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Okay, the March 11th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 2.03 p.m.

I'm Dionne Foster, chair of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rink has had a previously excused absence.

Great.

Thank you so much, Clerk.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

One.

Okay, great.

We have one in-person speaker, which means that each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered.

We will begin with in-person speakers and then move to remote.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not and their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please.

First speaker is Ryan McKinster.

Thank you, Chair Foster and my two committee members, Ryan McKinster, Habitat for Humanity.

I'm the Policy and Advocacy Manager.

I'm just here to show our support for your work as that of the Office of Housing, especially around affordable home ownership.

This work matters deeply to us as well as our families that live in our homes.

I want to tell you about Adam.

Adam is one of our homeowners.

He worked as a Comcast business technician for over 25 years.

He and his wife, Muna, are raising seven children, and for years, all nine of them shared a three-bedroom apartment in West Seattle.

He told us, we were priced out.

I always wanted to buy a home, but couldn't.

We were priced out on the market.

Adam and Muna are now homeowners at 5042 Martin Luther King Way, and he said, we're more secure now.

It's just a little bit of freedom.

That freedom has made possible the kind of investment this council funds and this department supports.

Think about what the Office of Housing's partnership actually makes possible.

Liberty Commons, which is opening in Columbia City, will be the largest single-building habitat for humanity project in the entire country, with 58 permanently affordable homes, steps from light rail, and a neighborhood working hard to prevent displacement.

None of that happens without Seattle's partnership.

and Liberty Commons is not alone.

Through our partnership with the African Community Housing and Development, we're developing 65 permanently affordable homes in Rainier Valley as well.

Together, we are increasing black home ownership and keeping families in like atoms rooted in the communities they built.

Every dollar Seattle vests in permanently affordable housing is leveraged three times from state and private donors.

This is why almost 80% of our upcoming pipeline over the next five years occurs in Seattle.

These homes are affordable for 99 years and beyond.

That is not only generational impact, it creates generational wealth.

We are grateful for this council, the mayor's office, the office housing, and the Seattle community as a whole for their continued support and partnership, and we thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate your comment.

Clerk, are there any other registered speakers?

No.

Okay.

Fantastic.

With that, we will move to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, appointment 03348. The appointment of Carlin Llorente as member, the Burke-Gilman Place Public Development Authority governing council for a term to December 31st, 2026.

Fantastic.

And at this time, I will welcome to the committee table both Carlin Llorente and also Mike Hadzenbeller, who is the former chair of the Burke-Gilman PDA.

So Mike is going to give us an overview of the PDA, and then Carlin will introduce himself.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

So the Burke-Gilman Public Development Authority is a 20-acre piece of property located, better, in northeast Seattle, roughly between Sandpoint Way and 40th Avenue Northeast, bordered by 55th Street on the south, and Metropolitan Market and the Birkin Trail on the north.

This is property that was originally owned by the Coast Guard.

It was donated to the city in the 1970s.

and the city created the Public Development Authority to develop the site for housing and other services.

So today there are about 130, I think 140 units of affordable housing on the site that are owned by a couple of different entities.

There are two separate buildings that are owned and operated by Ronald McDonald House Charities.

There's one site that is owned and operated by Provail, and Children's Hospital is also involved as a user entity.

and the PDA has relatively focused jobs, really maintenance and management of the property and oversight of development that might take place there.

And there are four user representatives on the board that represent the organizations that have a presence there, ProVail being one of them, Ronald McDonald House, the Children's Center, which is an early learning center that's on the property, and Children's Hospital, and then there are five at-large board seats two of which are open right now and we're recruiting members for the board.

So if you know anybody that's interested.

So that's a little bit of an overview of the PDA.

Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate the overview.

Why don't we go actually right into having Carlin introduce herself and then we'll see if there's any questions from colleagues before we proceed.

Thank you, Sheriff Foster.

Thank you, members.

I'm honored to be with you today.

If confirmed, I look forward to working to advance the PDA's core purpose of providing housing, health care, education, and make sure the facilities serve the community.

I understand the board's work not only as an oversight of property, but as a stewardship of a shared place where long-term public value depends on thoughtful governance, good judgment, and strong partnerships.

My current role is the President and CEO of ProVail.

I spend my days working at the intersection of mission, long-range strategy, operations, and shared accountabilities.

Our work is grounded in supporting people with disabilities to live lives of their choice, full of purpose and opportunity and dignity.

ProVail's work has shown me again and again how much facilities matter, much more than assets on balance sheets.

They are civic infrastructure.

They make care, learning, housing, and belonging possible.

If confirmed, I look forward to approaching this role with a collective and a particular sense of responsibility.

Collective because the PDA exists to serve multiple organizations and purposes, and particular because I'm very serious about ProVail making sure that its property is put to the highest and best use in service of the PDA's public purpose.

I appreciate the Council's consideration and look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

And I appreciate your commitment to community.

As you reminded me, we met at a youth care fundraiser earlier this year, and it was lovely to see you there.

And I know that you are engaged in many organizations, both through your day job and your other personal commitments.

So thank you for that.

Colleagues, do you have any questions for folks at the table?

I am seeing a question from Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for being willing to step up into this role.

So back in my prior work, I was working with the Office of Housing, including hearing a little bit about the struggles to keep the board, you know, have enough folks for the board.

And so certainly want to do what I can to support, to make sure those positions are filled.

But just more generally, I know this PDA is a little bit unusual compared to some of our other PDAs, given how it's so property specific, this parcel and so certainly just want to offer partnership if there's any sort of plan to reimagine you know a different structure or different sort of way to to organize around this specific you know piece of property but in the meantime just really appreciate the the service and again if there's other folks that you're aware of certainly happy to put forward other other names to fill out the board so thank you

Thank you so much.

Yeah, as Mike mentioned just a moment ago, we have two open seats.

We have materials to describe the opportunity and we're eager for partnership to help fill those vacancies.

Thank you so much.

And thank you so much, Councilmember Lin.

Are there other questions from fellow committee members?

And let the record reflect, Council President Hollingsworth has joined us.

With that, thank you for your presentation and we will follow up with you on any engagement to make sure we get the rest of those seats filled and hopefully filled with just as excellent candidates as yourself.

With that, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 03348. Is there a second?

Second.

Fantastic, it is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 03348. Are there any further comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll to recommend confirmation to appointment 03348?

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Vice Chair Lin?

Yes.

Chair Foster?

Yes.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and none opposed.

Fantastic, congratulations and thank you for your service.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the City Council confirm appointment 03448 will be sent to the March 17th, 2026 City Council meeting.

Thank you so much.

With that, we will now move on to our next items of business, items two through eight.

Will the clerk please read items two through eight into the record?

agenda items two through eight, reappointments 03449 through 03451 and reappointments 03453 through 03456. The reappointments of Avery Barnes, Yoon Kang-O Higgins, Yolanda L. Spencer, Linda Chavez-Lowry, Diane Garcia, Ricky Grabowski, and Megan Kizkaden as members to the Seattle Arts Commission.

Excellent.

These are all reappointments, colleagues, and all of our information was provided in your packet.

As is common for reappointments, we have not asked members of the committee to join us today.

Do any of my fellow committee members have questions about any of the appointments?

Great.

Seeing none, I'll just take a quick moment to say I got a chance to sit and chat with some of the members at an event I was at last night and we're just pleased to have such a fantastic group of folks serving on our committee.

With that, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03449 through 03451 and appointments 0353 through 03456. the reappointments to the Seattle Arts Commission.

Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments and the reappointments.

Are there any further comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm appointments?

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Vice Chair Lin?

Yes.

Chair Foster?

Yes.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and none opposed.

Fantastic.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the March 17th, 2026 city council meeting.

All right.

Now with that, we will move on to agenda item nine.

Will the clerk please read item nine into the record.

Agenda item nine, Seattle department of construction and inspections rental programs overview.

Will our presenters please join us at the table and we'll have you unmute and introduce yourselves when ready.

And just to note, you may want to scoot the mics a little bit closer than they are right now.

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to come and present today.

I'm Jeff Talent with Department of Construction and Inspections.

I'm the code compliance director, and we have the landlord and tenant programs in our division.

And I'll introduce, I'll let Maureen introduce us in a second, but a little bit of a shout out for her.

She's new in the position.

She's just become our rental programs manager, and she just comes with great expertise and experience to help us out here in the city.

She has a background in landlord-tenant law.

She's an adjunct faculty at Seattle University working, doing trainings in landlord-tenant law, and then she's been managing our group that does frontline services to landlord and tenants for the last several years.

Thanks, Jeff.

I think it was already on, and I turned it off when I hit the button.

Council President Hollingsworth, Chair Foster, committee members, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today.

As Jeff mentioned, I'm Maureen Roat.

I am the Intel Programs Manager for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

I've been with the department now for six years, previously working with the property owner and tenant assistance team, and landlord, tenant, and housing has really been my world for my entire professional career.

I've been doing this work for just about 20 years now.

so happy to be here today, answer any questions you might have and give you an overview of the work that our department does.

Thank you so much and we're so lucky to have both of your experience and expertise in this issue and one of the reasons we wanted to have SDCI join as we are still in the beginning of the year as a committee is we're rounding out the overview of all of the items that are under the purview of this newly formed Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee and of course SDCI is part of that committee in so much as it's related to landlord-tenant relations.

So we are really excited to get this overview of the work that you do, not just with landlord-tenant, but with rental inspections and so much more.

Are we able to get the slides pulled up?

Fantastic.

So I'll just conclude my brief remarks and say, with more than half of the residents in the city being renters, it's incredibly important that we're responsive and we know where renters go when they have questions about their rights, but also where landlords go when they have questions about inspections or relationships with the city.

We look forward to getting this overview of the rules, regulations and the fantastic work that you all do in SDCI.

With that, I will hand it over to you for a presentation and I'll ask my colleagues to hold any questions until the end and the floor is yours.

I guess I'll just kick it off that we're going to cover a lot of ground here.

We won't read everything on that slide, but you should leave with a full understanding of what we do and some of the performance metrics, how we're serving our customers, and what our priorities are for this year.

So I'll pass it over to Maureen, though, to work through the first set of slides here.

Okay, we wanted to give everyone here a sense of who we are and what we do in code compliance at construction and inspections.

We provide a wide array of services through multiple teams in our office, and all of these teams interconnect and work together in some way to serve residents of Seattle, both landlords and tenants.

We have our property owner and tenant assistance team.

Again, this is the team I managed prior to my new role.

This is a fairly large team.

We have 11 full-time positions in that team.

However, I will say for the work that that team covers, it doesn't even seem like 11 would be enough.

We do investigate complaints and enforce city rental housing regulations.

That is everything that falls outside of the world of inspections.

So we're talking about rental agreement, complaints, prohibited acts complaints, and we'll get more into the code specifically that we enforce, but knowing that we deal quite frequently with complaints that are coming in from tenants.

We also have our rental housing standards, and those are going to be governed by both our housing zoning inspectors and our REO team, our rental inspection ordinance team.

And those combined really make up the housing code compliance portion of SDCI as far as what the minimum standards are for health and safety in those units that are being rented out.

We have outreach and education.

That is linked directly to the rental programs in SDCI through our Renting in Seattle program and one full-time outreach coordinator who handles quite a lot of work with responding to questions from owners and renters and hosting landlords' trainings maintaining a web and print materials that are available to the general public, and we're working to make sure that all of our materials that are public-facing are meeting federal accessibility standards.

So we're working very hard, I know, with other departments in the city to meet all of those requirements and really go through those documents.

We also administer $2.5 million in tenant services grants.

We partner with community-based organizations to provide services to particularly hard-to-reach communities and essential services for housing stability that our department doesn't provide.

We're really looking at those CBOs that provide wraparound services, rental assistance, legal aid, things that we can't do but we want to support in working through the city.

And last but not least, we're here today, and we are providing, hopefully, subject matter expertise to elected officials, to our city attorney's office, and to other departments on the work that we do.

We're always available to answer questions related to our landlord-tenant regulations, give a frontline perspective because our teams are working directly with residents.

They're hearing the complaints that are coming in.

They're seeing the problems that can happen when housing is not safe, and they are really excited to participate in that work.

All right, we're going to talk a little bit about codes.

This is a pretty high level of the work that we do, just to give you a sense of the scope of that work.

And it really falls into two buckets, one of those buckets being maintenance, habitability, and safety.

And that's going to fall to our housing, maintenance, and building code team.

I actually think that's reversed.

It should be the housing, building, and maintenance code.

and then our RIO team, our Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance team.

These are really our inspectors who go out in the field, who look at the properties, who ensure on that RIO side that any new rentals or renewed rentals are meeting those minimum standards and also ensuring that properties are getting those randomly selected inspections every five to ten years if we have not received a complaint in the interim.

Housing Building and Maintenance Code, these requirements for general standards should look pretty familiar.

They are similar to those that are required in the RCWs as far as maintaining units and also providing for maintenance, heat, electrical safety, fire and security safety.

This also, our housing building and maintenance code, is also a complaint-based response.

So we are taking complaints from usually tenants, sometimes neighbors, who are reporting issues with properties, and then our inspectors are deployed to the field to do those inspections.

Oftentimes, our inspectors are partnering with a member of our property owner and tenant assistance team to answer any questions that might come up.

For our tenant protections, we regulate everything from move-in to move-out and everything in between.

We have regulations around rental agreements and fees.

We have some prohibited acts that owners are not permitted to do in the course of a residential rental.

And then we also have the duties of owners, which again reflect the duties of owners that are there in the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act.

While we do receive most complaints about properties from tenants or complaints about these issues, rental agreements and fees, prohibited acts and duties of owners, we do have a fairly active landlord community in the city of Seattle and we do have a designated staff member who is actually our outreach coordinator who handles questions for educational and technical assistance coming in from owners.

Those questions, really come in around new laws when they're passed.

They come in around some of them are more complicated laws with rental agreements, and also about just best practices.

Like, as a landlord, what is the best practice that I can do to be compliant with these laws?

And it helps that our Our outreach coordinator is also a landlord herself, and that really came out of conversations we had with small landlords who expressed a bit of uneasiness around communicating their questions on education to the same people that were doing compliance and enforcement.

So while we always try to educate our owners when we're engaged in that enforcement role, they were really more comfortable having this person they could go to to just say, this is what I'm doing.

Is it wrong?

How can I fix it?

So we did create that system within SDCI.

So far it's been working really well.

Alright, so move in to move out, right?

We talk about what can and cannot be charged to a tenant at move in, what types of fees can be charged during the tenancy.

We talk about a lot of what can happen during the tenancy as far as an owner coming into the property and what notice that requires.

We get a lot of calls around rent increases.

And then once we get through to the end of the tenancy, most of the calls that we handle are about when the tenancy doesn't end as everyone hoped and expected.

And those calls are coming from those eviction protections that are in the code.

So, City of Seattle has a plethora of renter protections as far as eviction goes, the most recent being Right to Counsel, and with Right to Counsel, that provides low-income tenants in Seattle with the right to an attorney if they are facing an eviction.

The city partners with the Housing Justice Project currently to provide that service, and it is a service that's mandated to be funded through the code.

Any eviction that takes place in the city of Seattle has to be done with just cause.

And similarly, lease renewals require if your lease is going to be terminated, the owner has to have just cause to do that.

So right of first refusal is how we refer to it.

And it was also done in Seattle to really bridge a gap in the state law.

The state law has a similar renewal policy where leases need to be renewed unless there's cause not to renew them, but it excluded term leases.

So Seattle closed that gap where you need to renew a lease regardless of whether it's term or month to month, and you need to have cause to do that.

There are several eviction defenses.

These are separated out because eviction defenses are tools for the tenants to raise when they're facing an eviction.

At this point, the case is usually in litigation in that status where we are no longer involved once it's in the courts.

And there are defenses that tenants can raise to the eviction itself.

So the first and early on in the tenancy being is the property Rio registered.

Whenever we receive a complaint from a tenant, we check to see, is there a RIO registration?

And if there isn't, that property goes on the list to be contacted to get that process moving forward so that the property can be registered as it's required to be.

If they're going through the court system and a property isn't registered, a tenant can raise that as a defense.

They can also raise defenses around the time of year that these evictions are happening.

So during the school year, and it follows Seattle public school schedule, tenants with children under 18 in the household, school administrators, and school staff cannot be physically removed from the home during that period of time with very limited exceptions.

The winter eviction defense also prohibits evictions for moderate income households during winter months, so that's read as December 1st, 12-1 through March 1st, again with limited exceptions, and these are defenses that can be raised in the court process.

We administer several relocation assistance sections of the code.

Probably the one people are most familiar with is the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance, or TREO.

TREO relates to development activity, change of use, removal of use restrictions, so there's some overlap there with the Office of Housing and our MFTE program, where properties are coming out of an affordable housing program and transitioning back to market rate.

This provides early notice to everyone.

So there is no income requirement to get the notice that the code provides, which is about six months of notice when you go through the trail process.

And it provides relocation assistance, half paid by the city, half paid by the owner.

That's the current amount, the 53, 54, it changes annually with the consumer price index and only low income tenants, 50% AMI or below are entitled to that assistance.

Economic displacement relocation assistance, that came actually after COVID.

It was one of the regulations that was enacted to try to prevent mass displacement.

And that deals with rent increases of 10% or more.

So if the rent increases 10% or more, EDRA, as we call it, provides up to three times the rent to 80% AMI households.

Some distinctions with EDRA, it applies to the household, but there can be multiple households within a unit.

So if you have two roommates who want to move separately, they can both apply and they get assistance, and the assistance is split between them as opposed to them having to divvy it up throughout the household.

Also, with economic displacement relocation assistance, we thought we would see a drop in this after the state passed housing stabilization and rent stabilization.

So far, the way our numbers look, and Jeff will get into this in more detail with the numbers conversation, So far, we're still seeing quite a bit of 10% or more rent increases qualifying for the EDGER program.

We believe that's in large part due to some of the exceptions in the state law that are still allowing for rent increases in certain types of buildings.

We also have emergency and other relocation assistance.

This is the type of assistance you're going to see that's partnered with our housing zoning inspectors.

So they'll go out to a property.

If they identify life-threatening issues, then we will issue what's called a repair and restore.

It'll give the property owner an opportunity to fix it.

If the fix can't be made or it can't be made in a reasonable time while keeping the property safe, we close the property and that means anyone living there has to leave.

This is done as a last resort.

We don't want to displace people.

We always try in any circumstance where a correction has to be made to a property to have that correction made as opposed to requiring people to vacate.

Sometimes it's just not possible depending on the extent and we want to make sure that no one's living in an imminently hazardous condition.

So in doing that, we do provide financial assistance in certain circumstances for people who have to vacate.

Probably the most common that we don't provide assistance for are going to be fires and other events that are not within the control of the owner.

So that's something we get a lot of questions about with respect to what does emergency assistance cover.

As you can imagine, we do have quite a bit of overlap with state law and a lot of areas where Seattle's laws are more protective and also areas where there's a state law that exists but we have jurisdiction under the code but not jurisdiction over the state law.

So let me explain that a little bit.

So rent stabilization was passed at the state level.

We spend a lot of our time educating renters and owners about the requirements of rent stabilization.

We provide them with helpful information including links to the text of that legislation so that they can become familiar with it, but we do not enforce that legislation.

It's enforced through the Attorney General's Office.

Notices to terminate for cause and lease renewals.

Again, there is a state law requiring lease renewal.

City of Seattle is more protective, including those term leases.

We have timelines for repair.

We are often asked how long an owner has to make those repairs.

These timelines are in state law.

So again, we're providing education and information on those state laws.

and security deposits.

We do have enforcement authority over security deposits, but there are also good civil remedies in the state law for tenants who can actually get, if they go to court on an intentional security deposit withholding, they can get more through that state action if they can prove that that withholding was intentional.

So while we do have enforcement authority over security deposits, sometimes the path to getting that deposit back is better taken through the state.

And again, that's not an exhaustive list, just one we see the most questions on.

All right, outreach.

We do a whole lot of it.

We try to spend as much time as we can in the community and working with the community.

This doesn't always mean that we are the ones providing the direct workshop or the trainings or the counseling.

a lot of times we're relying on community partners that we fund to reach those audiences that for good reason might not want to engage with the government and really get to those populations that historically do not reach out for help directly to government officials.

So that's one of the ways that we expand our outreach and inclusion is working with those CBOs.

Internally, we have the Renting in Seattle program.

It's a fully branded program that really has tailored resources.

If you've had a chance to look at the website, the resource is designed to be used by renters and owners, and each section of Renting in Seattle is specifically tailored to those audiences.

So if you click on the I'm a renter, you're going to get a different read than if you click on I'm an owner, because the idea is trying to take you through the information that's most relevant to you based on your position.

We also do landlord trainings.

We have four plans so far in 2026. We just had one last week at Bertha Knight Landis and had 74 landlords turn out.

Some great discussion in that training.

Our renter's handbook, which is available in 14 languages, we do partner with the Rental Housing Association on this handbook.

The handbook is actually required to be provided by owners when a tenant is moving into a property and at renewals during the tenancy.

So the idea is that every renter in the city of Seattle should have a copy or access to this handbook.

We have a landlord newsletter that's based on our RIO registrations and additional landlords who signed up to be on a listserv.

We send out a newsletter through that listserv and we also communicate things that come up in between the newsletter, right?

So if new laws pass and things need to be communicated to the landlord community urgently, we can send it out through that tool.

We do a number of partner trainings.

We work with community organizations, landlord organizations.

We go to a lot of community events where we can do tabling, get out and really reach people who may not come to downtown Seattle or who, again, might not want to engage in a government building.

and I keep talking about community partners.

We're finally here, here they are.

These are the community partners that we are directly working with through our grant program.

These providers do everything from direct eviction defense to supportive services like case work and dispute resolution.

The partnership with dispute resolution is new this year, so we're really looking to see how we can expand that and work with dispute resolution to help us in those scenarios where we have customers call and it's clearly just a dispute between the tenant and the owner that needs to be amicably resolved.

It's not something where we would mediate.

So we are working with all of these providers.

We provide annual training for the providers, whether they are return grantees or new grantees, which we actually are hosting tomorrow.

We have a big training tomorrow for these organizations to participate in.

Our annual grant solicitation is $2.5 million for 2026. We're hoping to maintain that baseline in 27 and 28. And then from all of these organizations, we do receive a monthly report on both what's been spent and what the deliverables are that have been met in that period of time.

All right, in addition to intersecting with CBOs, we also intersect quite frequently with other city departments.

So the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, in the beginning when I said we really deal with the tenancy from the move in to the move out, Seattle Office of Civil Rights looks at those issues, or at least some of those issues that are happening before a tenancy even exists.

So they're dealing with first in time and fair chance housing, and then also any fair housing violations that may occur during the tenancy.

We frequently get questions about this and are referring customers to SOCR for help.

The Department of Neighborhoods, We hear from the Department of Neighborhoods on communications and concerns that have come through the Renters Commission.

Oftentimes, we're able to help them direct a customer either to us or to the right place when they're looking for assistance with their rental.

HSD provides the rent assistance through community organizations.

Many of those organizations overlap with some of the organizations that we're funding for services.

Office of Housing, our partners that are here with us today.

We work fairly closely on MFTE properties, particularly that are going to expire.

We, in the last several years, have started a structured outreach to those properties when we know that they are not going to renew their MFTE, so we want them to know early that they're required to go through tenant relocation.

So we work with the Office of Housing to confirm what those properties are and communicate with them that they're required to go through that process.

City utilities, we are, for any requests that we get from tenants with utility disputes or problems with shutoffs, we work with city utilities on those issues.

Sometimes we don't know why something has been shut off, whether it's a non-payment issue or a mechanical or other property-related issue.

So our inspectors work with city utilities to try to pinpoint that problem, and we will refer people there for billing disputes along with the hearing examiner's office.

All right, so my last slide, but probably one of our most important slides, is how do customers get to us?

I just spent the last 15 minutes or so talking about all the things we do and all the things we cover.

Well, those services are only as useful as people's ability to get to us and to report their problems and get assistance.

So how customers reach us, they can reach us in a number of ways.

They can submit complaints through Seattle Services Portal, which is an online portal, or they can call the Renting in Seattle hotline.

Once we receive a complaint, whether it's from a tenant or an owner, We have an intake team that can handle basic questions and correctly funnel those questions to the right team.

If it's something that isn't meant for SDCI, they can also provide referrals.

Our complaints are triage-based.

This is largely due to the number and complexity of complaints that we receive, with first priority going to emergency conditions, evictions, lockouts, and rent increases.

Those all tend to be the most time sensitive and pressing for customers, so they go to the front of the line.

and once we get to the point where a complaint has been processed, then a specialist or an inspector contacts the customer and will follow up from that point with an investigation to determine if a violation exists or what needs to be done for compliance.

And with that, I will turn it back to Jeff.

Thank you, Maureen.

And so I'll talk a little bit about performance and our numbers, how we're doing in terms of serving customers.

We take our performance very seriously.

We track it carefully.

We manage to it.

We check in with our team and adjust as we need to.

The graph there is there to show you, we had a couple of very tough years there.

Coming out of the pandemic and the lifting of the eviction moratoria, there was quite a bit of pent up demand for our services.

And so we had called it kind of the pig in the Python or the mountain or something.

So over the course of starting in 21, 2022 and 2023, we were very busy and struggling to keep up with the demand for our services.

I think the message we're here today, and maybe I'll knock on wood, right, is we think the workload is stabilizing.

It stopped settling out about 70% over pre-pandemic levels, but at a level that we can manage.

If we can get you to come a little closer to the mic, that would be fantastic.

Thank you.

Is it better there?

Okay.

So in 2025, we had over 5,000 rental complaints made and about the same number of rental complaints addressed.

So more or less parity, right?

We were able to keep up with demand in 2025, and that was sort of the first year after a few years of struggling to keep up.

Maureen mentioned this triage system that we use.

We prioritize higher and lower cases, and it takes, we get front of the line treatment for the most urgent situations, and some situations take longer.

If it's a WADEF scenario or just wanting some general advice, Those go towards the back of the line.

There's a bunch of stuff in the middle.

We did a kind of deep dive into how the triage system was working last year and sat pretty comfortably with the results.

It was a one day median response time to complaints that came in.

So half of the people calling us are in that express lane with high priority calls.

We get that assigned to an analyst right away.

The analyst starts working on their case.

On the other end, 28 day average response time for other calls coming in.

So the middle tier are probably a little bit ahead of that 28. The lower priority calls probably could take a month or longer to get a response.

It's been steadily improving over the last couple of years here as the demand for our services has gone down.

We had 289 enforcement cases in 2025. We're quite successful in not having to move to formal enforcement.

So everything we do is enforcement at some level, right?

We get a complaint, we get on the phone, we talk to a tenant, we learn what the situation is, we talk to a landlord, they resolve the issue.

That was enforcement.

We're not tracking that as a formal enforcement, but we get quite a bit of success just in those conversations that we have.

A few other numbers for you.

So TREO, Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance, we had 86 households go through the TREO process and they received an average of $2,600 last year.

In EDRA economic displacement relocation assistance, there were 75 households with an average payout of $4,700.

As Maureen mentioned, you know, we kind of expected a decrease in EDRA demand with the state rent stabilization, but we had 24 EDRA cases so far this year.

We're only two and a half months in.

So we're on track right now to be sort of at the same level as the past.

Rio, just some numbers for you.

The Rio program has two components, both a registration and an inspection component.

The registration is kind of like a business license.

So of the licensed rental properties in the city, we have 28,000 properties in the city and contained on those properties is 195,000 units.

So that's the scope of our rental inspection program.

and then last year we did 3,600 inspections on those properties.

Those are those randomly selected inspections every five to ten years.

For outreach we hosted 22 staff hosted or staff 22 events last year and in our landlord trainings we had over 800 property managers and landlords come and in our grant program our grantees reported 9,244 direct tenant contacts so that could be it's a variety of things that we just kind of totaled up it could be tenants supported in the eviction process.

It could be interested people, renters that showed up at an outreach event.

And then 147,000 digital outreach contacts.

Those are always a little bit soft, but digital media is a super important way to reach people.

And so it may be easy to get high numbers, but that's important.

That is an important place where we're reaching a lot of renters.

All right, 2026 priorities.

I don't know, Maureen, if we agreed to talk about this, maybe I'll jump in and you can add.

Yeah, go for it.

So I think the biggest theme for us this year is adapting to this new normal.

Again, hopefully we've stabilized at a workload that we can keep up with and then improve the customer experience in this new normal.

So updating our customer intake systems to get a little bit faster movement from our call center to assign to an analyst to a responsive call.

We're doing active work on the EDRA intake and IT system right now together with Seattle IT.

Expand collaboration with our community-based partners to meet some of the unmet needs and complete accessibility work for all of our public-facing materials.

It's been a big effort this year.

Really important to us is to improve the Rio IT system.

We know that there's some challenges with our customers using it and just in the process of trying to get the prioritization within Seattle's broader IT portfolio to work on that.

And then a big one right now is just to continue to provide subject matter expertise to the policy makers in the city, like the council members here, mayor's office, city attorney's office.

other parties that may be calling looking for some advice.

I don't have anything to add.

That was full coverage of that slide.

All right, well, we covered a lot of ground here for you.

We're always available and happy to answer questions now or follow up questions later on.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate both of you and the work that you put into this great presentation.

You covered a lot of ground and I want to say just about 30 minutes.

So thank you so much to both you, Mr. Talent and Ms. Rote.

We really appreciate your service and your leadership.

I will now turn to my colleagues to see if there are any questions for our presenters today.

Councilmember Lin.

Yeah.

Uh, thank you both.

Um, such important work, um, on the Edra, um, stuff, is that newer buildings?

Could you give a little bit more of information about who who's applying for those?

Yeah, so we are still, of course, getting some applications from buildings that are not exempted from the state cap on rent, but we still are processing those requests.

We let people know you can report this to the Attorney General's office if it is over a 10% increase.

Most people choose to go forward with EDRA.

At that point, they want to go through the process and they want to move on.

So we do process those applications if they are 10% or greater.

And the reason for most of the continuing applications that are over 10% is the fact that a lot of buildings fit that they are newer than 12 years.

I'm glad to hear that you're in a place where you think the workload sounds like is somewhat manageable, but could you just, any big picture improvements, things that you think we could be doing better?

I know that's a big question and happy to have that question offline, just how are we doing from a big picture perspective or perhaps this is a different one how do we compare to the extent that you know to other cities of sort of similar size in terms of our kind of how your department is structured or kind of like the staffing

So a lot of my experience with other cities comes from requests that we've had to present at conferences, and I will say that Seattle is uniquely positioned in the way our department is set up, almost to the point where jurisdictions seem envious of the idea that we have this basically collaborating team of inspectors and property owner and tenant assistance analysts who can help with rights questions that come up.

In those audiences, we tend to be a more robust department than what any of similarly situated cities are talking about.

It doesn't mean that other cities don't exist like that, but just a lot of the interest that we get when we're having those conversations is around Well, how did you build Rio?

And what kind of lift did it take?

What kind of money did it take to put that program into place?

So I think in a lot of ways, the way we're set up really is at the forefront of what a lot of cities of similar size are doing.

And we get a lot of calls, frankly, to provide technical assistance on how to do it.

And to the extent we can offer some guidance on this is what we did.

If we did it again, this is what we might do differently and help those other cities through that.

We do spend some time doing that.

I might offer.

It's been several years, but we did look at pure cities quite a bit, and the one place I would say where some cities have what might be seen as bigger staffs are cities that are running their own rent stabilization programs, where they have a whole line of business that we don't do that can take quite a few staff, but that's kind of apples and oranges comparison.

And is that because a lot of our partners are doing that rental assistance, so in some ways it's kind of outsourced to a certain degree?

I think it's because rent stabilization in Washington is managed at the state level, and we are actually specifically excluded from enforcing it on the state's behalf.

Oh, the rent stabilization.

Oh, I thought you meant rental assistance.

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, like different jurisdictions have separate departments' entities that you can push complaints for rent stabilization through when they're managed at the local level.

And one last question.

Any big requests from our CBOs or just any thoughts on how they're doing?

in the sense of things that they would like us to do?

Yeah, anything, improvements that they're like, oh, I wish anything that they could do.

I'm sure funding is hard for them.

I'm sure the tenant needs, or at least that that's what I've heard.

But anything else in terms of system improvements that you've heard or requests from them?

I mean, we've heard very directly in the right to counsel, the in eviction defense services that the demand has stayed very high post pandemic here and the providers of those services have been struggling to keep up with the client demand and they have set thresholds for screening criteria for who they can accept and who they haven't.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Lynn.

Those are great questions.

Any questions from other members of the committee for our presenters today?

Fantastic.

I'll just add one, well, we'll see if I'll add one or two or three or four, I'm not sure, but a couple of comments that I wanted to make and actually I'll throw it to you to just make sure we hit this point around EDRA and the statewide rent stabilization.

So the gap there, as I understand it, is that that the statewide rent stabilization does not apply to buildings that are, is it 12 years or newer?

So it's 12 years or newer that that statewide rent stabilization does not apply.

So we are still seeing folks who might be getting rent increases above 10% in those buildings.

And then those folks are coming to SDCI and accessing the EDRA program.

Is that correct?

Yes, there are a few other exceptions in the state law, but predominantly for larger buildings, that's the issue.

Fantastic.

And then I had one other question, and I actually didn't, this came to me as I was watching you present today.

I think I saw on one of your slides that the payout for EDRA is on average about $2,000 higher than it is for TRAO.

And it's also correct that EDRA, in order to qualify, you can be up to 80% AMI, and then for TRAO, you can be up to 50% AMI.

So it just struck me that we're seeing sort of a larger payout in a program that you can access with a higher median income.

Can you share more about how that came to be?

Yeah, so a couple things.

One is that tenant relocation assistance through Trejo, a lot of it is governed by the state.

So there's an enabling statute and state law that gives cities the authority to create a tenant relocation assistance program.

and that state law limits the qualification to 50% AMI.

So we basically have utilized that AMI since Trejo's inception.

And then when City of Seattle put economic displacement relocation into effect, we had the 80% AMI specifically because we would be able to qualify more people in that circumstance.

I think the unintended consequences, what you were talking about, which is we end up with this scenario where people who are paying higher rents, who in theory would be higher income, if their payout is three times their rent, then people who are making more but still qualifying for the program are going to get more relocation assistance than a low income tenant.

And I think that was an unintended consequence of how the formula was written into the code.

Thank you.

I really appreciate that.

And certainly seems like an area for further exploration to the extent that we're able to collaborate with some of our state partners and focus on making sure our low income or our lowest income renters have access to that relocation assistance.

And it feels like a good opportunity.

Well, probably over the course of my four years, I know Some of our friends from OH are gonna be up here, but we just had them present and talk a few weeks ago about area median income and black households.

And we know that the average black household is about at 50% area median income.

So just gives us information about who's able to access which program.

So I really appreciate that.

I think what the final question that I wanna ask is just a little bit of more information around the I've lost my note here.

Security deposits.

So can you just share with us what governs return of security deposits and what enforcement capacity there currently is?

So right now with security deposits, we do have a hold on providing direct enforcement where we would contact the owner and require the return of the deposit.

that largely is the result of a capacity issue that came up during that wave of calls that you saw come in post-COVID, and right now we are doing an education and self-help assistance for anyone who calls with a deposit issue.

The reason for that is when we looked at all of the different things that we enforce, we saw that security deposits was one of those areas where there is a good path for self-help, and also the remedy in the state law where you can get two times your deposit back if it's an intentional withholding could be a better outcome for a tenant than the city just getting their baseline deposit back for a withholding.

And there were really excellent self-help materials available through Washington Law Help that we could provide directly to tenants with those issues.

We did find that most of the calls coming in with respect to security deposits were not about the deposit itself, like the fact that the owner missed a deadline and didn't return the deposit.

They were about disputes over whether or not the damage was done.

And that's not something that SDCI gets directly involved in.

So a lot of those now we're looking at, is there a way to utilize our new grantee with the Dispute Resolution Center to work with them on potentially some of those issues as well, to expand that out a little bit.

and also our authorization for enforcement on security deposits in our code just references right back to the state law.

So if you look under the security deposit SMC, you'll see that it references the RCW.

So essentially anything in that RCW with respect to the requirements, how long an owner has to return deposit, what they have to provide to essentially secure their right to withhold the deposit, that's all governed by the state.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that information and clarification.

All right, going one last time to colleagues for further questions.

Seeing none, I wanna thank you both.

This was an excellent presentation and thank you for your service.

All right, where are we now?

We are gonna now, what a great question.

We are gonna now move on to item 10. Will the clerk please read item 10 into the record?

Yes, agenda item 10, Seattle Office of Housing Homeownership Program Overview.

All right, thank you.

Will our presenters please join us at the table and we will give you a second to get your presentation pulled up.

So I will just do a little standup routine here.

We're really pleased to have you both.

I'll go ahead and introduce you.

So we have Joy Hunt with us.

the interim manager of home ownership programs.

And we have Kelly Larson, the director of policy and planning, both from our own office of housing.

And we're excited to have you here with us today to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, which is our home ownership programs at the city.

As I've shared with folks, I own my home because I got down payment assistance.

which is one of the many types of home ownership programs that we have.

And as the cost of living goes up in Seattle, as the cost of purchasing a home goes up in Seattle, the work that we and you are doing to ensure that we can keep home ownership within reach, I think is just incredibly important.

And I'm really excited to have you with us today because I think too often folks have a misunderstanding of what home ownership programs are and what they can do.

and in fact maybe sometimes a misunderstanding of how important they are even still within such an expensive housing market.

I think I've bought enough time here and so with that I'll hand it over to you to introduce yourselves and start your presentation.

And colleagues will just do the same thing with any questions until after the briefing.

Great, thank you so much Chair Foster.

Good afternoon and good afternoon to our other committee members.

I'm Kelly Larson, Director of Policy and Planning for the Office of Housing and I'm here with my colleague Joy.

Hi, I'm Joy Hunt, I'm the interim manager for home ownership at the Office of Housing.

So we're gonna provide an overview of the homeownership programs administered by the Office of Housing starting with the need for homeownership and ORH's broader role in supporting homeowners.

Then we're gonna share more details about the Homeways Home Repair and Weatherization programs and the advancements that create affordable permanent homes for sale.

Finally, we'll share some opportunities and challenges we are wrestling with now and that we anticipate in the years ahead.

It is the Office of Housing's vision for everyone to have a healthy and affordable home.

OH affordable home ownership investments are critical to achieving this vision.

We know stable housing provides a foundation for families and individuals to grow and thrive, and the department's home ownership investments prevent displacement and support more diverse neighborhoods.

This is a key strategy for addressing racial disparities in Seattle's housing market, as well as the racial wealth gap.

The permanently affordable homes funded by the Office of Housing maintain affordability at resale for over 50 years, offering lasting stability and a shield against shifting market conditions.

We are revisiting this graphic from our last briefing to this committee which presents a broader view of Seattle's housing needs and existing efforts.

Seattle needs 112,000 homes by 2044 as the city grows.

The green represents affordable income restricted housing and the gray represents private market housing.

You can see where OH funded home ownership investments generally land, supporting homeowners in the range of 30 to 80% of very median income in that green box just below the main chart.

The growth targets in this chart don't clearly distinguish between rental and home ownership, though we strongly support both types of housing.

It's an overview of the different forms of home ownership support funded by the Office of Housing.

We have home wise home repair, weatherization and energy efficiency programs.

Join team lead the work to invest in acquisition and construction of permanently affordable homes.

OH also provides homeowner stabilization services and down payment assistance.

and all home ownership programs serve households up to 80% of area median income, which is just over $100,000 for a two-person household in Seattle.

This is a summary of our homeownership investments in 2026. The budget for acquisition development of new for sale homes is 16 million and the total budget for weatherization and home repair is 9 million.

Jumpstart payroll expense tax provides a total of 10 million annually for developing new homes and providing weatherization and home repair The housing levy has committed $7 million annually for homeownership and 5% of mandatory housing affordability or MHA revenues are dedicated to homeownership, estimated to be about $1 million in 2026, but this may be more depending on actuals.

We have other federal and state sources that support weatherization and home repair programs for a total homeownership budget of $25 million annually.

As Council President Hollingsworth knows, in addition to what is listed in this chart, OH and community received one-time appropriation of $3 million for 2026 homeowner stabilization contracts as well.

To put this in context of history a little bit, for three successive housing levies prior to the current levy, from 2002 to 2016, the seven-year homeownership investments totaled around $10 million.

So that means for three seven-year cycles, homeownership received $10 million for seven years.

The funding environment for homeownership has changed a lot with new MHA and Jumpstart payroll expense tax revenues, as well as a larger housing levy.

committed a higher percentage of revenue to home ownership than ever before.

The 2023 housing levy commits nearly $50 million to home ownership over the seven-year period, and Jumpstart and MHAA fund sources commit to 5% of total revenues to home ownership.

More resources have supported this sector to build up an impressive pipeline of projects, and we know consistent and predictable funding allows developers to plan for the future and commit to new projects year after year.

Dive a little more deeply into our home repair program.

We first have a home repair loan program providing loans to income qualified homeowners to address critical life safety and structural issues in their homes.

Loans start at $3,000 and can go up to $24,000 with zero interest.

If a homeowner repair presents more urgent health or safety risks, they are eligible to receive up to $20,000 as a grant through our Home Repair Grant Program.

To qualify, community members must own a property in Seattle and income qualify at that 80% area median income level.

We offer a variety of interior and exterior improvements through these loan and grant programs, roof repairs and replacements, plumbing, kitchen and bathroom repairs, gutter and sewer improvements, and other accessibility modifications like a tub to shower conversion, ADA toilet installations, and doorway widening.

Many, many more things beyond that as well.

We also have a side sewer assistance program in partnership with SPU, where homeowners can qualify for a zero interest loan to repair their side sewer.

Our weatherization program provides free, energy-efficient improvements to income-qualified homes, decreasing energy bills, increasing comfort, and saving money.

The types of available improvements that a homeowner may receive through the weatherization program are insulation, ductless heat pumps, hot water heater replacements, duct and air sealing, furnace repair replacement, and other repairs and upgrades.

Again, homeowners must live in Seattle or be a City Light customer and income qualify at 80% of AMI.

Our oil to electric program is a multi-department partnership with the Office of Housing, the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, and Seattle City Light.

The city offers free oil to electric heating conversions for homeowners and renters who are income qualified at 80% of AMI, and this program aims to reduce overall energy usage and reduce utility costs.

If a homeowner also qualifies for the utility discount program offered by the city, they can save up to 60% on their utility bills in combination with this program.

The services offered here include conversion of an oil furnace to an electric heating system, decommissioning a homeowner's oil tank, and general health and safety inspections.

Our goal with these programs is to help keep people in their homes.

We recognize that improvements to homes mean healthier residents, and it's one of the many ways that our office works to address high living costs and prevent displacement from neighborhoods where people have established history and community.

Our programs have weatherized over 1,100 homes, converted 263 homes from oil or gas to electric heat, and provided over 85 home repair loans and grants.

So now I'll talk more specifically about permanently affordable home ownership.

First to frame what I'll be talking about, permanently affordable home ownership is part of a larger movement.

Habitat for Humanity's partnership home ownership model was founded in rural Georgia in 1942 in an interracial faith community.

The first community land trust grew out of the southern civil rights movement as a tool for establishing a new form of land tenure for black farmers and their families.

The movement was founded by civil rights leaders including Slater King and Charles and Shirley Sherrod.

Today there are 225 community land trusts in the United States.

Buyers of permanently affordable homes must have incomes below 80% of area median income.

To ensure a band of eligible buyers, homes are priced at 65% of area median income or below.

Home price calculations are based on the assumption that no more than 35% of pre-tax income should be used for housing.

For the purposes of this calculation, housing costs include mortgage principal, interest, property taxes, insurance, HOA dues, and any monthly stewardship fee.

This means that currently permanently affordable home prices range from 250 to $350,000, dependent on the number of bedrooms in the home.

Permanently affordable homes have resale restrictions which make them affordable to the first and all successive buyers.

The goal of these resale restrictions is to balance buyer equity with an ongoing affordability for successive buyers for generations to come.

So here's some additional detail on how the model works.

Income-eligible buyers, folks with incomes below 80% of area median income purchase a home.

They lease the land under the home in a long-term renewable lease.

When they eventually choose...

Oops, sorry.

Thank you.

Oh, better.

When they eventually choose to sell, they sell the home at a restricted price to the next buyer.

The resell formula most commonly used in Seattle is 1.5% annual interest.

The land is owned by a nonprofit, for example, Habitat for Humanity, a community land trust, or a co-op developer.

The nonprofit provides long-term stewardship of the land and homes to ensure they are sold to income-eligible buyers at affordable prices in perpetuity.

This is an example of a capital funding stack needed to develop permanently affordable homes.

There are typically three sources of funding, an OH loan, funding from the Washington State Department of Commerce, and a construction loan, which is replaced by the buyer's mortgage when construction is complete and the home is sold.

This is a highly efficient public investment.

For every dollar the Office of Housing contributes to the development of permanently affordable homes, we leverage $3 in state and private investment.

However, at this time we are seeing an average of a three year wait for state funds needed to match our local investment.

To date, we have 358 permanently affordable homes in operation in Seattle.

These are homes where construction is complete and the homes are now inhabited by income-eligible buyers.

85% of our homes are in South Seattle, 43% in District 1, 23% in District 2, and 22% in District 3. We love building in the South End and are also looking forward to completing two large projects up north in District 6 this year.

Most of our homes are family-sized housing, including 47% two bedrooms, 34% three bedrooms, and 5% four and five bedrooms.

Here's some high-level information on our home buyer demographics from 2020 through February of this year.

28% of buyers identify as black or African American, 27% white, 16% Asian or Asian American, 9% Hispanic, 9% multiple races, 1% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 10% decline to report a racial identification.

Looking at income data, 79% of our buyers are between 50 and 80% of area median income.

The remaining 21% are between 30 and 50% of area median income.

Some of the folks in that 30 to 50% bracket have been assisted with down payments to the Covenant Home Ownership Account Program or other down payment assistance programs which allow us to reach deeper affordability for home sales.

I'm excited to share some of our projects with you.

This is Habitat for Humanity's Liberty Commons project located at 5022 Martin Luther King Junior Way South.

It's five stories and 58 units of housing.

It's the largest single building Habitat for Humanity project in the United States, right here in Seattle.

It's opening in July and we expect home sales to wrap up by the end of this year.

Homes will be sold using community preference, which drives buyer outreach in neighborhoods with a high risk of displacement.

Community preference focuses outreach on people who live, have formerly lived, work, use services, or volunteer in the neighborhood.

Goals are to help renters entering homeownership stay or return to their community and to reduce displacement.

I'm also excited to present Homestead Community Land Trust Woodland View Project in the Finney Ridge neighborhood.

This project will have 19 permanently affordable homes with some market-rate homes and ground floor retail.

Homes will be priced between $245,000 and $315,000 and will begin selling later this spring.

And this project is located at 5819 Finney Avenue North in District 6. Third and final project to present today is the Goodwill Baptist Project, also being developed by Homestead Community Land Trust.

This is a really unique and innovative opportunity.

Goodwill Baptist Church sits at 15th Avenue and East First Street in the Central District.

The church currently owns a large surface parking lot.

The church will stay where it is, and 34 permanently affordable homes will be built where the church parking lot is currently located, with a new underground parking lot for church members installed below the homes.

creating a win-win situation for the church community and the future owners of the permanently affordable homes.

I also want to share a particularly exciting partnership initiative, which is the Rainier Valley Affordable Homeownership Initiative.

Initiative's goals include building 100 new permanently affordable homes, mitigating displacement, and building the capacity of community-based organizations.

These homes are built on 10 sites of surplus sound transit land previously used for light rail construction staging.

Nine of the sites have been awarded for development and a request for proposals to develop the 10th site will be released later this year.

Developers include Habitat for Humanity, Homestead Community Land Trust, and African Community Housing and Development.

Development is complete on two of the sites and will complete on a third site in the next couple of months.

Leveraging publicly owned sites like these sound transit sites is an emerging key strategy that significantly increases project viability and sometimes allows for more deeply affordable homes.

Next, I wanna share some homeownership related opportunities with you.

First, we're lucky in Seattle to have three critical local fund sources to support the development of permanently affordable homes, the housing levy, MHA fees, and the payroll expense tax.

Our local dollars are almost always first in on projects, allowing nonprofit developers to competitively seek state or federal match and construction loans.

Second, as I shared on a prior slide, our partnerships with agencies including sound transit are allowing us to support development on publicly owned land, which helps control costs and increases project viability.

Third, permanently affordable home ownership is a uniquely flexible model.

We can build small infill projects with as few as one home or large condo buildings, which we've seen a couple of examples of here today.

Fourth, we know there's a lot of energy around social housing, and our program shares some of the goals of social housing, including being free from market speculation and permanent affordability in perpetuity.

Finally, we want to mention that in addition to supporting permanently affordable home ownership, OH is thinking of strategies to assist market rate homeowners in partnership with the Black Home Initiatives Sustaining Existing Homeowners Project Team.

This might look like advocating for expanded property tax relief to assist market rate homeowners, foreclosure prevention grants and services, resources to help families prepare wills to facilitate the intergenerational transfer of homes, low or no interest loans to build ADUs or DADUs or additional home repair resources to help homeowners up to 100% of area median income and more.

Now I'll speak about challenges.

Our number one challenge is managing demands for permanently affordable homes.

There's consistently high demand and great interest whenever we have homes of this type up for sale.

And that's been true since the beginnings of the availability of these homes in Seattle.

Second challenge is access to resources, including delays for state funds needed to match local investment, the high interest rate for construction loans right now, and questions about future access to payroll expense tax funds.

Finally, we want to support emerging developers of affordable ownership homes and funding to support ongoing stewardship activities could help facilitate bringing more developers and stewards into this work.

Looking ahead, I'm so excited to share our pipeline with you.

We currently have 22 permanently affordable home ownership projects with 455 homes in various stages of development in our pipeline.

These projects range from two to 68 homes.

The majority are family-sized housing units.

And finally, in the future, we look forward to adding a large number of homes to our pipeline when the Fort Lawton project is approved by this council for formal submission to our federal partners.

Fantastic.

Thank you both so much.

I think I was waiting for the questions slide to pop up there for some reason.

I was like a little slow in my pickup.

We really appreciate it.

I think that was a fantastic overview of the homeownership programs.

I will check in with my colleagues first to see if they have any questions.

Yes, ma'am.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you both for being here.

Great presentation, just to get kind of an overview of where we are.

And I will say, and like the Chair had mentioned, near and dear to her heart, same thing.

I know all the Council members were always talking about homeownerships, opportunities for folks.

and one of the things that I wanted to know from you all is how do we and we might be constricted by state guidelines but opportunities to push a little bit on the AMI piece for not the home ownership piece but the weatherization or or ADA stuff.

There's, as you all know, there's a lot of people that are in their homes and they just, they don't meet that threshold, but they don't make enough to make the ends meet just enough.

And they just might be in a house that might be worth a million dollars that they bought years ago for $50,000 or a hundred.

And they just don't, you know, just most of their incomes go into taxes and a whole bunch.

Do you all think there are opportunities for us to find creative ways to incorporate more people to stabilize them in their homes?

I know it's a loaded question, it's a lot.

Thank you for the question.

We are looking a lot at area median income in the last two years and really trying to be as thoughtful as we can and careful because there has been such a shift in our area median income in this city with growth of high wage earners.

pulling up the entire chart.

So we are really cautious about over-correcting in this time to make sure that we're watching who are the renters that we are trying to serve, who are the homeowners that we are trying to serve.

And many of, you referenced a data point earlier, Chair Foster, around the average black Seattleite and their household income is at 50%, a very median income.

So I think there's just a lot of a lot of data pieces to be looking at.

I will say in our last update to the housing funding policies that guide our investments and our work at the office, we did raise the income thresholds for all of our home repair and weatherization programs.

They were prior at 50% AMI.

We raised those all up to 80. So we did expand the population that we could serve there, which is a good thing.

And then we face potentially some constitutional limits as well with some of these definitions around serving the poor and infirm is, I'm quoting somebody else, that is not my, that's the terminology.

So we are always wrestling with this as well and trying to ask these questions.

I know the team is very interested in finding ways to expand eligibility for certain populations and we're working on that.

Awesome, and if I may share another- I also want to share that through the Black Home Initiative, there's just a lot of conversation about property taxes for market rate homeowners, and particularly, there's currently an exemption option for folks who are seniors or disabled, but if you inherit a home, for example, a young person starting out in their career, there's typically no exemption option, and just knowing that families are very vulnerable to homeownership loss at the point of inheritance, we are thinking about how to be in conversations about when we can lean in in support of BHI's work to have conversations about property tax reform for folks of all ages and all abilities.

No, awesome, and I so appreciate you all that work because I know I would get tons of people asking about home ownership opportunities, but people then shifted the conversation, said, Joy, we can't even think about that if we can't stabilize our own home.

And so obviously those, as you all mentioned, we had some $3 million funds that we shifted to you all and just really appreciate your work on that for those community groups who do a lot of that stabilization tax reform.

not reform but tax education for people or providing lawyers so folks understand when probate happens or the reverse mortgage that Big Mama took out and understanding when that house is passed down so people aren't losing those.

So really appreciate the intentionality behind it between the weatherization stuff, the ADA improvements, the home ownership opportunities as well for people, and then the stabilization piece that I know is really huge for communities, and then the projects that you all have talked about that are coming online.

Because, you know, entry point at 315, Hello, where is that at for folks?

That brings me back to 2008, back in the day, which is wild.

But just thinking about those opportunities for people to be able to have that is really huge because then they feel like, okay, this is mine and we wanna create more of those opportunities for people and be able to be invested in the city.

And we're also gonna continue to have renters in our city.

We just heard a presentation about those resources for renters.

So it's a delicate balance and I think just the work that you do is really great and happy to continue to support.

And then also to get updates about the outcomes as well, I think is really important.

So thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Council President.

And I see another hand from Council Member Lynn.

Before I go to you, I really just quickly want to say, let's make sure we follow up because part of what I heard in the Council President's question was looking for some clarification on what we have authority to do through our housing funding.

What's the P in there?

Thank you.

I was going to say portfolio through our housing funding policies, which will be coming in front of this council later on in the year.

compared to what are determinations made at the state level.

So I want to make sure we have that clarification for her.

So we'll do that as a follow-up.

Okay, over to you, Councilmember Lynn.

Vice Chair Lynn.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for presenting, certainly near and dear to my heart as well.

And thank you to Council President for raising the question and the concerns around costs in general.

I think this work is critical to our anti-displacement efforts with the the home repair, the weatherization, and addressing the tax concerns.

I certainly would love to work with you on our state legislative agenda for next year and anything we can do to increase those income limits and the relief that is available.

And also just getting the word out.

You know, the Black Legacy Homeowners Group is doing a great job of getting the word out, but so many people still don't know about the possibilities of getting tax relief, property tax relief.

If there's any way we can work with our King County Assessor to make it more standardized, you know, we've got a lot of technology.

If there's ways that we can make it easier for people to access those tax exemptions, I think that would be great.

And if we need to fund that outreach, I think it's well worth it.

One last comment question on the opportunities.

You know, down payment assistance has been difficult to make pencil, just given the very high costs.

And we do have the new state program with the Homeowner Covenant Act.

And I've heard from a lot of community members that even with the Homeowner Covenant Act.

It is hard for people to make that pencil in Seattle just because the down payment assistance even at 150,000 is not enough.

And so just wondering if there's opportunities there to layer sort of our subsidies with the Homeowner Covenant Act so that we can make sure that people can take advantage of that incredible program within our community as well.

Yes, our down payment assistance can be layered with the Covenant Home Ownership Account Program, and we partner closely with Homesite Washington to administer those dollars.

Thanks, Joy.

Fantastic.

Any other questions from colleagues?

Great, I will begin my ad lib now.

So I'll just say, I really appreciate that question, Council Member Lynn.

We actually will be having folks come and talk to this committee about the Washington State Covenant Home Ownership Program and how they structured that program shortly.

And I'm really looking forward to that conversation because they've had tremendous success in ensuring that they're getting home financing out to actually primarily to black Washingtonians, which is gonna, we're really looking forward to having them in committee later on this month, I believe, or later on this year.

I wanna go back to something that you shared in terms of a three-year wait for state dollars.

Can you just share more detail about that?

What's causing that delay and what impact that delay has on our investments when we're doing affordable home ownership.

Yeah.

So there's a limited amount of resources designated for home ownership through the State Housing Trust Fund.

And so one of the factors that's used to decide how those awards are made is permit readiness and frankly, how long folks have been in the queue waiting to get funds.

And so we just end up with like a long-term pipeline to build homes.

So if we make an initial award, then folks can go ahead and submit their housing trust fund application, wait three years to do that.

And then we closed the loan, then they began construction, meaning it's taking at least five years from initial application to us to complete homes.

Yeah.

there's pressure for jurisdictions that are larger than a city to achieve geographic distribution as well, and so they always face competing demands, but we would be remiss to not advocate for more resources for housing and home ownership and all types of housing, which is what we are asked to do if we work in this sector for many, many years is to say that we have incredible need, and in order to meet those needs, we need more resources.

So the slowing of this pipeline really is about a shortage of adequate resources to make these new homes complete.

Thank you so much.

And the only other thing I wanted to uplift is just actually in response to Council Member Lynn, I knew I had this number somewhere, I wanted to pull it up.

So with the Covenant Homeownership Program, 191 loans were funded in King County and 39 of them were in Seattle.

So just for fun.

Okay, I don't have any further questions for you all.

I wanna appreciate you and the work that you do.

And I think you've certainly given us a lot to think about around the impact of home ownership and really clarifying how much space there still is in the world of home ownership, even in such a constrained fiscal environment and in such an expensive housing market.

So thank you for your leadership and we look forward to seeing you back here again later this year.

Thank you, Chair Foster.

Alrighty.

I believe that concludes our business for the committee today.

Is there any other further business to come in front of the committee?

Oh, I'm sorry.

I couldn't hear you council member Juarez.

Oh no, I was saying thank you.

Goodbye.

Thank you very much.

This concludes the March 11th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Arts and Civil Rights Committee.

Our next scheduled meeting is March 25th.

Thank you for attending.

It is 3.34 PM and we are adjourned.

All right.

Thanks everyone.

Thank you.