Mayor signs legislation to place housing levy on ballot

Mayor Bruce Harrop.

Thank you, Tiffany.

Thank you very much.

Wait a minute.

Is this amplified?

OK, very good.

Before I talk about what is really exciting, hard work that you've all committed yourself to, I do want to recognize that within the last several hours, we suffered a tragedy on downtown, on the streets of downtown Seattle.

You'll read more about it tonight or tomorrow.

It involved a shooting and a very fortunate situation.

We don't know what motivated it.

We do have the suspect.

We do believe at this point, I think a life was lost.

And it's very sad.

And I don't generally try to start off a great event with that kind of sad news.

Excuse me, but I think it's important to ground this celebration into what's happening in our city, that they are relying on us.

They're relying on us for hope to deal with these complex issues of recklessness and violence, housing insecurity.

And we have to be rooted in love and compassion.

And I want to recognize we have some elected leaders here.

I see Councilmember Morales here.

I think I saw Councilmember Dan Strauss here.

Councilmember Mosqueda will speak after.

Am I missing any of your colleagues here?

I don't know.

But if I'm not, I want to commend all of you for being in this fight with me.

Thank you very much.

And our housing leaders.

OK.

Now, I'm going to re-approach the mic with a better attitude.

OK.

All right.

They know I say a lot of corny jokes.

So this is exciting.

And I'll tell you why it's so exciting.

9-0 vote.

These 9-0 votes just keep coming.

Thank you City Council for embracing what was very challenging to try to make sure that we calibrated this right to build more housing for those who need it the most and still be mindful of the fact that even when you're paying through using tools like this to pay through a tax that it could still have aggressive consequences.

Finding that balance between always trying to develop good policies to house and shelter people.

So what does this do?

This is a great investment by the voters when it passes on one of our most effective tools to reach housing affordability.

$707 million to produce and preserve 3,516 affordable apartments.

$122 million to support operations and maintenance of city funded affordable housing and stabilize workers to stabilize workers providing critical services to low income residents.

in more than 1,100 new and existing permanent supportive homes.

$51 million to create 177 new home ownership opportunities, including new affordable for sale homes and down payment assistance, and stabilize 90 low income homeowners through emergency home repair grants and foreclosure.

assistance, and $30 million to stabilize and prevent over 4,500 households from experiencing homelessness through short-term rental assistance and supportive services that will help them avoid eviction.

Now let's clap on that.

I have to thank all of our affordable housing warriors, our partners.

Some of them are represented here today.

And I'm just going to name a couple because you'll hear from their fine leaders in a second.

But there are so many more.

So I do apologize in advance if I didn't call out you or your organization.

But I do want to talk about the Housing Development Consortium, El Centro de la Raza, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, our own Office of Housing.

I plucked one of your advocates and asked her to lead this with you in a collaborative way.

And again, there's so many more that did this important work.

Now, my direction for the Technical Advisory Committee and you all fine leaders, quite frankly, was to go big and be bold.

We can't turn a dance around?

Yes.

Did I hear a clap?

Yeah, let's start us off with a clap on that one.

Not that stuff.

I want just a hard clap.

Be bold.

Be bold.

So thank you.

And I want to give a special shout out to Council Member Mosqueda.

your partnership in getting this legislation ready to send to the voters.

Not only the substance of what you did, but how you went about it.

Sometimes authenticity just can't be faked.

People will sense it, and they follow that kind of authenticity.

And I recognize several of you by name, but I was asked to stay to the script here, so I'm not going to call you out.

But with that, I'd like to start making your way, Council Member Mosquedez, this is your, this is your, And again, you have some of your colleagues here, your fine colleagues, but the council select committee on the housing levy, you just did outstanding work.

And I joked earlier by saying that another 9-0 vote.

The reason I say that was some level of humor.

And I said this earlier, and I need to make this point, that yesterday when I had a press conference on the use of drugs, and how we are going to go about it.

I said repeatedly, as many of you said, we'll leave with compassion.

We'll leave with treatment.

But I talked about it.

I got a little choked up, because I said that when people fought and talked about the war on drugs, I said, for some of you, it was a history lesson.

But for me, I survived it.

I was a walking target, as was everyone in my neighborhood, not too far from here.

And when the city council struggled to hear that pain and those concerns, That's one Seattle at its best, regardless of where you voted on that issue.

Listening, because I grew up in a Seattle where those voices were not heard.

That becomes important in policy.

One would argue that what happened was misaligned with what everyone wanted.

Some of us grew up in a city where the voices were not heard.

In this housing levy, most of you here fought for voices that are not and were not heard.

Some of them barely speak English.

Some of them are living in tents in conditions we wouldn't want anyone to live in.

live in.

So, this work that you're doing, yes, we'll celebrate it, I'll crack some more corny jokes, we'll have fun with it, but I can't impress upon you enough the outstanding, humane work that you did under your leadership.

Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Well, colleagues, let's continue to talk about the why we do this and the who we're listening to.

This housing levy is another historic opportunity for Seattle to lead.

It's an opportunity for us to undo the harms of past discriminatory policies, like racist lending, restrictive covenants, redlining, exclusionary zoning, that still persist throughout Seattle's fabric.

Is our opportunity to support community driven housing design to help fight displacement, root community in place, and enable residents to participate and thrive in our local economy.

This is part of the solution among many components of how we fight the most pressing crisis in our city, in our region, and in our nation.

And that is lack of access to affordable housing and stable housing.

We see this play out every day.

We ride the bus to work.

We go through our community.

We see the pressing need and we know neighbors who need access to affordable housing for families, for seniors, for vets, for students, for workers.

This is part of the solution, and it has been only made possible because of all of the collective power and ideas rooted in community that are present in this room.

This is your levy.

You made this happen.

This is a year and a half's worth of work.

So thank you, community partners, for providing the housing levy for us today.

And as the mayor said, this was a unanimous vote, so I want to thank my council colleagues who are here, Councilmember Morales, Councilmember Strauss, thank you for your support throughout this process.

To all of my colleagues for their yes vote today, we had a strong foundation, Mr. Mayor, in the proposal that you sent down, led by the Office of Housing, because it was rooted in community.

A year's worth plus of work led by the Office of Housing with our technical advisory committee who provided feedback for what this housing levy needed to be over the course of the next seven years and how we would invest $970 million directly into what community needs, access to housing.

affordable units, a first-time home that they can call their own, and services, the workers that provide the services inside and the workers that build the building outside.

That's what you wanted and that's what we created with this housing levy.

Yeah, let's give it up for them.

So for the affordable housing leaders, community partners, community members who participated in the technical advisor committee, I want to shout out the 20 members who participated in the year's worth of efforts to bring through the office of housing, through the mayor's office, and to council this foundation for which we built upon.

Let's give it up for the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, Catholic Community Services, DESC, Homesite, Plymouth, Chief Seattle, Enterprise, GMD, We Are In, United Way of King County, University of Washington, Cannon-Taylor, U.S. Bank, SCIPTA, PDA, SEIU, 1199 Healthcare Northwest, King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Seattle Foundation, Seattle Housing Development Consortium, and Seattle Housing Authority and Bellwether.

Give it up for that technical advisory committee who provided feedback.

And importantly, to our community partners who provided feedback as the legislation was transmitted to us.

We worked over the course of about three or four months prior to the legislation coming down and receiving feedback from all of you so that we could do exactly what the mayor said, run a smooth process that was collaborative and already included your input, because that's what Seattle voters deserve.

answers, solutions to the crisis, to see us collectively working together.

And the folks who helped make this process so meaningful, transformational, and impactful are our community partners who helped to receive the proposal as transmitted and added additional information into it.

We stood together at a press conference as the legislation was introduced, and we heard from leaders like MLK Labor, SEIU 1199, Seattle, King County Building Trades, Laborers 242, Northwest Carpenters, IBEW 46, who are the workers who said, we want to build these housing units, and we want to work inside, and we need good living wage jobs to invest in the health of our community and the health of our local economy.

Let's give it up for our labor partners who helped put this package together.

To our community organizations, who we get a chance to meet with on a quarterly basis through the housing community roundtable that our office convenes.

Thank you, Aaron House from chief of staff in my office and lead on housing.

We pull together folks and ask, what would you like to see?

And the folks that we talk to on a regular basis provided input on the original proposal, helped with the enhancements that we added via amendments, and are here celebrating this comprehensive proposal for voters today because they know it's not just enough to put money on the table, when community organizations that are led by communities of color are often at the back of the line.

It was the work of folks like Africatown Community Land Trust, Filipino Community Center, El Centro de la Raza, among others, and skipped the PDA, among others who said, Money is good, but prioritization is important.

And our community is facing the highest rates of displacement across the area.

We need to be first in line to receive some of these dollars and make sure that we can go to other lenders and say the city of Seattle believes in us.

We have proof of concept, you should too.

So thank you so much to our community organizations who are led by folks of color and are leading the way in helping to design housing from the community vision, not just units, but a place to call home.

And Chief Seattle's in that group, too.

Let's give it up for those community organizations.

And finally to our affordable housing providers who have been at the table and as we heard from Community Roots Housing today have been also allies in this call for organizations that are trying to serve those who are highest risk of displacement to be part of the solution to receive that funding up front.

Thank you so much to Community Roots Housing, Habitat for Humanity, DESC, Plymouth Housing and Housing Development Consortium and so many others.

Thank you for your generous work and affordable housing development.

So Mr. Mayor, I'm going to summarize here because I think what we need to do is hand it over to our community partners who really led the way so that we can then hand it off to the voters.

But let's remember what's included in this package.

We've created thousands of deeply affordable housing units, the commitment to preserve housing and to build housing, services in place for neighbors experiencing homelessness, for our most vulnerable community members, that is the promise in this levy.

The promise in this levy is preventing and reducing homelessness through increased investments in rental assistance dollars and homelessness prevention supports so that individuals and families can stay stably housed.

And thank you to Seattle Housing Authority.

Where are you at?

I know you're here.

Seattle Housing Authority who has not only included 400 vouchers in this housing levy, but has also complemented that with the housing vouchers from the past levy that they are continuing to build upon.

Thank you to Seattle Housing Authority for their continued partnership in this and for really stepping up.

The promise in this affordable housing levy is to create permanent affordable home ownership opportunities, to get out of generational poverty, to create opportunity for our communities most at risk of displacement, to right those historic wrongs that we started with, and make sure that our community is able to build generational wealth through home building.

The promise in this levy is not just one bedrooms or studios.

We're talking two, three, and four bedroom units so more families can afford to live in the city that they work in.

And we're talking about supporting our workers, workers who are building these buildings with community workforce agreement and prevailing wage for the first time.

Woo, I heard a woo.

Give it up.

And we're talking about supporting and investing in the workers, the DESC workers that are represented by SEIU 1199, the workers within our affordable housing units that are represented by OPEIU Local 8, and so many more who provide the services to our most vulnerable community.

Mayor Harrell, his team, the Office of Housing, the community members who drafted this, you put that in.

You made that a core tenant of the affordable housing levy, really for the first time ever.

We cannot help keep people stably housed if we don't invest in the workforce that on a daily basis is figuring out how they're going to afford to put food on the table and a roof over their head themselves.

This housing levy changes that and invests directly in the workers who are providing these critical services.

Yeah, I saw some applause for that, okay.

In summary, this is about what good governance looks like.

It's about responding to the most pressing crisis in our community by listening to community.

This housing levy in partnership with Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax will help stabilize those wages and make the three and four bedroom commitment possible.

This housing levy package is about health.

It's about resilience.

It's about workers finding a place to call home, building from the ground up, and investing in frontline workers and those workers on the outside.

It is about a transformational approach to creating new homes, home ownership opportunities, and creating generational wealth.

It is about childcare and community hubs, and creating cultural hubs and small business opportunities.

It is about families, seniors, kiddos, and the individuals who are our neighbors but need a place to call home.

This is a historic moment.

Thank you for all of your work.

Now we hand it off to you voters.

Thank you so much.

And it's my pleasure to introduce the person at the helm of the Housing Development Consortium who has helped to lead us to get to this historic moment today in deep collaboration, a thought partner, and truly an innovative and visionary housing leader, Patience Malaba.

Today's the day, folks.

Congratulations.

A round of applause for all of you.

As introduced, I am Patience Malaba, and I have the honor and privilege of serving as the executive director of the Housing Development Consortium.

We are a membership association that is represented fully in this room by affordable housing developers across the King County region, by community-based organizations and advocates across the region.

I also got to serve on the Technical Advisory Committee, working alongside with many of you who are in this room in shaping and developing the housing levy proposal that we've seen across the finish line.

So together here, alongside someone that I confidently call a warrior and champion for affordable housing, Mayor Harrell, Seattle City Council member who has been leading and championing affordable housing and shepherded this process to this moment and deliver to us, Council Member Mosqueda, all of the City Council members who are here, our HDC board members who I see here, I see my board of directors across the board, see my board chair right there alongside other board of directors.

to the coalition of HDC members who have shown up above and beyond, and the partners from the labor community, from the business community, who've worked with us.

Together in this moment, we're marking a significant milestone for affordable housing in Seattle.

This is a crucial step in our collective commitment in building an affordable and equitable Seattle.

We all have that commitment, and not only are we talking big about it, but we're delivering.

The housing levy proposal is big and it is bold.

And I can call it a generational investment in desperately needed affordable homes.

It is an investment in the people, and this is for the first time in the life of the levy, the people who work in the buildings and make them homes.

So often, it's very easy for the wonky among us, I see all of you, to talk about numbers and policies when we talk about the housing levy.

But at its core, the housing levy is about people.

It is about the well-being and stability of our most vulnerable neighbors who need support.

It is about the vibrancy of our community.

It is about building a future that is equitable for the city of Seattle.

Personally, I know every day at the end of the day, after long meetings, all I want to do is to go to a place that is safe and I call home.

And I firmly believe that every individual and every family in Seattle deserves a safe place that is affordable and stable to call home.

And today we're taking a stride as a community toward that goal.

Through this effort, We're building, we're leveraging on the successes of levies that have delivered above and beyond.

Levies that have built thousands of permanent affordable homes.

But it's important for us as leaders to acknowledge that while we've made that progress, the need for affordable housing in our community is greater than it's ever been.

Skyrocketing rents continue to displace people.

In one of the wealthiest corners of the world, people are being displaced and don't have housing security.

And disproportionately, the people most impacted are low income, they are black, they are indigenous, and people of color communities.

And as daunting as that sounds, with the brilliance and the excellence in this room and the great work that I know all of you do, we know what works.

And it is to scale investments in affordable housing while dually changing our land use policies.

I've lost my train of thought here.

But let me say this.

The work we're doing today is just one milestone.

It's the beginning of the work.

It is time now, beyond the glamour of the great comers that are with us today, and the beauty of this room, to roll up our sleeves and talk to our neighbors in Seattle.

That's the work, folks, to get the levy across the finish line.

Your support is not only vital, it is absolutely necessary.

So today we celebrate, but tomorrow demands that we get out there and continue to dedicate ourselves to educating, to have an unwavering commitment to ensure that affordable housing is a reality for all the residents in Seattle who need it.

I am glad to be working with all of you because together we're doing the work of building a future.

for my daughter and many of our sons to grow up in a community that is affordable, equitable for us all.

And with that, thank you.

I would like to introduce.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce a community partner, an HTC member, who has worked alongside us and has been a true community champion, Miguel Maestas from El Centro de la Raza.

Over to you.

Thank you, Patience.

Good afternoon, everyone.

On behalf of El Centro de la Raza, the Center for People of All Races, and our Executive Director, Estela Ortega, we are honored to share a few words.

And so wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues.

First, thank you, Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Councilmember Morales, Councilmember Strauss, all of the council members for the unanimous vote on the levy.

Thank you for your leadership to move the Seattle Housing Levy forward.

Perhaps at no time in our history is the levy more needed, as is the leadership to get it done.

So thank you.

It is great to be here to celebrate the passage and signing of the levy legislation and now, as has been said, begins the hard work to make sure that this cornerstone of affordable housing, this cornerstone funding continues to be supported by the Seattle voters as it has for decades.

Looking back, we know there has been so much done by so many to advocate for, to fight for, and build affordable housing to make sure that it is part of the future of Seattle.

Now let us honor that past by rolling up our sleeves and working to get this levy passed in November.

The affordable housing crisis continues to be exacerbated by rising costs and gentrification in our neighborhoods.

And during the pandemic, we all saw the role of essential workers play out.

The levy will allow thousands who work in our city, many in essential jobs to afford to live here.

So many are stressed by spending more time and more money to get to work to make this city run.

If you work in Seattle, you should be able to afford to live in Seattle.

We know this levy is about advancing racial equity.

People of color disproportionately experience homelessness and displacement.

It supports community-based organizations like El Centro de la Raza and others in this room to develop housing.

And when I say develop housing, I mean be the developer.

Not just offer up the land or partnering with a developer.

It means being the developer of affordable housing and directly addressing the crisis of our communities and that our communities face.

It supports building assets for our communities for generations to come.

I am happy to share that tomorrow at 11 a.m.

is the groundbreaking event for El Centro's new mixed-use development in Columbia City, which is named For Amigos Beloved Community.

Thank you.

Everyone is invited, of course.

We all know how vital, safe, quality, affordable housing is for our most vulnerable people.

It is critical to improving health outcomes and employment and economic opportunity.

And just as important, and the mayor said this, it is the hope that it provides that lower income and working families and their children do have a future in Seattle.

Mayor Harrell, honorable council members, and everyone here today, thank you for your leadership and for supporting that hope and that future for our city and its people.

Thank you so much.

Mil gracias.

Now we're going to sign the bill.

If you would like to be in the picture, you guys know how this works.

You're not new.

This is the moment.

If you want to be in this photo, which you do, because this is the biggest and best levee that the city of Seattle has ever seen, please position yourselves in the position at this time.

What's on now?

What I will say is after all of those very eloquent and inspirational speeches This will probably be the shot right here.

And I was very inspired by what I heard.

Thank you.

It's obvious, as I said about Council Member Esqueda, it's obvious the authenticity is coming from the leadership group, the housing leaders.

We are very fortunate in Seattle to have this set of housing leaders in our community.

We are very blessed to have that.

So let me sign this and pass out some pens.

All right.

That one.

First, is Council Member Mosqueda?

Okay, you're gonna be the pin distributor.

Oh my goodness.

Okay.

And I think as Patience says...

Just making sure all of them feel official.

There we go.

As Patience says, the work begins tonight and tomorrow.

You know, everyone dies to get a pin.

Brianna, did you put enough pins out here?

My goodness gracious.

Okay, I'm going to have to milk this last gal out.

If you don't have enough, I have a couple of pens.

Did I get to take the pet back?

These are going to be our magic pens.

All right.

One Seattle.

We got it.

Thank you everybody.

It's been a great day and it's going to be a great victory.

We'll see you on the other side of this thing.