Select Committee on Citywide Mandatory Affordable Housing (MHA) - District 1 - Public Hearing

One business item today, and that's Council Bill 119184, which would implement the city's mandatory housing affordability program.

We're going to start this discussion with a brief presentation by Sarah Maxana, who's here to my left, who's going to walk us through the principal zoning changes proposed here in District 1. We'll then open up the official public hearing Comment and when we do that there you'll find two microphones one here in the front of the auditorium And then one in the back of the auditorium if you choose to use either one, whichever you prefer This is the 11th meeting of our select committee on citywide mandatory housing affordability and It's our last of our meetings that we're doing out here in districts.

So, look for more information about more meetings coming to you soon, but this is the final of our district-focused discussions is tonight.

So, I'm going to officially read this item into the record, and then we'll move on to Sarah's presentation.

And after Sarah concludes, we'll open it up for the public hearing.

So this is Council Bill 119184, an ordinance relating to mandatory housing affordability, rezoning certain land and modifying development standards throughout the city, implementing MHA requirements and modifying existing development standards to improve livability.

Without further ado, please take it away, Ms. Maxanan.

Thank you.

So I'm going to walk through an overview of the mandatory housing affordability program, what the legislation does, and then walk through each of the five urban villages in District 1 with an overview of the rezone proposal.

So mandatory housing affordability is a program whereby we are putting in place new zoning that conveys additional development capacity so that more housing can be built in locations.

And in exchange, there are new requirements that development must contribute to affordable housing either by providing that affordable housing on site as part of the project or by paying a fee in lieu to the Office of Housing so that those dollars can be leveraged with other city dollars, state, and federal dollars to produce more affordable housing around the city.

The outcomes of MHA are to create at least 6,000 affordable units that's affordable to 60% of the area median income or below over the next 10 years.

And there's two ways that development can comply with MHA, as I noted.

There's the performance, which is creating new affordable units on site or payment contributing to affordable housing.

In order to put MHA in place, there are two components.

There are the new requirements, the affordability requirements, and then rezones that essentially enact or trigger those requirements.

And so without MHA, you might have what is here a six-story building.

It's a market rate building under the current code with no affordability required.

With MHA, there is a rezone that allows additional development capacity.

in this case noted with a new story in bluish green at the top.

And with that new development capacity, there's either an affordable housing contribution.

Oh, it hasn't been going.

Wow.

Thank you.

There we go.

Sorry about that, folks.

So I'll turn around and make sure that we're on the right slide.

So it's not very easy to see in this color, but this should be a seven-story building on the right-hand side.

And that shows the additional development capacity, one story.

But with that, the developer has to pay into affordable housing or provide it on site.

And they have to do that regardless of whether they take advantage of the new zoning or not.

So even if they were to build a three story building on that site, they have to contribute to affordable housing.

There we go.

Putting MHA in place has been a what is now almost three-year process since the recommendations from the HALA committee first came out in the summer of 2015. During that time, Department of Neighborhoods and Office of Planning and Community Development and Office of Housing have been throughout the city talking about how to shape these rezone proposals in each neighborhood.

There was a deliberate effort in the case of MHA guided by city council to make an extra effort to engage underrepresented communities, particularly communities of color and low income and rental households.

Engagement shaped the proposal in several ways.

Some of the common themes that we heard over that two and a half years is that there is a need to create more housing that's affordable across the full income spectrum, that there is a tremendous amount of concern about minimizing displacement of current residents as Seattle changes and grows, that there is a desire to see more housing choices, particularly home ownership and family-sized units, A desire to see more housing opportunities near parks, schools, transportation, other key amenities or assets.

That a number of urban villages, neighborhoods talked about urban design needs and creating more of a sense of place in their urban village.

And that where possible, we should be looking at ways to promote environmental sustainability, specifically supporting transit use and putting in place protections for trees.

So in District 1, there are five urban villages.

Sorry, it's a little sticky here.

The MHA ReZone proposal proposes new zoning for all multifamily and commercial areas throughout the city, and that includes all urban villages and urban village expansion areas.

Urban villages were defined in 1994 in the city's comprehensive plan.

And they are neighborhoods throughout the city that are meant to be a focal point for investment and transit and other amenities, and also a place where the city is going to accommodate most of its growth.

In District 1, there are five urban villages.

The proposal uses a growth and equity analysis to distribute the new development or the new growth differently across neighborhoods.

The growth and equity analysis was in the 2016 comprehensive plan, and it looked at variety of neighborhood characteristics to develop two indices.

One was a displacement risk, and that looked at various socioeconomic characteristics of community members.

and rated neighborhoods as having a higher or lower relative risk of displacement.

And the other index was access to opportunity, and that looks at the various building blocks, the physical components of neighborhoods that are correlated with having more success in life, whether that's access to school, access to jobs, mobility, access to parks and open space.

It's important to note that this is a system that looks at neighborhoods relative to each other.

So saying that a neighborhood is lower risk of displacement or lower access to opportunity is not to say that it does not have any risk of displacement.

It just puts it on a relative scale to other communities in the city.

There are five urban villages in District 1, and they vary on displacement risk from low to high, as well as vary on access to opportunity.

So going through the urban villages one by one, Admiral, the primary principle that governed the rezone proposal is that for communities at high access to opportunity and low risk of displacement, we propose more M1 and M2 level changes.

M, M1 and M2 are a way of categorizing the scale of the rezone, so M is the minimum to put the program in place, M1 is a little bit higher, M2 is a little bit higher than that.

And so in our communities with high access to opportunity, low risk of displacement, you're going to see more proposed M1 and M2, those larger changes.

The single-family zoning in the Admiral area is proposed to go to residential small lot and low-rise.

That's the first bump and the second bump up from single-family.

There is no urban village expansion being proposed to the boundaries of this urban village.

We are only expanding urban villages around the 10-minute walkshed to frequent transit nodes, and Admiral did not meet that transit threshold.

And the goal of this proposal is to support the mixed-use corridor and node on California Avenue, and it goes up to 75 feet.

Moving to West Seattle Junction.

Similar to Admiral, this is a community with high access to opportunity and lower risk of displacement, so the proposal includes more M1 and M2 level changes.

There is also an urban village expansion being proposed here to capture the full 10-minute walk shed around the primary node of the urban village.

The existing single family in the urban village and the urban village expansion area is proposed to go to either residential small lot or low rise.

And that is intended to create transitions from the higher density areas to the lower density areas by tapering down.

There's no expansion being proposed for the future ST3 station at Avalon.

And the goal is to support the mixed use nodes and corridors and allows up to 95 feet in height.

Moving down to Morgan Junction, Morgan Junction is a community with low access to opportunity and low risk of displacement relative to other communities.

And so the proposal includes mostly M level changes.

That's just that minimum bump to put the program in place with more limited M1 and M2 level changes.

The existing single family is proposed to go to single residential small lot or low rise.

There's no urban village expansion being proposed.

As with Admiral, it did not meet that transit threshold for an expansion.

And there's support of the mixed use nodes and corridors up to 55 feet in height and some special considerations for some steep ravines and other topographical issues.

Moving to South Park, this is a community with high risk of displacement relative to other communities in the city and low access to opportunity.

And we're proposing just M-level changes, just the minimum to put the program in place throughout the urban village.

The single family in South Park is proposed to go to residential small lot.

There's no urban village expansion.

Likewise, does not meet that transit threshold.

The commercial zones that are in, this was one thing that we heard very loudly from the community members about the importance of retaining the existing commercial businesses that are there and a desire to see the existing commercial and neighborhood commercial zoning classifications remain.

So we've supported that.

And finally, Westwood Highland Park or South Delridge area.

Primary principle, as with South Park, this is an area at high risk of displacement, so we're proposing M-level changes throughout most of the urban village.

The existing single family within the urban village is proposed to go to residential small lot.

There's no urban village expansion.

There is a change being proposed for commercially zoned properties to go to neighborhood commercial and with this would come additional design amenities that encourage more of a pedestrian scale environment.

And this is to support existing mixed-use node at Westwood Village up to 75 feet and along Delridge Way up to 55. There are a lot of areas in District 1 outside of those five urban villages that have multifamily or commercial zoning in place today.

And in all of those places, MHA does take effect, and it's just through M-level changes, so just that minimum bump to put the program in place.

And while this was primarily an exercise in putting new zoning in place to allow additional housing choices, there was also the opportunity to visit what are called development standards, and these are the regulations that govern how buildings, the bulk and scale of buildings, and there was an opportunity here to look at how how the buildings can better be representative of the neighborhood character and the values that community members were bringing to us in engagement.

How this new, there was a lot of interest in how new capacity will look and feel.

And this is a rendering from a 3D modeling that we did during engagement that shows single family on the left and low-rise on the right.

And in the distance, you see yellow buildings, and those are rezoned buildings that are taking advantage of the new development capacity.

So you see some townhouses and some three- and four-story apartment buildings on the right.

As I noted on the proposed development standards, it was an opportunity to look at urban design features as well as tweaking landscaping requirements, putting in place new protections for trees and improving sustainability of new development.

There we go.

But at the end of the day, what this program is really about is trying to get more income and rent-restricted housing for our city's affordability crisis.

And this program is expected to produce at least 6,000 new income and rent-restricted housing that will stay affordable for 75 years through these rezones.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

We've been joined by Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you for being here with us this evening.

So I'm going to now open the public hearing.

We've got, at this point, about 40 folks who have signed up.

The first couple of people who've signed up as a group, I invite you to come to the microphone as a group when your name is called.

And groups who've signed up as more than four or more folks will have the opportunity to speak for five minutes, whereas individuals will have two minutes this evening.

So Charlie Lapham, your group first, followed by Matt Hutchins, 1B, and then Kirsten Smith, your group, 2A.

Hi, thank you.

I'm Charlie.

I'm with MLK Labor.

We represent 150 unions across the county and over 100,000 workers.

We are strongly supportive of the policy because we need to make Seattle a place where working class residents can live and work.

And we believe that these policies would help accomplish that goal.

So I'm happy to be here with a couple of union members and union leaders to speak from their perspectives.

Hi, I'm Brooke Salzer, Executive Board Member of the King County Labor Council and the Washington Federation of Public Employees.

I currently live here in District 1. My wife and I just purchased a beautiful home.

and we're raising our beautiful daughter and soon-to-be baby son.

And we're in support of this, because you know why?

That was an American goal right there, to be able to afford a house.

My first house had a dirt floor, and we were migrant farmers, and now I'm living in this beautiful house.

And I ain't gonna stand in the way of anybody else getting affordable housing.

I'm not gonna stand in the way, because my members are being driven out of this city.

Five years ago, I had 337 members living here in District 1. Now, when I pull out my list, I only have 119. Those members are no longer able to live here and work in Seattle.

They're now traveling from Federal Way to Tacoma.

And that's less time that they get to spend with their families.

That's less time they get to get home and read to their child.

Policy just creates more homes.

That's what we're about.

Let's knock down these fake walls.

We're not Trump here.

We're not building walls to keep the community out.

Let's knock those down.

Let's let people live in Seattle where they work.

Thank you.

I'm Jake Simpson.

I'm a member of Unite Here Local 8 and I'm a cook at Facebook.

My wife is also a union member with UFCW.

We're both members of the High Point community.

We have a two-year-old daughter named Sophia.

We take her to Myrtle Reservoir Park every day after daycare.

It's super important to us to be able to raise our daughter in the community that she has begun her life in.

She attends daycare two blocks down the road from our apartment and without this proposal being passed, we don't see that future being possible for our family.

Like he said, there are a ton of union members, full-time workers that work very hard and grew up in the city and are now being pushed out and are unable to live here.

This is the most important thing we can do for our community and I urge you guys to uphold your responsibility to the working class.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Matt Hutchins.

Matt, you're going to be followed by Kirsten Smith's group.

We're lucky.

We live in a house we love, in a neighborhood we love, in a city we love.

We've worked hard and we're kind of blessed, but honestly we were just lucky.

Opportunities that we've had don't exist for everyone and many of the people in this room.

They're all on the outside looking in.

I worry about people who are just 10 years younger than me that have no opportunity to buy a house.

And where are my employees going to live?

Are people of color segregated by inequitable planning over the last century?

Where are they going to live?

Who gets to live near jobs, near schools, near transit, near great parks?

I might worry about my future, whether I'll be able to age in place and stay in my neighborhood.

I'm not sure.

I'm more concerned with whether my kid will be able to live here in this, the neighborhood where she's growing up in 20 years.

And at this rate, no way.

So I'm here tonight to say we've got a housing crisis, an inequitable city, an affordable city with climate change on the horizon.

We need more bold action.

And now.

Delay is not going to make these problems disappear.

It's only going to make them worse.

Building more homes for those who need them is a fundamental societal necessity.

They're a community asset that we all benefit from.

It's an economic engine and an environmental imperative.

Until we acknowledge this, the biggest threat to our neighborhood is continued inaction.

If we don't act, we're slamming the door on our future.

I want to keep West Seattle livable, affordable, vibrant, and growing.

To do that, we need to embrace housing options, big and small, affordable, market rate, apartments, condos, backyard cottages, family flats, so the people that make West Seattle great can continue to build this community.

MHA is just the first step.

We need every tool in the toolbox.

Please support Housing for All.

Thank you.

Kirsten Smith's group, 2A.

You're going to be followed by Laura Lowe, 2B, and I think it's Hicks-Von Vette, 3A.

I'm sorry if it's something other than Hicks.

Sorry.

Please.

Good evening.

My name is Kirsten Smith, and I'm the manager of policy at AIA Seattle, the American Institute of Architects.

The architects at AIA believe in building communities for everyone.

I'm one example.

I live in Delridge, and I live in a single family neighborhood, and I would be happy to have it more dense.

I would be happy to have my block more dense, although I will admit that they're not on the list for MHA at this time.

AIA Seattle endorses MHA as critical to ensuring that the city's growth and the growth of its affordable housing options go hand in hand.

As architects, we are strongly rooted in urban design principles and are experiencing firsthand the impact of MHA in those areas of Seattle where it is already in place.

We look forward to working with the city to implement and improve MHA over time.

Hello, my name is Mingli Yuan.

I'm an architect and a West Seattle resident, and this is my daughter.

Hi!

And I've seen many of my co-workers, many of my friends leave the city because it's just not affordable, and they're young professionals.

And if they're not able to afford, who can start to afford living in the city?

I am co-chairing a committee inside the AIA, which is the committee on homelessness.

We have about 40 members, and as part of our research into homelessness and how we can get folks off the streets and into more permanent housing, We found that systems like rapid rehousing aren't as effective in our region just due to the high cost of housing, that putting folks in these housing situations and then having the aid be cut off after a while just leads them back into homelessness.

And so really what our group feels like we need to see is just more affordable housing, and we think MHA is a great way to do that.

Hi, my name is Megan Altendorf.

I am the Subcommittee Chair of the Advocacy Subcommittee for the Committee on Homelessness for AAA Seattle.

I'm also an architect.

Seattle is in the midst of a housing crisis.

We do not have the luxury of sprawling flat land available for development like suburban cities of the Midwest.

As a result of our beautiful geographic surroundings, we only have a finite amount of land in which we can add housing here in Seattle.

We believe that density is the answer and that change needs to begin now, not in five, 10, or 15 years.

I would also like to reiterate that we hope that you council members are open to the feedback from professionals such as architects who are analyzing and reacting to land use regulations on a daily basis.

And the AIA specifically hopes to work with the city to determine if the affordable housing rates required of developers should be adjusted in the future, ensure good design principles are used in the development of affordable housing projects, and identify urban amenities that Seattle must invest in alongside affordable housing.

Thank you.

No other members?

Thank you.

Laura, you're going to be followed by Mr. Van Vett, 3A, and Jordan Ream, 3B.

I just want to say for the news cameras, this sign does not represent my views, nor any of the people that have spoken already.

And I can give you something that does represent my views, if you'd like that.

My name is Laura Lowe.

I'm a renter in the U District.

And I'm here on behalf of another renter who wanted to be here tonight, but is taking care of his family.

He asked me to read what he's going through and why he supports mandatory housing affordability.

He's part of a family with good jobs, union benefits, and really awesome kids.

They bike and bus everywhere.

They're lucky enough to do that.

And they're lucky enough to have fairly good housing security.

There's very few options in their neighborhood for housing for the four of them.

And the city as a whole, they're looking at prices in their neighborhood over $800,000 due to scarcity.

He believes that 90% of the city should be open to apartments.

Right now they're banned in 90% of where we can build in the city.

He would like affordable multifamily housing all over, housing for intergenerational living, car-free living, pedestrian-friendly streets, arterials and safe bike lanes, transit-only lanes to prioritize buses, missing middle housing, which means housing like old-fashioned courtyards, duplexes, row homes, things that I lived in in Chicago, and really focus on forms of social housing that increase public health as well as the way we interact with each other.

Um, we need much more...

We all probably agree here that we're frustrated, which is why we showed up today.

Um, we're frustrated with our leaders.

Either we think the leaders are doing too much or too little.

And the people that aren't as angry as we are aren't here.

The people that are just at home and are just like, everything's going fine, they didn't show up tonight.

And there's a new study about bikes that showed that when you just took a survey about what people thought about bike share, it was like 71% of people were happy with it.

But the council is mostly hearing 80% negative feedback every day.

And that represents the same thing with the housing conversation, is they're only hearing from people that are angry.

They're not hearing from everyone else that's happy.

So please take that in mind when you make your decision.

Thank you.

Thank you, Laura.

Hicks, Nix, Niels.

Sorry.

I'm sorry about that.

That's all right.

I probably spelled my name quickly when I signed in.

It's Niels Von Veen.

Sorry.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 38 years and before that grew up near the University Village.

I'm very much in favor of affordable housing and aware that the city needs to plan for increased density.

One of the major issues that we have here in the surrounding Fauntleroy neighborhood is the density of the transient pass-through traffic that serves the ferry, Lincoln Park, the nearby commercial areas in Westwood Village and White Center, and beyond.

The biggest impact in the short term, in terms of the density impacts and upzonings that there would be, would be on the parking availability, which has been a really big issue because so many people, in the case of the rapid C bus, come down and park their cars.

and take the rapid C bus and park in the neighborhood.

This neighborhood began as very much a bedroom community for nearby Boeing workers.

And I think the important thing when taking into account the impact of this plan is that there needs to be a really significant investment in infrastructure beyond what's been talked about to support the increased density.

I don't want to see what happened in Ballard happen in this neighborhood.

The increased density has not resulted in more affordable housing.

And in terms of all the discussion that I just heard, those 6,000 units, I would like to hear a number about how many houses or how many units there are that the developers have had to make a lot more money in the upsizing of, it's not more affordable housing, there's just more housing that sells for more money.

So, thank you.

Jordan.

Folks, thank you.

If we take 30 seconds to applaud after every speaker, we will be much later tonight, so I appreciate that enthusiasm, but Jordan.

Jordan, 3B, followed by James Rolera, 4A.

Yeah, I've been to a number of these meetings throughout the city, throughout the neighborhoods, and I've heard people plead for their neighborhoods not to be wrecked.

And the hall of people that I see come forward through most of these meetings is generally a parade of white privileged.

I don't see many It's true, you know, I'm a 27-year union member.

I work with SEIU and the University of Washington, and most of our members make $30,000 or so.

So they wouldn't even be able to afford the so-called mandatory housing, the affordable housing.

That said, also, these meetings are not because the city council wants input from you.

These meetings are actually mandated by law.

They have to have them.

Most of the council gets big donations from construction companies and developers, and they do their bidding before they'll do yours.

So they don't really care about your neighborhood.

They care more about the builders and their donations.

And you can see this by the rapid growth throughout the city.

You know, you don't have to sell your property to developers.

If you don't want to upzone your neighborhood, band together as neighbors and don't sell your property.

They can't make you do it.

You can stop the upzoning if you don't want it.

Most of these council members, they make pretty good money, and I don't know how many of them live in areas where they may be forced out by upzoning or their neighborhood wrecked.

And Rob Johnson, when he came in, he came in with a personal mandate to facilitate the upzoning.

In fact, in a pre-election debate, he proposed that the tax structure in the upzone areas be changed so that the person living on a piece of property in the upzone, if you had a small bungalow, but there could be a nine-unit apartment built there, that your taxes would be changed to reflect the nine-unit apartment not your single-family home.

James Rolera, 4A.

James, you're going to be followed by Jill Fleming, 4B, and Mia Presser, 5A.

Okay.

Hello, my name is Jim Rolera, and I'm a 30-year resident in my current residence, which is a block south of Jefferson Square.

In the 30 years that I've lived there, I've seen a lot of change, and I think the issue that everybody is talking here is about affordable housing, and I don't believe anybody here is against affordable housing.

I know I'm not.

The concern I have, though, is responsible growth, and to ensure that with the growth that is being proposed, the infrastructure is in place to handle that growth.

Now, in my 30 years, I've seen at least six different apartments, 500 units, all within two blocks of my house.

On 41st Southwest, what I have to listen to is a two-lane street that you can't go because so many cars are parked.

So what happens is cars start honking each other, swearing at each other because they can't get by.

When I come up Fauntleroy and I go to Trader Joe's, I have to be careful that I don't ram into somebody in the rear end because they're stopping to go into Trader Joe's.

I am not against the growth.

All I would like to see the council do is to take their time to rezone this area to L1, L2, to allow another multi-units going in there without assessing the impact that the current growth that you have already approved, all the apartments in the Fauntleroy, Alaska Junction area, you need to evaluate that before you continue to do the growth.

because it looks good on paper does not mean it does not impact the current residents that live in that area today.

Thank you, James.

Jill...

Jill Fleming, 4B, followed by Mia Presser, 5A.

Hello, my name is Jill Fleming and I am a long time Alki homeowner, 34 years.

I have lived most of my adult life in West Seattle.

I'm a member of the Facebook group I lived in West Seattle before it was cool.

I love the inclusiveness of Alki where on a sunny day you can walk along the beach and hear all different languages spoken.

I love that so many ordinary homes have views and that you don't have to own a McMansion to have one.

I know that some of my neighbors are concerned about the changes occurring in Seattle.

I am concerned, too.

I want the next generation to have the same opportunities to have a home in Seattle that I had.

That is why I am supporting MHA.

I want Seattle to be the inclusive city I have always known it to be.

We need the 6,000 affordable homes that MHA will support.

We need the added density to accommodate the growth that has already occurred.

My own block is currently zoned, and has been this whole time, LR1, and which will have slight modification under MHA.

The diversity of housing stock in my neighborhood, combined with the businesses in the park, make for a vibrant community.

I raised my family in Seattle.

I want others to have that same opportunity.

I support MHA and the additional homes affordable in market rate that it will bring to Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jill.

Mia, again, folks, we'll be here all night if we applaud after every speaker.

Mia, you're going to be followed by Christy Tobin Presser and then Carmine Pascucci, 6A.

Hello.

My name is Mia.

I am 11 years old, and I live in the West Seattle Junction.

Families generally don't move into apartments in the junctions, and I never see kids coming out of these apartments.

There are kids in my school, and there are families in my school that rent houses.

You should be making it so that families have a house to live in in the junction.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mia, for joining us this morning.

Christy?

Good evening.

My name is Christy Tobin-Presser.

I 100% support the creation of affordable housing.

I 100% support planning for increased density.

I do not support the current MHA proposal.

The slides that Ms. Maxana showed were lovely with respect to how engagement shaped the proposal.

If engagement had actually shaped the proposal, I wouldn't be here.

The current proposal to rezone single family to low-rise is not to allow existing families to welcome new neighbors.

It is to replace them.

The goal and the impact of this is to replace existing residents, families, seniors, low-income individuals with new market-rate housing that will only allow a small, largely homogeneous segment of our society to be able to live in the West Seattle Junction.

The city has data, and I hope that you have it, that that MHA could achieve the same roughly 6,000 affordable units over the same period of time by doing an M bump, which would be residential small lot, for example.

Neighborhoods could retain their character.

Families could stay.

Families would be encouraged to live here.

There would be less displacement.

As our city council members, you have an obligation to the people that live here just as much to the people that want to live here and to the developers.

And with respect to what, Ms., I think Loeb said, that only the angry people are here and everyone else sitting at home is fine with this, that is not my experience.

Most people that I speak to think that this is a done deal and that nobody is listening to them, and I hope that that is not the case and that you will listen to the comments of the people that live here.

Thank you, Chris.

Carmine Pascucci, followed by 6B Barb Pascucci, and then 7A Renee Commons.

Hi, I'm Carmine Pascucci, as you just said.

My wife and I have lived in the West Seattle Junction area for 34 years near Camp Long.

Let's see, I'm not against the growth, most of the growth proposed, but I'm concerned with certain elements of it.

And I am pro-affordable housing, as I spent 36 years working with Seattle Housing Authority, so I know a little about affordable housing.

My concern is about loss of existing affordable units for low-income workers, seniors, and others, and the displacement risk in the West Yale Junction.

First, I have two questions.

Who lives here in West Seattle and who drove a car here tonight?

Many of us see a loss of current affordable units because almost all developers will opt to pay out the one-time affordable fund for units to be built elsewhere to avoid onerous city tenant occupancy inspection and reporting regulations for those who build on-site in UVs.

It's just a kind of a fact of doing business that maximum profit and efficiency of operating rentals is achieved best by private, not having affordable units on site.

Also, part of the plan is to rezone about 225 single-family units within the West Seattle Junction to LR1, I believe.

These convert approximately 225 single-family units on a one-to-nine into about 2,001 and 2BR units, not family, with no outside space and parking.

So these are included in the expansion boundary, which many of us object to.

So there's a loss of affordable, loss of family, and even though this will take time to build out, those will be displaced.

Where will they go?

It'll probably take five to seven years to build out affordable, and most of it won't be in this area.

In my last few seconds, I'd like to thank Councilmember Herbold for informing the council at yesterday's meeting that District 1 community groups expect to be involved in neighborhood planning.

Thank you, Carmen.

Barb 6B, you're going to be followed by Renee Common 7A.

Hello, and I'm really kind of nervous.

I'm not even sure what I'm going to say.

What I had planned has changed.

I'm just grateful to finally have the opportunity to see you, who are making such major decisions over our lives, come face to face with us.

I've been waiting two years since I went to the first crazy thing at Shelby's ice cream parlor where it was pouring rain and everyone drove and I had to park illegally at Jefferson Square.

It was January in order to attend the meeting.

My personal, I don't know whether to speak from personal or external, but obviously I'm the mother of kids.

Affordable housing is important to me.

But I will say for people making the decision, you must keep in mind that we have had families and think about how you would feel with your own family.

being displaced and being victimized and vilified as a name calling like a NIMBY or saying that we're like Trump supporters of the wall.

I've lived in this community for 34 years.

I love my street.

I know where people before there was plumbing, where the neighbors got water from the spring in the alley and hauled it to their homes.

I know the hills, I know the backyards, and I know the people.

And I don't like the way this is coming in and just sweeping everything as if only some people count and other people don't.

I've been told that I should get an electric bicycle.

We live at the top of a steep hill.

Because I said I can't walk everywhere.

It's extremely steep.

I'm one block out of the urban village.

You know, I'm on a fixed income.

I'm retired.

I have health issues.

I think it's actually rude to tell me that.

Thank you, Barb.

Okay.

Thank you.

Renee, you're 7A.

You'll be followed by Carl Guest, 7B, and Patience Malaba, 8A.

Thank you, Councilmember Johnson and the Seattle City Council.

My name is Renee Commons, and I've been a West Seattle resident for the last 30 years.

I've headed up the West Seattle Junction Urban Neighborhood Community Volunteer Organization, and we've been a very active group.

And what I've behold here in West Seattle and love so much about West Seattle is our sense of community.

This community way before me fought vigorously on the last up zone to have a say in how our neighborhoods were planned particularly the West Seattle Junction and now we're being asked to embrace this MHA plan without really having an opportunity to provide guidance for this serious implementation of redevelopment.

One of the biggest concerns I have about this, and I'm a supporter of affordable housing, is this this plan does not ensure affordable housing in West Seattle, particularly in the West Seattle Junction.

Developers will be inclined to pay the nominal fee to put in the bucket, and affordable housing will be developed elsewhere.

The bonus housing that will be happening in West Seattle will be not of the affordable housing median income.

It will be far above that.

And we're also seeing a tremendous stress on our green spaces, a lack of green space and walkability, which are all things that...

and preserving sight lines.

These are all things that people really embrace about Seattle.

And I think they're...

I impart on the...

The council to have a sensitivity for for communities and what we're trying to do here I have never seen so many people pour into the meetings as I've seen in West Seattle over the last two years and that's why from the stress level I had to get out of it because people care and they want this neighborhood to be great.

So more green space has to be Developed more planning has to be considered around this and we want affordable housing Here not elsewhere.

Thank you Carl?

Thank you.

My name is Carl Guess.

I live near the West Seattle Junction Urban Village.

I'm a single family homeowner and I'm a big fan of affordable housing.

but not this implementation.

It's not only that the housing targets are too low and that there are too few units actually going into the neighborhood where I live, it's that MHA degrades livability.

Two examples.

First, this number, 28%.

It's the average tree canopy that covers Seattle.

It's what mitigates air pollution, keeps things cool, reduces stormwater runoff.

Hallowood upzone an already growing West Seattle junction.

So the question is, is there enough canopy to offset this new density?

Well, your staff never performed that neighborhood level analysis, but a few of us did.

And the answer is not 28%.

It is 15.8%.

We have a little more than half the canopy average of Seattle.

MHA will simply mean dirtier air, hotter temperatures, and more stormwater runoff in my neighborhood.

Second number is this, 434. Those are the number of new acres of parks and open space that MHA requires.

More than three Lincoln Parks.

Four of the five urban villages in District 1 are underserved in terms of parks and open space, yet the EIS has no specific plan to acquire new acreage.

In fact, it quietly and deliberately moves away from a population-based standard.

The result is pretty easy to telegraph.

We're going to have fewer parks, we're going to have less open space, and we are going to systematically strip the green from the Emerald City.

Councillors, I would submit to you that MHA's current price for livability is simply too high.

Thank you.

Patients, 8A, you're going to be followed by George Wolanin, 8B, and Marianne McCord, 9A.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Patience Malava, and I'm here on behalf of Seattle for Everyone.

We are a broad coalition of organizations, about 35 organizations, from labor, environmental organizations, housing providers, social justice organizations, and we are all united in supporting the housing affordability and livability agenda.

And I just want to begin by thanking you for all the work that you have been doing.

I want to thank you for your leadership and for the extensive community engagement that has been done so far.

Our members have been involved in the process, and they have engaged throughout the time, and we look forward to moving forward from this point on.

We are currently, as Seattle, faced with a very deep and wide situation of a shortage of affordable housing.

And as a renter myself, who is currently looking to move to Seattle, where I happen to work, I can tell you I am on the outside looking in.

I do not see options for me.

There are very limited options.

And therefore, the question is, what needs to be done?

We need to take action.

We need to take action now.

As has already been said, the delay is not going to help us.

The delay is not going to help the situation.

It's only going to worsen it.

We need to move forward.

We need to make sure that we are moving forward with the MHA proposal, and we're making sure that we're passing this legislation to address the issue that's facing communities on the ground.

MHA will ensure that we are...

Good evening, everyone.

For the interruption,

If you are finishing up at the fourth banquet and are thinking, hmm, what should I do next?

Please, come on up to the PTSA meeting in room 222. All right.

Come join us at the PTSA meeting starting at 7 p.m.

Thank you for being there.

We got 10 minutes.

Okay.

Thank you for your patience, patience.

Okay, thank you.

And on that note, I just want to say that as a coalition, we're urging you to move forward.

We look forward to working with you.

MHA will ensure that we are building affordability.

We're including income and rent-restricted homes that lower income people need, that people that look like me in many ways need.

So we need to move forward and pass this legislation, and we look forward to working with you in that process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patience.

George?

George Wallon?

As George makes his way down, George, you're 8B.

You're going to be followed by Marianne McCord, 9A, and Kevin Freitas, 9B.

Well, I'm going to get into something a little bit different here.

I've been in West Seattle since 1968, and I live down by the end line triangle.

I'm speaking to you on behalf of that building that's there at 4412 Southwest Wildwood Place and Southwest Bryce Point.

They're trying to raise the level of this building.

The last time I heard was five floors for some I guess these 350 square foot units for people to live in.

George, I'm sorry to interrupt.

I've been informed by my colleagues that they believe you're referring to a building that is currently proposed to be a contract rezone.

That's a contract rezone if it is the building that we believe it is.

That makes that matter quasi-judicial for the council, which means we are prohibited from hearing testimony either for or against that project.

because that testimony goes directly to a hearings examiner as opposed to the full counsel.

So I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from making any further comments about that individual project and ask you to make your comments more generally about housing in your neighborhood.

I can do that.

And I just want to make a clarification.

It's not like we can't receive comment.

It's just that the comment that we receive has to be put on the record in a particular way, and then we can review it at that time.

In that decision making, we act more like a judge or a jury than a legislative body where we can be lobbied.

So please, as it relates to that project, share it with the hearing examiner, and we will review the file at the appropriate time.

All right, I won't talk at it, talk about it as a general building.

As a general area that I am right there in that area, the end line triangle there, and I do not want to see any of that zoning changed for additional height.

If you start to change that zoning then It'll go from one building to the next building to the next building.

And most of those people that live in that area, like I've been there since 1968. I graduated from this school in 1972. You know, I am all for affordable housing.

But there are places to put affordable housing.

These folks have been in West Seattle, a lot of them have been here for 30, 40, 50 years.

If we have to have growth, we need to have it controlled.

And just to have someone change a building so they can make a ridiculous amount of more money and take away people's views and be a lousy neighbor, I don't think we should allow them to build a building that high in that area.

So, you know anything we can do to stop them from doing that would be appreciated I will try to contact all of you through email and Give you some more specific information Thank you, but that's it.

Thank you Marianne McCord Marianne 9a followed by Kevin Freitas 9b

Hi, I'm Mary Ann McCord, and I am talking on a little something different.

Lisa already is aware of this, but they keep talking about the Highland Park Westwood Village urban village, and they very briefly, Sarah mentioned it as like an afterthought, that part of that urban village is South Delridge, and we have no designation, proper designation on the urban map.

And so I love all the comments that my fellow West Seattle neighbors are making, but I just want you to know we exist, and I want you to go to the right people for that.

urban village.

We are a corridor, so when I was hearing what had happened previously with the West Seattle Junction, I'd like to use that.

Use that information and go ahead and use that for our corridor.

We really, as neighbors, feel that we are just primed for development and we understand that we are going to have some great opportunities to include affordability, but we want to do that with parks.

We have absolutely no parks in South Delridge.

We want to do that with thoughtful transit, thoughtful usage of the corridor that's going to go all the way from the bridge down to Burien.

So I really want my little time here was to talk about my neighborhood, South Delridge.

And if you don't know we exist, we do.

And please come down.

Thank you, Marianne.

Kevin Freitas, 9B.

You're going to be followed by Tamsen Spengler, 10A, and Scott DePriest, 10B.

Thank you, Councilmembers, for your time.

I'm Kevin Freitas.

I live at 474-736th Avenue Southwest in the Alaska Street Junction, and I wanted to echo some of the comments of a couple other speakers related to density, which I think HALA brings.

I think that's phenomenal, and density is amazing, but the things that it doesn't bring, unfortunately, in my perspective, are anything related to, you know, services, which we've heard some about, affordability and diversity.

And I think that the one thing is that developers are going to pay into the fund and diversity is going to go elsewhere.

It's going to be essentially ghettoized out to the outskirts of the city because that's where it's affordable.

And that's counter to what people on low income or fixed income need.

They need access to services, groceries, healthcare, parks, and they're not going to get that in new developments on the outskirts.

So we need to be much tougher with developers and make this less of a giveaway for those developers.

And I think the other perspective is that there are solutions that can be enacted right now that don't involve giveaways to developers, and that is really embracing single-family homeowners.

I'm very fortunate to be one, but I also don't have the ability, necessarily under the current rules, to easily create my own density.

If I wanted to create a backyard cottage, or a unit in my basement, or even both, That's not really happening in the current climate, and there is a way to do that right now by lowering some of the limitations and access points to allow us to be the investors in our own city and actually kind of crowdsource some of the density.

It's really worked in Vancouver.

They've created tens of thousands of units in the last handful of years.

I don't know how many affordable, but then in Portland, they've just eased those same rules.

So it's really important.

And I think the other side of the coin is when it comes to any of the, you know, governmental agencies that are here to create housing, why do we have to build new housing when I just did a search in the West Seattle Junction and found 60 apartment buildings?

Can they not skip building buildings, brand new buildings, and just start subsidizing those?

And we have, boom, 60 units of affordable housing.

Anyway, thank you very much for your time.

Tamsen Spangler, Tamsen Spangler, 10A, followed by Scott DePriest, 10B.

Good evening.

My name is Tamsen Spangler, and I am a homeowner in a third-generation home in the Morgan Junction.

I've been in that home for over 30 years now.

And I have two issues with the MHA.

Number one is I really see a failure to measure and mitigate the displacement that's going to happen.

The numbers of on-site affordable housing units plus those to be built with developer fees even in the MHA preferred alternatives do not match the amount of displacement of low-income working people, seniors, people with disabilities, and many other vulnerable community members.

And I'm speaking particularly, too, for the seniors.

We're on fixed income.

When those taxes go up, we won't be able to live there anymore and be forced to sell our homes.

So I would like you to take another look at those numbers.

Also, I'm not against growth.

We had a neighborhood plan in my community, and that plan took over two years to make.

That plan included plans for how to grow that made sense to our community and that could have accommodated the growth Seattle is expecting to have.

Unfortunately, the city recently defunded those neighborhood plans and ignored their enforcement when developers didn't abide by them.

I'd like you to take another look at the neighborhood plans.

I'd like our neighborhoods to have a voice in this development, and that's my main concern.

Thank you for being here tonight.

I appreciate you listening to us.

Scott DePriest, 10B.

You're going to be followed by Paul Sesmet, 11A, and Peter Nitze, 11B.

My name is Scott DePriest and I am a West Seattle resident.

In fact, I live in the Morgan Junction just on the border of the Morgan Junction, Bourbon Village.

One, I want to thank you all for being here and listening to what we have to say.

And I also want to say I am an avid supporter of affordable housing.

If it's done correctly and consistently, I want to speak personally to an issue that affects myself and my neighbors who live in the 5900 and 6000 block of 44th Avenue Southwest.

That particular block, if you'll note on the urban village plan, the east side of those two blocks is part of the urban village.

The west side of those two blocks is not.

We love our neighborhood.

I love our neighborhood and the single family bungalows that line those streets and if you look at 44th Avenue consistently from Eddie all the way up to Dawson It's one single-family home after another to up zone the east side of just those two blocks to small lot residential Is going to create an inconsistent environment and disrupt?

The neighborhood feel that we have and certainly will not have any impact on affordability and in the neighborhood It's hard to imagine tearing down a home that would now sell for $650,000 and replacing it with three single-family townhomes that will sell for $800,000.

Not to mention the parking impact that we've already experienced from the C-Line bus along California and the businesses on California that overflowed their parking.

onto our blocks.

So I'd ask you to be considerate and judicious about how these up zones are applied within the boundaries of the urban villages.

Thank you, Scott.

Paul Sussman, followed by Peter Nitze, 11B.

Hi, I've lived here 60 years in West Seattle.

City planners were showing no parking required in all the urban villages in NC's own MHA examples, with no footnote exceptions.

City planners touted these examples for months.

Now it comes out parking is required as they've just passed a new ordinance that mapped frequent transit, thus eliminating urban village parking everywhere but Admiral.

only Admiral has required parking.

When Admiral was pointed out to planners that it too met the parking relief based on Metro combined routes, the map mysteriously changed and Metro made changes to system maps on May 2nd and then backdated them.

SDCI planners have kept Admiral out of the area of parking relief, thus causing affordable efficiency units to become too expensive to build in Admiral due to parking garage costs.

That keeps lower income people out of that neighborhood.

Planners claim equality for social classes in the EIS, but they discriminate by code requirements.

Admiral is the only one, this can only be attributed to very high ranking politicians that live and have family along with supporters in Admiral and not in my backyard approach.

There would be no other reason for this pushback given the city's policies for growth everywhere else.

MHA is flawed for affordability equality in Admiral Urban Village.

Admiral shows existing frequent bus stops in the EIS, so density increases would make sense for MHA, but then SDCI created a director's rule map that requires parking in Admiral.

Which is it?

Show MHA works in Admiral with frequent but then stifle smaller units and push them elsewhere in the city by requiring very expensive parking garages.

Social injustice by penalizing Admiral Urban Village.

No affordable efficiency units in Admiral.

Parking stalls cost upwards of $50,000 each and 50-unit building could have a $2.5 million cost added to it for parking.

Does that help affordability?

We need cost-efficient units.

Thank you Paul.

Peter, Peter Nitze, you're going to be followed by Jeanine Reese, 12A, and Leanne McMillan, 12B.

My name is Peter Nitze.

My firm has been engaged in historic preservation and adaptive reuse development in Seattle for over 30 years.

My wife and I are both residents of West Seattle.

I am a board member of Bellwether Housing, which is the largest affordable housing developer in the city, and I support MHA.

In the communities where we've lived prior to moving to Seattle, I think, the ones we've found to be most vibrant and robust are mixed.

Diverse communities, both ethnically, culturally, economically, something I think that Seattle has enjoyed for much of its history, and I think it is important to try to preserve.

I would say right up front that MHA is not a perfect solution, and I think a number of folks that have spoken have pointed out challenges and flaws with it, but honestly, it represents what we need more of, and that is compromise.

At the end of the day, to make forward progress, if you wait for the perfect solution, you're going to wait forever.

What it does offer is a step towards what we desperately need, and that is more housing of every variety, affordable and otherwise.

If the city is to continue to grow and prosper, it needs to offer housing to folks close to where they work, close to amenities, close to transportation, and MHA accomplishes some of that.

I happen to believe that far more radical land use reform is required.

that the amount of space that Seattle has available is limited, and too little of it is available for multifamily housing, and to provide access to housing for all.

So, not ideal, absolutely, but nothing is ideal.

It is a workable solution.

It's a solution that does address an underlying and systemic problem that the city faces, and so I support it.

Thank you, Peter.

I'm Janine Reese.

I'm a 30-year union member, shop steward, and I vehemently disagree with my brothers and sisters that MHA is a really good plan.

It's a day late and a dollar short.

It doesn't get affordable housing in West Seattle in the junction where we actually need it, and I'm going to go on to infrastructure.

I reviewed your environmental impact statement and it's disgraceful.

It fails to address the infrastructure needed to even support current development and growth.

The city last updated their sewer and drainage plan in 19 excuse me 2006. Your own comp plan shows 90% of our sewer lines are less than 12 inches and are considered capacity constrained in many instances.

90% of them.

Look at the map in the comp plan.

Seattle Fire Department has not had FTEs added in years.

Response times are not being met now.

So, good luck if you need a paramedic in the junction at a fire because the average response time is now seven minutes for a paramedic.

Instead of meeting the actual NFPA requirement and the Seattle Fire Department's requirement of four minutes, it's not good if you need advanced life support in a fire at the junction.

The Seattle Police Department, according to your own Berkshire report, needs more officers, at least 175, over the 2016 levels, not the pittance that Mayor Murray agreed to implement after the 2013 levels.

Has the city met this recommendation?

No.

So the message is, invest in infrastructure.

We need to meet the current growth first before overbuilding without the requisite services needed today.

Thank you, Janine.

Leanne?

Leanne McMillan, are you here?

Leanne McMillan?

Leanne, you're 12B.

Amanda Sawyer will be next, 13A.

Sarah Walmsley, 13B after that.

I live in West Seattle.

I have owned my home for 20 plus years in the West Seattle Junction area.

I understand and support the need for affordable housing and for more dense housing.

Having said that, the current HALA plan is flawed.

It doesn't take into account responsible growth.

You have heard several of my neighbors here talk about the lack of infrastructure with traffic and parking issues and lack of green space availability.

I would like the city to consider some alternate plans.

One may seem counterintuitive to some of the folks here that think that we should not have large areas designated for challah.

However, it's important for us to spread that density to a larger area while keeping the current height restrictions and so I'd like the city to consider increasing the zoning to small lot cottages and along with that consider perhaps I know you said that It was important to have density around traffic hubs.

Well, why not perhaps have eco-friendly shuttles from different parts of West Seattle provide transportation to the junction so that people don't all park their cars in that area, making the problem of parking even worse?

The city also has not taken into account the importance of what happens to the neighborhood when we have light rail.

Please consider slowing down and having an integrated, sustainable solution that considers all facets of transportation, especially light rail.

I see you have 14 minutes left.

So I just want to say thanks for coming out.

I see several people here that I have met with before.

And I hope you listen to us because no one is more vested in livability than the residents who are here.

Thank you, Leanne.

Amanda Sora.

Hi, I'm Amanda Sawyer.

I live in the West Seattle Junction and I'm also the director of Juno.

I believe we need to increase density in order to accommodate growth and also build and secure more affordable units of all sizes to accommodate families who've been priced out and for anyone who's wondering if they can afford a future in Seattle.

And yet, I believe MHA has some major failings.

For example, from the city's own environmental impact statement in the housing and socioeconomic section, the estimated number of new affordable units to be built in West Seattle Junction over the next 20 years is nine.

That's exhibit 3.1-89 if you want to look that up.

That's nine performance-based units or on-site units built in our community.

That's the displacement of older market rate, multifamily, and single-family homes for nine affordable units in my neighborhood over 20 years.

My community will bear all of the burden of density but not benefit from increased affordability or livability.

Fee-based units will be built elsewhere with no guarantee to proximity to transit, work, schools, and so on.

I think we should be asking more of developers and requiring more on-site units and investments to improve livability.

I also believe that zoning changes could be made with less impact to families living here.

currently living here.

Increasing zoning by skipping over RSL exacerbates a family's ability to stay in place.

Please consider a solution that would decrease impacts to the people who live and love these communities.

And please consider an option that makes West Seattle more affordable and more accessible, not more expensive.

Thank you.

Sarah Walmsley, 13B, followed by Lisa Kuhn, 14A, and Chris Ilgenfritz, 14B.

Good evening, Council.

Thank you for being here.

My name is Sarah.

I'm a renter and a huge supporter of MHA.

As we know, everyone in this room knows, meeting our need for affordable housing requires more density, and it also requires for participation from all sectors.

And MHA gives us both.

I wish that we had implemented it sooner so that the growth we've already seen would have included affordable units.

We've been talking about MHA for many years now, and I hope we can move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

Lisa?

Lisa, you're going to be followed by Chris Ilgenfritz, 14B.

Hi, I'm Lisa Kuhn.

I'm going to finish a speech I started in council chambers yesterday morning, but only had one minute to deliver.

To catch you all up, I talked about my neighbors in the Alaska Junction who are a firefighter, a police officer, teachers, a postal worker, all of whom the city wants to replace with tech bros because that's who can afford the market rate apartments they want to put on our property.

I mentioned that this program was put into motion by a former mayor, Ed Murray, a predator who proved himself to be a predator by implying that the 11,126 homeowners he was targeting were racist for owning the homes, which of course ignores the fact that a large number of those homes are in areas that people of color were redlined into.

So, now we get to the crucial part that I didn't get to say.

The 19,727 existing affordable apartments the ReZone will target, large numbers of which are also in areas that people of color were redlined into.

And just how clueless is it to believe that return right policies wherever constitutional, will be able to shoehorn those 19,727 households into 6,000 low-income units if and when they ever get built, which one council member suggested.

Should those renters temporarily move into their cars for a few years?

Are they magically supposed to be able to afford market-rate units?

Or are they all just supposed to give up and leave?

And one more quick point on the racist, rich, old, white people angle.

Just how do you explain Got Green and their Don't Displace the South End campaign?

You know something?

I don't think they've been fooled by your rhetoric.

And if you look at the FBIS, the hypocritical rhetoric is appalling.

I'm going to finish by using the word...

Thank you, Lisa.

Chris Hildenfritz.

Chris, you're going to be followed by Faye Rash, 15A, and Sean Turgeson, 15B.

Hi, I'm Chris Zildjian-Fritz, and I'm a member of the Fauntleroy community.

And I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to speak.

I think one of the things, as a resident, I have felt very strongly that I didn't feel that my council members with the exception of mine, Lisa, is listening to me.

And I just really hope that you take this opportunity to realize that there's a lot of people, a lot of communities that are really, really interested in working with you to bring affordable housing to our communities that our community members that need affordable housing can live in.

I look at the increased population estimates, and I think, well, where's the infrastructure?

Where's the bus transit options?

We live on a steep slope.

So what happens when all that water comes down into the brand-new Loman Beach waterfall, water, excuse me, the water plant, and it overflows?

That's a lot of money that you've spent, but I just really want you to consider the fact, work with us in your community to keep our community what it's been.

I really thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Faye?

Faye, you're going to be followed by Sean.

Hi, my name is Faye Rash.

I'm a West Seattle resident.

I have a one-year-old daughter.

I've heard a lot today about the plan, and the word that concerns me the most is or.

And or is either you can build these units on-site, or you can pay a minimal fee.

And if you were serious about having affordable housing, there wouldn't be an opt-out, and there wouldn't be an opt-out that was as small as this one.

And so I'm someone that absolutely is in favor of affordable housing.

I'm absolutely in favor of my daughter growing up in a diverse environment.

I'm absolutely in favor of us and my neighbors being able to stay where we are.

But if the developers get to come in, build brand new units that most certainly will be market rate, there's no way that's going to happen.

What's going to happen is everything's going to get more expensive.

The services are going to get more expensive.

Those with the means are going to create an environment that is too expensive for us to live in, and we'll have to go.

So if you want affordable housing, great, 100%.

Create affordable housing.

Do not create housing that just serves to price those out that need to stay there.

Thank you.

Sean?

Sean, 15B, you're going to be followed by Lisa Walters, 16A, and Allison Bolgiano, 16B.

Thank you very much.

My name is Shawn Turgeson, I'm a West Seattle resident.

The one size fits all implementation of HALA really doesn't do it for me, mainly because with the or option, it just, we're not, you're asking us to give up a lot in the quality of our neighborhood, but you are not going to get the diversity in our neighborhood.

I've seen it already.

I've seen the homogeneity of the people moving into my neighborhood, and it's either Amazon or that other big company.

I'm going to be just a little bit mean.

Seattle is an extremely profitable city to build in.

And we heard a very knowledgeable take insight into the infrastructure part of this problem.

If you guys were swinging really hard for impact fees, I felt like, I would feel like you had our backs, that you were working for us.

Nick Licata told us what happens at Sunkadia.

This bill looks to me more like it was written for developers than for residents.

And two last things.

One is you set the consultants on us.

Really, we had public meetings and you sent consultants out.

And Mr. Johnson, I would suggest that you never, ever compare a Seattleite to a Trump supporter again.

Thank you.

Lisa Walters.

Lisa, you're going to be followed by Allison Bolgiano, 16B.

Thank you.

I'm Lisa Walters and I'm a West Seattle resident for over 13 years and tonight though I am here on behalf of the Seattle Housing Authority to speak about the need for more affordable housing.

Seattle Housing Authority serves over 34,000 individuals, 17,000 households.

12,000 of those are children.

5,500 are enrolled in the Seattle schools which makes up 10% of the entire Seattle schools enrollment.

Two-thirds of the households we serve are elderly or disabled.

Yet for every family we serve, another waits for help.

With rising rents, higher rates of homelessness, our wait lists for Section 8 and public housing exceed the need.

In 2017, we opened our wait list for the Section 8 program.

Over 22,000 households applied for 3,500 slots.

Our public housing wait list averages three to four years for housing.

There is simply not enough affordable housing in our city.

Children and families, seniors and veterans are doing without basic needs in a struggle to keep housing.

And behind these numbers are real people trying to make it in life, like Jill, who waited six years for SHA housing.

She was a single parent doing the best she could to take care of her family and knew she needed more advancement for her family and her community.

She was taking basic classes for nursing, but was unable to sustain them without the housing.

But with stable, affordable housing, she was able to graduate from nursing school and support her family and her community.

In these times we must have all options to address the housing crisis.

The mandatory housing affordability will provide up to 6,300 income and rent restricted units across Seattle.

It would create affordable homes and communities to support the full spectrum of low-income housing needs from families living homeless to low-wage workers.

The most recent Count Us In report showed a 4% increase in homelessness, and in Seattle schools, the district now has over 4,000 homeless children.

It is imperative that we do everything we can to ensure that more people have access to safe, healthy, and affordable homes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Allison?

Allison, 16B, followed by Jesse Simpson, 17A, and Cindy Barker, 17B.

Good evening.

Thank you Councilmembers and staff for being here.

My name is Allison Bolgiano.

I work I work for Bellwether Housing, the largest nonprofit developer of housing in the county.

I do not live in West Seattle.

I do live in Wallingford, where many people share the concerns of this neighborhood, not to say that they're identical.

And, you know, a lot of people here tonight have said that they support affordable housing.

I'm happy to be in the room with so many affordable housing supporters.

Affordable housing, it takes a lot of money to build, just like any housing.

So to me, I see MHA as a critical, one critical solution alongside our housing levy, alongside the head tax, alongside state and federal programs that will help us build housing.

At Bellwether, we currently have site control, meaning we have the ability to build on some fabulous sites.

One of them is on First Hill.

It's extremely walkable, close to major transit lines.

Another is immediately adjacent to the upcoming Roosevelt light rail station, and our plan is to have that housing open when the light rail opens.

But we need money to accomplish this.

And MHA can be part of that package that will help us build high quality housing that puts people within reach of great schools, our public libraries, jobs, parks, etc.

I really appreciate the council going out for the last several years and engaging with the community.

I think it's time to pass this solution so that we can have more affordable housing and more housing in great neighborhoods like the one I get to live in and here in West Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you, Allison.

Jesse?

Hi, I'm Jesse.

I'm a native Seattleite.

I grew up in West Seattle and attended this very high school.

I'm also one of far too few of my peers able to still live in Seattle.

I'm in favor of MHA, even though I recognize that it alone is insufficient to fully address our housing crisis, which has been decades in the making.

It will, however, create thousands of much-needed affordable and market-rate homes.

When I was born in the mid-90s, my parents were able to afford a house in West Seattle for just under $150,000.

That house is currently valued at $700,000.

That obscene appreciation is due to the land use restrictions that we've placed on what can be built in West Seattle and Seattle at large.

As it exists today, our zoning is exclusionary.

The status quo is not working for anyone who is faced with the crushing reality of Seattle's real estate market.

We need to create as much housing as possible, subsidize affordable housing for working class people, and an expanded rate of market rate housing to keep rents from rising further and accommodate more people in the city.

We also have to go further beyond our urban villages and allow denser and more affordable housing citywide.

I would encourage you to look at rezoning all single family to RSL.

To all the people in this room who have bought a house 30 years ago, I'm envious of you.

Because working and middle class people in my generation will never be able to afford a house in Seattle.

The only way we will still be able to live in this city is by building more apartments, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, ADUs, and social housing.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jesse.

Cindy?

Cindy, you're going to be followed by Joseph Ringgold, 18A, and Glenn Bowman, 18B.

I live in the Morgan Junction area, and I'd like the council to know that the city, with the full involvement of the PLEZ committee, has taken a rather simple idea to solving our housing crisis and made it so complex that it fails on many fronts.

The original HALA-based concept, even before the MHA grand bargain, was that the city would give something as simple as a floor of extra capacity, and in return, the developer would be required to give affordable units.

I heard support for that while I stood at the hollow committee outreach events.

But the implicit understanding by those citizens was that it was a reasonable ask of them, one extra floor across the whole city, and a reasonable ask of the developer, put that affordable housing in that building, period.

That is not what has been proposed.

The city has taken on a much larger transformation of the city under the umbrella of MHA and made it so fraught with bad assumptions and loopholes that the program just won't work as desired.

That one single story has become multiple.

The city has rejiggered the basic height, bulk, and scale of the code to accommodate what might have been considered design improvements, but ultimately are citywide enroachments on the livability elements we prize in the city.

and not just on affordable housing projects, on every single multifamily building that will be built in the future.

Density can be done right, but not this way.

The city even muffed the transformation of the single-family zones.

I am a supporter of the urban village strategy and understood that someday single-family would not make sense inside an urban village.

But to transform the whole city in one fell swoop when the basic principle of the urban village strategy was that each village was unique and planning should respond to that uniqueness disregarded the opportunity for each village to address its issues at the same time.

The discussion around displacement really highlights that shortfall.

Finally, a reminder that the 10-year MHA strategy also depended on the creation of market rate housing to turn the corner on housing costs.

The goal in 2015 was the creation of 30,000 units.

Since then, over 35,000 units have been built or permitted.

No turn on that corner yet, so something failed there.

Thank you, Cindy.

I'm sorry, Cindy, your time is up.

Thank you, Cindy.

Joseph Ringgold.

Joseph Ringgold, you're going to be followed by Glenn Goldman.

Hi, I'm Joseph Ringgold.

I remember as a kid looking in history books and seeing pictures of Hoovervilles in the Great Depression.

Some of them were even in Seattle, in Soto, in places that are familiar to me.

A little bit later in my life, I had the privilege and opportunity to go to South Africa, where I saw something similar, a level of destitution and desperation that I had never seen before in person until now.

That destitution and that desperation is a result of a societal failure, and I believe that societal failure is housing scarcity.

Now, I have lived in Seattle for over half my life.

Most recently as a homeowner, just in the Roxhill neighborhood here.

But for most of my life, I was a renter here in Seattle.

And I knew as a renter what all renters know, that fear of getting the envelope at the end of your lease that says your rent is going up by 10, 20, sometimes even 30%.

And when that happened, the recourse that I had was the option to go to another apartment, have availability nearby.

Scarcity of housing was my enemy.

Now, the homelessness issue in Seattle is a housing affordability issue, and a housing affordability issue is a housing scarcity issue.

Because housing is scarce, landlords can take every spare cent out of low and middle income renters.

That's money that could otherwise go to medical, to healthcare, to food.

Now, I've been fortunate enough to create a community in West Seattle, and in my community, the people who have rented most recently or have bought houses recently but know the rental market in this town support MHA because it fights scarcity and it creates an ethos of abundance in the city of Seattle.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Joseph.

Glenn Bowman, 18B, followed by Angela Compton, 19A, and Kitty, I think it's Koenig.

Hi, my name is Glenn Bowman, and I don't live in West Seattle.

I live in Green Lake, but there's a lot of people there that have similar concerns that you're hearing tonight.

First, I'd like to say that I agree with many speakers here who have raised the concern that if developers don't have to build affordable housing on site, then it will be built in cheap areas, not spread throughout.

Second, as I hear more and more people's comments and read more opinions, both for and against, one of the issues that to me seems like it should be one of the most important is that single-family zoning was created for racist reasons.

It was a way for white neighbourhoods to keep people of colour, particularly black people at these times, out of their neighbourhoods.

This was just redlining by another name when the Supreme Court ruled that redlining and other ways that were being used to segregate were deemed unconstitutional.

I'm not saying that everyone who supports single-family zoning is racist, and I'm not saying that at all.

This is not the case.

But the zoning itself is.

As a city who prides ourselves on being progressive, we cannot allow our strict single-family zoning to be maintained.

We need more housing, we need all types of housing, and we need it in every part of the city.

If Council allows wealthy white neighbourhoods to maintain these codes with racist roots, then Council will be complicit in allowing this redlining by another name to survive.

I am a homeowner, but I own a home.

I do not own my neighbourhood.

I do not, or at least I should not, get to decide what kind of housing is allowed in my neighbourhood.

I should not be allowed to decide what range of incomes should be allowed in my neighbourhood.

The city is for everyone.

Please go forward with MHA.

It's not perfect.

I would love to make changes.

I would love to do more.

But as the man from Bellwether said, it is what we need right now.

It is compromise.

And thank you for all you do.

Angela, you're going to be followed by Kitty, 19B, and then Becky Bicknell, 28.

I guess I'll just hold this.

Good evening, city council.

My name is Angela Compton.

I'm an outreach coordinator at FutureWise working on housing issues.

Today, rather than sharing my own story or a prepared statement from FutureWise, I'm going to share a statement prepared by my homeless neighbor, A.

Alvarado.

Being homeless is hard.

Every day, every interaction starts with a stigma.

I am wanting and willing to do what it may take to work my way up, better myself, and become more successful.

Yet, there are many barriers that one faces without safe and stable housing.

I value living in the big city.

It's full of opportunities.

Yet, these opportunities are not available to everyone in the same ways.

Even when we do the right thing, like building affordable housing, we don't make it accessible to those who really need the resources.

For example, low-income students, especially those who have children, are not allowed to live in most of the affordable housing already in our communities.

Don't we want to see these families succeed?

So why aren't we setting them up for success?

Why aren't we using the vast amount of resources a big city like Seattle has to uplift our neighbors?

I would like to see changes happen that allow for lower income neighbors to stay and live in Seattle, near the opportunities that being in a big city brings.

Please pass mandatory housing affordability and begin to make it so everyone in Seattle has access to an affordable home.

In the big city that gives folks the opportunity to grow and succeed, we need everyone to be able to thrive.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angela.

Kitty, you're going to be followed by Becky Bicknell, 20A, and Daniel Martin, 20B.

Hi there, my name is Kitty Craig, sorry I wrote so terribly.

I'm a third generation West Seattleite, raising my fourth generation here in Morgan Junction area.

So thank you again for providing the opportunity to provide public comment and for hearing from folks from West Seattle and other places in the city.

First, I'd like to voice my support for the aspiration of increasing affordable housing in this city.

I'd also like to voice my support for the current appeal of the environmental impact statement, since the city hasn't adequately addressed the environmental impacts of these actions at the neighborhood level, like you've heard earlier tonight.

As you presented tonight, MHA proposes dramatic increases in density in West Seattle and across the city, which is really important as our city is growing by 1,000 people each week.

Somehow 6,000 units seems just like a pittance compared to what we're gonna need looking at these growth pressures that we're having.

But I'd like to see the council really take time to figure out how to maintain the livability of West Seattle and other communities around the city as you move forward.

First, I'd like the council to consider Keeping affordability housing here in the city, don't let developers simply pay into a fund and have it located elsewhere.

Second, I'd like the council to really enact and support developer impact fees to support more parks, better transportations in our schools.

We are way behind other cities in our region in using this tool and we're missing out day by day.

I'd like to see greater protection of our environment and natural areas, such as our tree canopy and environmental critical areas.

And I'd also like to see more creative use of multi-benefit infrastructure.

Think about park and rides with parks on top.

We're going to need to think about that as Sound Transit comes to West Seattle.

Also, I support more stringent design review and development standards to retain the character of the homes that we live at, not just to obliterate it by seeing boxy home after boxy home.

And finally, I support really the adherence to more neighborhood planning and adherence to concurrence.

Thank you, Kitty.

Becky Bicknell, followed by Daniel Martin, 20B.

Thank you, council members.

I am a Morgan Junction resident and also another employee at Bellwether Housing, and I support the passage of MHA.

The lack of affordable homes is a regional issue of access and equity that requires urgent action across many neighborhoods.

I believe that Seattle and neighborhoods like West Seattle with great schools, recreation, access to jobs shouldn't be accessible only to those who can afford million-dollar homes and $2,000 rents.

I personally have benefited from access to affordable rental housing across this city in multiple neighborhoods, and am now settling here in West Seattle, raising my kids here, and want to preserve that way of life for them, and more importantly, for those who might not have the same resources and privileges that we have.

At Bellwether, we recently opened 200 new apartments and had over 1,000 calls to try to get into this housing in our first month of leasing.

If MHA passes, the affordable housing community will benefit from these new resources to build even more housing, and we also benefit from this added density to increase the impact that we can have in our developments.

We have thousands of new homes in development eagerly waiting for the passage of this legislation to bring these homes online as soon as possible.

As mentioned before, this legislation brought so many parties to the table to craft a compromise solution.

Let's pass it as a first step and start making a dent in our affordability problem.

Thank you.

Thank you, Becky.

Daniel Martin.

Daniel Martin, are you here?

Daniel Martin, 20B.

Oh, OK.

Sorry.

That's OK.

Daniel Martin had to leave.

Is it all right if I speak in his place?

I got here late.

We usually don't allow for that, but I'll accept it this time around.

And then we'll move on to Jacob Simpson 21A and Brian Lawley 21B.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

State your name, please.

for the record?

Yes, my name is Galen Gardette.

I live in West Seattle.

I have been a resident of Seattle for 30 years.

I bought my house in West Seattle 15 years ago.

I am a single black female who has bought my house in West Seattle 15 years ago.

It was a house that no one wanted.

It was on the market for a year.

I bought it.

I've worked on it.

I've built it up.

I contribute to my community and to my neighborhood.

I do a lot of work for WSDOT as well.

I do not support MHA.

I do support the appeal of the EIS.

I do support affordable housing.

When I moved to Seattle, I had no money.

I had just gotten out of college.

I had student loans.

And I worked my way up from a bad apartment on Capitol Hill to another bad apartment that I could barely afford, and I was barely eating.

But you know what I did, folks?

I worked, and I worked, and I worked.

And finally, I saved up enough to be able to buy that little house in the West Seattle Junction.

And this is why I'm talking to you today.

I want to support affordable housing but I don't think that MHA is the answer and I have a solution to it if you guys would listen to me and listen to a group of us who have come up with quite a few solutions.

Unfortunately I don't feel very heard so thank you for hearing me today.

One of the things that I've been able to do in my career is travel back and forth to the Middle East.

And in certain countries in the Middle East, they've had this exact same problem.

You wouldn't think that they do, but they do.

And they've addressed it in a very certain way.

They built affordable housing where they had space for affordable housing.

and they gave civil services to the people who needed it right there at their housing units.

And they helped them with transportation through shuttles and through buses.

So instead of, I really invite you guys to, instead of taking the neighborhood that we've all built up and increasing this density and making our lives really difficult, to really work with the other cities and counties around you to identify the space that's available for this affordable housing and build the space there.

Jacob Simpson.

Jacob Simpson, 21A.

Jacob, are you here?

Jacob Simpson, 21A.

Jacob, you're going to be followed by Brian Lawley, 21B.

I'm not seeing Jacob Simpson.

Brian Lawley, are you here, 21B?

Please come forward, 21B.

Jody Foise, 22A.

We'll be next.

Members of the City Council, ladies and gentlemen, as a registered voter, contributor to political campaigns, and volunteer for political campaigns, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I am 100% opposed to the HALA upzone proposal.

Single family homes and the families that occupy them are one of the bedrocks of our communities and our society.

They should be preserved.

This proposal is marketed as a way to increase affordability.

But let me be frank.

This is really about keeping the bubble going.

Construction unions, developers, bankers, and investors who may be out of state, and frankly, even some homeowners do not want the price to come down.

They don't want to end up in an underwater mortgage.

There really isn't anything that can be done at the local level to address affordability without significant legislative changes at the state and federal levels, and even changes in monetary policy at the Federal Reserve.

And I don't think that it is appropriate just to give the appearance of doing something and perhaps securing a short-term political victory to sacrifice people's homes or their neighborhoods where they have bought in and put their blood, sweat, and tears into that home and neighborhood over a period of years.

For all of these reasons, I ask that you vote no on any proposal of this type.

Thank you.

My comments will be brief.

I live in West Seattle and I support affordable housing, but I do not support doing it in a way that destroys neighborhoods, which the current proposal will.

West Seattle has expressed its willingness to accept density and affordable housing.

It has simply asked that you respect its existing neighborhoods and residents while it does that.

Thank you.

Chuck, you're going to be followed by, I believe it's Jennifer Seset, 23A, and Philippa Nye, 23B.

Good evening.

My name is Chuck Burkhalter.

I live in the Luna Park area, right on the fringe of the West Seattle Junction.

I've been in West Seattle for about 15 years.

To echo just a lot of the things that I've heard tonight, I think that it's counterproductive for this opt-out payment for the developers to be able to make a payment.

not actually build affordable housing in the affordable housing units or the new units that are going up.

I think that's a shame that that's even an option.

I think that needs to be completely removed if we're going to move forward with this program.

I also think that the current program is actually going to enforce gentrification in the area.

It's gonna put more high-priced housing into the area as opposed to preserving some of the actual affordable housing that actually exists right now, because you're actually rezoning single-family lots, and I think that that's gonna create teardowns, and that's gonna be replaced with the increased density and the increased allowable housing units that are gonna be more expensive.

So I actually think that it's gonna create gentrification.

I also think that right now the infrastructure in West Seattle is untenable.

I think that the sea line buses are completely packed.

We got parking rides, non-official parking rides throughout the entire region as people definitely are loading the buses, but we just have not kept pace on the infrastructure standpoint that we need to.

And then lastly, I think just a brief history lesson.

It was about 20 years ago when the comprehensive land use went into effect in the late 90s.

Back then, the council actually reached out to the neighborhoods and neighborhood guidelines actually trump city guidelines.

You can look it up in the SMC 23.41.010A.

I think if you're going to force urban villages to make all the accommodations, you need to scrap that plan and, as the previous person said, make the entire city a residential small lot.

Thank you, Chuck.

Jennifer?

Jennifer, I'm sorry that I couldn't quite read your last name.

You're going to be followed by— Jennifer Scarlett.

Sorry about that, Jennifer.

You're going to be followed by Philippa Nye, 23B.

Okay.

I am not very good at this, but I'm winging it.

So my name is Jennifer Scarlett, and I live in the South Park community.

It's a low-income community, and I'm a low-income worker.

I earn $30,000 a year.

And my neighbors are in single-family homes.

Some of them own, and some of them rent, and most of them are not white.

And they're certainly not white elitists.

And we are all at risk of displacement.

if our properties are up zoned and there's an incentive to tear down those properties and replace them with market rate townhouses that we can't afford.

So whether it's property taxes going up or it's the owner of some bank somewhere and they sell it and people have to leave, my whole community is basically at risk.

So up zoning for us is kind of the housing emergency right now that we're looking at.

I wanted to talk about Being homeless, I've been homeless.

I've been homeless twice in my life.

I've been displaced.

I've been pushed around Seattle from one place to another.

And I finally was able to buy a house.

The bank still owns it, but I'm paying for it, and I work on it.

And now this policy is going to displace me from my home.

And I finally have a home, and it took years to get one.

And it's all I wanted, and I saved and saved and worked to get it.

The houses in my neighborhood are still affordable.

The townhouses being built there are selling for twice as much as what my house is appraised on, two lots.

So I'm not seeing affordability coming to South Park through this program.

The MHA displacement analysis is based on a program that many people don't qualify for.

Unmarried roommates don't qualify, apparently, and neither do undocumented immigrants.

And I don't think the analysis is correct.

Thank you, Jennifer.

That's all.

Philippa?

Philippa, you're going to be followed by Philippa Nye.

Philippa, you're going to be followed by Danielle Wallace, 24B, and then Duncan Sharp, 25A.

Hi, I'm Philippa Nye.

I've lived in Delridge for 23 years.

I bought my house there through a first-time homebuyer program.

And having my affordable housing has helped me to start my own business and has definitely improved my quality of life.

And I want other people to have that opportunity.

And I just want to respond to some of the things I've been hearing tonight.

One of them was that people are basically upset about growth.

And I feel like MHA didn't create growth, it's a response to growth.

It's an opportunity to use the growth that we have happening in this city to fund affordable housing.

Even within the single-family neighborhoods, which I live in one of, it's not, you know, growth and change is happening.

My neighborhood is becoming whiter.

Every small little 1940s house is being bulldozed and replaced by a 3,000-square-foot one.

I mean, it's not like we're protecting our single-family neighborhoods now.

They're becoming less and less diverse.

And the other thing that I'm hearing tonight is that affordable housing isn't going to happen in West Seattle.

And I worked for eight years for the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association.

We did a lot of affordable housing development in our corridor.

And nonprofits are really creative about finding ways to find land, even in areas that are already gentrified or in the process of it.

And there's been a huge effort to try to particularly get affordable housing at transit stations.

So I think that they're, you know, West Seattle will get affordable housing because I think there's a lot of creative people who will be working on that.

So, you know, I think it is important for our neighborhood and it will, it will affect the diversity, it will preserve the diversity of our neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Philippa.

Danielle Wallace.

Danielle, you're going to be followed by Duncan Sharp, 25A, and then Yen, 25B.

Hello, my name is Danielle Wallace and I am a resident of District 1. I'm fortunate enough to have purchased a house a couple years ago in Rocks Hill.

I've lived in Seattle for almost 10 years now and most of that as a renter and I understand that many of us in Seattle are in emergency away from not being able to afford our rent or our mortgage.

Seattle also currently faces a homelessness crisis, which is a housing affordability crisis.

With over 12,000 neighbors who are unsheltered in King County, we must build affordable housing now.

As a new homeowner, I've also experienced some of the benefits provided to homeowners, and those benefits are not being shared with those who are unsheltered, those who are low-income, and those who are middle-income neighbors who are renters.

I want our neighborhood to be welcoming to all, not just to homeowners, especially those who can't be here tonight, those who are unsheltered, and those who are renters.

I support MHA in West Seattle, and moreover, encourage you to reinvest those fees directly into affordable housing in the neighborhoods that are most at risk for displacement.

I'm excited by the prospect of more affordability in my neighborhood.

And I urge you to support MHA and other equitable development strategies that can help our city become more inclusive and equitable.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Duncan Sharp.

Duncan 25A followed by Yen 25B.

Good evening.

My name is Duncan Sharp.

I live in the Fauntleroy area there.

In fact, I'm going to be possibly impacted by the zoning proposal that's going forward.

I'm concerned about the MHA that's being proposed here, especially with how the zoning is being changed on my particular piece of property.

I'm a homeowner here, came here about four years ago.

We also own a small business on that property we developed.

From what I can see, one of my biggest concerns with this is it gives the developers too an easy way out.

If this continues as it is, looking at the development possibilities of my property, I would probably turn around, pay the fee, and put in two units besides retail in this area and just probably move out of the area because I wouldn't want to live there anymore.

So that's the other aspect of this is is that I haven't really other I want to appreciate the Fauntleroy Community Association for keeping us informed about what's going on here because I haven't been notified by the city about the zoning changes that have been proposed.

I think there's a I think will be best is to better provide incentives for developers to provide affordable housing units in the properties.

And I do have concerns, especially in the Fauntleroy area, about traffic.

With the Fauntleroy Pier, the ferry system there, there's an awful lot of traffic.

Again, they're also considering what they're going to do to try and get traffic on and off the ferry system there.

So there has to be more development in that area.

There has to be more accommodation for traffic.

Thank you.

Yen?

25B?

Yen?

Okay.

We always do a call at the end for folks who have not had a chance to sign up.

So if she is returned by the time we're done with those folks who have signed up, she will absolutely have the chance.

Lawrence Colts, 26A.

Lawrence, you're going to be followed by Ole Wise, 26B.

I'm a homeowner in West Seattle.

I've lived here for 59 years.

I'm an architect of 48 years.

I'm not against affordable housing, however I find the MHA program as proposed unacceptable.

It sounds and looks like it's politically driven, not family driven.

I'm a very visual person and I observe things.

I live one block off of Fauntleroy and sometimes I have to wait 20 minutes to enter the road because of the traffic there.

And then when I get to the intersection at Fauntleroy and Fauntleroy, there's usually a bus park there.

I have to wait another 5 to 10 minutes because of the way the bus people have situated the bus stops there on the Fauntleroy and the California Junction.

Now, none of these things seem to be addressed in the MHA.

I've never seen a street widened in West Seattle because of higher occupation.

I have never seen that.

I've never seen increased parking provided.

I've always seen more no parking signs, less availability.

And I've never seen real good bus planning in West Seattle.

Many of the homes that I've gone in, I call them Lego homes because they're very blocky.

I don't see much open space and there's very little allowance for landscaping around those homes.

I feel that current city programs usually make living in Seattle less friendly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oli Wise, 26B.

Oli, you're gonna be followed by Margaret Morales, 27A, and then Steve Lippert, 27B.

Well, I can say that I've been in West Seattle as I was born here 84 years ago, so my heart's still in West Seattle.

I was very fortunate to have my dad purchase a piece of property down in the Alki area back in 1944. At that time, it had two World War II duplexes on it.

We still have those duplexes and they're worn out and we say now is the time for us to build something and we were trying to make it affordable but one of our challenges that the current Alki overlay requires one and a half parking places per unit.

So net result about 25 percent of our cost of this new project going to be in just parking.

On the new program, I see that it says one spot per unit.

Can you tell me if that supersedes the Alki overlay?

We're happy to talk with you about that afterwards, Mr. West.

Thank you, I'd like to know.

We're trying, and by the way, our small project will require one of an affordable unit and we are very glad to make sure that we comply with that and supply that unit rather than just buy our way out.

We believe in affordability in West Seattle.

Thank you.

Margaret Morales.

Hi, Margaret.

Margaret, while you make your way down, Steve Lippert, you're going to be next.

And Steve is the last person who's officially signed up.

So anyone who would like to testify, please line up in the aisle here behind Steve.

Go ahead, Margaret.

Hi.

I'm Margaret Morales.

This is my family.

We just lived down the street on Thistle.

We are so lucky to own a home here.

And we're very aware of the privileges we have because we were able to purchase a home in Seattle.

And so we love MHA.

We love that it is going to make that possible for some more households in the city.

So we want to say we're pro.

And our only concern is that it doesn't go far enough.

I'm concerned that the MHA fees are too high and they will stop the development, more development that we'd like to see.

That's our concern.

And I wish you'd just forget about RSL and go straight to low-rise.

So anyway, we're pro-MHA, and let's make space for more people in this city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing the kids with you tonight.

Steve Lippert?

And then thank you to the folks who lined up.

If anyone else is here, please begin lining up and we'll call on you next.

Steve.

How you guys doing?

I'm Steve.

I'm a longtime West Seattle resident.

I own property near the Morgan Junction.

And we've been working on this problem for 20 years.

We developed a neighborhood plan, which was then adopted by the city council into the comp plan.

which you guys have completely ignored, because one of the tenants of that plan was to preserve single-family homes.

When we developed the neighborhood village, we accepted more density into the West Seattle Junction, which allows more flexibility with topography, existing structures, traffic, and those pieces of property are just now starting to turn.

yet you're planning on expanding the urban village plan in the junction.

Let's talk about the reality of the junction.

The 715 bus, the C line, packed to the gills.

The second bus that they put on, the same line that runs at the same time, packed to the gills.

Then we get onto the bridge, totally full.

West Seattle sewer line, full.

The water line coming into West Seattle, at capacity.

The electric trunk coming into West Seattle, at capacity.

Your roads, your infrastructure.

I have a nine-year-old that goes to Fairmount Park Elementary, which was remodeled three years ago.

They can't have a full assembly because they're over full.

You guys are now changing the zoning for the middle school to be able to put portables out front.

We don't have any hospital or health care facility in West Seattle and you guys are trying to pack more density in a way that doesn't blend with the neighborhood.

You've jiggered the numbers to make the open space calculation to use the Jefferson Square or the Jefferson Golf Course, which is a privately run place.

You can't go walk on and go throw the ball.

So we're losing open space.

And you're going to, in a way, change the entire character of the junction.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you.

Please come forward.

Please state your name for the record.

Bob Huppy.

I live in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Continue.

Okay.

First, I want to second everything he just said.

That's what I was going to come up and say.

I feel like you guys need to take a deep breath and really think about what's going on in West Seattle here and what's happened over the last...

I've lived here since 1982. And it's extraordinarily different than it used to be.

I welcome diversity.

I wish it were way more diverse.

The most diverse place in West Seattle is the West Seattle Y. I wish the whole of West Seattle looked like the West Seattle Y. But I don't think we're going to get there this way.

All the apartments that have been built in West Seattle, most of them are two bedrooms.

No families are going to live in those things.

If you're going to ask for developers to provide affordable housing, have it here in West Seattle and have it big enough for families to live in it.

I'm a school teacher.

I taught for 33 years in the public schools.

I want kids in Seattle.

And I want them in all the neighborhoods of Seattle, including West Seattle.

And I want them to be able to afford to live here.

And if we're going to make this tradeoff, let's make sure we have apartments that are big enough and affordable in all parts of West Seattle, not sent off somewhere else in another part of Seattle.

And let's make sure that there's transit and there's decent parking.

are saying, well, they don't have to have parking near any transit hub.

Well, I live right near a Rapid Line C stop, a half a block away, a block away.

And in the daytime, it is completely crowded with parking.

All the cars all over the place, including since it's by Gatewood School, the teachers have to park on the street.

The people who work in the retirement home, they have to park on the street.

And I don't think these things have really been taken into account.

So I second your your stuff and that's all I have to say.

Thank you Bob.

Thank you.

Please come forward.

Yes sir, please come forward.

Please identify yourself for the record.

Hi, my name is Earl Lee.

I'm living in Westwood area and Westwood Village and I'm a former business owner in the junction and I've seen a lot of changes in West Seattle and some of the things in which have happened over I've been here for 28 years and that we seem to get ahead of ourselves as far as what services and that the city can help us with with all this development.

I live right off of 26th Avenue, and it seems like even with the EISs that come out, they're not really paid attention to, or we don't get the proper ones in which we need.

because I live on a street where there's just you know 10 million buses going by the houses shake but and we have come to the city and told them there's nothing and we're still not getting any resolution one one section is fighting with the other section and how are we supposed to believe and what's going to happen with this development when we're having so many problems with what we have to contend with presently?

And I think we need to be able to be reassured that this program is going to solve the problems that we have and not just generate more problems and make things even worse than what they are presently.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Yen Baines.

I live just north of Roxbury, right close to Westwood Village, between Westwood Village and White Center.

And I am actually very much for MHA, and I think that, if anything, it doesn't go far enough.

The up zones that are slated for my particular block, I would be directly affected by, and I still am for.

I think that the housing affordability crisis in our city is such that we really need to actually be taking bolder measures, which is why I think that there should be a higher percentage for developers and re-evaluate the percentage designation for neighborhoods with high displacement risk.

And in those neighborhoods, those fees should come back to the neighborhood, the particular neighborhood that's being most affected.

I think that at a minimum, the fees should be, I think, 5% or higher.

And let me see, a couple other points.

the city needs to also address this.

I know that MHA doesn't directly address displacement in the way that it should, and there are policies that are proposed such as creating a citywide displacement voucher program or updating the MHA fund distribution to match more of the equitable development initiative priorities.

Actually, that's it.

That's all I'm going to say.

If you can count me as a pro, though.

Thank you.

Thank you, Yen.

Please come forward.

Hi, my name is Mike Hall.

I live in Alaska Junction.

Thank you for listening to our comments tonight.

I just want to give a personal example of, I haven't been paying attention to any of the Hollis stuff until about six months ago, but I've been living in my house for 15 years thinking about how I want to redevelop it and when I get the money to do it, what I want to do.

and for the last maybe three or four months we've been entertaining the idea of expanding our property and we've met with multiple people who are developers and I just want to speak to the fee comment because I do think that In all the proposals we've seen that have been brought to us, all the developers, or at least builders, are just simply looking at that as a little bit of a loss of profit, and not necessarily really supporting the underpinning of affordable housing.

And so I think what everyone's vocalizing, at least in our area, is that We're getting recommendations to build skinny, tall houses and use maximum density, which we appreciate, but the houses, both of them, that they're recommending are going to sell for more than the house that I'm living in right now.

So there's plenty of profits there for the developers to pay that fee and push the housing somewhere else.

and really avoid the principle concept of one extra floor in the use that it's supposed to be used for on the property itself instead of pushing it into a further location.

So I think it's going to displace a lot of different people, and it's going to be the exact opposite that the idea is trying to achieve, which is it's going to create more expensive housing in more expensive locations in West Seattle.

And it's one of the last places where people can move to to raise a family.

Thank you, Mike.

Hi, my name is Bruce Bob Zane.

I've been a block watch captain here in the Seattle area since, in West Seattle, since 98. I did want to thank you all for coming here and listening to us.

I know it's a long evening.

You're spending time away from your families.

I did want to say that I know two strongest forces in nature is change and resistance to change.

And you all push through this every day at the City Council.

Having said that, I'm definitely against MHA.

I know that We need affordable housing.

I'm not supporting of this in its current form.

I came here with no money to Seattle.

I saved my pennies living in a horrible apartment in the Northgate area until I was able to afford a house here.

I won't go into a lot of detail in terms of what that looked like.

I bought a place here, and I eventually kind of moved forward in that process.

I eventually, I kind of thought in terms of this evening what I really wanted to do, and I guess I really just wanted to communicate in terms of The types of things I think we should be spending our money on, and I know that we've had conversations around this, but I think it should be around infrastructure.

A lot of things around just buses.

We spend a lot of money talking about and voting for parks.

And I don't see a lot of money going into parks.

I don't see a lot of money going into buses.

I get crammed into going downtown and having to stand up when I can catch a bus on the sea line.

So whatever we can do around that, it would be most appreciative.

Sometimes I feel like you guys are passing around a crack pipe.

Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you, Bruce.

Bruce is our final speaker, so that will close today's public hearing.

Wait, wait, wait.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hi, friends.

I'm Michael Oxman.

I'm an arborist, and this sign says it all.

So MHA is kind of part of the triple whammy.

You've got larger buildings.

You've got impervious rooftops and no place for the tree roots.

So I'm just saying that in your summary, just say that somebody said that the increased bulk and density will displace trees, not just people.

So the livability is out of Hella.

And it's kind of like the Oak Grove subdivision.

Where are the oak trees?

They're gone.

They built a subdivision there.

So that's not going to work.

And then, as you heard yesterday at your city council meeting, new construction is not affordable.

So affordability is out too.

So that's kind of like the, as I said on my Facebook page, it's like the emperor's got no clothes on.

You guys are trying this thing and you've got the wrong name for it.

You're like a bunch of people that are in the tail end of a game of Monopoly, and right at the end, two people usually have most of the buildings and most of the money, and everybody else is dropped out.

Those are the citizens of Seattle that are going to be displaced.

But the two guys get together and they say, hey, we're going to go down to the Toys R Us, and we're going to buy a couple Monopoly games and take the money packets out, and we're going to split them up amongst us.

So that's what these trees that are worth more dead than alive are going to do, is the developer is going to divvy up the money, and then you'll get your cut in your re-election campaign contributions.

So I guess that's about it.

Oh, yeah, and watch out for the backyard cottages.

Those are 600 square feet.

Those are going to take out a lot of trees.

So don't vote for that either.

Thank you, Michael.

I don't see anybody else coming forward.

So this is going to conclude the public hearing on Council Bill 119 and 184. This also concludes the special meeting that we've got for today.

Our next committee meeting on this topic won't be until July.

That'll be Monday, July 16th at 1030 a.m.

at City Hall, where we plan to talk about what we heard here tonight, as well as the process that we plan to use going forward.

Thank you all.

We're adjourned.