make the transition in a way that would best serve the needs of FreshBooks customers who might have the most difficult time with the transition to electronic benefits.

And in particular, those are customers who have limited English proficiency and also those folks with limited access to technology resources.

The racial equity toolkit included robust engagement of key community partners, retailers, and program participants to user test the system before we launched.

So, next slide.

So, throughout this process, we heard feedback from our customers and community partners that really emphasized some of the benefits of the transition to electronic benefits.

And that included the flexibility of purchase amount with electronic benefits was really welcomed after some of the difficulties that customers faced when they were shopping with paper vouchers, which were issued in $10 increments and needed to then be spent in $10 increments.

And electronic benefits were also easier for customers and cashiers to use and offered a more discrete purchasing experience than customers had had with the bulky paper vouchers.

The user test process also revealed several steps where customers faced some confusion, like the need to activate their electronic benefits for the first time before they started using them, and also navigating point of sale challenges with the new system.

And this issue being particularly amplified when the customer and the cashier don't speak the same language.

So as a result of these toolkit learnings, our team made several changes to support a more equitable implementation of the transition.

And this included creating a phone call-in activation line so that folks with limited access to technology would be able to just call a phone number to activate their benefits before they started using them.

We also worked with our community enrollment partners to offer a trusted and in-language assistance for customers to activate their benefits.

We also revised testing and training protocol across our retailer network to try to ensure that there would be a robust understanding of e-benefits processing protocols prior to implementation.

And also, we revised our customer communications, including really visual-based communications, one of which was a how-to video that was available in five languages, most commonly spoken by our customers.

Okay, so that's the FreshBooks RET, and now we'll hear from Sandra on another RET our office did last year.

Thank you Robin, and hello this is Sandra Mallory I'm the buildings and energy program manager at Seattle at the Office of sustainability.

And so I'm here to talk about a policy that we are in the process of developing.

in which Seattle would implement emissions performance standards for Seattle's existing larger commercial and multifamily buildings.

It's a policy that would build on an existing Washington State standard, which requires larger commercial buildings to meet energy targets starting in 2026. Seattle's policy would establish corresponding emissions targets.

Targets would initially start higher, and then they would ratchet down over two decades until buildings achieved net zero carbon buildings by 2050. And the approach gives owners predictability around long-term expectations, but also a lot of flexibility in how a particular building would achieve the targets.

So OSC worked on a racial equity toolkit in 2020 to 2021, and we are continuing to use it and revise it.

It's sort of an ongoing tool for us.

And we identified a number of key draft outcomes that the policy should achieve.

The first of them, making sure that we are providing support services for lower resource building owners to help alleviate impacts of the policy.

minimizing displacement risk, and ensuring that in implementing the policy that BIPOC communities benefit from the healthier living and working spaces.

And because the policy would create jobs, making sure that these clean energy careers can go to BIPOC and women.

And so due to COVID impacts on both building owners and the community in general, generally, our external stakeholder engagement was put on hold in 2020 and 21. So to develop these proposed outcomes, we relied on previous community input, for example, the Puget Sound SAGE report powering the transition.

really digging into the buildings that would be impacting and learning more about them, and then a series of cross-departmental conversations.

And so you could, if you could, oh, one more.

And then just one of the clear needs that was identified in the RET, if you could back up, sorry, Jessen, was that in order to develop this policy, we really needed that external stakeholder engagement.

And so we are in the process of conducting a very robust and inclusive engagement process.

We actually had 350 folks at our first open house.

There is an affordable task force that is being led by the Housing Development Consortium.

We have focused, we've been doing focus groups with nonprofit owners and having ongoing conversations with labor representatives.

So this is an ongoing policy development process, but I do wanna go ahead and now you can go to the next slide, Jess, and thank you.

Highlight some of the work that's already underway to achieve our equity outcomes.

So, first of all is the jobs.

There should be 150 to 270 annual jobs anticipated from this policy.

So we've coordinated with FAS on a $1.8 million RFP for clean energy jobs and construction training, pre-apprenticeship training.

In term, we are doing technical assistance.

We just, you know, before we even put in place a regulation, we've launched a preliminary support program, prioritized, again, to under-resourced building owners.

It will help them to comply both with the state standard and to prepare for emissions targets.

And then in the policy itself, in our draft framework, we're phasing compliance such that the larger commercial buildings, those buildings with the greatest impact and owners with the greatest resources would take initial action first.

And then smaller commercial buildings and multifamily buildings would have a much longer ramp up period.

We're also proposing greater flexibility and more support for buildings where we know there will be cost constraints and upgrades will be more difficult for owners.

Again, nonprofits, owners with financial hardship, unreinforced masonry, affordable housing.

And we are also really actively working to secure funding for capital upgrades.

So not just technical assistance, but also helping owners comply with you know, some money in the bank to go towards capital upgrades.

We have reallocated some previous IRA loan loss funds towards capital grants to pilot two to three affordable housing projects to decarbonize.

And with Office of Housing and Seattle City Light, we've got another grant proposal into the Department of Energy, again, for affordable housing.

And we're very closely tracking the infrastructure opportunities that should be coming out this fall.

So thank you, and I will turn it over now to Stephanie from our change team at the Office of Sustainability.

Thanks, Sandra.

Good morning.

My name is Stephanie Henry.

I'm a program analyst with the FreshBooks team, and I serve on the OSC change team.

At OSC, we're working intentionally to foster a relational learning and supportive culture that uses anti-racist principles and values, diverse perspectives and experiences.

In support of that goal, we established voluntary and optional caucuses for white people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

These are facilitated spaces to unpack our internalized racism and build a system of accountability with each other.

We also invested our time and physical effort with workdays at Black Farmers Collective's Yes Farm in Yesler Terrace and their farm in Columbia City.

As change team, our eight-person team is small but mighty.

One of our subgroups focuses on hiring from resume reviews, to interviews, to retention, to offboarding.

This is a particular interest because of the underrepresentation of BIPOC within the environmental sector and OSC.

Another subgroup participates in the yearly budget process.

As Justin mentioned, we review our office-wide year-to-date women and minority business data as it tracks against our goals.

Program leads are encouraged to be mindful of their spending and its impact on women in the BIPOC community.

Finally, our change team co-leads are involved in the citywide racial equity team, so we can be aware of and engage in citywide issues and actions.

Thank you, and I'll hand it back to Jess.

Thank you, Stephanie.

So this is our final slide, and then we're happy to take questions.

So looking forward to 2022, we're already in the midst of 2022, but what we're working on currently in our partnership with BIPOC communities to tackle the climate crisis and build sustainable communities.

One major priority is actioning this Green New Deal in partnership with the Oversight Board and our other city partners across departments.

We are really excited about establishing the Duwamish Valley Resilience District to reduce vulnerability to climate impacts while keeping people and businesses in that community, preventing displacement, and building community wealth.

Scaling up equity-leading electrification policies and programs.

We mentioned the Dreyage Truck Electrification Program.

Sandra talked in depth about our building electrification program to really ensure that BIPOC and under-resourced residents, building owners, truck drivers, and workers benefit from the clean energy transition that is happening that we need to be doing right now.

We're expanding the Fresh Bucks Retailer Network to serve the diversity of Seattle residents and small businesses.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, we're prioritizing BIPOC leadership and the food action plan update.

And we are also addressing tree canopy cover disparities and urban forest health, including pilot efforts to green industrial lands in the Duwamish Valley.

So that concludes the presentation, and I am happy to take questions.

I will stop sharing.

Thank you all really for your excellent presentation and also for the underlying work that you have showcased in the presentation.

So I really appreciate Jess and Sandra, Stephanie and Robin and all the efforts from your colleagues.

Please convey our best wishes to all of them.

I will open it up to council members just by making one comment.

One is obviously the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

It's not a surprise that you have underscored climate change-related initiatives as part of the RSGI effort, but I think the times that we are living in also call for that emphasis, so I appreciated that.

The open house that you mentioned, you know, about building emission standards, I wanted to also congratulate you for that.

Edward Doan from my office, who's the policy analyst for My office and also was clerking this committee attended that open house so that if you wanted to add anything from your experience there, you're welcome to.

And just to also again underscore just from based on the most recent data that we have the IPCC has just reported that.

greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025. I mean, just imagine what a tall order that is given where we are.

And it's obviously not just about the city of Seattle.

This is a global challenge that we're facing.

The greenhouse gas emissions have to peak at 2025 and then have to be halved the next 10 years to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level.

And what the IPCC is saying is that if that doesn't happen, the world faces a catastrophic increase of three degrees Celsius.

And we know that in spite of all of these warnings from the IPCC, and this is just the latest warning, big business and governments continue to make new investments into producing new fossil fuels, adding to the disaster.

I've mentioned this statistic before in this committee.

Last year, it was reported that the world's biggest 60 banks provided nearly $4 trillion of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015. And this is despite the dramatic reduction in energy use that happened at that time because of the lockdown and stay-at-home work from the pandemic.

The overall fossil fuel funding astoundingly remained on an upward trend throughout that lockdown.

In fact, financial underwriting for fossil fuels in 2020 was higher than in 2016, which is a shocking but clarifying indictment of capitalism's inability to solve the climate crisis.

And so in that context, especially the work of any group of individuals, you know, that is working against it, that is to be appreciated.

And I also just mentioned that under the policy and planning slide, and as you mentioned just now, Jessen, the electrification of dredge tracking is an exciting program.

Dredge trucks are just for the members of the public, the trucks that take the shipping containers back and forth between the port and the train station.

The truck drivers are quote, unquote, independent contractors, which may give a wrong impression of what their situation is.

I should mention, they often drive their own trucks, and they're paid absolutely poverty wages.

In fact, the crisis that they've been in has been a longstanding one.

In fact, the Teamsters have wanted to organize them, but it's been filled with obstacles because of the independent contractor designation.

And just wanted to highlight that OSC has pilot funds to help electrify the drain dredge trucks because those truck drivers sit there all day with idling diesel engines engines start sucking down fumes.

This is important obviously because it's a terrible source of greenhouse gases.

And it's an important pilot though, obviously it is starting modestly, hopefully it will be successful and can be implemented more broadly.

And if you wanted to add any points on that, you're welcome to also, but council members, committee members, if you wanted to make any comments or ask any questions.

I don't see anyone, OSC members, did you want to add anything?

I will only add that on the dredge program, I think it is a really exciting opportunity to learn how to do this and then to build out the plan to be able to scale.

Because as we know, there are 1000 trucks that idle on city streets, and I think 4000 across the region.

So really doing good, deep policy work that is kind of focused on how to build out is really part of what we're doing.

So we'll look forward to reporting more on that as it as we implement the program.

Yeah, definitely.

And I appreciate you putting the numbers on it because it gives you a sense of the scale of the problem that would be exciting if we were able to address that.

So we look forward to hearing more about that program as well.

I don't see any council members champing at the bit.

I learned recently it's champing at the bit, not chomping at the bit.

I don't know if you all were aware of that.

I wasn't, but now I am.

I don't see any council members chatting at the bit.

I got a chuckle from many of you, which is great, but feeling any further comments, OSC, thank you so much for your work.

Thank you, council members for today's committee participation and seeing no further comments, I will go ahead and adjourn the committee.

Thank you so much.