Can you hear me?
All right.
Thank you so much to the city of Seattle for joining us here today.
We are here today to celebrate a monumental step forward in the legislation to bring the 2023 select housing levy committee meetings into process so we can have legislation for the council to consider.
This is about creating affordable housing across our city and could not be possible without the advocates you see standing behind us.
Housing advocates from the Housing Development Consortium, give it up!
Habitat for Humanity, give it up!
DESC, Plymouth, Housing and More, give it up!
To labor leaders that are in the house, give it up for the labor union members!
MLK Labor, SEIU 1199, Seattle King County Building Trades, Laborers 242, Northwest Carpenters, IBEW, and so many more.
We are excited to be here with community members who have been calling for more investments in affordable housing throughout the city of Seattle.
Give it up for Chief Seattle Club!
El Centro de la Raza!
The Filipino community of Seattle!
And so many more.
I want to give a huge note of appreciation to Seattle's mayor, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and their entire team from the Office of Housing who have worked with the coalition members that we just noted to bring together this robust 2023 Seattle housing levy legislation to us here today.
It was introduced yesterday and with your support we will vote it out next week.
Give it up for Mayor Ruth Harreld and the team.
So it's my privilege to be here today to act as emcee as we hear from members of the community about what is at stake and what is the opportunity in the housing levy legislation that was introduced to Seattle City Council officially after being transmitted from Mayor Harrell.
We now have the legislation in front of us.
This afternoon we will have a public hearing and today marks a huge day in our collective efforts.
with the executive and the legislative branch and the community at large to bring the 2023 housing levy legislation to fruition.
So please join me in giving it up for Patience Malava, the executive director of the Housing Development Consortium, who helped lead the technical advisory committee that brought us the housing levy legislation.
Thank you, Patience.
Well, I want to say thank you to everyone for joining us here today.
My name, as introduced, is Patience Malaba, and I am the executive director of the Housing Development Consortium.
As we gather today on the cusp of the second and final public hearing for the Housing Levy Ordinance as it moves through the Seattle City Council process and what we believe will be legislation to be adopted over the next few weeks, We are excited.
We're here supporting a program that we know has been a proven solution.
For nearly four decades, the housing levy has been a voter approved funding source to support the building and maintenance of affordable homes.
Thousands of homes for the most vulnerable and low income households in our community.
We know that the levy is an unparalleled success story.
It is a story that we know not only invests in the production of affordable housing but it also invests in the assistance that is needed for some of our seniors in our community in order to mitigate displacement.
It invests in rental assistance to help prevent homelessness.
It also invests in targeted support for homeownership assistance in order to address inequities and help build generational wealth as we work towards meeting the goals of equity within the city.
And we are excited to stand here as HTC because HTC and our members, we know that housing is not just a roof over your head.
Housing is the foundation for stability.
Housing is truly the foundation for inclusion and a sense of belonging in community.
When we invest in affordable housing, we're not only investing in the well-being of people, we are investing in the prosperity of our collective community.
And with that, we stand in strong support of the housing levy legislation.
And we are proud, Council Member Theresa Mosqueda, to support you as our champion moving this proposal forward.
We're also grateful to the mayor for working with us and getting this proposal as robust and bold as it is to scale amidst the moment.
And with that I will hand over back to council member Theresa Mosqueda to introduce our next speaker who has been a great partner.
Thank you.
Give it up for Patience.
It is my incredible honor to bring to you the leader of this King County, Martin Luther King County Council, MLK Labor.
Give it up for Katie Garrow, Executive Secretary and Treasurer of MLK Labor.
Good afternoon, members of the press.
It is good afternoon, community.
It's an honor to be here with you all.
I lead MLK Labor.
We're the umbrella group for unions here in King County.
We represent more than 150,000 unionized workers in 150 different unions.
I myself have been a union member for 11 years.
It has been the one thing that has unlocked prosperity for myself and my family.
My husband and I both have good union jobs in the city of Seattle.
We both have college degrees.
Despite these facts, we were unable to purchase, to be able to afford to purchase a home in the city of Seattle.
We recently purchased in Federal Way and we feel lucky to have been able to still buy within King County.
We're raising an eight-year-old transgender child.
We'd love to be able to raise them in a city that touts itself as a refuge for LGBTQ youth.
But despite Seattle's pride flags and inclusive rhetoric, this city is not functionally affordable to young, working-class LGBTQ people.
And for many union members and single-income households, the situation is much bleaker.
We have janitors who clean buildings downtown and live in their cars.
We have families who are stuffed, packed like sardines, into a studio apartment.
We represent construction workers whose only option for home ownership is in a place like Yelm, and they have to commute two hours each way to be able to get to and from work every day.
No matter what you do for work, whether you are a teacher, a longshoreman, a nurse, a barista, the cost of housing is a barrier to be able to live in a city where you serve your community.
We're proud of Mayor Harrell and of the City Council and Councilmember Mosqueda and all of the stakeholders who have been involved in proposing a housing levy that puts forward a historic investment that will increase the supply of homes in our city.
And equally important is making a commitment to create better jobs for the people who build affordable housing, many of whom are standing behind me, and the people who serve our community in case management and mental health care in permanent supportive housing facilities.
I believe it is important for leaders to tell the truth, so I want to acknowledge that this levy will not solve the entire problem of housing affordability and homelessness.
But we should not use that as an excuse to sit back, but rather as fuel to do more.
This crisis is the defining one of our time in our city and of this generation, and we should not sit back.
We must do more.
Thank you.
Let's please give it up for our Director of the Office of Housing, Micah Winkler-Chin, also here representing Seattle Mayor Bruce Harreld and all the executive team's effort to bring us the Seattle Housing Levy.
Welcome up, Micah.
I am not Bruce Harrell.
I am Michael and I'm director of the Office of Housing.
And as you've heard, the housing levy is critical tool for addressing housing affordability in Seattle.
The levy builds homes and strengthens communities.
And we have a nearly 40 year track record to prove it.
Thanks to four decades of housing levy investments, an estimated 16,000 people are living in safe, healthy homes they can afford.
That's 16,000 seniors, working folks and their families, people who have experienced homelessness, all who have safe, stable roofs over their heads thanks to the housing levy.
Every housing levy since 1986, when I was a younger person, has met or exceeded its goals because city staff have worked hard over the past four decades to set ambitious but achievable goals.
And city staff, together with our community partners, some of whom are in back of us right now, have continuously worked to improve our processes to become more efficient, creative, and collaborative in the ways we fund and develop affordable housing.
In short, the housing levy proposal being considered today is informed by 40 years of doing this work and doing it well.
The housing levy, as proposed, will help us respond to Seattle needs today while also planning for the next two generations of housing affordability in our city.
To do this, the housing levy will grow to respond to increased housing costs and the growing needs of our community and meet the demands of this moment.
continue to deliver diverse affordable housing options while prioritizing households at the lowest incomes with the highest needs, and continue to support buildings as well as the people who work hard to make those buildings into safe, healthy homes.
I'll wrap here by expressing my gratitude to our partners who supported the development of this proposal along the way and to those who implement our work in community.
We couldn't do this work without you.
As we keep moving through the steps to renew the Seattle Housing Levy, we at the Office of Housing look forward to continuing to work alongside the Mayor's Office, City Council, and all of you.
to meet Seattle's affordable housing needs in this moment, and to lay groundwork for strong, resilient communities for future generations.
Thanks.
Thank you so much.
And speaking of the community partners, we're going to transition over to that.
But did you hear Director Winkler?
Did you?
Hello?
Help me, help me.
Where's our IT?
Did you hear Director Winkler-Chin say efficient and effective use over producing the housing levy?
Let's give it up.
Check, check.
That one working?
Check, check.
Check, check.
Hello, hello.
The other one's out too.
Hello, hello.
Okay, we're going to speak as loud as we can.
Jay uh let me let me do some introductions while we work on that.
In front of us next we have James Lovell from Chief Seattle Club.
Roll with it.
Bonjour everyone and good afternoon.
My name is James Lovell and I'm an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of Belcourt, North Dakota.
I'm the Chief Seattle Club's Chief Community Development Officer.
We're an urban Native social service and housing-based organization right around the corner in Pioneer Square that serve our unhoused and chronically homeless American Indian and Alaskan Native relatives.
Native people are just over 1% of the population, but over 15% of the unsheltered people and 32% of the chronically homeless.
At Chief Seattle Club, we work with our members to reduce these disproportionate numbers through housing and traditional methods of healing, work that is supported by our predominantly Native staff.
Nice transition, right?
by our predominantly Native staff whose lived experience is at the core of creating sacred space as we care for our members.
Building affordable housing has greatly increased our capacity to serve our community members who are time and time again neglected by the conventional systems.
Renewing the Seattle Housing Levy legislation is a crucial step for our community as we continue our progress to house and heal all people.
For urban natives, the housing levy legislation is a strong foundation for organizations like ours to continue building permanent supportive housing.
At the Chief Seattle Club, we developed All All and operate two more permanent supportive housing properties in Seattle with more than 219 units.
That's 219 lives, more than 219 lives.
We have 120 more units opening in less than a year.
In each of these instances, we have safely filled our buildings with our chronically homeless relatives and have started them on their journeys towards healing.
We have proven that we can do the work if we have the tools.
The housing levy is one of the proven tools that our city has as we continue our fight against our regional housing and homelessness crisis.
The housing levy is more than just a commitment to much-needed brick-and-mortar developments.
It's a commitment to housing our people at a scale and with the kind of love, safety, and compassion and dedication that will transform lives.
We thank everyone for coming out to support the Seattle housing levy legislation.
Miigwech and thank you.
we can have this worked on more please thank you okay thank you so much and continuing our theme of making sure that we are building housing to meet our community needs please give it up for the people who care for people in the housing that we are building if we don't have the workforce investments to make sure that people care for those in these units people will continue to cycle into homelessness and need additional services and nobody knows this better than the members of SEIU Healthcare 1199 Northwest who are within places like DESC.
Give it up for our registered nurse Naomi Morris.
Thank you.
My name is Naomi Morris and I'm a nurse at DESC working with folks living in housing programs.
to house and keep house people who have been chronically homeless in our communities by providing them the support they need.
I've gotten to see how housing has brought success to clients just being able to call a place that your own is the stability and dignity people need to work on their stuff.
We all have stuff we are going through and the people we serve deserve to be to feel respected and safe in their own space so they can work on their stuff the same as everyone else.
The Seattle voters have been leaders supporting the philosophy and hard work through the housing levy, and this November we get to take the biggest step forward yet.
My co-workers at DESC will be supported by this levy, and the time is definitely now.
We don't do this work to get rich.
We do this work to help people.
But it is really hard to do when you are housing unstable yourself, or are an hour commute away from work each way, every day.
We need to belong in the community we serve.
We can live here, commute from here, make a life for our families here.
We will be the city's greatest support in tackling homelessness.
We want people who are driven by this work, and those people need to be able to support themselves.
Work cannot be a stressor to the people who are trying to alleviate the stress of those who need it most.
This is our calling, and the levy is a chance to treat it like that.
We do belong here, and this housing levy finally supports that.
My coworkers and I and everyone supporting growing housing and tackling the homelessness crisis in this city needs the council's support and then the people's support because we all belong here and it's about time we act like it.
Thank you for your time.
Powerful, powerful words.
Thank you so much, Naomi.
Please give it up for the people who build the housing on the outside, sticking with our worker theme.
Give it up for the Executive Secretary of the Seattle-King County Building Trades, Monty Anderson.
Thank you, Theresa.
First of all, I want to thank Naomi and the other speakers.
What the nurses and everybody do here is just incredible, and I just want to say thank you very much for your work.
It's incredible.
My name is Monty Anderson, I'm the Executive Secretary of Seattle Building Trades.
I represent about 15,000 workers in King County and probably most of us here behind us is working class construction workers.
What we see in this housing levy is something that's never been before.
We are working with the Office of Housing and the Mayor's Office and Councilwoman Mosqueda and others to have a community.
My fault.
Do I start yelling now?
To have a community workforce agreement.
And what that is, what we're going to say is when we're building these things, we're going to use people from the community to build these buildings.
For too long, housing has been built by an underground economy, to be honest with you.
And it's tough to look workers in the eyes and say, hey, listen, you're working here all day, but you can't afford to be here.
We're tired of that.
And the Office of Housing came right along with everybody and said, listen, we're going to have these job sites reflect the community.
And we're proud of that.
Apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, we're going to work with everybody that wants to be in construction.
Now, it's not everybody, but it's a lot.
It's a great job.
It's great benefits.
And we feel that the Office of Housing has embraced us and our goal to increase the apprenticeship opportunities for people in Seattle.
My message is very simple.
Let's support this levy because it supports everybody along the chain of this housing.
And like I said, I can't thank again everybody at the Office of Housing and all these wonderful construction workers behind us to get to work and start building this housing.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
And we just heard about building communities so that we can live in the community.
Please give it up for K.Y.
King-Garrett from Africatown Community Land Trust, who has been building community for the community left out for far too long.
Give it up for Y.
King-Garrett.
Thank you.
K.Y.
King-Garrett, third generation community builder from the Central District, Africatown.
and president, CEO of Africatown Community Land Trust.
102 years ago today, May 31st 2021, the first bombing on U.
S. Soil happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, decimating a historic, thriving black community known as Black Wall Street or Little Africa, the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Throughout the country, many acts of such aggression to destroy thriving black communities happen, but also not so overt acts in terms of policies and practices from urban renewal, redlining, and many more which have decimated thriving black communities.
One of those thriving black communities was the Central District of Seattle, which has been a historic black community since 1882 when Henry when William Gross bought 12 acres of land from Henry Yesler, establishing the Central District as a settling place and a safe place for black families to settle.
A community that reached up to 80% African American has completely been decimated by systematic exclusion from the economic growth that has taken place in the city and region.
This levy, affordable housing, provides an opportunity for not only people to stay in the community, to come back to the community, but also for to be included in the economics of developing.
William Gross was a developer in 1882, developing in downtown Seattle.
Today, in this state, we barely can find black developers that can develop at scale.
The levy is an opportunity not only for providing affordable housing for our people that work in schools, work in hospitals, work in the service economy, work as firemen, teachers, and so on and so forth, but also to increase the economic equity and participation here in the region.
In order for Seattle to be a world-class city, it should be inclusive of the communities of the world that have helped make this city.
The levy is an opportunity to advance that and create a new normal rooted in equity.
So we strongly advocate for increasing the amount of affordable home ownership, having a clear equity lens that prioritizes those communities that have endured many different policies and practices that we know about, provide for reparative investments to restore those communities and provide an opportunity for Seattle to lead the nation in terms of facing gentrification, displacement, reversing these trends, and making a city, making City of Seattle a place that includes more of us and not continuously excludes so many of us.
So with that, I say let's move this forward.
and it's also make sure that we're prioritizing affordable home ownership, greater investments and affordable home ownership.
This was a community.
Central District was a community of one of the highest rates of black ownership in the country, and we need to be moving towards that and not just rental housing and that when people make economic progress and have economic mobility, then they have to move out of the community.
So we also want to see greater increase, greater investments in affordable home ownership and making sure that black developers and workers are participating in building in our communities and throughout the city.
Thank you.
Incredible words.
Let's give it up one more time for K.
Y. King-Garrett, Africa Town Community Land Trust, leading the way and telling us to move it forward.
Let's give it up for our last speaker here today, Ryan Donohue, Chief Advocacy Officer from the Habitat for Humanity, Seattle-King County, and Kittitas County.
Give it up for Ryan.
Thank you very much, Council Member.
Habitat for Humanity is proud to be able to be here with such amazing champions that are here right now.
This legislation is one that we wholeheartedly support, mostly because it's what our vision is.
Our vision at Habitat is to build a world where everyone has a safe, decent, and affordable place to call home.
And the only way we're going to be able to do that is by building at the scale that this levy helps us get to.
We're here not because of me, not because of the work of really anybody.
We're here to be able to help people like Aurora, a single family homeowner in the South Park neighborhood who is able to have her own home because of things like the Seattle housing levy.
We're here because of people like Beckley, who's living in Capitol Hill right now in a condo that we helped build.
She moved into it just at the beginning of this year, and she's able to do that because of things like the Seattle Housing Levy.
It's because of people like Lachelle Lucas.
who's moving into her home here in just a couple of months and also in South Park.
And have a home for her family because of things like the Seattle housing levy.
This housing levy and this legislation is going to help people have a place to call home.
That's what we're all here for today.
That's why we at Habitat for Humanity support this critical piece of legislation, and we thank everybody for inviting us here to be a part of this, and we look forward to seeing this get passed.
Thank you very much.
All right, that is the incredible lineup of speakers that we've just begun to hear from tonight.
And at 4.30, we're going to have a public hearing inside where you will be able to hear more from the community at large who's calling for the Seattle City Council Committee, the Select Committee, to move forward with the legislation.
And I want to thank the folks who have spoken today because not only are they here trying to help make sure that the importance of this legislation is understood, they have been at the table over the last year plus to make sure that the technical advisory committee included feedback from labor and business, from community housing developers to those who are living inside and serving as workers, workers on the inside and the workers on the outside building this.
Today in committee at 9.30 this morning, we talked about amendments that collectively with the mayor's office, the council, the community at large, we included additional enhancements to do what K.Y.
King Garrett talked about earlier, building more affordable housing units for purchase for first-time homeowners, two, three, and four bedrooms so that we can have more multi-generational housing, which the Filipino Community Center and El Centro de la Raza also talk about.
We included as well information to expedite and to prioritize language that Ryan talked about in terms of making sure that we're building on city-owned property so that we can drive down the cost of construction, use derelict city properties, put that public good to the public's use by building more affordable housing and making them first-time home ownership opportunities to get and to address generational poverty.
We have enhanced ways in which we will get dollars out for rental assistance and support, not just building units, but child care, small business support, community center opportunities, so that more of us can live in the city of Seattle.
I'm talking about my colleagues in my union, folks like OPEIU workers being able to live in the city of Seattle.
I'm talking about construction workers that are here.
Raise your hand and give it up for construction workers in the city who are starting their career and wanting a place to live in the city.
I'm talking about people who are serving folks within permanent supportive housing and non-permanent supportive housing with residential assistance, like the nurse that we heard from, Naomi Morris, who is helping to make sure people stay stably housed and building housing through the lens of what our community wants.
Whether it's making sure that there's more affordable rental units or more affordable homes for purchase, we are creating the broad spectrum of what our community, what our city, and what our local economy needs in this legislation.
So with your support, we will get this out of committee on June 7th, and we will pass it at the full city council the week following.
One more time.
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Housing!
When do we want it?
Now!
And with that, if there are any questions, we're happy to take some, but we're also going to a public hearing in about 10 minutes.
I know the feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the question was, for those who say that this is an expensive levy, what is our response?
I think that the construction workers in this room know it best.
The price of materials has increased.
The price of goods in this city have increased.
The price of labor across our country has increased.
If we only invested in the status quo, we would be reducing units.
We would be serving fewer families.
We would be making it less possible to keep people safely housed.
I believe that the Office of Housing in partnership with the Mayor's Office and the community at large that identified the dollar amount that was transmitted to Council, Council has not changed that dollar amount.
I believe it is the absolute right path that we need to stay on so that we can serve more people and serve people in an efficient way that keeps them stably housed and creates opportunities for generational well.
There's quite a contrast with what's going on in Portland versus what you're talking about here in Seattle when it comes to all of this housing.
Have you talked to Portland leaders at all about any of the ideas down there?
And also, do you support a camping ban?
So we, I think in the city of Seattle, are proud to be national leaders when it comes to housing.
Seattle was the first city to ever pass a Seattle housing levy.
And we have proof of concept.
We have overproduced in terms of the housing units that we said that we would create.
We have been effective stewards of the dollar.
So other cities often look to the city of Seattle in terms of how we're building housing and how we're serving people in those units.
I think Monty spoke to it well, and so did Katie Gary, our executive secretary from MLK Labor.
We are also leading the way across the nation in how we're making sure that we're investing in good living wage jobs now in this levy as we build new units as well.
This is a holistic approach to how we create options for people to call home and to create a sense of place and community as well.
Child care, community centers, small business.
It's not just about the unit, it's about the people in the community that we are serving.
And in terms of how this helps address the homeless crisis, whether it's cities up and down the West Coast or across the country.
We know that large cities are experiencing the same issues of homelessness and housing instability.
Seattle, with this levy, will continue to be a national leader.
Part of the solution to homelessness is housing.
The solution to homelessness is housing and making sure that we have a workforce there to care for people so that they don't cycle back out into homelessness, or when they have a housing option come open, that they have somebody there to care for them to make sure that they create stable housing.
I believe up and down the West Coast and across this country, people will look to us and the housing levy as part of the solution to not just housing, but also the healthcare needs that we can make sure people stay housed and healthy.
Thank you.
I'll follow up with you.
Oh, I have not talked to Portland.
Yeah, you told me.
Yeah, you told me.
No, I'll talk to you about that later, yeah.
What do we want?
When do we want it?
I'll see you in the main chambers at 4.30 for the...