AN ORDINANCE relating to housing for low-income households; adopting the Housing Levy Administrative and Financial Plan for program years 2019 and 2020; adopting Housing Funding Policies for the 2016 Housing Levy and other fund sources; authorizing actions by the Director of Housing regarding past and future housing loans and contracts; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.
Housing, Health, Energy and Workers Rights Committee Agenda and for Accountable 119 531 relating to housing for low income households. Adopting the Housing Levy, Administrative and Financial Plan for Program Years 2018 and 2020, the committee recommends the bill passes amended. Caspar Mesquita. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I'm really excited about this legislation that's in front of us. Council Bill 119531 is referred to as the Housing Levy Administration and Finance Plan and Housing Funding Policies for program years 2019 and 2020. But as my Council colleagues who've been participating in this conversation at the Housing Committee know, I've referred to this as the moral compass document for our Office of Housing. This is how we dictate to the city how they will spend the money that we have for affordable housing. This is absolutely critical as we think about pulling together the funding that we have available from the housing levy funds, the incentive zoning payments, the mandatory housing affordability payments, as well as other funding sources that the city administers for creating affordable housing. How we use those dollars and who we allocate and who gets that approval for building affordable housing in the city is truly a moral decision, and we have an obligation to build housing as fast as we can and to recognize that those who are in need of affordable housing are many of the communities that right now are at the highest risk of displacement. We must be building affordable housing as fast as possible to address the increase in the population locally and to address the crisis of the cost of housing. We have not responded fast enough to build that housing. We have not built housing density types that we need across the city, and we haven't worked with our community partners as fast as possible so that those who are interested in working with and leading with the voice of those who are most at risk of displacement can help get to the front of that list so that they can build housing that is culturally competent, that is rooted in community, that has a women and minority of businesses on the first and second floors, that has child care facilities, that has health facilities, that has plazas like Roberto Maceda, this Roberto Massa Plaza. This is the type of housing that we want to see created across our city. And we have taken this opportunity through the administration and finance plan to reconfigure what should be our priorities when it comes to using these housing dollars. Every two years, we have the chance to recalibrate how we administer the housing dollars based on our community needs. And this year, we pulled together a robust group of stakeholders that have helped us craft the legislation in front of us. We pulled together individuals who assist and have themself been eligible for affordable housing, individuals from the nonprofit housing development world who have given us tips and tools for how we can improve our process. Organizations that are newly interested and entering into the affordable housing development world to help us identify how we can create affordable housing across Seattle , address the unaffordability issues and the displacement that we are observing every day. And we've pulled in our labor partners to make sure that we are building high quality housing using good union labor, and that we're aligning those labor principles in our housing policies. So some of the really exciting components of this legislation, Mr. President, include supporting community driven development and harmonizing the policies with our surplus land disposition policy. And just by way of reminder, that was one of the first housing policies we passed last year to make sure that the city, if we had surplus land, that we stopped selling it off at the highest dollar figure that we held onto that public land and used it for the most important public use, which is housing right now. And we said, as you hold on to this land, the first people that we should be working with are to make sure that we are organizations that are working, to make sure that those who are at the highest risk of displacement are getting affordable housing. At the time, community organizations, that that's great. Thank you for holding on to that public land and not selling it off. And we need your assistance with getting the dollars in hand so we can build. So this document today complements that work from last year. We have also emphasized that we want to co-locate not just housing units, but to truly create homes and community. We've included throughout the document the emphasis on child care facilities, health services and other community services like public spaces and plazas and greenways. So that we're investing in housing and we're creating community space at the same time. Really excited about the language that's in here around community preference and affirmative marketing so that we can have an innovative and directive approach to prioritizing community members with historic ties to neighborhoods for that new affordable housing that we're building in areas especially at highest risk of displacement so that people can continue to have a place to call home that is affordable. And we don't continue to see high risks of or high rates of displacement. We've also created more funding and more of a directive for acquisition of properties. So when properties come up for sale, housing authority nonprofit developers Seattle itself through the Office of Housing, has more of an opportunity to put forward the funding to acquire existing buildings so that we can actually create affordable housing. And we've heard from folks like the Seattle Housing Authority and others that because of the cost of. Land, the limited space that we have, the cost, the materials and labor. Sometimes it is more affordable for us and quicker for us to get housing online if we can acquire existing buildings versus starting to build from scratch. So we made sure to include that as well. And lastly, I want to thank again Councilmember Herbold, who with our office and in partnership with the unions and building trade folks, we worked on a comprehensive strategy to address and advance labor equity in our housing investments. And maybe you'll have more to say about that, but really excited to make sure that we look across our housing policies so that we we lift up some of the work that we did last year. You might remember the case site work that we passed last year, and we infused in there through conversations with labor ways that we could see apprenticeship utilization, women and more minorities getting hired into good union jobs, looking at ways that we can make sure that individuals had the opportunity to get into the building trades and have the ability to build the housing but not necessarily be eligible for it. We wanted to make sure that we lifted up that language and so we're harmonizing that across the board. Very quickly, Mr. President, maybe I'll save some of my thank you's for the end, but I just wanted to again underscore the importance of this document that sounds very wonky. It is like alphabet soup. But the reality is that this in combination with the public land disposition policy last year will allow for us to build more social housing, socially responsible housing, housing that's affordable and accessible for communities across Seattle. And to do so with the urgency that this housing crisis deserves. Thank you, councilwoman skater. Let's remember as a member, because remember Herbold. Thank you. In addition to working with Chair Mosqueda on how to advance strategies to advance labor equity outcomes in city funded rental housing developments, we also asked SHC to begin now to look at how they can use pre apprenticeships on its housing construction sites. I really appreciated the opportunity to use the plan to define Housing First principles as the expected approach to providing housing for homeless populations. We made clear that we wanted to address the concerns that we read about mutual termination agreements in the we read about concerns about the use of these agreements and the impacts on evictions in the Losing Home report that the Seattle Women's Commission did with the King County Bar Association. And moving forward, we're going to require that our providers have policies guiding the use of mutual termination agreements. We included an expectation that housing providers comply with fair chance housing our our city's law related to criminal background checks. And then two other three other pieces I want to I want to lift up I want to lift up some of the language related to incentivizing councilmembers, get a mentioned our desire to use more publicly owned land for social housing. We also are incentivizing the use of levee funds for preservation of existing affordable housing, the stuff that we sometimes call naturally affordable housing by allowing for a more robust revolving loan fund. And then finally, we have some amendments that I think will help increase affordable housing options for low income housing, specifically amendments increasing the subsidy for three bedroom homeownership units for low income, large, larger families. And then also specifying that levee funds can be used to build a new, detached accessory dwelling unit. In addition to making changes to an attached accessory dwelling unit consistent with the pilot project that Councilmember O'Brien was instrumental in making sure that the Office of Housing work on in conjunction with our new ADA legislation that will be voting on in another week. Thank you, Councilman Herbold. Any other comments before Councilmember Mesquita closes the debate? Councilmember skater, you want to say a few closing remarks? I want to thank the community members who have made this work possible. You know, I have to underscore that as we're talking about climate change and the need to address climate change with urgency through a Green New Deal, this is one component of a more comprehensive strategy as we create greater density in the city of Seattle. And we do so through an affordability and a racial justice lens and a gender justice lens. When we create housing that is specifically affordable for our working families, that our retirees and those at the highest risk of displacement, we're helping to prevent people from having to move two and 3 hours outside of the city to have to have a car that has high carbon emissions or to take a bus that doesn't get them to. Work on time potentially because they've been pushed so far out of our city. This is part of a much bigger strategy that we need to address climate. And I think as we create affordable housing throughout the city, it's going to take this intersectional lens that we need to apply to housing, to transit, to a to holding the polluters accountable and much, much more. So I just wanted to underscore that connection today because of the leadership you all have shown on that issue today. Specifically, some of the organizations that have been working on both climate justice and housing policy have been at the table to help us craft this policy. And some of these individuals and organizations have been part of our community housing roundtable. I just want to thank them. Puget Sound Stage got Green Rayner Beach Action Coalition, but as a Development Fund. Black Community Impact Alliance Yes. LA Community Collaborative Chief Seattle Club. Delbridge Neighborhood Development Association. Africa Town. Dellums Valley Affordable Housing Coalition Homesite SIP the PDA Housing Development Consortium. Thank you for all of your work. And thank you again to the the labor unions and our friends from the labor movement, including the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, Seattle Building Trades Laborers, Local 242 Northwest Carpenters, Local 86 who were part of the work that we did last year on the case site pilot that lifted up labor standards. And part of our efforts this year again to make sure that we concretize that commitment in the air and off plan. Thank you again to the folks at the Office of Housing, especially Director Walker. We know this is your last month with the city of Seattle. And I want to underscore the amount of attention that our Office of Housing gets at the national level for the work that we've done. We need those funds in hand and we need to expedite our commitment. But we couldn't have done what we've done so far without your leadership and thanks to your team, including Emily Alvarado. I want to thank our committee colleagues who are up here today, central staff, including a Radcliffe who done a ton of work on this for your collaboration on this legislation. I already thanked our Councilmember Herbold, but I also want to thank my staff, Erin House, who has put a lot of work into pulling together all of those organizations I just mentioned. And Aretha Basu, who just stepped out, who helps convene the community housing roundtable and to acknowledge and recognize her mother, who's with us today. Thank you for being here. CITY They're very excited to have you, your daughters doing great work. Thank you. And with the passage of this proposal and the amendments that we've included building on the foundation that the Office of Housing in the mayor's office sent down to us, I think we have fully rounded out our moral compass for the Office of Housing over the next two years and look forward to working with you to expedite the creation of affordable housing throughout the city. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Customer I'm a skater. Any further comments before we vote? Okay. If not, please call the rule on the passage of the bill. Swan Badger. Hi. Herbold. I suarez. I macheda. I O'Brien. Pacheco. Hi. President harrell. Hi. Aiden favor and unopposed. The branch if counted as I. This called the next budget night event of the record which the the bill passed insurer said thank you customers get very much. These are part of the governance equity and Technology Committee. Please read all three of the report.