Land Use Committee 7172024

Good afternoon, everyone.

The July 17th, 2024 regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It is 2 p.m.

I'm Tama Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Moore.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Present.

Chair Morales.

Here.

Or present.

Thank you.

If Council Member Moore, I see her on the line.

Council Member Moore, maybe I'll call one more time.

Council Member Moore.

Okay.

If she presents herself, we will announce her.

Okay, thank you.

We have three items on the agenda today, all informational items.

We have a briefing and discussion on three of our equitable development initiative projects.

We have a briefing and discussion on an annual report on our accessory dwelling units program.

And we have a discussion with community organizations and different players in the housing space to talk about our comprehensive plan with a focus on anti-displacement strategies through a housing lens.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Naomi, how many folks do we have signed up?

We have two signed up in person and none online.

Okay, so each person will have two minutes.

When you hear a chime at 10 seconds, that means please wrap up your comments.

Speakers will be called in the order which they registered, and we will go ahead and open the public comment period.

So now may we please call the two speakers.

First, we have Alex Zimmerman, followed by Steve Rubistello.

My name Alex Zimmerman, I'm president of Stand Up America.

My English not so good.

I read this report.

What is you have?

You are genius.

In 23 you open 500 condo.

500 condo for one year.

I never see like this before in Seattle.

Only one question.

Are 200,000 people who need apartment go to this 500 condo?

It will be more dangerous in concentration camp.

You know what this mean?

Or jail.

You know what this mean?

500 condo.

Open in 23. Geniuses.

You fix it everything.

I read today article from from public caller, you all millionaires, all club of millionaires.

I disabled man and social security very low, but you all millionaires.

Question right now simple.

Can you super smart millionaire doing something for 200,000 people who need apartment?

Low income senior citizen, disabled people, yeah, homeless.

Can you doing this?

Exactly not.

So for this, for 10 years, I told you 100 times in every meeting, you need to open better room in city hall down, you know what it means, one day per week from 9 to 9 for three minutes so people smarter than this freaking garbage who come here, you know what it means, will come and talk.

Civilize, educate people.

What is one change is never come here.

Everything what I see here for many years is a human garbage, low class, professional, nothing to do.

Next up, we have Steve Ribustello.

Well, we still haven't looked at raising the MHA, even though we're all for housing, especially for people without...

And the MHA continues to be one of the lowest in the country, if not the lowest, but certainly on the low end.

And we are evening out the number of trees in the city of Seattle.

We're eliminating them in the areas that we have them.

And so it's going to be equal, zero, zero.

I would hope this committee would consider some of the public's business rather than just keeping trees.

the margin wide for the for-profit developers.

When you reduce the size of parking spaces, when you don't require loading docks, when you add additional units, you're not really saving people money in the for-profit area.

One of the reasons why your system is not working is because if you have a million dollar unit, it stays a million dollar unit.

So if you add more units, you make it more profitable for the developer, they just put it in their pocket.

They don't sell those units off cheaper than what they could get in the market.

And that is one of the main reasons why Seattle continues to have the same problems.

Now, one thing the council did that actually did help thanks to SeaTac passing, raising the minimum wage.

And I don't know if it would have passed in Seattle if SeaTac wouldn't have done it first and kind of embarrassed the council on their liberal credibility.

And I think at this point, when you look at what it costs to live in Seattle and look at the wages, look at that.

Also look at these towards the people that are buying rather than continually making developers wealthier and wealthier.

Look at their protections.

They don't say they're making no money.

We have no additional commenters online or physically present.

Okay, so we will go ahead and close public comment and move to the next agenda item.

Naomi, will you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, equitable development initiative projects update for briefing and discussion.

Great, thank you.

Okay, so we're joined by Jenna Franklin with the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Cesar Garcia with the Lake City Collective is joining us online, I believe.

Asia Tale with Yehow Indigenous Creatives Collective.

And Edwin, Linda, and Caleb Germano, are they?

Edwin is en route.

Okay.

Okay, very well, with Estelita's library.

So I will let y'all settle in and ask you to please introduce yourselves and get started with your presentations.

Great.

Thank you so much for having us back.

We're really pleased to bring three EDI project grant recipient spotlights to you today.

I am Jenna Franklin.

I'm the Equitable Development Initiative Division Director, and I am joined by Dakota Murray, who is an Equitable Development Project Manager and an Indigenous Planning Specialist on the EDI team and for the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Dakota's here with me because Dakota has managed both at the RFP cycle of our award processes, working with the grantee organizations and the board all the way through to managing these projects day to day in parallel with her community development counterparts.

And you'll get to meet some of them today.

So I just want to feature some of the work that our staff do and then also turn it over to our grantees to talk about their projects.

I'm going to go ahead and start my screen sharing here.

Bear with me just a moment.

I can get to my correct screen.

There we go.

We're in business.

So joining us online is Cesar Garcia.

He's the co-director of the Lake City Collective.

This is a grantee project that is really special.

We're excited for Cesar to talk about their development journey.

And I'm going to minimize this so everyone can see the full slide.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Cesar to introduce their project and talk a little bit about how their development process has been going and what's ahead as well.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me?

Yes, please go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

Dear Land Use Committee, it's a great honor to be here today.

I would also like to thank the Office of Planning and Community Development, Jenna and Katie, for the invitation.

My name is Cesar Garcia, and I am one of the co-founders of the Lake City Collective.

The other co-founder is Peggy Hernandez, who is also my life partner.

Our family is composed of three young kids and a small Chihuahua mix.

I would like to share the impact that the Equitable Development Initiative, EDI, has had in our organization and also to our underrepresented communities here in the North End.

I also would like to share a little bit about our project, which we call the Multicultural Resilience Center.

That is our dream home.

First, a little bit of a background.

For many years, Peggy and I did a community advocacy and cultural events, mainly as volunteers and without a space.

We used to meet and organize events at our local park, Little Brook Park.

the extinct community center and the library.

In 2019, we applied for capacity building funds through the EDI program.

We had applied a previous round and were not successful, but the second time we were awarded funds and that was a life changing event for us, for Lake City Collective and also for hundreds of families and minority businesses that we support through our work.

These EDI funds have allowed us at the time to rent a space for the first time and to have a hub for community members that now call our center a second home.

Our center is a place to gather, to learn, to have fun, to discuss and advocate for important liability issues and connect with the city, but most importantly, to preserve our culture and celebrate our heritage.

It hasn't been easy.

It's not easy to be a Mexicano, a mestizo, up here in the very tip of Seattle and have access to the same resources, the connections, the attention, and even the respect that others take for granted.

But that's what we love about our work.

We see ourselves as that invisible cook behind the kitchen, the hotel maid, the landscaping person, the nanny, working efficiently and quietly doing our work behind the scenes, persevering to provide for our family.

We are the same only in the form of a CBO.

And because we are the same, our current and future center is and will be the hub for people like us.

Hard work has paid off thanks to partnerships and with great city employees that we have encountered along the way.

and people that believe in us.

Our project and the impact they have seen with our work has helped.

We couldn't have made so much progress in food access, food justice, cultural preservation, environmental justice, pedestrian infrastructure, environmental and social justice without the city's help and support.

But especially, we would like to thank the EDI and OPCD who have given our community a home.

and the opportunity to be stewards of our community and have a chance in self-determination.

Our project is entering a development phase, and through our capital campaign, we are pursuing grants and funds from other sources, including the EDI funds.

Our project is expected to be about 25,000 square feet.

Right now, our current center is about 6,000 square feet.

We will have a large multipurpose community room.

We will have a demonstration kitchen, an art gallery, a community art studio, business and entrepreneur support offices, a children's playroom, an urban rooftop garden, a patio, as well as meeting rooms, and a photo book take array.

So that's our project, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Thank you, Cesar.

It was also really wonderful this past weekend.

Lake City Collective joined us, planners from our office and another equitable development partner at an event in South Lake Union with MOHAI, where we engaged families and children in planning and envisioning what equitable development in Seattle can achieve.

And so it was really awesome to have them there.

But they also brought a full scale model of their future home, which was incredible to see.

And you can just imagine when you see it, people activating the inside and the outside of that space and really creating an anchor in that neighborhood.

But was even more wonderful were all of the members of Lake City Collective who came and staffed with Cesar to see the not just the commitment to the work, but also the community that they're building and the connection that they share and having all the kids build Legos and show other kids, you know, how to plan and build something.

So anyways, I wanted to note that and thank Cesar for attending that MOHAI event with us.

With that, are there any questions specifically for Cesar, our team about this project?

I have a couple of questions.

The first is, Cesar, you mentioned food security and food access.

Can you talk a little bit more about what that is and how this has supported your effort there?

Yes.

Thank you, Council Member.

So we live in a very urban environment, very without open spaces and without opportunities for our communities to have access to foods that they traditionally eat.

And also, very importantly, a lot of the community members that participate with us they come from small pueblos and villages where the way of life was to plant, to harvest.

And right now they are in the middle of an urban environment and we have this wealth of knowledge from all these community members who don't have access to the foods that they eat in agriculture.

Thanks to the Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund, we are able now to have a beautiful garden that you are all welcome to visit and that is cared for by not only adults but also kids and youth and we are planting those foods that people traditionally eat not only for It's not only that it has an education component, but we are very thankful to programs like the Environmental Justice Committee, who really provided those seed funds, as well as the food equity fund now that we are working on.

And then you said, so the slide shows that to date you've received 1.2, almost 1.3 million in EDI for capacity, and was that pre-development, the capital funds?

Is that right?

Yes.

Well, if I may, or I can let Jenna answer that question, or I can answer.

Most of the bulk of those funds is actually when we applied for the strategic investment fund.

The strategic investment fund is what applying and we were awarded and were successful.

We got enough funds, $1 million to actually purchase the property that is going to be where our future center is going to be.

So we now own that property, just half a block from where our current center is.

So we're not going far away.

And the rest is one point.

I don't have the specific amount.

But the rest of the other funds are capacity.

And then my last question and colleagues happy to open it up if you have questions too.

So you've acquired the building and you're in the development phase.

So what is needed left?

What is your capital campaign goal?

The property is actually an empty lot, which gives us a blank canvas to work on.

The cost of the project has been going up since we started working with the designing team.

A lot of factors have increased the estimate of how much the project is going to be.

But now the project is going, like we started with an estimate between $12 to $15 million.

Now we're talking about $20, $25.

And even if we delay a lot on getting the necessary funds, we can go up to $30 million.

Thank you.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Cesar, for being here.

This is a great project.

I'm wondering if you could just walk us through a little bit of how this all came about, how you had the initial idea, and then how did you make contact with the OPCD, were you aware of the EDI fund?

I'm just really interested how that, from idea to actually now owning your building, how that all occurred.

I would like to give a lot of credit to the Department of Neighborhoods Community Liaison Program.

That was my school.

Before, I was not involved.

You will ask me how city government works.

I don't know.

Right now, it's not that I know a lot.

But back then, I didn't know.

And the CL program actually kind of was that school.

I was doing a lot of outreach for them at the time.

And I really learned, you know, how the city worked.

When we became a CBO, a community-based organization, in April 2019, we started connecting, trying to connect with different departments, the city departments that basically knocking a lot of doors and learning about this process.

It has been a slow process for us.

We are an organization.

Minority organizations sometimes have a harder time to connect with people and people in power.

I love this council this time because I have been able to connect with people like you, Councilmember Moore, and Councilmember Rivera, but the last time around we were invisible, essentially, in our district.

That also affects organizations because you cannot connect with people in government as quickly as you would like.

I don't know if that answers your question.

Thank you.

May I ask another?

Yes.

Thanks.

So I'm looking at your intended outcome, and there are two there that are really important.

Well, they're all important, but two that sort of stand out to me.

One is that you're able to foster a stable connection and sense of pride to the area that would in turn prevent displacement.

I'm really curious how having this facility and this resource, how that would help facilitate that.

And then also- THE OTHER ONE IS ESTABLISHING PARTNERSHIPS THAT WOULD HELP PRESERVE EXISTING AFFORDABLE HOUSING SITES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, WHICH I KNOW IS A CHALLENGE, AND TO IMPROVE LIVING CONDITIONS.

SO CAN YOU MAYBE EXPAND ON THAT A LITTLE BIT?

THANK YOU.

YES.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR QUESTION, CONSULTANT MEMBER.

We are, all the community members that participate in our programs, they have been in their neighborhoods for many, many years, 15, 20 years, if not more.

And a lot of, many of them, oftentimes they, They are always and we are always under certain different kinds of pressures.

And these pressures, a lot of people tend to believe that the economic pressure is the most important.

It is important.

However, we see that there are other pressures that really makes people decide to leave.

Safety is one of them, but also bad management.

A lot of the people that we support, that come to our programs, we are all renters for the most part.

And we have seen that bad apartment managers, apartment buildings that are in not the best shape, are actually making people leave their homes.

We try answering the second part about partnerships.

We try to really form these relationships with the owners of those buildings with even the apartment managers to try to make, to kind of solve or at least kind of mediate a lot of the challenges and issues that a lot of the renters see in their apartment building.

So we also, a lot of the prevention that we do, you, are in your community, like, let's say Little Brook, where it's our home base, and you feel like, you know, you have two blocks from where you can get support and information and be connected to city programs just in your own neighborhood, and you feel safe, you feel connected, you feel like the culture is being celebrated in your own community, there is a very high chance that you will stay in this neighborhood.

It doesn't matter if the rent goes up a little bit.

It doesn't matter that you have challenges in your building.

You feel connected to that place.

You feel like you belong to that neighborhood.

And that has been our EDI strategy.

That's our goal, to feel like you belong somewhere, to feel like you can be a steward of your own creek.

You can be a steward of your own park.

And that's our strategy.

That's why we are, at least at the organizational level, we are not talking about housing.

Because there is a lot of, sometimes the housing The rent that people pay here for the last 15, 20 years is even more affordable than what is now called affordable housing in Seattle.

Because they have been there for years and years and years, and the rent is cheaper than the affordable housing price.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to ask about, or clarify, and Cesar, maybe this is more of a question for OPCD, so I'll ask it, and you're welcome to answer, and then they can.

can as well, is you mentioned that you got the funding through the Strategic Investment Fund, which actually is not EDI funding.

Strategic Investment Fund was the one-time funding program.

I think right now it's administered via the East EDI folks at OPCD, but it was meant to be one-time funding.

So that funding went to purchase the building in full or then you mentioned that you also, EDI allowed you to rent the space.

I want to make sure I heard that properly as well.

So do you mind clarifying?

So the strategic investment fund allowed you to be able to purchase the building?

Yes, Council Member.

Well, what we have in the beginning, before applying for the strategic investment fund, We apply for two rounds of capacity building.

The capacity building, which was, if I remember well, sometimes so many numbers in my head, but it was 75,000 each time.

Those funds are what really give us enough money to go and rent a space, which is the space that we are located right now.

And then when the SIF, the Strategic Investment Fund, came out, that was after, that was the third year when we were able to acquire the land.

And I'm going to say that we are very proud that we were the first of the grantees for that that actually closed on the property.

We work night and day.

And we were really happy that we closed the property.

And a lot of that was actually the partnership that we did with the owner.

This owner, he really believed in us and he could have sold the property to a developer.

He was actually pursuing a developer to build, I don't know how many floors of apartments.

But he believed in the work that we were doing, and he saw himself how the community was transformed with that work.

Pedestrian safety, and advocating for a new redevelopment of the Little Brook Park, $2.2 million with city, county, and state funds to get a redeveloped park.

He saw the change, and he, instead of selling to a developer, he said, you know, I'm going to wait for you.

I'm going to wait for you, and when you can come up with those funds, our partners want to sell it to you as opposed to a developer.

Thank you, Cesar, and that's just a testament to the work that I know you've been doing in community up there even before you got the SIF award, so really appreciate the work that you're doing up there.

I have one last question, if that's okay, Chair, and that is just to clarify, Cesar, the project that you're doing, you said you're trying to get more funding Is it to remodel the building or can you talk a little bit about what the, and did I hear it right?

Did you need an additional 30 million or, sorry if I heard that incorrectly.

The property that we purchased with SIF funds, that lot is currently empty.

It doesn't have any structure.

The fundraising, the capital campaign will be to build the center from the ground up.

or even underground, I'll say, because of the parking.

I really would like to emphasize something really quick.

We had our EDG meeting, the Italy Design Guidance meeting with different departments of the city.

It was such a, we were so nervous about that meeting.

And it was such a, we came out from that meeting, the designing team, you know, Katie Sheehy, who is our project manager with Office of Planning, or myself.

so delighted that all the people that were there from different departments, City Light, ADCI, SDOT, all these different departments were so supportive of our project.

And they were trying to see how to work, like how all these different investments that are happening in our neighborhood How can that all work in synchrony to our project?

So that was also a great experience to have in that regard.

Gracias.

Thank you.

Council Member Wu.

I just want to echo my colleagues.

Thank you for all that you do.

And Council Member Rivera took part of my question.

I was going to ask like, well, congratulations to making it to the development phase.

Wanted to see if you've come across any challenges, any suggestions on how city can do better to help support you in your efforts to make progress in your project.

Yes, there are a lot of things that can be very helpful, Councilmember.

Of course, funds, EDI projects, we have relied, as you heard, on EDI funds to continue our projects and to use, for example, we are pursuing a federal grant, a very important federal grant, and it's very possible that we will need like a bridge funds uh well that happens if happens we are positive it will happen and so those another round that we can apply another or cbo's can apply will be will be of course very helpful And we are talking about the land use in this today, just making sure that there is a mechanism, maybe some efficiency, or maybe to think about our EDI projects as something that is very important for communities.

And it's very important that we don't delay on our projects, not only because the cost will increase, but also because our communities, you know, they depend on us.

We are delivering our services right now, but the quicker, you know, the faster we can build our projects will be better.

So if there is some kind of assistance that we can get in terms of the permitting, you know, in terms of the zones that each of our projects need, you know, to complete our projects, that will be very, very helpful.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

Why don't we move on to Yeehaw Indigenous Creatives Collective?

Thank you.

Thank you, Cesar.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Isha Tail to talk about the Yeehaw Indigenous Creatives Collective project.

And in the presentation we provided, we also have a linked video.

And we'll save that if there's time.

But we first want to be able to feature all of our grantee projects.

Thank you.

Hello, council members.

My name is Aisha Tail.

I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a second-generation urban native born and raised here on beautiful Coast Salish territories.

I use she, her pronouns, and I am the director of Yahout Indigenous Creatives Collective.

I want to start by thanking the City of Seattle and the Equitable Development Initiative.

I can personally attest that EDI and its funded projects have positively transformed my life, and I know they have positively transformed the lives of many Native people and Native-led nonprofits across our city.

In 2021, our nonprofit was awarded just over $2 million through EDI and the Strategic Investment Fund, which allowed us to return over an acre and a half of green space in Rainier Beach to Native Stewardship.

Our site identification and purchase process was long and complicated, to be honest.

And I mention that because I think that is likely the case for many nonprofits, in Seattle in particular.

It took nine months to find a site that would be suitable, and it took another eight months of negotiations before we could close on the property in December 2022. EDI staff, including the amazing Dakota next to me, were incredibly supportive and invaluable guides throughout that entire process.

Not only did EDI funding benefit us, but the backing of such a reputable program has allowed us to continue to grow our grant revenue from both private and public sources since that initial property purchase.

And we saw a large increase in personal donations following the excitement of our public announcement.

So much so that just this past March, we were able to purchase the house right next door to us.

Now we have water and power and indoor gathering space and are continuing to build community wealth for indigenous peoples without, I'll say, sacrificing any green space.

We are working hard on the land, and our intention is very much to preserve all the existing canopy coverage and exceptional trees.

This is especially important in a BIPOC neighborhood overly burdened by climate change.

We are growing culturally relevant foods, feeding people, and providing healing opportunities through our programs.

We are also strengthening local economies by hiring creative entrepreneurs to lead workshops, design and build structures, and create public art.

Our plan moving forward is to sustainably cultivate an indigenous arts campus where native artists can heal their connections to each other and the land with public walking trails and cultural programs to benefit all of our neighbors.

We are sowing seeds today to benefit our children's children, seven generations and beyond.

With an upcoming presidential election, imminent recession, and thinning social fabric, now is the time to lean in and strengthen our communities for the work ahead.

I ask that you please work together to protect this important initiative, and I have a few recommendations.

I would recommend trusting ADI staff who have deeply rooted community relationships and on-the-ground expertise, I would recommend supporting awardees by giving them the time and flexibility they need to navigate a competitive real estate market with record lows in inventory.

And I would encourage you to encourage other city programs to lift up and accelerate the work of EDI by providing additional resources and through innovative strategies like the proposed amendments to the city surplus land policy.

Thank you so much for your time today, and I hope you all know that you are welcome to come visit us anytime in Rainier Beach.

We would love to give you a tour.

Great, thank you very much.

It's an exciting project, and I will admit I have not been out there yet, but I'm happy to go out and take a look.

Colleagues, are there questions?

yet, okay, I have a question and I'll probably ask everybody, but if you can talk a little bit about how, this might not apply to some of your projects, but how going through the city's permitting process has impacted the timing on getting these projects done.

I can start and then I'll ask if any of our grantees want to talk about how they've navigated even just learning.

What we hear most often from grantees is it's an unfamiliar process, has a lot of layers, so there's a learning curve to it.

But also, some of the things our grantees are trying to do are innovative uses in areas that exist under certain zoning.

And so there's more work that we need to do across departments to make sure that we are positioning our director and deputy director to work with SDCI And then also making sure that things that are sort of technical barriers, such as clouds on title related to structures, this came up this week, so it's fresh in my mind, a cloud on a title where an acquisition is pending that could be held up because it takes three months to clear that in the SDCI database.

And our director was able to work directly with SDCI to start mapping a way to address that and not bring the project schedule sort of to a halt.

So that's one example.

But I think, you know, we know that we have folks doing really interesting, necessary, innovative things.

And so to have an open mind means that we also have to examine the why for some of our rules and processes and who they benefit and who they burden and whether or not they actually facilitate building inclusive and connected communities where a diverse group of people in Seattle can actually have access to the services and the amenities that they need to thrive.

I don't know if I'll ask my grantee organizations whether or not you have any thoughts on the permitting process.

I can speak to it when I, now is fine or?

Green button.

This is Edwin Lindo with Estelita's library and he'll talk about his project.

I can skip ahead in the slide and Edwin can incorporate thoughts on permitting and then we can go back to any open conversation.

No, I was just going to add that to your point, it is, incredibly new when you're trying to get to know, as Cesar mentioned, the operations of the government systems.

It's relational currency.

And if you don't know folks that exist in those different departments, I've had environmental consultants say, Edwin, this permit is going to take seven months for us to just do drilling in the street.

Well, seven months, thankfully, and they said they had never seen it happen, but folks who are staff who I didn't know have been working diligently and that seven months turned into about a month and a half.

And that expedites, that saves us money, that saves us time, that saves us the amount that we put someone on a contingency or on retainer.

And it changes things.

And that's just in the acquisition phase.

The part then, perhaps what says that and others of, if you're trying to change land use requirements or if you're trying, what we're trying to do is have intermediate phase of old mechanic shop turned into a community space as an intermediate situation until we build something.

And a lot of folks say, oh yeah, that's not possible.

And we're thinking, well, it used to be an old mechanic shop and people were working there just six months ago, but now we can't use it to read books.

What do we need to do to get that?

And I think it is the point of innovation understanding that there's clear legal limitations, but how do we get through that would be a good approach.

Thank you, Edwin.

If there are other questions before Edwin talks more in depth about his project, we can pause for those.

Why don't you go ahead, Edwin, just introduce us to your project.

Introduce yourself.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Council Member Wu.

Yes, and then a quick question.

Do you have like a development consultant, someone who could help you through this process?

Or is this something you'd recommend the city provide?

The city should provide that capacity.

We are eventually going to get a development consultant, but because that costs money, we are trying to save that until we absolutely need it.

So we're figuring it out on ourselves.

Thank you.

I have a question about the previous project.

Are you engaged in a capital campaign for site improvements for the house or development?

Great question.

So our intention is to start a community-engaged site planning process the end of this year, early next, once we can secure funding and to make sure we include community voice in a meaningful way and don't kind of jump ahead on any design planning.

So we'll know a bunch more then.

Right.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I am going to just jump in.

You didn't ask me about permitting, but here I am answering your question about permitting.

And a couple statements first.

I guess I'm not going to have questions for you.

I'm just going to make a bunch of statements right now, which is that permitting delays EDI projects.

Permitting in our city is not meeting my threshold of success.

That's why we had an audit.

And, Chair, I appreciate you bringing that audit to this committee.

I will also flag, to Edwin, your point of a mechanics garage can't be certified for occupancy for people to read books in.

What?

What?

I mean, I've heard the same story for for-profit businesses where they take over a former mechanic shop gas station that has already been converted into serving food and drinks.

And then they take over that space and they can't get their certificate of occupancy.

And it was already done being used for that same purpose.

And so chair, I'll flag for you now, I'm gonna be asking the auditor to follow up the current audit with the second phase regarding certificate of occupancy.

I will say hearing from SDCI briefly and meeting with them ahead of the committee where they were going to present here, that SDCI is doing a lot of work to get themselves into a better place.

And there are many departments that are not with in SDCI that have permit review desks that still have work to do.

And then there are also departments that are stretched thin.

The fire department, this is not blame on them, but the fire marshal is required to approve permits, inspect permits, and be a fire marshal, which includes going to arsons, fires, et cetera.

And so he's literally firefighting and trying to do his job, and there's not enough staff there.

I'm not gonna continue on this soapbox about permitting, but Edwin, your point of you're being told it takes seven months to take the next step in your project, and then we as politicians are asking, why is it taking you so long?

and it's actually within the city that is contributing to your issues.

That's my statement today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera, is this about Estelita or the previous project?

This is about actually in general.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry.

Council Member Wu raised the idea of a development consultant, and I just wanted to ask SDCI if this is something when you created the program that you thought about adding to the program and whether you talked to law about, because I know there are legalities about what what services we're able to provide with taxpayer funding.

So whether this was something that was contemplated, if so, what,

Yeah, great question.

So in general, I think the development consultant gets to the broader question around both pre- and post-site control pre-development needs.

It also gets to the question around a technical assistance program, because that's one type of technical assistance.

Dealing with environmental remediation is another type of technical assistance that we know is slowing down our projects.

And so we do have in our longer term plan, the goal of creating a broader technical assistance program.

The work in front of us right now is to carve out the resources for that, both in staff time to manage and stand it up, what's the actual model for technical assistance, creating something that's both proactive and reactive to emerging issues, and then working with law to define the areas of technical assistance in alignment with the city contracting and procurement rules that we are allowed to provide.

That is...

something that our team feels very strongly is necessary.

And grantees cannot plan for all the unforeseen things.

But also, we have limitations on how we can fund via contracting mechanisms.

And so a technical assistance program that can be applied in both a proactive and reactive way we think is a really important component of addressing stuckness questions.

Great.

I'm looking forward to that development.

Council Member, I'm going to ask us to let Edwin present his project and then we can follow up with more questions.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you.

And I'm going to touch on a few things that Council Member Wu was speaking about the consultant.

Having gone through this, we're now about four years in from applying to multiple EDI grants, receiving a number of capacity funds, which was incredibly helpful to just get us to the point of finding the property.

So that's point number one is, the mechanisms of the funding that you all approve unfortunately create conditions where we're now behind the eight ball, where properties go on the market and within three months it's off the market, but we're in the process of trying to get funding.

And so contemplating what does it look like, and I know it's a major budgetary process, but the nimbleness that could be allowed for EDI to be able to say, yes, let's support X, Y, and Z in a more immediate way.

So that's one.

Two, as far as the The consultant, you know, I got to say, our communities aren't dumb and no one here suggested that.

I'm saying the fact that we would need a development consultant to maneuver the bureaucracy of a city says something about the bureaucracy of the city.

I don't feel good paying someone just because of the relationship they have over the last 10 years.

I get it, it's business, but that's on the backs of our communities.

We should have those relationships.

If you were to say, well, what does that look like, Edwin?

It would look like Each department saying, my role here is to make sure you know how to get a hold of us and we'll connect you with the right people so things happen, which is what a development consultant does because they have those relationships, except it doesn't make sense to me that I pay them $1,000, $500 an hour.

to just work their relationships.

We should be able to have those for free as a community.

And I believe that our community shouldn't have to figure out, I'll say this, in development, which some of you have been a part of, from an outsider perspective, it feels like a black hole.

And the black hole is truly what I've noticed is a facade.

It's a black hole only because we don't let the communities into those spaces.

It's not a black hole because it's complex.

It's not a black hole because we don't understand or we don't have the sophistication.

It's a black hole because my P&L looks different than his P&L.

And so the bank is going to talk to him before they're going to talk to me.

How do we level that playing field and say, no, all these community funded programs, they are developers and we should treat them like developers.

And the moment we got this grant, I received phone calls from banks.

I received phone calls from developers and private developers and nonprofit developers and development consultants saying, we're here to help.

I said, that's interesting.

You weren't here to help before we got the grant.

So is it just the money?

And the last point I'll make, and then I'll talk about the project.

So thank you for giving me my soapbox, is for us, we have affordable housing.

And that's our initiative here, along with our cultural space.

There's a lot of people making money on affordable housing except the people who are the small CBOs building the affordable housing.

This grant money is not coming to us, right?

It's going to someone doing this service.

It's going to someone getting money as the property owner.

It's going to someone who says they're a developer.

And we are trusting them with the lives of our organization.

And so I really think having the holistic city, the holistic we, stepping in and say, we will make sure that this gets followed through the same way we do with a lot of private developments, which I've seen and I've observed, not only just here in San Francisco, where I grew up and I've seen it.

They make sure projects get done.

How do we make sure these projects get done, that they don't fail because someone was too scared to ask a question or they didn't have the relationship?

So I'll step off the soapbox.

And the project we have through Estelita's library, we are a social justice library.

Our mission has been to decentralize knowledge.

I am a professor at UW.

It's my living wage job.

And this is the work we do because we love it, because our community deserves it.

The books that we started with were the books that I learned from.

I went to UW Law School, and I have my law school books in our library because we realized that our community, talking about capacity building, would come in and say, well, how do I apply for law school?

Or what's the LSAT?

We have an LSAT prep course.

Or I'm getting a divorce, and I need help.

And my kid wants to learn about black history, and they want more information about what that is in real black history, or Chicano history, or Latinx, or queer history.

And we had a neighbor, a young seven-year-old, who, I'm going to say this publicly, but we were really nervous.

She lives around the block from their current location.

She left her grandmother's house that was babysitting her and snuck away to come to the library and knocked on the door while me and Estelle, my partner, were there.

And she said, I heard this library is for me.

And we were like, yeah, you heard right.

And she was like, it's about books like about me, about black people.

And we said, Yeah.

And she's like, how does it work?

And I said, here's a basket.

Pick any book you want and you can take it home.

She's like, I don't have to pay for it.

No, you don't have to pay for it.

So when do I bring it back?

Whenever you want.

And she did.

She filled that basket up.

Her grandmother was screaming.

We heard someone screaming for someone's name and she ran away and we walked her back to her grandma.

She was like, I can't be mad at you because you ran away to go to a library and And the grandma effectively said, we're so grateful that this is in our neighborhood, that the place she ran away to, granted it wasn't really running away, but the place she ran to was a place that I know she will be safe and people she cares about.

And that's just one tiny example.

And what we're really getting to is that the books were just the beginning.

I grew up in public housing, in affordable housing, and the trap that set us up as a single dad that my dad raised me as He had a choice between taking a raise at a nonprofit for $2 more, taking folks to their doctor visits, senior folks to doctor visits, or losing his housing.

And he decided not to take the raise so that we wouldn't lose our housing because every year they do the income check.

And they said, if you take the property manager said, if you take this raise, you're going to lose your housing.

And so we are trying to do something so transformationally different.

We are trying to build housing without federal tax credits.

We are trying to build housing without the limitations that you have to be stuck in poverty so that you can live in a place that's four walls around you.

We're saying, no, you should be able to come here Go get that raise.

Build some generational wealth, and let's help you get out of this apartment.

This apartment should not be your forever home.

Seattle should be your forever home, but this apartment is the place where you start.

That's radically different.

We've talked to some development consultants.

They said, Edwin, you are absolutely crazy, but we need that right now.

No one has done it, but we need that right now because it means you get to serve the community in the ways that they need, not the ways that the government decides they need it.

And when we think about it, we have the main floor.

Y'all may be familiar.

It's the old mechanic shop, Dragon Auto, across from the public library on Beacon Ave.

It's an old family that's been in Beacon Hill.

And we're grateful that they said, we want to go with Estelita's library.

We've been negotiating with them for three years.

Three years.

And They could have, like Cesar Fadric, decided to go with a private developer.

They didn't.

They said, Ecelitas is doing some tremendous work, and we want this legacy to be ours in Beacon Hill.

Unfortunately, when we talk about delays, we have now come to find that it is incredibly contaminated.

We're talking about plumes of particulates in the soil because it used to be an old gas station.

That old gas station, I'm not going to name, but I'm going to encourage when folks ask what help we need, that old gas station is not alone in the practices they have.

There are gas stations and petroleum companies around the state that are leaving the bag to these small mom-and-pop shops, walking away, giving it to them pennies on the dollar, and saying, but we're not liable for anything else that happens.

And at the moment, we are now talking about a potential cleanup because it now extends beyond the property line.

It extends under the public library, into the public street right away.

The initial cleanup, we were contemplating around $3.5 million.

It is now approaching $7 million.

Now you say, Edwin, run away today.

What are you doing?

Why is Estelita still in this project?

Because Estelita's commitment is showing that the cultural work of this tiny organization can clean up the neighborhoods that we live in.

That these books, these communities, these voices are going to clean up the dirt that someone else was supposed to do.

But that does require a tremendous amount of support and help from you all, from the state.

And so where are we at this point?

We haven't closed on the property yet.

We are still negotiating.

What does that closing look like in light of this contamination?

I've been in so many meetings with the Washington Attorney General, with the Washington Department of Ecology, and I want to give big credit to them as well.

They have stepped in and said, this project is important when we talk about racial justice, and we have received, at this moment, $500,000.

You talk about money being spent.

That $500,000 is just to test the limits of the contamination.

That's it, isn't it?

I don't get it.

It's going to test the limits.

And we still don't know what the limits are.

We have applied for $4.5 million.

We believe we are highly competitive with the Department of Ecology.

That's to help the remediation, to clean up, and it's all in the purview of building affordable housing.

People ask, well, why you?

Who says you have the capacity to do it?

You should bring experts in.

Again, We are the experts of the problems that we know our communities have.

We are sophisticated enough to do it.

And what we've been doing is as we go through it, having meetings with ecology, lawyers, consultants, we are bringing community and showing them this is how it can be done.

Why?

Because I really believe that this is step one.

If we're talking about building dense community housing and affordable housing, our organizations and EDI is not going to be able to compete against private developers.

And those properties that are not contaminated, we're losing out just about nine out of 10 times.

But these contaminated sites, we actually have a chance because those property developers don't want to touch it with 175 foot pole.

But if we have the relationships and relational currency to move things within the city, it means we have an advantage.

It means we can get it at a lower price.

It means we can build housing in places that no one else wanted to.

It is tricky.

It is complex.

It is protracted.

Absolutely.

But it is absolutely within our domain and capacity to do this.

We just need a tremendous amount of support.

So I will leave that there and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Edwin.

I want to touch on one thing, too.

What we keep hearing, and we have other projects who are in the same phase of addressing environmental contamination and experiencing also what Edwin's talking about, is the vision that people come to EDI with when they apply is to have a transformative impact on the community.

And they're willing to go to great lengths dipping into environmental justice, addressing these major issues of wellness that are multidimensional.

And so...

I know we can say the process is very important, the end product, the commercial space, the ownership.

But in the process, they're taking on large scale issues that other folks are not addressing.

And they're taking on the responsibility to fix for bigger social things.

And so that's very inspiring for our team.

It makes us want to work as hard as we can.

and help the program evolve.

They're using their capacity building dollars, even when limited at $75,000 at a time.

They're getting more than a dollar for dollar out of those dollars, right?

But they're also...

what we see is that they're testing out, piloting approaches that build frameworks for other organizations that will help them move faster.

They're piloting even aspects of program provision so that when they get close to operations, they have a solid operating model.

And they're really clear on how they're going to generate the revenue they need to maintain the facilities.

And we're asking them to have those plans so that they can remain legacies in a long-term sense.

I just want to highlight these are really complicated layered projects.

They take a lot of energy to do, but the community is meeting and exceeding what other folks are not doing, taking on.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

And I think all of these are exactly the kind of projects that EDI was created to support, right?

These are community-driven projects led by community members who have ideas for what kind of...

cultural anchors or housing or other projects they want.

And what I've heard also is that many of them acquire neighboring parcels because other neighbors appreciate the work that is going on and also want to contribute to that community-driven approach.

I know the Filipino Community Center, for example, which has another EDI project, was able to acquire the cash, the pawn shop next door because that property owner wanted to sell.

They saw the senior housing that was going up, another EDI project, and wanted to contribute to the Filipino community being able to stay in South Seattle.

So they also negotiated a longer term sale process that might have otherwise happened, but they wanted to be sure that that was kept there.

This is all really important work so that community members have agency over the kind of things that happen in their neighborhoods.

We are out of time on this presentation.

I will let Councilmember Wu ask her question and then we'll move on, but I really appreciate all of you being here and thank you so much for sharing your experience and the challenges that you have and the ways in which the city through this program can continue to support your work.

Councilmember Wu, and then we'll move on.

I want to thank you and thank you for highlighting the very deep systemic issues that communities face when it comes to working with city bureaucracy and the whole idea of having to hire a development consultant when you shouldn't have to.

But I was just really curious where you are in your process to getting the site acquisition closed.

And is there anything we could do to help?

Yeah, great question.

Thank you.

We are closer each day.

We do have a seller who's older, and I think a lot of times we're dealing with communities that see it as their retirement, right?

And they have ideas of what it should be, but I think we have a really open and flexible seller, so it's us.

working with the different parties involved is one, making sure EDI, the city attorney are comfortable with what this deal might look like.

But it's also the contemplation of where's the rest of this money to clean it up come from?

be one thing that I think that as a city is perhaps stepping up and allocating resources through the city attorney, pursuing these type of claims or even writing very strong willed letters to the polluters saying, It shouldn't be the job of the city and or community organizations to clean this up.

It is what the Department of Ecology did.

They sent a letter to this third party petroleum company and said, we see you as a violator and a participant party to this.

You need to come to the table.

But I think.

beyond just the state level locally, how do we bring those folks to the table so that we're not held with the receipt saying, well, you owe X amount, that the funds are diverse.

And what we're showing is we can get funds from a lot of places, but when we have the city support, and we know this as community orgs, folks give money to folks who get money.

And they get money because they're doing their job really well.

And I think that's a testament to our work, to your work, is that we show the impact of these dollars.

But that's one side.

And then the other is, in supporting EDI through its funding, how do we ensure the projects that are in this lineage get to the finish line?

And saying, what does that number look like to get them there?

And how do we support that?

Thank you.

Terrific, thank you so much, everyone.

Really appreciate you being here and we will follow up on some of this to be sure.

Okay, we are gonna move on to agenda item two.

Naomi, will you please read that into the record?

Agenda item two, annual report on accessory dwelling units for briefing and discussion.

Great.

Okay, so we are joined by OPCD, Rawan Hassan, Philip Carnell, I believe, is here, and Jeff Wendland.

So please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation on the Annual Report on Accessory Dwelling Units.

Thank you, Chair.

My mic.

No, try again.

Green lights go.

Let's see here.

Thank you, Chair.

There we go.

I'm Jeff Wendland.

I'm the Land Use Policy Manager in the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you, Chair.

This is Rowan Hassan, a planner at OPCD.

Philip Carnell, Planning and Equity Data Analyst in OPCD.

And Rowan and Philip prepared the data and analysis in this report this year.

So they're gonna do the presentation today and I'll be here as a resource for any other policy questions.

Thank you, please go ahead.

Today we will brief you on the 2023 Access Re-Dwelling Unit Annual Report.

This report provide comprehensive analysis of ADU production and development in Seattle.

It explored trends, regulatory impacts and future directions.

ADUs are secondary dwelling units situated within residential zones.

They offer flexible living spaces and contribute to the diversity of housing options.

They're either attached when they are connected to or integrated within a principal unit, or they are detached when they are separate structure like cottages in backyards.

They're either used as condominiums when they are sold to a new owner.

A growing number of new ADUs are condominiums.

In 2022, 44% of ADUs were permitted as ADUs.

Their average selling price was 750K compared to 1.18 million for principal dwelling units and 1.6 million for new detached homes.

They're also used as long-term rentals.

In 2022, ADU owners and occupants survey, we found that approximately a third of total ADUs were used as long-term rentals.

And one of eight of these owners offered their ADUs for free for a friend or a family member.

And they're also used as short-term rentals.

Around 10% of ADUs were permitted as short-term rentals.

And in this case, they need to receive a short-term rental business license throughout the city.

And approximately 15% of overall short-term rentals licensed in the city were ADUs.

And it's worth mentioning that short-term rentals operators are generally limited to operating two units, so we're not expecting a growth in short-term rentals, if at all.

In mid-1990s, attached ADUs became allowed in Seattle.

In 2010, detached ones becomes allowed.

However, we only see a small percentage of single family lots within the city had ADUs.

That led to, in 2015, City Council adopted a resolution to facilitate ADU production and increase in that production within the city.

And in 2019, we had the ADU reform.

allowed for two ADUs within neighborhood residential zones, like zone lots.

And it removed regulatory barriers and eased the complex permitting process and led to launching AD Universe, which introduced the pre-approved DADU plans in 2020. Like, these regulatory actions have facilitate an increase in ADU production.

And since the ordinance in 2019, an annual ADU report became required by that ordinance.

So next, looking at the current planning context, we'll say here that both regulations, including new state laws, as well as the King County countywide planning policies are impacting ADUs and also impacting the One Seattle plan moving forward.

In particular, new state laws from the 2023-2024 legislative session are promoting ADUs as well as middle housing throughout the cities in our state.

HB 1110 will allow for middle housing in most cities that will require Seattle to adopt zoning that allows between four units and six units in areas that are currently neighborhood residential.

In addition, HB 1337 will require that cities not just permit two ADUs per lot in neighborhood residential, but anywhere where there is residential zoning.

So that would open up other zones where currently we allow one ADU today, such as RSL and low rise.

Both of these are impacting the one Seattle plan and which will allow four to six units on all residential lots to be in compliance with that HB 1110, which ultimately will push us as a city to enhancing our housing supply and diversity and also improving affordability.

So next up, we're starting to look at the results of the report.

And this key result here is first that ADU permits issued in 2023 remain high.

So if we're looking at the chart on the right, and if we're comparing 2018, the last year before ADU reforms in 2019, and 2023, permits issued were around four times higher last year.

However, we do know in this report that applications for ADU permits, these are kind of the first sign that a developer or a homeowner would like to put ADUs on a lot.

They actually decreased from 2022 to 2023. There are significant market changes happening right now in terms of interest rates increasing on debt as well as cost inflation and also potentially people holding off for more dense zoning with the new comprehensive plan.

Kind of looking at where ADUs are permitted as well too, we're looking at around 47% of ADUs are permitted with two ADUs on site.

So this would be mostly specific to the NR zoning that we're talking about here.

And as the last bullet on this slide, around 13% of those detached ADUs were permitted using pre-approved DADU plans in 2023. Those permit timelines are decreased for those people who are utilizing that with about 50 days lower than custom DADU plans, reducing the permitting timeline from around 130 days to 80 and also requiring fewer correction cycles for the permitting body.

Next, looking at the geography of ADUs, we've got this map on the right here.

And you can see there's these teal squares and circles, and that's where we permitted an ADU last year in 2023. Behind them are the gray squares and circles where permits were given years past.

And over time, this map has really filled in.

And as you can see today, throughout most neighborhoods that are NR, there have been ADUs permitted.

In fact, last year, 87% of ADUs were permitted in neighborhood residential zones.

And now that is so many that ADUs are outnumbering single family residential permits two to one in the city.

In addition, of those single family residences, around 70% are permitted with new, when they're newly permitted, they're permitted with one or more ADUs on site.

Looking at the median lot size of a lot that's permitted within ADU, we tend to still see that those lots are slightly larger than your average lot kind of throughout the city, in particular on DADU sites where maybe there's a spatial imbalance that requires more of a lot, more land than might be readily available throughout most in our lots.

And as a final point of this finding, we found that ADUs are also more common in neighborhoods that we have lower displacement risk at in the city.

This is in part due to the fact that there is less neighborhood residential zoning that is not lower displacement risk.

So there's less neighborhood residential and a high risk of displacement.

But there is, this is also a key finding of the report.

And as our last slide, we're looking at future considerations for both of the departments that do a lot of this work.

So this is kind of key bodies of work that both DCI as well as OPCD will have ongoing.

And this first bullet is updating the pre approved data plans, this is necessary to for the designers to update so that they can keep in keep up to code when the new building code is adopted every three years.

And DCI conducted designer outreach in May of this year.

And while most of the designers are expected to respond and go ahead and update their plans to be in line with the new building code, they will have to also do so before the next building code update comes into effect.

Otherwise, their design will no longer be considered pre-approved.

And as the last point, with regards to the comprehensive plan and zoning and OPCD, we want to make sure that ADU permits, what we expect is that ADU permits may decrease due to market shifts and also these anticipated zoning changes.

Also that...

developers might opt to develop more middle housing such as a fourplex or other types of units that would be made available in neighborhood residential zones.

But we do want to make sure and intend to preserve that the ADUs remain an option throughout those zones.

So at that point, that's the end of my presentation.

Terrific, thank you very much.

I have a couple of questions and then I'm happy to open it up to my colleagues.

So we know that there are state changes coming.

Can you talk a little bit about how and whether that would change the permitting of ADUs through those new processes?

It wouldn't really change, it would not change the permitting for the ADUs.

It would just be new, slightly new development regulations.

We'd continue to permit them the same way, or SDCI would, and also SDCI intends to continue to make the pre-approved plans for DADUs available.

So really no changes to the permitting process.

Okay.

And then for, you mentioned the, I think it was the previous slide, but most of the ADUs are located in areas with low displacement risk.

Is there, and as we know that those are areas with higher access to economic opportunity and so often those are also areas that are wealthier and wider.

We have a lot of interest in more home ownership opportunities, particularly in communities of color, but that is not where the bulk of these ADUs are located.

So can you talk a little bit about whether there is consideration on how to assist these communities that have so far not been able to take advantage of these more streamlined processes?

Yes.

So your assessment of the findings are definitely that.

And I'll bring up as well that last year's ADU report, also in the survey of occupants and owners, it also included that most owners are primarily white, have incomes above $200,000.

And so we did see this concentration.

And as we're seeing that concentration, we, as an office, worked on an application for something called pro-housing.

And the pro-housing grant, we sought after it for as an anti-displacement tool from HUD.

And we actually received $5 million to do two pilot projects in partnership with OH.

So they have their home ownership as preservation of multifamily units that would be exiting a income restricted period.

And then also more particular to the ADUs is the program for legacy homeowners that focuses on pre-development assistance, going to households that might otherwise sell their property and exit the community so that they can actually work as, say, citizens as developers.

And that grant was just awarded about two weeks ago, so we're still in the very early phases of it, but it was $5 million split between the two departments.

All right, thank you.

Let's see, do I have...

Council Member Wu.

Yes, thank you for your presentation.

For these EDUs, DADUs, most are rental units, or are they ownership units?

Do you know?

44%, like around half of them, are owned as condominiums, and a third of these are rented.

Like, one of eight is offered, like, for free for a family member or a friend, and 10% of these are short-term rentals.

Interesting.

So you say in your last slide that ADU permits may decrease due to market shifts and anticipated zoning changes through the comprehensive plan.

Do you, are you suggesting that perhaps they decrease but other housing is created?

Or do we just lose that housing option?

And how does that relate to, I'm so sorry if you mentioned that earlier.

Yes, so I think that the decrease that I'm pointing to is more of a shift in the market.

As properties are allowed to have more units on site, they might prefer to go with this new development pattern of four to six units, as opposed to what is currently allowed today, which is one principal dwelling unit and two accessory dwelling units.

with a mixture of either two attached or one detached and one attached.

And I'm so sorry, did you have a second?

I might not have answered the second part of your question.

Oh, no, that made sense.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Very helpful.

Thank you very much.

We'll be interested to see how things play out once the statewide legislation is actually implemented here as well.

So thank you very much, everybody.

Appreciate it.

Okay, Naomi, can you please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three, comprehensive plan roundtables series on housing for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Okay, our roundtable folks are making their way up.

So while they do that, I'll just say we're joined today by Representative Nicole Macri, Liz Underwood-Boltman from Puget Sound Regional Council, Sol Villarreal with the King County Realtors, and Parker Dawson with Master Builders.

Before I ask you all to introduce yourselves and begin your oral presentations, I just want to talk a little bit about what we're doing here.

So colleagues are aware that the major update to the comprehensive plan is coming later this year.

We expect to receive a final draft from the mayor's office in December.

Because we're running a little late with that legislation, I was hoping to start discussion of the comp plan a lot earlier this year, but instead we will be using the remaining time we have in this committee before budget starts to at least begin talking about some of the major issues that we will be facing.

So more specifically, these round tables that we are planning, we'll discuss the comprehensive plan specifically with anti-displacement measures in mind.

We know that that is incredibly important.

It should be at the forefront of everything we talk about with this comprehensive plan discussion.

And as someone whose district has been impacted by folks who have been displaced and who continue to be pushed out of the city, this is really important.

for me.

I know it's important for all of us.

So we've decided to focus on four topics for these conversations.

We're starting today with housing.

We'll also be talking about climate, economic development and the arts, and accessibility and mobility issues.

So we'll have a few players in each of those spaces join us at the next four land use committee meetings to provide their perspective on anti-displacement work through those particular frameworks.

And so I'm going to go ahead and hand it over.

I'm going to ask Liz to start from PSRC with sort of a broader regional perspective, and then we'll make our way down the line.

Please go ahead.

Great.

Is this on?

This should be a green light on if it's...

Hi, my name is Liz Underwood-Boltman.

I'm a principal planner at the Puget Sound Regional Council.

I work in growth management planning.

So just as a refresher about the Puget Sound Regional Council, we work with the 86 local governments in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish County on regional planning issues, including transportation, growth management planning.

So one of the big things that we do as an agency is work with local governments to adopt Vision 2050, which is our region's long range plan, which is kind of like the comprehensive plan for the region, which also addresses kind of major policy issues that local governments are addressing through their local planning, things like housing, climate change, mobility, all sorts of access to opportunity, all sorts of policy issues that are then kind of locally adopted through local comprehensive plans.

So Vision 2050 includes policies, includes actions.

It also includes a regional growth strategy, which talks about the distribution of growth plan through the year 2050. So we have groups of cities that growth is allocated to through that part of that process.

And through King County and King County working with its cities, growth is sort of divided up between jurisdictions.

So talking a little bit about kind of like how growth is kind of actually allocated to individual jurisdictions as part of that planning process.

So our regional plan really encourages growth towards major cities, metropolitan cities, cities that have access to high capacity transit, have centers.

So that's really kind of the framework that we're working with as part of a regional plan.

So as part of King County's work to allocate growth to the cities, City of Seattle and City of Bellevue worked together to distribute growth between them.

And so that has sort of helped identify housing and employment targets that the city is now working to incorporate as part of its comprehensive plan.

One of the major changes in the last few years has been around housing and requirements for housing and local comprehensive plans.

And so that's a big question as part of that.

I'm sure that you'll be wrestling with and the mayor's plan will be wrestling with as well to think about how to address housing at different income levels to ensure that the city is accommodating housing need to also address displacement, exclusion and racially disparate impacts in housing, as well as addressing barriers to affordable housing.

So these were changes that were made at the state level that cities around the region are working through their comprehensive plans to help address too, because there are regional issues in terms of our housing market.

The Puget Sound Regional Council, we review and certify local comprehensive plans.

So once the city has adopted its plan, we'll review it and a certification allows the city to be eligible for federal transportation funds.

So as part of that, we'll look at Growth Management Act requirements, consistency with our regional plan, as well as some of those new housing requirements as part of that process.

So it's kind of the big overarching framework of our process.

I'm certainly happy to talk about that more, but that's just kind of an overview of our regional context.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member Morales and council members.

It's great to be here.

My name is Nicole Macri.

I'm the state representative from the 43rd Legislative District, which includes areas from the Pike Place Market to University of Washington.

and several other areas in central Seattle.

I'm one of 18 legislators who represent residents of the city of Seattle.

We have six legislative districts here in Seattle.

I think the 43rd has the greatest overlap with the largest number of city council districts.

So have a lot of connection with several members.

of our council.

And of course, in my work in Olympia, I'm really focused on making sure that our state can be a good partner with our residents and with our city government in particular to make sure we can meet the needs of residents.

And of course, I know it is top of mind for all of you that we have tremendous challenges with housing, particularly housing affordability for a growing number of our residents in Seattle.

As Liz mentioned, the state legislature has been doing a lot of work in the area of housing as it relates to growth management.

So the Growth Management Act was enacted in the mid-'90s at a time of rapid growth in Washington state.

And as we particularly have faced this crisis of housing hitting every corner of the state, there has been more focus on what we call the housing element in the Growth Management Act, and really turning to our local communities take more deliberate actions to expand access to housing, particularly affordable housing, and across all income spectrums, and to address issues of displacement and racial discrimination in housing, a legacy that as policymakers we all carry and are obligated to address.

Comprehensive planning provides a really rare and important opportunity for all of our communities to address the challenges we've had in housing, particularly the under supply, which has been one of the primary drivers of housing cost.

in our region.

We know that this plan that this council will enact will set the frame over the next decade, but will have implications for the next 50 to 100 years in the kinds of types of housing and abundance of housing that will impact hundreds of thousands of people in the city currently and in the future.

I wanna name a few statutes that have gone into effect over the last few years that are particularly relevant.

It was really nice to come in and hear the previous presentations, which are also related to this work of comprehensive planning.

the importance of equitable development and the importance of creating a more diverse array of housing opportunities for people at all income levels, including accessory dwelling units.

In 2019, the legislature passed House Bill 1923, which created a menu of options for local communities to choose to really create more housing diversity and housing affordability and created incentives for communities to do that by providing support and planning dollars for local communities.

In 2021, the legislature took bolder action in passing House Bill 1220, a bill that I was intimately involved in getting passed in the legislature.

which really shifted the affordable housing requirements in the Growth Management Act from being encouragement to local communities to being required.

So as you heard from Liz, the PSRC plays a key role in helping our local communities understand their obligations regarding housing targets across areas.

all income levels across the spectrum and making sure that we are hitting those.

It also requires communities to take deliberate steps to address issues of redlining and racial disproportionality in communities in how they build their zoning and housing policies.

And more recently, we passed House Bill 1110, which is also known as the Middle Housing Bill, to require and promote a diversity of housing.

And so that really is, I think, the high level on the state work that we have done.

We are undertaking work, continued work related to expanding policy related to the intersection of transportation and housing really promoting transit oriented development to ensure that residents in communities across the state have equitable access to the transportation investments that we are making both with state taxpayer dollars as well as local regional and local taxpayer dollars.

And so our work in that area continues.

And that intersection of transportation and housing is also a very essential part of the comprehensive planning that you all will be undertaking.

So with that, I'll pass it over to the next speaker and look forward to the conversation and questions.

Can you hear me?

Okay.

Good afternoon, council members.

Thanks for having me here.

My name is Sol Villarreal.

I'm a residential realtor in Seattle, and I'm also the VP elect of government affairs for the Seattle King County Realtors.

So I spent a lot of time working with buyers in Seattle trying to buy homes, a lot of them first time home buyers.

And as all of us know, I think homeownership, when you talk about anti-displacement strategies, is really the best anti-displacement strategy that we have.

There's no better way to make sure you can stay in Seattle long term than owning a home.

The problem we have is that there's a big gap in the types of homes we're able to build.

And I think you saw with the previous ADU presentation, one of the reasons we see so many of these condoized ADUs and DADUs being built is because they're filling a really large unmet need that our current zoning isn't filling.

And the fact that these are being condoized and sold individually is kind of a loophole, right?

It wasn't the original intent of the legislation, is my understanding.

So I think we have this opportunity with the comp plan to really be intentional about the kind of housing that we want to see built as a way to try and fill in some of these missing gaps.

And I'll just give you an example of something that's near and dear to my heart that I see every day with my buyers that I wish I could sell every day that just doesn't exist.

And that home type is houses that work for median income families, right?

If you look at what we're building new construction wise in Seattle, most of the new construction real estate that we're building for purchase is new construction houses that are, you know, large $1.5 million plus or smaller, more affordable townhomes that are more in the like 600 to $900,000 range.

And that's the majority of what we're building for buyers to purchase today.

The big critical piece we're missing there is that middle piece of something that costs more in that $600,000 to $900,000 range, but it's a three-bedroom house that a family can both afford and can also actually raise kids in when that time comes.

So a lot of my buyers, when they buy their first home in Seattle, functionally speaking, that's going to be the only home they're going to be able to afford because of what we're building right now.

So they can get into that first rung, but that middle rung of the housing ladder is just missing.

and i think one of the biggest opportunities we have in the comp plan or the u.s council members having the comp plan on our behalf is to help incentivize builders and give them the tools they need to be able to build that missing rung of the housing ladder to ensure that families who want to avoid being displaced economically from the city have options to go to whether that's the first home they buy that they can then stay in for the next 15 years or folks who are living in condos and apartments and townhomes now who want to have something to trade up to they'll actually have an option that they can afford.

So, you know, it's one example.

There are other housing types, obviously, besides affordable housing for median income families, but that's one that I see every day in my work.

So it's something I'm very passionate about.

And if we fast forward, you know, 10 years, i would love to see an equal number of developments where you see a 5 000 6 000 square foot lot that instead of having you know four to six townhomes built on it has four to six small houses each one is 1250 to 1500 square feet two stories three bedrooms cost the same thing as what a townhouse would cost same price point same folks can afford to buy it but now they can actually stay here throughout their life cycle whatever they need for a house they don't need to move because of the home type.

That's my dream, and I think we're all positioned to be able to do it.

And Parker can tell you more about increased FAR and lots of area coverage and all the things that actually get us there.

Really leaving me all the boring stuff.

Well, thank you so much, council members, for hosting us all.

I know we all really appreciate the opportunity, particularly this year.

I know that I've often called 2024 as really the biggest opportunity year for housing that we've had since the birth of the Growth Management Act, thanks in large part to the tremendous work that our state partners have been doing, not only with House Bill 1110, but really so much around it as well.

My name is Parker Dawson.

I use they, them pronouns.

I'm gender nonconforming.

I'm here on behalf of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

As a refresher, we have about 2,500 members working in King and Snohomish County, about 400 who operate in Seattle.

Collectively, we're the largest and oldest home builders association in the country and are very proud to build virtually all for sale family housing options in Seattle.

At the Master Builders Association, we do work for those members from a broad suite of educational opportunities to help them navigate the often complex web of permitting and process that goes on with building even a single house.

We have been working to support and lead jurisdictions toward environmental modernization of building processes through our Build Green program, which is Another shout out to the city Seattle has been incredibly successful in this jurisdiction.

We thank our city partners in that regard And also through the work that I do and that of my colleagues in government affairs We work with our government partners every day to make sure that through our policy decision-making processes we're really centering the people that we build for which are families and So often in discussions that I've seen about our comp plan this year, we've really had two conversations that have seemed to miss each other, talking about affordable housing, incredibly needed affordable housing, rental options from zero to 50% or zero to 60%, which we know we have been lacking and we know we need to find solutions.

more diverse strategies to fulfill.

But then we talked about large development, mid-rise, high-rise buildings, 400-unit-plus apartment buildings or condo buildings, you know, when you're not even really getting a family unit and it's still selling for over $1.5 million somehow.

But what we really don't talk about is that family housing that Sol had alluded to, that two-story house, 1,500 square feet, three bedrooms, something that a family can purchase and grow in, stay in, something that A person who has gotten the chance to live here their whole lives doesn't have to sell and leave their community for just to be able to have a dignified retirement in options where people who don't have the luxury of being able to access a multifamily home even can really get around in and learn to call home.

There are several things that do drive up those costs.

I know that I'll be repeating much of it.

The significant deficit in housing stock that we have is a huge one.

You know, I think that you probably saw from that ADU map that was presented prior to our panel, we're making decent progress in this regard.

But I know that several presentations given to this council throughout the year have shown that I think it's around 88 or 90,000 units that we still need to get up to just to get to where we're supposed to be today.

That doesn't account for the total of, I think, around 120 or 130,000 that we're going to need over the next 20 years to really be in a solid place.

Another thing is permitting.

Council Member Strauss, I know that this is an issue near and dear to your heart and to me as well.

You know, in King County, the average permitting delay is about 8.6 months.

And for each month of that, or I'm sorry, for that whole process, You can end up racking up about $50,000 to $60,000 in holding costs.

I know holding costs is a strange term.

That can be everything from having to redo permitting processes, application fees, reschedule inspections, reorder materials, delays in labor costs.

That's really what we mean when we do say holding costs.

But as a little bit of an example, I have one builder who purchased a lot of land from the Beacon Development Authority down in South Beacon Hill about three or four years ago as part of an effort and a funding campaign to help them build affordable housing.

He chose to build 22 townhomes on that project.

Three and a half years later, we're just now getting work done with the city to bring to full council.

We're fingers crossed in August.

a proposal to commit final plot and be able to subdivide those units to actually be able to get them online and get families in those houses.

But when you're talking about an eight-month permitting process that adds on $50,000 per unit, and you're looking at 22 units in three years, that's, you know, What started out as 22 townhomes that really did seem like on paper an opportunity to create that dream of a mixed income dense community that would present an opportunity of anti-displacement options has unfortunately been blown out of the water just by time.

And then the last thing, and I'll love to get to questions as well.

But on the comp plan specifically, we've really got a great opportunity to attack a third prong of this issue, which is presenting more options for our families.

You know, a lot of the times when we're out in communities, we see nothing but town homes going up or ADUs and DADUs that look like town homes.

And while these are fantastic opportunities and starter homes for some folks, you know, making sure that we do have an opportunity to bring down that three-story tower to a two-story larger home that can't have three bedrooms, make sure that we can provide those options to more people at more affordable costs across the spectrum, you know, from 100, 120, all the way down to 80 and even 70% income.

One of the biggest issues of having to build and really relying on building up into a third story in order to get the FAR, the floor area ratio or bulk of the building, is that building a third story is more expensive, one, and it lowers the property value, two.

Not to mention that less people want to hike up three stories to get to their child or to get to their bedroom on a hot day in a city where we proudly don't use AC just like we proudly don't use umbrellas.

Well, with that, I'll wrap up.

And again, thank you so much and look forward to being part of this discussion and any of your questions.

Great.

Thanks, everybody, for being here and for being willing to respond.

I'll start with a couple of questions.

Um, so you've all talked a little bit about diversity of housing types.

Um, I know that there are state issues with sort of condos and how that works.

Um, but to your point, Parker, about, uh, townhomes being somewhat inaccessible for some people, I'm thinking about aging my aging parents.

Um, How do we support a three bedroom stacked flat opportunity that could also be for ownership in the city as we're talking about how to increase density.

We just heard that maybe ADUs or there's gonna be a shift away from ADUs.

So as we're thinking about what these different housing types could be, and we know that there is interest in ownership, that seems like a really viable option.

if we can make it work.

So I'm wondering if anybody wants to take that question.

Uh, sure.

Sorry.

Um, uh, Yeah, so first I want to dispel a quick myth.

I don't think that we're going to see a significant shift away from ADUs necessarily.

I think that they're going to remain unless the comp plan alters how they are treated through the permitting and development process.

A fantastic option for infill, which is really a lot of times the only option that we have in Seattle.

I do know that being able to incorporate ADUs lot splitting, simple fee outright lot splitting, the ability for you to not condominiumize that ADU or DADU, but portion off your land as a choice or not.

We'll do wonders in being able to give people the option, like your aging parents, for example, the ability to stay in their home and stay in their community while still being able to sell off a portion of that land through the DADU and be able to cash in on part of their retirement.

So I think that that's one really great inclusion that OPCD has stated they intend to include in that comp plan process.

But as far as...

you know, shifting toward types of housing that are more family inclusive.

Another myth is that townhomes are necessarily a distinct type of house, but oftentimes when we look around the city, you know, whether it's an ADU or a DADU or even a triplex, a quadplex, those do appear as townhomes and those are townhomes in many ways.

But making sure that when we look at the development standards for those types of housing, that we really keep in mind the ability to build them for families Again, going back to my statements on relying on height, very often what we do when we try and say, okay, how can we get density?

How can we get that third bedroom?

We say, okay, let's increase the FAR.

How are we going to fit that FAR?

Let's give them another story.

But we don't stop to consider, you know...

know what we're or the rest of the lot lot lot area coverage for example or setbacks a lot of other tools in our tool belt to make sure that we can reduce the street scale you know in other words blend in these housing choices with neighborhoods to make sure that we can get that density and we can give those amenities for families to really to move in or keep their housing in the long term.

But I'm happy to pass it off to others on the panel as well.

Yeah.

Just on the question of stacked flats specifically, I know stacked flats, if you look at it from a density perspective and, you know, how do you get family housing at scale in residential neighborhoods, I think stacked flats are really kind of the ultimate dream in a lot of ways, because you can go as many stories as you want and just keep adding more units.

My understanding, and I don't have a lot of process knowledge on stacked flats, my understanding is that there's not really a model for building them that's been kind of proven to work in these neighborhoods.

So maybe Seattle's a good place to pilot some of that, but I think stacked flats are a great example of the housing types that we can be looking to in the comp plan to try to incentivize and create opportunities for and you know just like parker was saying there are a lot of additional ways to to get a lot of different diversity of unit types to ensure we can accommodate a number of different folks in in neighborhoods but i think stat flats are well worth looking at for sure

I'll just add that at the state level, we're thinking about how we really make these opportunities accessible to folks.

So you all may be aware of a bill we passed, the Covenant Homeownership Act, which is really focused on expanding access to black home ownership in Washington State, in part by creating a new fund of resources to help families who've historically been displaced and redlined to gain access to housing that otherwise would be out of reach.

What we're working on right now is creating the opportunities for developers to build home ownership opportunities at lower costs through a variety of different models.

Cities can play a really essential role in creating that development regulation context, which can either increase the costs or decrease the costs.

And so looking at these different opportunities and how we align them with some of the state policy and funding opportunities to ensure our residents have access, I think is another piece of the work for us to be considering.

Thank you.

And this is, I'll...

Go ahead and ask my question and then hand it over if anybody else has a question.

We are, I'm sure we'll be talking about how we can achieve our housing goals, how we can increase home ownership.

I'm wondering if somebody could speak to how upzoning, which has created displacement and gentrification in the past, because we didn't anticipate and mitigate that.

So if you can talk a little bit about what measures could help with the anti-displacement so that we can increase the density throughout the city and make sure that folks can stay in their homes and stay in their communities.

Great, I'll start and I know everyone here has deep knowledge in this area.

I think it's important for us to really reflect on the impacts that our sort of checkerboard approach to upzoning has had on our more vulnerable communities.

communities here in Seattle.

We've gone through a period of a generation, two decades of extreme gentrification and displacement in certain areas of the city.

And we have an opportunity to take a different approach to density, having more broad scale and even in kind of up zones across the city.

So low level increases in density and zones in all areas of the city, and really looking at how we think about our neighborhood centers equitably across the city and how increasing density can impact existing residents and adjacent residents.

I think we, along with many other regions of the country have learned a lot about how to do density a lot more smartly.

Some of the state policy that has been put in place, I think helps to set the frame for that planning.

We're very fortunate, I think, to have really high quality staff here in the city who've been looking at these issues as well.

There are multiple other kinds of strategies.

You all just got a wonderful briefing on the Equitable Development Initiative.

Seattle is a leader in this way, and these strategies of having community-centered development is essential to making sure that communities community needs are deeply understood and that those who will benefit from development are actually driving how communities are developed what we look at is this integration of multiple features as well as you heard community amenities alongside housing alongside the kinds of services that we know that our families and communities need and that kind of integrated is something that unfortunately in the United States we don't have great reflex on, but initiatives like EDI are helping us to get smarter about.

Anybody else wanna?

Go ahead, Liz.

I was just going to say, I think we're really excited about the changes that have been made at the state level because I think beyond just Seattle, we're seeing cities across the region rezoning and having to look at sort of more closely also at displacement risks, thinking more clearly about racially disparate impacts in terms of housing.

So it's not just kind of one-off upzonings here and there, but sort of a regional look at kind of where we need housing overall.

So I think there are some really good tools that have come out of the state in terms of thinking more holistically about the context of displacement and rezonings too.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

Just understanding that we're making decisions here for Seattle, but all of the decisions we make here will impact surrounding cities and South King County particularly.

So it has ripple effects for sure.

Sol, were you going to say something?

I was just going to say that I think when we think about upzoning, right, we tend to think about it primarily in terms of number of units.

We just need to build as many units as we can.

And I think that misses the second part of the conversation, which is what kinds of units are we building?

And there are a lot of disconnects, I think, in our current housing policy between you know, this drive for just more density and more square footage at all costs and what translates to what people actually want and can afford on the ground.

And an example of that that, you know, I'm sure the three of you are very well aware of, but the idea of the MHA bonus right now in areas that are zoned for townhomes, allows a townhome developer to build a fourth story, which buyers don't want, right?

It's not a benefit.

So they're essentially getting something they don't want and having to pay more for that.

And that also makes that housing less affordable.

So it's just an example of, I think, something that the policy was very well-intentioned, but that didn't end up having the impact it was meant to on the ground.

So I think there's a lot of opportunities for very small changes that end up impacting what ends up ultimately getting built.

Because to me, the best way to prevent displacement is to ensure that we have a larger number of affordable homes that people actually want to buy.

And that's what we're missing right now is more homes at price points people can afford.

That's fundamentally what it really comes down to.

May I tack on as well?

Sure.

Just to extend on what Sol was saying, I almost feel like I should reboot the MythBusters show or something with the number of times I'm saying this.

But, you know, it's not exactly a true statement that density is going to lead to displacement, that up zones are going to lead to displacement.

It certainly can if you don't manage properly and you don't plan accordingly.

You know, one of the big things, particularly with what Sol was saying, You know, when you're looking at trying to incorporate truly affordable units, you know, a lot of times those affordable units can be absorbed into the cost of an incredibly large development, you know, something like 100, 200, 400 unit apartment building, you know, without increasing the cost and decreasing the affordability of the remainder of those units.

But when you are looking at a zone like low-rise or like neighborhood residential, You know, and you're trying to offset the cost of building that affordable unit with only one, maybe two, you know, three, if you're lucky, other units, depending on the type of site.

You know, that becomes a lot harder to make sure that the remainder of those units, other than that one affordable, are affordable to hardly anybody.

And while you may end up having one affordable unit for somebody to purchase, you are pricing out dozens of families who could have otherwise had an opportunity to occupy those others.

And as far as increasing the potential to six units in the NR zone and having the affordability bonus go up to, I think it's 1.8 FAR is the current draft in four stories.

Oftentimes, as Sol was saying, not wanting to buy that as a renter, I certainly wouldn't want to.

want to buy that and I would have a hard time accessing the whole thing not to mention that you know those units become less and less affordable over time you know I'll also just additional comment so separate from my role in the legislature I develop housing affordable housing for people who have experienced homelessness and this increase more broadly of density will bring down the cost of per unit development across the board, which will be important to make sure we regain some efficiency in our affordable housing development.

So as we invest as public funders and buying down rents, so people who are extremely low income or who are low income people coming out of homelessness can afford rents, that we gotta make sure that we're building these units at a cost that is affordable.

It is right now, all the holding costs and costs related to development regulation that drive up the costs impact our affordable housing developers in similar ways as they do our private sector developers.

That means the efficiency of our housing levy dollars and other public investments are just not going as far.

and creating a comprehensive plan that sets the frame that promotes more density in areas across the city, including, and especially in these sort of neighborhood centers where you can do larger developments that 100, 200, 300 unit buildings where you can incorporate a diversity of housing for people at all income levels, families who are extremely low income, people coming out of homelessness, et cetera, will be a tremendous benefit.

And buying down rents is the most efficient anti-displacement strategy you can get.

Very helpful.

I really appreciate all of you being here.

I think we're about to lose quorum.

So I'm going to thank you all for being here.

We will be having additional conversations like this on other topics and really look forward to having your participation in those as well.

So thank you all for being here very much.

Representative Macri, I appreciate you taking some time out of your very busy day.

I've lost my script, but here we go.

Okay.

Oh, this concludes the July 17th Land Use Committee meeting.

The next regularly scheduled Land Use Committee meeting is on August 7th, 2024. Thank you everyone for being here.

We are adjourned.

Thanks.

Thank you all.

Yeah, thank you.