Seattle City Council Lunch & Learn: Housing Development & Anti-Displacement Strategies

Oh, awesome.

Thank you.

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon, everyone.

All right.

It's great to see so many of you, familiar faces, some new faces in the audience.

We're going to have a Lunch and Learn today.

This is Seattle's version of a work session, a little bit more of an informal conversation which allows for us to dive in deep to a topic.

And today we're talking about community-oriented development and anti-displacement strategies, an idea that came directly from many of the organizations that you'll hear from here today.

and so many more who were not able to join us at the table given that we only have an hour for this conversation.

I just want to say a huge round of applause for all of you who've been engaged in this work for so long.

It takes so much time and energy.

We celebrated on Monday one component, which was the mandatory housing affordability element, but we know that this is just one key ingredient to a much bigger cake that we are trying to bake together that not only requires us to look at developing more affordable housing, but how do we protect tenants?

How do we ensure tenants' rights?

How do we protect from displacement?

And how do we do what we started to do last year with many of you, which is put more of our community organizations who are working with nonprofit developers who want to create affordable housing in their community, who are oriented towards anti-displacement strategies at the at the front of the line to get access to funds from the city, the county, and the state so that we can have true site control and basically self-direction over the type of housing that we want to create.

And as Council Member Juarez and I always talk about, it's not just the individual units that we're creating.

We're creating homes above child care centers, above senior centers, above art and cultural space, around public plazas, and creating more green space.

These are the type of things that we want to do to support small businesses and our communities so folks can age and stay in place, can create their own families in the city of Seattle, can afford to live in the city they work and not have to commute for hours in.

So this is the vision of what I think we're all interested in, and it's not just one public policy that needs to pass.

I would say it's probably a dozen or so.

Today, we're going to talk about about a half dozen.

And we have some really incredible friends with us that will lead us through this work.

We're going to make us some more coffee.

I know it's noon, but we ran out of coffee.

So we're going to make you some more coffee.

We also have some bagels over there.

We hope folks enjoy a little snack.

And if you brought your own snack, please feel free to eat.

And this is just the beginning of the conversation.

MHA, now what, right?

So now what?

Let's invite up our friends who are going to have a conversation with us here today and really will lead us through to the discussion.

Julia, if you'll join us up here.

Julia's with Puget Sound SAGE and she'll be doing an orient, yeah, give it up.

We're gonna bring you all up.

Yeah, and actually if you don't mind sitting on this side so that everybody can see you if that's okay.

I know that you might have to turn your head a little bit for the slides.

Julia, is that okay in terms of orientation that way?

So Julia's with Puget Sound SAGE.

She's gonna lead us through a conversation on anti-displacement framework and Displacement 101. Patrice Thomas, give it up.

Rainier Beach Action Coalition.

We're going to have a story of the Rainier Beach and the jobs, economic development tie-in there.

Thank you so much.

Let's give it up for Evelyn Allen from the Black Community Impact Alliance and Catholic Community Service.

We'll talk a little bit about affirmative marketing and community-oriented driven development in the Central District.

Our friend Patience Malaba, give it up.

She's from the Housing Development Consortium.

We'll talk about the role of affordable housing and acquisition and preservation strategies.

And we'll also hear, hi, welcome Council Member O'Brien.

Patience, we can wrap around there too.

You're good there though, you're good.

Yeah, you're good here.

Yeah, and then, where were we?

Okay, oh, help me with the name.

Uchi, Uchi.

Listen to the audience, everybody knows it.

Uche?

Yes, welcome, please come and join us from home site.

We'll talk a little bit about home ownership opportunities, something that we're really passionate about here, making sure folks have opportunities for that first-time home buying opportunity to get out of, you know, often generational poverty and create true equity.

And when we say equity, we don't just mean equity in terms of home ownership thinking in terms of the pocketbook, but we mean equity in terms of social justice.

Yeah, if you want to sit by Julia, anywhere you want to go.

And then last but not least, our friend Xochitl from Washington Can, give it up.

Okay, she's running five minutes late.

She'll be right up here.

So she got a pre-applause.

She'll talk about eviction reform and other tenants' issues.

It'll also be interesting to hear her update from the activities at the state level, because there's a lot of really great legislation that's happening.

So folks that haven't yet come to the table before, welcome, first of all.

And the green button on the stem here allows you to make sure that you know your mic is on.

And there's a little gray button that turns it on.

Yeah, so Julia, Aaron, do we have extra handouts as well for Julia's presentation?

Okay, great.

So we'll get you some of Julia's presentation.

I want to welcome Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember O'Brien, Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you guys so much for joining us.

I also know that Councilmember, our Council President Bruce Harreld said that he really wanted to co, but he's in Olympia today, hopefully advocating on some of these important tenant right and density bills as well.

So with that, thanks again to this incredible audience.

You guys are so lively, and I appreciate it.

And we've opened the door so we get some light in here.

But please feel free to grab food, have a snack, walk around if you need to stretch your legs.

Just so excited you're here.

And we're going to get a sign-up sheet going so that folks can stay connected to us when we do the next iteration of this conversation.

We want to make sure you're all involved.

So Julia, thank you so much for providing us with a little bit of a 101 on sort of displacement strategies, what we mean when we say displacement, and then we'll go into a little bit more conversation around community-oriented development.

And we've given folks about eight minutes, so that gives us some time to have a conversation too.

Thanks, Julia.

Great.

Mic's on?

OK.

So my name's Julia Pasciuto.

I'm a policy analyst and researcher with Puget Sound SAGE.

At SAGE, we work on the intersecting issues of equitable development, climate justice, and workers' rights through a racial justice lens using strategies like coalition organizing, strategic research, and policy advocacy.

We organize a coalition of over 20 organizations in the Rainier Valley called South Core, who've been advocating for anti-displacement strategies in the city of Seattle and beyond for the last five years.

I'm also a member of the Interim Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board, along with some of the fine folks around this table, where we've been working on rolling out a series of anti-displacement strategies focused on supporting community-driven development.

I've been asked to give a presentation today, a primer on displacement in Seattle.

And I would like to start by acknowledging that we are on the unceded lands of the Duwamish and Coast Salish peoples, and express gratitude that those of us who are not originally from here can live and work in this special place.

Many of us are only here by conquest, exclusion, and isolation through reservation, incarceration, and genocide of Native people and recognize that any conversation we have about displacement must also center and be accountable to Indigenous people, something we recognize as an organization has been missing from our work and are working to rectify.

We center our work on the displacement crisis rather than the affordability crisis more broadly for a couple of key reasons.

The first reason is because our community and labor partners asked us to.

Their members are experiencing displacement right now, this very moment.

The second reason is to address the historic harm of public policy and private investments that restricted where communities of color were allowed to live in our city.

Focusing on displacement allows us to center self-determination and power of communities of color and low-income communities at a systems level.

And third, using an anti-displacement framework recognizes the importance of social capital and community cohesion that impacted communities have built and sustained in the face of hundreds of years of oppression.

And we know that displacement threatens to undermine the strengths and resilience of our communities.

Anti-displacement strategies are inclusive of the institutions, community, businesses, or networks in addition to housing.

Next slide.

So displacement happens in two distinct ways.

The first is direct displacement of current tenants, whether commercial or housing renters, occurs when residents can no longer afford to remain in their homes due to rising costs, or residents are forced out due to causes such as eminent domain, lease non-renewals, or evictions to make way for new development.

Indirect displacement is more the neighborhood level scale, which occurs when new development or gentrification triggers rising market rents throughout the neighborhood, causing existing lower income families to relocate because they can no longer afford to pay, and can result from public and private investments, speculative real estate environments enabled by historic disinvestment paired with new development capacity, and or an influx of residents who can pay more.

Displacement is notoriously tricky to measure.

We don't have the right data to tell when displacement is happening at the census level, but we know that it's happening because it's our friends and our family and our community.

As part of the environmental impact statement process for the update of the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, we advocated for displacement risk analysis that would help us pinpoint the neighborhoods with the greatest displacement pressures.

and be able to drive place-specific strategies to help communities stay in place.

These maps, particularly the one on the left, demonstrate our history of racially restrictive covenants, redlining, and disinvestment, which paired with our current planning and investment strategies put geographies where low-income people and communities of color can live at higher risk of displacement.

The second map shows access to opportunity defined by high performing schools, transportation and access to jobs.

And paired with the displacement map can help us identify specific mitigation strategies that could allow for a future where new investment and development doesn't necessarily lead to displacement.

There are a number of impacts of displacement.

They're all up on the screen.

There's significant health impacts, both on the individual level and the community level.

Displacement directly leads to people experiencing houselessness.

We know that there's a climate impact of displacement.

As communities are pushed out, they're forced to drive back to their jobs and their schools, undermining our greenhouse gas reduction strategies.

Something we're learning more about is the relationship between displacement and community cohesion, where displacement breaks up social networks and undermines civic power as communities are split apart and strewn across the region.

There's an education impact as children cycle in and out of the classroom, and a time impact for families.

I think for SAGE and for many of us around this table, it's impossible to divorce the impacts of displacement from their racialized and gendered impacts.

As I said before, we can't talk about displacement without talking about the original displacement of Native people from the land we're on today.

The correlation between race and income puts communities of color at higher vulnerability to displacement pressures.

The racial wealth gap rooted in our legacy of slavery and institutional racism puts black households and women of color at greater risk for housing insecurity, which all kind of shows up in who's most at risk for displacement and who's experiencing houselessness.

I think you hit the nail on the head that there's not one silver bullet for displacement, but we need every strategy under the sun at the same time.

The way that we see it is that solutions for displacement both come in kind of capital investments and regulatory solutions.

So on the regulatory side, we have tenant protections and policies like rent stabilization, groups at this table who have been leading the effort to strengthen those protections and undo state preemption for these strategies.

And what we've been focused on in the last couple of years has really been around the capital strategies regarding our public and private investments and assets, including community stewardship of land.

We see this as the most powerful anti-displacement strategy because it challenges the very nature of property rights that have been used to exclude and manipulate communities of color, residential and commercial tenants, and others at risk of displacement.

The theory across the country is that in order to drive down land costs, we have to take roughly 30% of land out of the speculative market to put in collective ownership and stewardship led by communities most impacted.

And we see this is going to take a massive restructuring of how and what we finance and raise additional capital to secure land and build capacity for frontline communities to lead this effort.

The Equitable Development Initiative is the strategy that the city has right now to support community-driven development and community stewardship of land.

We currently have $5 million a year, which is great, but we need much more than that if we're going to take this strategy to scale.

The other strategies that we have or that we need to have that we don't have are around preserving the existing affordable units and commercial space.

We need to think about constructing new affordable housing in conjunction with creating good jobs, not just housing on its own.

with good jobs, affordable commercial space, childcare, and community space, and really develop and build the power of communities to negotiate directly with developers through the community benefits agreement model.

That's all I have for you today.

I'm really excited to hear from everyone else around the table about how they're putting this work into action.

Julie, thank you so much for the comprehensive overview and for kicking us off today.

I want to welcome Council Member Bagshaw who joined us as well.

Thanks for joining us.

Really excited about the packed table and the packed house, standing room only, like, bestow my heart.

This is very exciting.

So we're going to hold questions, I think, until the end.

Council colleagues, if that's okay with you, just so we can make sure to get through everyone.

And we'll just keep that eight-minute timer going so folks have sort of a sense of where they're at on the the time frame there.

So let's go ahead and go to the next presenter and restart the clock with Patrice Thomas from Rainier Beach Action Coalition.

Thank you.

So I don't have a PowerPoint slide, but I would invite us to check out our website in the Flu Innovation District landing page.

So when we get a chance, I will if possible.

Do we have an opportunity to go to our landing page, our website?

So our website is www.rbcoalition.org and you can scroll around there but ultimately we invite you to go to our action areas and take a look at Can you all hear me okay?

Yeah.

And take a look at our Food Innovation District landing page.

And this is a location where you can come and kind of immerse yourself and learn a little bit more about one of our project that is found and is one of the first demonstration projects for the EDI.

And so essentially Rainier Beach Action Coalition is a place-based nonprofit.

We are stewarding our neighborhood plan.

This organization was birthed out of the merger of two organizations, one historically known as the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition, and the other was a group of resident volunteers that helped to update the Rainier Beach neighborhood plan with the City of Seattle.

And so once that update process was complete, they said, hey, let's take this plan, create an action plan, and actually take this forward, right?

And so you had Rainier Beach Moving Forward and Rainier Beach Community Power Rate Coalition.

They sat down, decided that it was in best interest of the neighborhood and those involved.

to merge and you now have Rainier Beach Action Coalition.

And so we work in four pillars essentially.

The first being growing food for healthy industry and that's where you find our one of our greatest priorities and that's our Food Innovation District slash Center.

Second you have lifelong learning and that's where of course you'd find education and family life priorities housed.

You would then have a place for everyone, and that's where primarily all of our economic development priorities lie, and that is from transportation to housing, you name it, the entire spectrum.

And then lastly, you have a beautiful safe place, and that's where you find our beautification and safety efforts housed.

And so as you can imagine, this depth of work is pretty expansive.

We're pretty proud to say that the root of our mission is to remain rooted in the neighborhood itself, but also be that placemaking agent on behalf of and with our residents and stakeholders in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

And so when I get to our Food Innovation Center, I think it's great for us to be able to, and most important for us to lift up the importance of working with folks that you see at this table toward changing practice and policy, right?

Because we all know many of our neighborhoods are stewarding the same priorities and the same issues and there's greater impact, you know, with more hands on the pie.

And so I guess fast forwarding to our Food Innovation Center, as mentioned, were you able to find the page?

Yay!

So, as mentioned, our greater priority is the Food Innovation District.

And so, essentially, we have assets in the realm of food found within our neighborhood naturally and programmatically.

And of course, what better way to bring folks together than around food?

But more importantly, there have been many much research done and whether participatory research or whether projects held in partnership with the city to really identify that the food sector is the fastest growing sector when it comes to jobs creation nationally and why not take advantage of that.

And so for us, it's not just about highlighting opportunities with low access into the food sector, but it's about looking at the full food system spectrum and being able to elevate those opportunities for our residents so that we can lower the unemployment gap in Rainier Beach, but also be able to provide our residents more opportunity to stay and thrive in place.

And so our Food Innovation Center, which is a product of our Food Innovation District vision, is intended to both house those opportunities to access jobs in the food system, to anchor our community space and our theory around community, but also to provide affordable housing.

And so essentially we've been working with other projects such as the Africatown, Little Saigon Landmark District, Meek Wing Luke, of fellow Opportunity Center MCC and the like to really push for the practice and policy changes that we need to see happen in order to really root community-driven development in a way that has staying power.

So it's one thing to have the check.

and the land and the partners to build a project.

It's another thing to create a system that allows you to do it and those that come behind you.

And so we're really proud to have been a part of this work that we're doing and that we'll continue to do.

At present, we are proud to say that we're closer than we have ever been to securing a site and to really being able to drive forward the vision that the community has lifted up.

And so, again, Okay, I didn't have time.

Whenever you do have time, definitely check out our website.

We'll have opportunities for you to be able to get engaged and keep up with the project itself.

But I think more importantly, as we are in partnership as stewards with the EDI, we really invite you to keep up with our push to secure a sustainable fund, because we know that $5 million is great, but it is just not enough.

A single project itself can cost upwards of, you know, $20 million, and that could just be for the housing piece, we're not even talking about for the community portion, right?

And so when we talk about community-driven development, it is about seeding the capacity, but it's also about seeding the process and best practice.

Again, not for us, not only for us to be able to see projects through to completion, but to pave the path for those that we're creating a pipeline for.

So I'll call it done there, and pass it on to Ms. Evelyn.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Let's give it up.

Yeah.

Julie, a huge round of applause to you for getting us kicked off.

I can't remember if we did that.

Thank you for that.

So our third presenter is going to be Evelyn Allen, the Black Community Impact Alliance and Catholic Community Services presentation.

Thanks again for being here.

Good to see you again.

Thank you for having me.

So as mentioned, my name is Evelyn Thomas Allen, and I'm the convener for the Black Community Impact Alliance.

And also, I'm a housing developer with Catholic Community Services.

Next slide.

So for the past four years, the BCIA Planning and Strategy Advisory Committee, which is a collaboration of black-led businesses, organizations, and educational institutions, each with its own network, has functioned as a power base to advocate for investments, assets, and resources for black families and the black community.

Our main goals are create wealth and improve the quality of life for black families.

In doing that, we've joined with others in our community, so we are a part of the Central Area Collaborative.

They support our mission by building economic viability for businesses with focus on black businesses.

Also, we work to bring black businesses back to the central area.

We are also a part of the Racial and Social Equity Task Force that has successfully advocated to establish the City of Seattle's Equitable Development Implementation Plan and the Equitable Development Initiative Fund, which is a fund to invest in projects that are self-determined by ethnic distressed communities.

Our project is Fire Station 6, located at 23rd and Yesler.

It is the equitable development project that we have placed under and gotten funds for from the EDI Fund.

And this will also help us to mitigate the loss of black businesses within the central area.

Africatown Community Land Trust Midtown Common Plaza Project has also received EDI funds and will become beneficiaries of the community preference policies, I hope.

We first learned about historic resident preferences from our city, sister city in Portland.

So we thank Mayor Dirkens and we thank Council Member Mosqueda for their work in helping us support that policy.

Next slide.

So the BCIA presented a proposal for the repurposing of Fire Station 6 into a business innovation hub honorably named the William Gross Center for Innovation in 2014. We've stuck with it for five years now.

As you'll see in the back there, we also looked at the possibility of having housing on that site as well.

That's the gray space in the back of the building.

The proposal has gone through another city internal process that is getting us closer to the answers of what we need in order to have that project transferred to our community.

The next slide is of a building located on 14th and Yesler.

It is a $2.1 million project.

At present, it's 34 units of SRO, better known as studio apartments.

We are planning on retaining that building for maybe another two years, and then that building will be torn down and we will build family housing there.

It'll be one, two, and three bedrooms.

And we develop it with the expectation that we'll be able to use that community preference policy at that site also.

Most excitedly, this is the Liberty Bank building.

The BCIA was one of the originating partners in the Memorandum of Understanding with Capitol Hill Housing that will return ownership of that building to the black community.

The BCIA participated in a consultant-led process to create the business plan that will have Africacown Community Land Trust ready as an organization to own the Liberty Bank building at the appropriate time.

The ribbon cutting for that is scheduled for this weekend.

Yay.

It's going to be this Saturday the 23rd at 11. We are waiting now to see how successful we were with our affirmative marketing in order to see about returning black residents to their historic black community.

This project.

is one that we are happy about.

It's Elizabeth Thomas Holmes located in Rainier Beach.

It is family units, one, two, and three bedrooms, again, over commercial.

And we are there to help the ethnic communities in the Rainier Beach area maintain a place in their historic community.

We're excited about the up zone, the MHA passing.

Yes, yes.

Been waiting for that so good.

That will help our development move forward.

So the BCIA is about action.

We're about seeing the needles move in a positive direction for black families and our black community.

And we do that unapologetically with the focus that we intend to stay at for quite a while.

Thank you.

We do have a few more minutes.

A few of the presenters have used the term community preference and you referenced it as well.

Do you mind just doing a quick definition for what we mean when we say community preference and how the program might work?

Well, this is what I can't say to you the exact definition as might be stated.

But what we're looking for is a preference policy that says that historic residents of a community, especially ethnic communities that have experienced displacement due to gentrification, have first priority in affordable housing to be able to return to their historic community if they so choose.

Now, we've done a lot of work in our community so that we know that, and when I say my community, I understand that the black community has been dispersed quite widely, so we stay in touch with Kent, we stay in touch with Federal Way, we stay in touch with Tacoma, we bring our community back together at different times of the year so we know that they want to come back if there's a way that they could afford it.

And so we are hoping that that community preference policy will allow us to rebuild the historic black community in the central area, central district.

Gentrification started for us in 1980. In that time, I don't think anybody, I didn't know what gentrification meant or what was happening with my community until much later when a lot of effects had already been or displacement had already happened.

So now we're holding on tightly to the 18% that they say are black people who are still in the central area.

We think it might be a little bit more, but we want to make it even higher.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Let's give it up one more time.

It's great to see you again.

Saw you just yesterday.

I feel like I see you at every community hearing and appreciate you being here from the Housing Development Consortium.

Time is all yours.

Thank you.

And I am so excited to follow someone who is excited about MHA.

Because what happened on Monday was such a bold step by the city to really confront the housing crisis and begin to build a city that is inclusive, affordable and equitable for everyone.

And MHA really harnesses that.

concept of saying we need to be looking at our growth and making sure that we are growing affordability as well and allowing people the opportunity to be able to live in asset rich neighborhoods that are near transit, near good jobs, near great schools and really something that has not been possible for so many people who are low and moderate income.

So today, the question is, what is next?

Because that was a floor that was set, and we need to be beginning to build up from this floor and build up from this foundation as well.

All around the city, we do see that we are growing.

We have many more neighbors who keep coming, and we will continue to grow.

For the past decade, we have heard a total of 20% increase as Seattle alone and not just as a region.

And with this population growth, really the questions are going to be, where are people going to be housed?

Where are people going to be able to live throughout the city?

And we need to be creating those opportunities to welcome our neighbors.

So I didn't introduce myself.

My name is Patience Malaba.

I am with the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle King County.

HTC is an affordable housing association with a membership of 180 members who are working across the county towards the vision of ensuring that all people live with dignity in safe, healthy, and affordable homes.

within communities of opportunity.

This is why we have tapped into this work, because this feeds into our vision.

This really takes us towards achieving that vision.

And I'm excited to look at the audience and see a good number of HTC members who are in this room.

And thank you all for being here and really being a part of this conversation and moving forward.

As we think of next steps, we are seeing that the economic growth that we have experienced as a city has been a tide that has not lifted all boats.

And as we look at who has been affected, it's really people who are low income, traditionally marginalized populations, people of color who have really felt that burden.

And the Regional Affordable Housing Task Force did an amazing job since 2017 working on their action plan.

And they show us that today we need 156,000 additional homes for us to be able to meet the need.

And we will need by 2040, 244,000 additional homes for us to be able to meet that need.

And when you're looking at the broader need, The biggest gap is for the people who are zero to 30% area median income.

And when we're thinking of what is the comprehensive strategy or comprehensive set of policies that can get us there, that's where we need to be asking the questions.

These are the people who are carrying the burden and yet they are really key in building the fabric of our community.

They're doing work without being paid enough.

Economic policies have not kept up.

Wages have not kept up with the housing cost.

So we need to be looking at how we are housing people.

And speaking of the comprehensive plan, I will go through about six strategies that we are looking at or six elements that we are looking at as opportunities for the city to be exploring as we go forward.

First and foremost, affordable housing development is an anti-displacement tool on its own.

And also with that, increasing housing options across the spectrum is a part of that strategy.

So it's key that we look at our funding sources and increasing funding sources for the production of affordable housing.

We have not had enough resources that are commensurate with the need within our communities.

For us to be able to produce, as a region, 44,000 homes within five years, which is what is being recommended by the Regional Affordable Housing Taskforce, we do need to increase the resources for us to be able to produce housing.

So that's one start.

And this has to be both rental and home ownership opportunities as well, because we know that there are communities looking at the history of our country with the racial segregation, with the different policies that have been implemented historically that kept communities of color, black communities out of the system and kept them away from being able to build wealth through home ownership.

So it's key that we're looking at those opportunities and increasing them as well.

Number two, expanding housing diversity throughout our city.

We all know that with MHA, we only increased the up zones to 6% of a total of 65% land that is zoned single family.

And we are not here to say, change everything, because I know we have seen how that plays out.

But I think it's important that we are strategic, looking at the Neighbourhoods for All report that was released by the Planning Commission last year, and finding ways that we can be gently increasing housing options for people across the city.

Another aspect within that production is finding ways that we're increasing housing options that are family-sized, because I know that the Office of Housing has within their NF plan to really support production of housing that is family-sized, but there are reports most recently that are showing that we're not producing enough of that.

And the population that is coming here is diverse.

Populations that come from where I come from, really our family sizes are different.

We need to be looking at how we're housing these families that vary in meeting the need across the spectrum.

And we're also encouraging the city to support community land trusts, finding ways that we're increasing resources for community land trusts, and also ways that we are supporting shared equity home ownership programs as well.

We have our members that include the Homestead, that include Homeside, who are really doing this work within communities, and coupling that with counseling, with education, and really helping families to understand and navigate the system.

is really key.

The second bucket is on community ownership.

How can we help and bring these communities that traditionally have not been involved?

I always say that housing issues are very difficult to digest.

You get into the space where people throw acronyms all the time.

It's MHA, you have no idea what MHA is.

And I think it's important that we have organizations that represent communities, Okay, I do a good job at talking.

Yes, so in terms of community ownership, finding ways that we are bringing and folding in communities as a part of the conversation and looking at preservation strategies as well, looking at PDAs that are at regional level and creating collaborations throughout the time.

And in my last 10 seconds, I will talk about affordable housing preservation, which some of our members are already doing.

Our members are doing all of those things that I have mentioned, but it's key that we're expanding as well.

We have the Seattle Housing Authority that just began their acquisition plan and working towards a total of 500 units in addition to their 1,500 inventory that's coming up online as well.

We're also in support of expanding the EDI funding.

We think that's really key in terms of strategic investments in neighborhoods that have been disadvantaged.

We also support commercial affordability and we want to see more small businesses being able to stay in place.

We also do support an expansion on tenants protections, which I know someone will speak a lot more on.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Patience.

Very exciting.

OK.

Uche.

Can you tell me how to say your name again?

Uche?

Uche.

Uche.

Thank you so much for joining us at the table, and thanks for being here today from HomeSite.

We do have a presentation from you as well.

Oh, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

I'm Uche.

I work in HomeSite's real estate and community development arm.

Yes, you could go to the next slide.

Oops.

Thank you.

So we are a community development corporation, a HUD-certified counseling agency providing one of the most comprehensive homebuyer counseling programs in Washington State, and a community development financial institution providing affordable mortgage loan products, including down payment assistance loans that help families buy and preserve their homes.

We recently implemented our mortgage lending statewide.

To complement our homebuyer education and counseling, we also develop affordable for sale housing, conduct community building and economic development efforts in low income and people of color communities.

And as a CDC, Homesight's mission and programs have focused on community engagement and revitalization in Southeast Seattle, our community of focus, for more than 28 years.

Our community development initiatives have included facade improvement projects, starting job training programs, establishing and growing business associations, and convening community-led coalitions to ensure that neighborhood Vision and priorities are implemented as new development and growth comes to Southeast Seattle.

We have supported through capacity building and financial assistance, formation and growth of community-based associations, neighborhood groups, and business associations.

Our place-based strategies include the coalition and capacity building, resident and business organizing, community-driven policy advocacy, and equitable investments and growth that benefit our community.

Othello Square, which is our big project, the project that we are hoping will really move the needle in our community, itself an equitable development project and is an example of our place-based strategy.

Since 2016, we have been actively working on making this development a reality to make sure that Othello Square spoke to what was important to our South End communities.

The community priorities outlined in the 2009 Othello Neighborhood Plan was a roadmap.

It included creating a safe and vibrant town center that supports the economically and culturally diverse communities of Othello.

maintain a commercial center that serves this very diverse community, a shared multicultural community center, a place where ethnic communities can both provide services for their people and also share concerns and celebration with others, and development of the neighborhood as an employment center for residents, a place with family wage jobs, with opportunities for training and education for youth and adults.

As a starting point, we, with the assistance of Southeast Seattle Community Coalitions and the Office of Economic Development, convened community meetings, community advisory work groups.

I'm sure a lot of you, some of you, have come to several of our meetings over the course of the past two years and reached out to and engaged and collaborated with community organizations, businesses, residents, resident groups to gather input regarding the Othello Square's design and program components.

We did this because the Southeast Seattle community lacks access to affordable workforce housing.

retail spaces, affordable to small and new business owners, business education and services, and post-secondary education.

Most of the employment, education, and social services serving our neighborhood are several miles north of the center of our neighborhood.

Despite low educational attainment in our neighborhood, it is the furthest from any post-secondary education in the city of Seattle.

If the neighborhood, if the Othello neighborhood were able to develop integrated business, employment, and education services near a central sound transit stop, it's a block away from the Othello light rail station, it could provide the backbone for new jobs and economic growth.

This community-led and driven project contributes to the prevention of residential, commercial, and cultural displacement and increases access to economic opportunity for multicultural communities in Southeast Seattle by implementing community priorities from a decade of planning, engagement, and community activism.

This embodies place-based, community-driven strategies to advance economic mobility, prevent displacement, build on cultural assets by creating a stabilizing anchor for residents, businesses, and cultural organizations in the Rainier Valley.

As a multicultural community coalition, a coalition of eight refugee and immigrant community groups based in southeast Seattle, who will be at Othello Square, eloquently put it, our communities are now facing the urgent threat of being forced to move from the very neighborhoods excuse me, that we help to build, shape, and enrich.

Homesite's response is to change the wealth building model in regards to both the community and the individual.

No longer is the homeownership path the only path.

We now fully understand that it begins with quality education from early childhood, supported by physical health and family well-being, and access to opportunities through entrepreneurship and career development.

And how can we assist in it more holistically?

This is what was behind the impetus of the Athila Square Project, to address displacement by creating access to needed community health, child care, social services, education, and job training opportunities to successfully compete for jobs that pay a living wage, as well as provide development skills for small businesses, provide affordable, safe homes, all accessible by transit.

Othello Square is our community's opportunity to put a permanent stake in the ground.

With a project that preserves and supports our cultural diversity and neighborhood character, it helps to close the opportunity gap and create opportunities for community ownership and wealth building.

This project's vision is to empower our community to respond to the pressures of extraordinary growth in Seattle, which is why Othello Square's programming is as holistic as possible.

It includes 68 affordable home ownership units ranging in sizes from one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom, the multicultural community coalition, and their cultural innovation center, 370 units of workforce rental housing to fill to address that 60% to 120% of the area median income of folks, the workforce that can't afford to stay here either.

Affordable retail space, a business technical assistance center to help those budding entrepreneurs, community health care services, affordable community health care services.

The Odessa Brown Children's Clinic will be expanding to Othello Square.

Early childhood education provided by Tiny Tots, which has been in our neighborhood for 50 years.

Secondary education.

as evidenced by the high school that will be starting construction in early spring.

Post-secondary education, workforce development, STEM, excuse me, education as well for middle to high school children, and they're expanding their programs to involve adult learners as well.

Othello Square, along with the other EDI projects, is working to create opportunity for low and moderate income people in diverse, thriving communities by creating affordable housing, minimizing displacement.

I can't stress that enough.

Implementing strategies that reduce racial inequities, preserving cultural hubs, and supporting immigrant and people of color businesses.

So the development, how much time do I have left?

Wow, thank you everyone.

Thank you so much.

That was a perfect place to end.

And we have one more speaker.

Thank you, Xochitl, for being here with us today.

And she has a presentation as well.

As we're transitioning, just want to underscore an hour does not do this justice.

So this is just the beginning of the conversation.

As we think about what's next, I just want to make sure folks know we recognize the time limitations are not equitable to the conversation.

So Xochitl, welcome.

Thank you.

Hi.

So my name is Sochi Makevich.

I'm from Washington Community Action Network.

And then just really briefly about Washington CAN is that we're a grassroots organization, and we work on a variety of issues.

When it comes to housing, we work on tenant protections primarily.

I'm also the co-chair of the Seattle Women's Commission, and we did a report on evictions.

So I'm going to jump around a little bit about talking about evictions and just talk about some other issues in the tenant protection arena and why it's important for preventing displacement.

So right now, and hopefully the state is going to pass a bill that's going to change all of this, cross our fingers, but Right now in Washington, you can be evicted for being a day late, dollar short, and there's very little grace.

It doesn't matter why you were evicted.

So this right here is a picture of a complaint in an eviction where someone was evicted for $15.

Because you have a three-day pay or vacate that you're given, if you don't pay within that time frame, you're pretty much going to be kicked out.

And so we're working to, because this was such a huge problem, you know, we've organized and joining with other organizations, we've pushed some state legislation that would extend the pay or vacate.

would require judges to use some discretion so that they can consider the circumstances about why someone fell behind, allow them to order payment plans, just to keep people housed.

Because if you get evicted, you are likely to leave the city.

We found that I think around 40 some odd percent of people ended up leaving Seattle after being evicted, and the vast majority of them become homeless when you get evicted.

So this is really important to reform our eviction process, because when you look at other cities like New York City, Boston, that have a much more forgiving process, people are much, much more likely to stay housed.

But the other thing is that the cost of living is also a huge, huge problem.

So when you, I'm gonna scroll down and find a slide, where is it, okay.

So right here, oh, why is this not working?

Okay.

If I can find it, any help?

Thanks.

I was gonna, yeah.

Is that, yeah, it's, I'm not sure what page this is.

No, I, well, I'll just tell folks and then you can just listen.

Okay, so basically, over the past five years, the median income in King County has increased about 20%.

And when you look at a lot of, there's a lot of low-income housing properties where the rent is based off of the area median income.

So let's say that you are a school bus driver, right?

Your income is not gonna increase 20% over five years, right?

We've had members who, because the area median income has gone up so fast, they got a notice for a $600 rent increase.

And this is in low-income housing.

And it's just as bad in the for-profit side, probably worse.

And so some of the other things that we're pushing are protections around rent increases.

So right now there's a ban on any attempt to regulate rent.

But I think we're confident that we can either get rid of that ban or create a statewide rent stabilization.

I think we're open to either.

And I think a lot of people throughout the state are too.

Maybe not the landlords, but that's fine.

And so really the thing is is that when you think about Housing, this is one of the most fundamental needs that you have, but we have a very unregulated housing market.

So for us, we really, really are pushing a lot of tenant protections so that people can stay housed and that they can not only stay housed, but they're staying housed in a safe, And so there's a couple other things I'll touch on that is not being addressed yet by the state, and maybe the city would want to address, would be it's really difficult to get your security deposit back, and it's really hard to move if you don't have that money from your security deposit.

So an example is there was a woman whose ex-partner broke into her house and almost killed her mother.

And she, as she left the apartment, she got a bill from her landlord for several thousand dollars because of the damage caused by the perpetrator.

There was even like a line saying, a cleanup of bodily fluids.

And that cost, that debt to that landlord prevented her from finding another place because you go through the tenant screening process and no landlord is gonna rent to you if you have debt to another landlord.

And I think a lot of folks, if you've ever had issues with some mistake on your credit report or something, you know how hard it is to try to fix those issues.

And it leaves people in limbo.

And it makes it really difficult to move and you end up having to move farther and farther outside the city where things are either cheaper or just easier to access housing.

So we're really pushing for just protections in general that will help people like stay housed and not be so financially strapped.

And I think that just one other thing I want to touch on is that a lot of these issues, while they do impact a lot of people and they impact probably most of the city at this point, is they're disproportionately impacting communities of color and single women.

So one thing that was what we found that was I think shocking when we were doing this eviction report There's actually more men than women who showed up in the filings in Seattle.

And we thought that was against all national research.

And we were like, why is that?

Well, we went and looked at the census data, and we found that the number of single female-headed households in Seattle has been going down over the past couple of years.

So essentially, women just weren't showing up in those eviction filings because they just can't afford to be in Seattle in the first place.

I'm very happy that I think there's a lot of lawmakers, both on the local and state level, that are working to address these issues.

And I think that if we do create stronger tenant protections, we're going to make sure that people are able to stay housed.

Sochi, thank you so much.

We have a huge report that if Eric can help us with, and apologies for the technical problems, is available I think as well for folks to grab and we'll put it up online as well.

The Losing Home Evictions in Seattle, thank you for helping to represent the Seattle Women's Commission.

So if we don't get it up there, we'll make sure that folks get it.

It's online.

Oh great, it's online.

You can find it online.

You guys have it online, but we also have it online.

We could have just gone to that website.

So before we go into questions, can you guys help me with a huge round of applause for this incredible panel?

Some folks may have a 1 o'clock immediately, but I would encourage folks to ask any questions, if you have them, of the table.

And I know folks do have to leave, so I know that they're saying thank you on their way out.

Yeah.

I just want to make a plug about next week's Civil Rights, Utilities, and Economic Development Committee meeting, some of the issues that Xochitl raised from the losing home report will be talked about in that committee, as well as some options for addressing some of those issues.

As you mentioned, many of them are being hopefully addressed in the state legislature, but there are definitely some outliers that I think we need to work on here at the council.

Great.

I'll do a little plug too.

This entire table plus a number of folks in the audience have been helpful with thinking through some of the next steps as it relates to the administration and finance plans.

Basically our document to guide Office of Housing to do additional collaboration and work with the equitable development initiative folks.

so that more of that funding can be braided.

I'm really excited to work with you all on that, and I think one of the points that you made earlier was it's not enough to have access to the land.

I think you said that it's more important to make sure that we have access to resources and systems to ensure that we're building power, access, and sustainability for our communities.

That's one of the big issues that we're gonna take on in this committee.

Anything else that folks didn't get a chance to say before we, yeah, patience, yeah.

We will be sending an anti-displacement strategies document that will have all of the things that I covered.

And also on March 26th, the Housing Development Consortium is hosting a housing and community development summit in Taquilla.

So if anyone is interested, it'll be great to have you there.

We will start at 11 to 2 p.m.

and you are all welcome to join us.

This is on our website as well.

What's the date again?

March 26th.

March 26th, coming up soon.

Xochitl, did you have some last comments on the slide that you wanted to point us to?

Oh, no, I just, this is like, when I saw this, or when we made this graph, I just thought it was very, just gut-wrenching to just see how, just how fast and how high income has gone up.

And there's just so many ripple effects to that.

So I just thought that was it.

It's really, really impressive to see and then also shocking because we know we see it on a daily basis with the number of folks getting pushed into the street and pushed out of our city.

I'll also note that Seattle is the fastest growing city in terms of cost of living compared to the 200 other cities looked at across the nation.

And we are feeling the impact of that income inequality and lack of access to affordable housing on a daily basis.

I think we are going to wrap up.

Dolores, my neighbor, I can't not call on you.

This is my neighbor, Dolores.

Very briefly before we wrap up.

I'm not sure if they're on.

Go ahead and scream.

My name is Dolores Rossman.

I've been a resident of Seattle for 40 years in the lovely community of Queen Anne.

I've been illegally displaced twice.

Teresa Mosqueda knows about what happened.

And so when we think about our communities, let's also think about older adults, because this can be a huge problem.

I'm on the task force, or the Age-Friendly Coalition, to really look at the older adults who are losing their homes.

So thank you.

Thank you, Dolores.

Now you know why I couldn't not let her say something.

Very impressive advocate as well.

And Sally Bagshaw, I know, has continued to bring that issue up as well.

Again, I know that this was too short, but I really appreciate your time and willingness to be here.

Thank you for working on getting so many incredible folks to turn out in the audience.

A huge amount of appreciation for all that you've done to help get us to this point where we're beginning to peel back the layers on the type of policies that we all need to work on to actually address affordable housing, displacement, and true community-driven development.

Thanks again for joining us.

And for all your friends, you can find us on Seattle Channel.

This will be up there.

Thanks, everyone.