AN ORDINANCE relating to affordable housing on properties owned or controlled by religious organizations; modifying affordability requirements adopted in Ordinance 126384; and amending Section 23.42.055 of the Seattle Municipal Code and Section 10 of Ordinance 126384.
Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay, folks, let's go ahead and end our period of public comment. We'll go ahead and go to other items of business on today's agenda, which is the public hearing on Council Bill 120157. Will the Court please read the title of Council Bill 1 to 0 157? Constable 120157 relating to affordable housing on properties owned or controlled by religious organizations. Modifying affordability requirements adopted in ordinance 126334 and amended Section 23.40 2.005 of the settlements, the code and Section ten of Ordinance 2060 384. Okay. It appears that technology is not our friend today. Just as we're about to do this. I see what Councilmember Strauss was having some need to reconnect. It looks like Councilmember Strauss is with us again. So before I open the public hearing on this item, I am going to go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Strauss , who is the sponsor of this bill. Councilmember Strauss will provide us with introductory remarks before we go ahead and hold the formal public hearing, for which we do have a handful of members of the viewing public registered to make public comment. So thank you so much, Strauss, over to you. Thank you. Council President Gonzalez and apologies for the technological issues that we just experienced. Just wanting to highlight that council bill 120157 is before us today and it makes changes to Council Bill 120081, which the City Council passed on June 28. And this will increase the affordability requirements from 60% AMI to 80% AMI Council Bill 120081 Implementing a new state law that allows for larger buildings than zoning would otherwise allow for affordable housing developments on sites owned or controlled by religious institutions. The state law defined affordable housing as affordable to 80% am-I, as did the original version of Council Bill 120157 that was transmitted to council. The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee considered the amendment to lower AMI requirements to 60% and decided against and rejected that amendment after hearing from stakeholders. The full City Council ultimately passed a similar amendment and lowered the affordability requirements to 60% AMI making Seattle's law more restrictive than the state law. Following these votes, my office and others were contacted by churches and community organizations expressing deep concern with the amendment, which works with and including from Nehemiah Initiative, which works with historically black churches in Seattle to save the black church in the central area into combat displacement. These stakeholders shared that the 60% AMI requirement threatened the viability of church affordable housing projects, meaning that we would lose affordable housing units that would otherwise been developed under this ordinance. Additionally, I heard that churches plan to use this ordinance as a way in ways that are more broad than what the City Council discussed during for council. In some cases, churches may wish to build affordable housing to allow their members to return home to communities that they have already been displaced from. Some of these members may not qualify for a 60% in my unit and they still have been displaced. I do not believe the city needs to micromanage how religious organizations best serve their congregations. Finally, I was reminded of the great importance historically and today of the Black Church is more than just a religious organization. But as Don King, president of Nehemiah Initiative, put it, as the largest African-American financial, emotional, physical, spiritual service provider and the largest African-American land owner, period. He added much more. And I know that many more people will be speaking during the public hearing today. So I will end with this. Just noting that this legislation will amend the previous council bill to provide more flexibility to churches to serve their congregations, build the needed affordable housing, and maintain themselves financially so that they can continue serving their community. Thank you, counsel presence. Those are my remarks before the bill. It's so much Castmember Strauss Appreciate that context setting and additional information both for the viewing public and for us as council members. So as Presiding Officer, I am now opening the public hearing on Council Bill 120157 relating to affordable housing on property owned or controlled by religious organizations. Online registration to sign up to speak opened at 12:00 noon today and I am going to call on speakers in the order of registration. The online registration will remain open until the conclusion of this public hearing. The same rules apply to the same rules that apply to the public comment period will be applied to this public hearing . Each speaker will be provided up to 2 minutes to address the council. Excuse me. And speakers are going to hear chime when they only have 10 seconds left of the allotted time. Your microphone will be muted at the end of your allotted. In their comments by seeing their name. And again, you have to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted. Sorry folks, I'm continuing to experience internet stability so and have to turn my camera off. Here again, public comment on this particular section is only related to the council bill just described by Councilmember Strauss, which is a bill related to affordable housing on property owned or controlled by religious organizations. So we're going to go ahead and open up the public comment period. I'm going to go ahead and start calling on folks who are both present and signed up to speak on this subject matter. The first person is Kirsten Smith, followed by Donald King. Good afternoon. My name is Kirsten Smith. I live in District one and I am policy staff at Air Seattle. The American Institute of Architects apologized for getting in on the list ahead of him because he should go first. He is a fellow of the air and we are pleased to support the 120157. We also appreciate the Council's willingness to take a second look at the legislation. The Provision Architect strive to apply our professional skills to advance racial and economic justice. One way we do this is to identify policy changes that make development work for bipoc individuals and communities, both to combat the risk of displacement and to generate wealth building opportunities. Adjusting this legislation to make it achievable for black churches to allow them to participate in the program without giving up control of their project to larger developers is an example of exactly this kind of policy adjustment. It also supports the city's commitment to eliminating racial disparities and achieving racial equity while deeper affordability programs are essential and needed to achieve additional city goals. You believe in this case and solve to be addressed elsewhere. We ask you to support Council Bill one 2157 thank you. Thank you for calling it. And next up is Donald King, followed by Joey Lopez. Of Europe. Good afternoon. This is Donald King. I am president and CEO of the Myanmar Initiative of Seattle. And in fact, in your name and again, you have the press. Sorry. No, that's okay. We're all it. It is. Definitely. Let's start the clock over again. Yes. The next. It's I feel like today is extra Monday. So no worries. You have the full 2 minutes. Go ahead. Good. Thank you. My name's Donald King. I'm president and CEO of the Myanmar Initiative. And it is the mission of the Nehemiah Initiative to primarily one save the historically black churches, the predominantly black churches of central Seattle. And as part of that mission are we have two objectives in mind. One is to develop affordable housing on underutilized properties of the churches, which is quite abundant. And the second is to provide the church with income from the development of those properties for the churches to survive. So the churches can continue to do good. But also being well financially we are supporting of the passage of CB 120157 because it corrects a previously passed bill, an ordinance 120081 that was flawed. It had a late amendment added to it that required it eligibility of 60% area median income, which does not particularly work for our black churches. We applaud those that work in the low and very low income housing provision market. But with the objective that I just told you about and the second objective of that is being able to make the black churches stronger through the development of their housing. A threshold of 60% or a limit of 60%. Amid does not financially work for that objective. So I am urging you to pass this ordinance, to pass this bill into ordinance 1 to 0 one five. Thank you. Thank you for calling in today. Really appreciate it. Next up is Joey Lopez, followed by Benjamin Maurits. Council President Gonzalez and members of council. My name is Jose Lopez, a resident of District three in the Safe Land Initiative Lead at the Church Council of Greater Seattle. I appreciate the time to speak today on behalf of the Church Council in favor of Ordinance 120157 to modify the affordability requirements adopted in the past ordinance as relates to affordable housing on properties owned and controlled by religious organizations. As many of you know, the Church Council of Greater Seattle is a century old organization that is committed to making informed, transformational change for deliberation and justice in partnership with Seattle's faith, community and community organization. Much like many of my initiative, as part of this work, we facilitate a network of congregations and faith leaders through our Faith Land Initiative. Our initiative trained and developed faith leaders to cultivate deeper relationships within their congregations and neighborhoods, and a practice toward community stewardship of faith owned land. We also mobilize Seattle's faith communities to take action by practicing transformative stewardship of faith owned land and engaging their lawmakers and elected officials as we look and legislating in terms of affordability. We have to realize the impact for people with the most need like Bipoc family. We know the families that are our families are what will reverse the impacts of displacement and gentrification and policies that contribute to housing exclusion, like the city's history of urban renewal. Past debate focused on rental rates for studio and one bedroom unit. However, 80% of am I for a three bedroom unit is $2,295. I. Reality is that housing of this size is almost nonexistent at this cost or lower. We must be mindful of the long term impact of our development decision providing space for the return of displaced black renters in a sustainable way that does not contribute to further racial and economic segregation. I urge you to vote yes on the passage of S.B. 120157. Thank you. Thank you for calling in today, Joey. Next up is Benjamin Morris. And then after Benjamin will be Alicia Ruiz. Hello. My name is Benjamin Merritt, and I'm a housing developer in Seattle. I'm here today to answer the specific question of what is the difference between 60% AMI 80% AMI. It is a difference between many homes and no homes for a family of four. The difference between earning 63,000 and about 83,000 a year in income and for a housing providers, the difference between being able to charge that family a fair rent of about 6000 dollars per month, or about 20 $100 a month for a two bedroom home. But for somebody who aims to build housing and for whom, like most of us, must borrow money to do so, it's a difference between being able to pay off your construction loan and not being able to do so. And if you can pay off the loan and you are in charge, then it's the ability to have a bit of money left over afterwards to pay other bills and keep your community going. Now, not everyone needs to fund their operations in this way. Large nonprofits with access to federal tax credits and local subsidies can do just fine building at 60% AMI. And they should. But no one, not even the church with modest profit expectations, can build housing at 60% ami without subsidy. In Seattle, we now have the opportunity to allow smaller faith based groups, especially the black churches, the opportunity to revitalize themselves through housing and to do so on their own without subsidy that they must be able to build to 80%. Ami, please approve this bill. Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in today. Next up is Alicia Ruiz, followed by Gary Tyson. Hi, my name is Alisha Reese, and I'm speaking today on behalf of the Master Builders Association opinions and on which county and our nearly 3000 members are today. We stand in strong support of the amended version of Council Bill 120159 that would modify the eligibility criteria to require that all affordable housing units built on property owned by religious organizations serve households with an average income of 80% of AMI. The passage of this amended bill is an important step forward towards racial equality and also provide desperately, desperately needed affordable housing in our city. Thank you. Thank you for calling in today. Next up is Garry Tyson. And then the last person I have signed up for this public hearing is Barb Wilson. Looking for Gary Tyson, who is speaker number? Oh, I'm sorry, since we were at the time, Carrie, but I think I just called on him. Do we still have. Speaker 50? There we go. Okay. Just press star six and we'll be able to hear you. Gary, if you're with us, we just need you to press Star six on your end, and then we will be able to hear you. You're not hearing the collar. So let's go ahead and move over to Barbara Wilson. It was number 58 on our list. I'm Barbara Wilson, District six. Speaking in favor of 120157, increasing the permissible EMI to 80% would make it financially feasible for religious institutions with less land to build the missing middle housing at virtually no cost to the city. This approach to increasing Seattle's affordable housing exists because a dedicated group of small historical black churches advocated for a state law requiring increasing density for. Such buildings on religious property. Our own church in Ballard has been exploring building affordable housing at 60%. Am I on our property? We're privileged to have a very large piece of property, but you should know that the part of the property used for such affordable housing will be reduced in value by half. The reality is limiting the definition of affordable housing to 60% AMI and below reduces the land value so much that it's financially prohibitive for the very churches who brought Seattle one solution to increase much needed affordable housing for black historic churches. If you wish to support the black community and their continued presence in their historical neighborhood, please press 120157. Thank you. Thank you for calling in today. Okay. Our last speaker is Gary Tyson. Let's see if we can get Garry unmuted and available to give us his comments. All you have to do is press star six. For us to be able to hear you. Okay. I'm still not able to hear Gary. I apologize for that. Sometimes these Zoom features don't work as well as we'd like them to. I would encourage you to email your comments to the full council at council that CEOs, you and CIO of Seattle don't shy away. I'm sorry you waited this long and we're not able to get you on the line, but I am going to go ahead and close out the period of public comment. I don't have any other individuals signed up to speak for this public hearing, and we're going to go ahead and move to other items of business on the agenda again. That was our last speaker remotely present to speak at this public hearing. The public hearing on council Bill 120157 is now closed. This bill is scheduled for a vote at the September 27th, 2021 City Council meeting. And the Council is still accepting comments on your email at council at Seattle Dot Job. Thank you so much. Let's move to payment of the bills. Will the clerk please read the title. Council bill 120179. The property managers pay started and claims to the week of September six, 2021 through September 10th, 2021, and ordering payment thereof.