2019 Seattle City Council Housing and Homelessness Voters Guide

To help Seattle voters understand their choices in the upcoming City Council election, Tech 4 Housing has partnered with Resolution to End Homelessness, Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness, Housing Development Consortium and Solid Ground on a 2019 voter education project.

This online Voters Guide on Housing and Homelessness is based on responses to a candidate questionnaire sent to all 14 candidates. We’re pleased that 13 of 14 candidates are expected to participate in this Voters Guide. See more of our methodology here.

Many thanks to the candidates who participated, and to the voters who consider housing and homelessness a primary issue in this campaign.

Note: Because we are 501(c)(3) organizations, we are providing this information for educational purposes only and are not making endorsements. We do not endorse nor oppose any candidate.

King County Elections will mail ballots to everyone mid-October. You can return your ballot by mail (no stamp required) or at a drop box, by Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Don’t know your district? Look it up here. | Are you registered to vote? Check and update your registration here.

District 1

Phil Tavel

https://www.philtavelforseattle.com

Download complete candidate response as submitted.

Question 1. Beyond making current programs more efficient, do you think we need to increase funding for housing for people experiencing homelessness? If so, where would you raise the revenue?

We need more funding for permanent supportive housing. We also need a regional approach to our homelessness crisis. Since 2016, population trends have shown that about 50 percent of the homeless population comes from Seattle, 30 percent from other King County cities, and 15 percent from other Washington counties. Yet, Seattle has borne the cost of responding to a disproportionately large portion of the homeless population (around 70 percent). We need a unified, customer-centric regional system that manages outreach, services, and housing. Under a new, regional system, leadership could re-appropriate funds and find new housing dollars in the waste of other programs. If we boost our effectiveness, implement an efficient regional system, and build partnerships with the private sector and State and Federal resources, we can finally treat this as a crisis, get people stably housed, and avoid regressive funding mechanisms. Possibly avoiding any new taxes all together.

Question 2. What are your thoughts on the City's current implementation of encampment removals? In what ways would you improve the policies?

The City’s current implementation of encampment removals is ineffective. There is a process to identify the six largest encampments and only those six are addressed each month. The circumstances that drive people into homelessness, homelessness itself, and the experiences people live through while homeless are traumatic. We need more of an emphasis on services and outreach expanded to a larger portion of the unsheltered population. Unfortunately, when the Mayor pushed for expansions to the Navigation Teams, certain Councilmembers fought against the expansion and reduced the planned additional funding. Helping those in need should not be a political battleground where elected officials go to demonize those who disagree with their approach. Using these outreach opportunities to connect more people with more services is critical to our success. We also must use customer input to shift how we communicate available services.

Question 3. The City and State have introduced several new tenant protections in recent years. Do you think more work is needed to protect tenants and combat displacement? If so, what changes would you like to see?

I do think more work is needed to protect tenants and combat displacement. I would like to see us to more to maintain current affordable housing stock instead of wholly relying on new development. Many of multifamily units in Seattle, especially in District One, are maintained by small landlords. Tenants in these units enjoy more affordable rents. However, when those landlords pass away or sell to new owners, rents increase rapidly or (in some cases) the new owners are developers and tear the whole thing down to build newer, smaller, and more expensive units. We should implement a program here modeled after San Francisco’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) and Washington D.C.’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). These ordinances protect existing affordable housing stock, but more critically, do so in communities most vulnerable to displacement.

Question 4. Homelessness and housing insecurity disproportionately affect people of color, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities and other marginalized communities. What would you do to address these disparities?

I believe the best way to address the disproportionality of the effects of homelessness and housing insecurity is through targeted outreach, collaborative policy building, and targeted funding following from these. There is no blanket policy that can solve this problem for all marginalized groups. However, by working with and within the communities in which we see these disparities, we can address the causes. Studies have tied racial disparities to racial wealth gaps and housing discrimination, LGBTQ disparities to unsafe family and social environments and housing discrimination, and disability disparities to employment, heath care, and housing barriers. By focusing our policies and investments to benefit these and other marginalized communities, we can address the disparities that exist in our society. Specific improvements include; housing bonds, data collection and analysis, credit score accommodations, allowing for alternative documentation for accessing housing and services.

Question 5. How would you adjust Seattle's land use and zoning laws? In particular, what changes, if any, would you want to see in neighborhoods currently zoned exclusively for single-family housing and in multi-family neighborhoods where we're making significant investments in transit?

I will work to strike a balance between new development and maintain our affordable housing stock, including reviewing City owned properties and upper floors in commercial zones to find a variety of options. It’s imperative to consider how housing can and should fit into existing neighborhoods. Currently, even with upzoning and other zoning changes, there is no process in place to solve the issue of population density without making our neighborhoods unaffordable. This is why I have proposed amendments to the in-lieu-of fee plan that ensure developers either build affordable units in upzoned areas or pay enough money to build affordable units on the public side. Creative changes to our land use and zoning laws that follow from thorough community engagement in conjunction with stronger protections and guarantees for affordable units are critical as we plan for growth – especially considering planned transportation investments.

Question 6. We know that it is cheaper to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place than it is to support them to exit homelessness. What is your vision for homelessness prevention initiatives and services in our community?

We will properly address the homelessness crisis if we address the root causes. Homelessness is extreme poverty. Poverty extends beyond housing. This is evidenced by the self-reported causes of homelessness during King County’s point-in-time counts. Job loss, substance abuse, and eviction are the three most frequent causes reported. Separation from partner and mental and physical health issues are also frequent causes. We must work together as a region to improve employment programs, substance abuse and mental and physical health issues, and tenant protections. Getting people housing is an effective approach in getting people shelter, but it cannot be housing alone. If it was as simple as getting people housing, we could ignore other areas and focus on building housing. Poverty and homelessness are extraordinarily complex—they require a broad network of various services, including housing, which effectively and proactively reaching out to improve our communities.

Lisa Herbold

http://district1forherbold.org/

Download complete candidate response as submitted. Some answers truncated here for being over 150 word limit.

Question 1. Beyond making current programs more efficient, do you think we need to increase funding for housing for people experiencing homelessness? If so, where would you raise the revenue?

Yes, I support the McKinsey Report recommendation that we increase our investments in homelessness, and I am currently working to double the investment in Permanent Supportive Housing for the remaining four years of the Housing Levy. I want to use the new authority granted by the state to retain a portion of Seattle’s sales tax that goes to grow our bonding capacity to do so. In 2019 over $190 million in housing projects (projected to produce around 2300 units) were provided in the Office of Housing’s Intent to Apply application round, but the City may only have capacity to fund about a quarter of those projects. Added bonding authority will supplement our Housing Levy, incentive zoning, and MHA dollars. We need more revenue in addition to that.

Question 2. What are your thoughts on the City's current implementation of encampment removals? In what ways would you improve the policies?

The unauthorized encampment removal policy is intended to mitigate the safety and health risks for people living unsheltered, and prioritize connecting people to services and housing. To avoid this policy from becoming disruptive to peoples’ lives we need greater accountability and fidelity to these goals.

To that end, I’ve levied a proviso on Navigation Team funds requiring the Human Services Department (HSD) to demonstrate which encampments are being removed and why. Through this reporting, I’ve advocated for HSD to adopt recommendations of the City Auditor such as giving the Navigation Team access to diversion services, which they didn’t have and earmarking enhanced shelter beds for people having to leave removed encampments.

Some of the additional Auditor recommendations I am pursuing are access to bathrooms and drop-in showers, and providing enhanced access to garbage pick up so locations are deprioritized for removal. I am also working to require the Executive to…

I am grateful for advocacy at the City and State level to improve tenant protections with passage of SB 5600 and HB 1440. More work needs to be done. I’ve advanced recommendations from the “Losing Home” report. made some important headway, and I’ve recently passed bills that would ensure that DV survivors aren’t liable for damages caused by their abuser, and protecting the ability for tenants to live with family members and roommates. I intend to follow up with a bill to limit the financial impact of tenant-initiated lease termination.

We need help from the state legislature to allow us to 1. Amend the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance so that a. renters with roommates and b. renters earning between 50%-80% average median income can qualify for assistance and 2. close loopholes in the Just Cause Eviction Ordinance so tenants can get eviction protection at the end of fixed term leases…

As we move to a Regional Governance Authority, I will advocate for new performance metrics that provide greater support for interventions that close disproportionalities in homelessness. Even the controversial Barb Poppe report said that we should focus efforts to serve populations with the greatest barriers accessing housing and services. A results-based accountability system that focuses rewards on organizations serving those with the fewest barriers to housing will not help us address our crisis.

As the “Losing Home” report outlines, eviction reform is key to resolve disproportionalities in homelessness, and I sponsored SLI 15-9-A-1 requesting HSD to provide recommendations on strengthening eviction prevention resources. Based on a racial equity assessment of MHA, I am also championing a policy that would promote earmarking affordable housing units with community preference policies in areas at high displacement risk to benefit communities disproportionately displaced from those areas.

I also support allocating Housing Levy dollars for…

I support transit-oriented development, including increased density with mandatory affordability that has helped to create greater housing options in our urban villages. Further, I support efforts to consider expansion of residential small lot (RSL) in other single-family zoned areas as well.

I support consideration of the Seattle Planning Commission’s Neighborhoods for All report. The implementation of the MHA legislation will help us understand the effectiveness of converting Single Family to RSL so that we can continue discussion of other zoning changes necessary to maximize affordable housing development outside of our urban villages.

As I’ve mentioned in questions 1, 3, and 4, I believe that eviction reform and prevention, and increasing affordable housing, especially PSH, are key strategies to increase housing stability. I will continue to advance these solutions. I also envision greater emphasis on preserving our current affordable housing stock through the City acquiring properties reaching the end of their Low Income Housing Tax Credit contracts. I also have anti-displacement legislation to require developers to replace affordable housing that they demolish because a significant portion of Seattle’s rental housing stock is in single-family homes (20% of single family homes are renter-occupied) and smaller rental properties subject to redevelopment to preserve or replace this “naturally-occurring affordable housing” stock.

Finally, I’d like to make more opportunity for new, low-income homeowners to enter the housing market. During the last reauthorization of the Housing Levy, I voted to support a pilot to subsidize the cost for…