AN ORDINANCE relating to the sale of low-income housing; requiring owners of certain multi-family rental housing to notify the Seattle Office of Housing, the Seattle Housing Authority, and tenants of the owner’s proposed sale of that housing; and amending Sections 22.907.030 and 22.907.100 of the Seattle Municipal Code.
The Report of the Housing, Health, Energy and Workers Rights Committee. Agenda Item three about 119537 relating to the sale of low income housing, requiring owners of certain multi-family rental housing to notify the Seattle Office of Housing, the Seattle Housing Authority and the tenants of the owners proposed sale of that housing. And in many sections 22.90 7.0 30 and point 100 of the transfer code. The committee recommends a bill passes amended. Customer. Thank you so much. And as people leave, I want to say thank you for both. Also commenting on the notice of intent to sell legislation. As you also talked about the need for a sugar sweetened beverage isolated fund. So thank you for that. I won't take their exit, Mr. President, as an indication that they don't like it because folks have weighed in. So I appreciate that. Today, I'm really excited to bring forward this legislation that creates the notice of intent to sell ordinance. I should say that updates the existing ordinance that's already on the book. We already know that Seattle's current real estate market, the tenants affordable housing providers, often struggle to compete. Many buyers come with cash in hand and snap up properties within days of being listed. And sometimes buildings are also sold without ever being listed on the market at all, leaving few opportunities for low income buyers to get a foot in the door, including tenants and nonprofit organizations, community organizations that are interested in preventing displacement and helping to make sure that people have an affordable place to live. So I believe, as this council has talked about multiple times, we need every tool in the toolkit to help make sure that we are creating new first time homebuyer options, that we are preserving affordability where we can, that we're creating and building more affordable housing units, both for renters and for first time homebuyers. And that, as we do all of this, we create additional options to exercise greater self-determination in terms of how we access affordable housing. The existing notice of intent to sell ordinance, which many of you passed years ago with Councilmember Burgess and Clark, I think, who led the effort, had identified that multifamily properties of five units or more with at least one rental unit at 80% AMI or below, should notify the Office of Housing of their intent to sell any property and provide a 60 day window before any transaction to allow an opportunity for affordable housing developers to submit an offer should they be interested in acquiring the building. However, as we've heard over the last year and a half, there is additional tools that we need in that toolkit. One is for those smaller buildings, those with 2 to 4 units, and to create more opportunities for those nonprofit developers and organizations, to have more of an opportunity to potentially make an offer on some of those larger units with five larger buildings, with five units or more. So we've engaged with community members and affordable housing providers. Some of the industry folks who you heard from today to try to get some feedback on the ordinance in front of you and ultimately have landed on this legislation with the amended amendments that Councilmember Herbold and Council Member Bagshaw have worked with us to include. And I believe that it really strengthens the opportunities for tenants, strengthens the opportunity for community organizations, and strengthens the opportunity for nonprofit, affordable housing developers to purchase multifamily residential buildings when they come up for sale. Be this either for individuals as tenants of the building who will now finally get notification before their building goes up for sale. Or nonprofit developers who we want to facilitate the ability ability for them to either preserve the building or create more affordable units. And also for our community partners who have said they would like to get more into this arena and to help preserve buildings or build more units so that there can be more affordable housing on the market as a whole. And with this legislation, we will be able to provide notice to those entities so that they have more time to make an offer. The proposed updates are not only intended to expand opportunities for tenants and nonprofits interested in purchasing properties come up for sale, but also to create a potential pool of new new purchasers. When we incorporate some of the language that Councilmember Herbold has been instrumental in, including by making sure that the Office of Housing is, let's say, hosting educational programs so that people understand where potential resources can come from. As we pull in existing funding that has come from the Office of Housing and other community development entities that have funding available for this type of purchase, we're going to build out our knowledge in the community about how to access these funds and potentially create more self-determination, homeownership and affordable rental units on the horizon. And we're also looking back as Councilmember Bagshaw has spearheaded the effort in the legislation. We're also going to be making sure that we'll hold ourselves accountable, that this tool is working in the future, and that we respond to the data that we get. We want this to be a benefit to tenants, to nonprofit organizations, to community organizations that are interested in this. And I believe that as we do so, we will potentially see more opportunities for those who've been historically not able to engage in this type of purchase, engaging in preserving affordable housing, and hopefully building out more affordable housing in the future. So creating a new pool of potential purchasers, obviously, this is not going to be one policy that solves any of our affordable housing. And Chris, this is again, one additional element to a much larger toolkit that we all need in order to create affordable housing across the income spectrum, but specifically for our lowest wage workers. And I really appreciate folks engaging on this legislation. We know we have other cities to pull from and the National League of Cities, again, in their report that they just released a few weeks ago, highlighted this policy strategy as one important tool to make sure that cities are offering more opportunities for people to purchase these types of buildings, and importantly, the nonprofit developers and community organizations along with tenants. So that is my comprehensive summary of the legislation and my huge thanks to all of the council that has engaged on this legislation. And I'm looking forward to hearing any concerns, but looking forward to really the implementation side of things. Okay. Any questions or comments? Councilman Bagshaw? Thank you all. I think we still have council central staff here for all of your good work. Thank you for your leadership on this councilmember mosquito. I want to underscore a couple of things. One, this does not impact single families. So single family homes with people that want to sell. It also does not impact the large commercial buildings that people are worried about. And I do want to acknowledge that, Councilmember Moss, Kate and I both reached out to representatives that work for landlords. The reason we added the tiers and the various gates for the 15 days was to make it clear that we're giving opportunities to people that might not have the information that they can get together and if they've got the financial wherewithal to put an offer forward. But I also, without blowing any attorney client privilege, I want to recognize and acknowledge that we did work with a lot apartment on this. So some of the issues that were raised in the last week, I believe have been addressed. So many thanks. I'm certainly voting for this. We'll see how it goes. We also have tied in an evaluation by the city auditor. If we find it's not working, it can be undone. So I think it's a it's a worthy effort. Let's try. Thank you, Councilmember Beck. Customer Well. Thank you. I want to thank the chair mosquito for moving forward some language in a shared amendment that was important to tenant advocates and organizations working to promote community land trust and low, low income homeownership. Specifically the need to do more to strengthen monitoring and enforcement efforts to improve compliance and help realize greater retention of affordability and promote tenant ownership in alignment with that. As it relates specifically to strengthening monitoring, making sure that properties that are that are required to comply with this law are or are likely to be required to comply with this law, are put on on a watch list that tenant groups and the city can work together in making early assessments of whether or not those are properties, should they go up for sale that the city should work together with community groups on identifying. Funding and opportunities to support the purchase of those buildings. And I think it also dovetails into some criticism that we've received from the the Rental Housing Association, which I actually don't see as a criticism whatsoever. They they refer to a similar legislation in Washington, D.C., called the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. And they show that over a six year period, 5% of buildings, subject to the requirement, were purchased by tenants. I think that's given the fact that we don't have endless public dollars to purchase properties. I think 5% of eligible properties being purchased would be would be fantastic. And I think what we really need to do not only is to support this ordinance and support tenants who are looking to purchase properties in collaboration with the city. But we also need to work on on the funding piece as well, which I think is something that there's broad agreement on. No, thank you. Thank you. Customer Herbold Okay. I think we'll be ready to vote. Customer said you wanted to reach. Please, just to close it out, Mr. President. That was closed out, but go ahead and close this out. Okay. So I want to thank the council again and also underscore what Councilmember Horrible just ended with. We have so much more work to do to make sure that there is the funding necessary. So our community organizations are nonprofit developers and low income tenants do have funding that they can pull from and when a potential purchase comes up in the future. I want to underscore my commitment to that as well as we move forward. My hope is that this type of legislation, in combination with robust funding and other public policies that we've passed, will lead to more co-op models, more co-housing models, more public housing models, as we're also making sure that this list of notification goes to the Office of Housing, as well as Seattle Housing Authority. This is one critical element as we're looking forward forward to creating more affordable housing, both for first time homeowners options, first time home ownership options, and for affordable rental units. So we're excited about the prospect of this and will be looking forward to working with all of you as we do the evaluation. Just a quick thank you, Mr. President, to wrap it up to the community housing roundtable who's been engaging with us. I want to thank Puget Sound Sage and Washington Community Action Network, who testified today in support and on our team, Erin House, who's done a lot of research on this. And as Tracy is listening, Tracy Ratcliff from central staff for her intense research and drafting of this legislation, in addition to the law department, who Councilmember Bagshaw has mentioned, has been working with us very closely on this legislation. Very excited to bring it forward to you. And with that, I will stop, Mr. President, so we can vote. Thank you. Cathy, I'm a skater. Okay? If there's no other comments, please call the role on the passage of the Bill Musgrave. I. O'Brien All right, let's go. I want to thank John Gonzalez Herbold, President Harrell Aden favor and unopposed. Bill Pass and chair of Senate. Please read the part of the Select Committee on Civic Arena's.