AN ORDINANCE relating to Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA); rezoning certain land and modifying development standards throughout the City, implementing MHA requirements, and modifying existing development standards to improve livability; amending Chapter 23.32 of the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC) at pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 203, 205, 206, 208, 215, 216, 217, 218, and 219
Agenda item for Constable 119444 relating to mandatory housing affordability, rezoning certain land and modifying development standards throughout the city, implementing major requirements, modifying existing development strategies to improve livability. The committee recommends the bill passes amended. So, Councilmember Johnson, you have the floor. I'm aware that there are I believe there's four amendments. And so I'll just sort of let you lead us through the amendment process you have it right now with regarding the base legislation. Thank you. Council President So this is the main citywide image legislation. The previous bill adopted the comprehensive plan changes to incorporate changes related to MJ. This is the implementation bill of the citywide zoning changes in the 27 neighborhoods. There are three amendments proposed. I believe Amendment one is a substitute version of the bill that reflects technical and clarifying amendments to maintain consistency with other parts of the legislation, including fixing typos and drafting errors to ensure the code language is consistent with the council intent. It retains some provisions of the code related to incentive zoning and adds language, clarifying that the requirement to dedicate 5% of energy payments to homeownership projects can be dedicated over multiple years. So in order to effectuate those changes, I would move to amend Council Bill 119444 by substituting version D nine for version eight A and by substituting version four for version three of attachment one and by substituting version four for version three of attachment two as presented on the agenda second. Okay, everyone follow that councilman words. Could you repeat that, please? Okay. This is just sort of a technical amendment to incorporate the changes described by Councilmember Johnson. All those in favor of the amendment, please. What I, I oppose vote nay. Okay. We have an amendment, the first amendment. So we had a couple more accounts presented. So this next amendment, Amendment two, would amend attachment two to remove areas that were studied in the university district. This from the city wide image bill. It would also remove a requirement for upper level setbacks along the AV, giving that no zoning changes on the AV will be part of the legislation. Those reasons in the district are going to be considered as part of a separate council bill that was introduced in today's introduction for calendar. So I would move to amend the Council Bill 119444 by amending Section 50 by deleting 23.40 7.9..3 and by adding a new map age to attachment two as presented on the agenda . Very good. The moved in second amendment number two has been moved to second. And any further comments, all those in favor of amendment number two say i. I. Although the polls say nay the I passed it to amendment number two is passed. So this next amendment, I'd like to turn it over to our colleague, Councilmember O'Brien, for an amendment related to the Phinney Ridge Greenwood neighborhood. Great. Thank you, Councilmember Johnson. This is references amend Amendment five. I'll move it and then I'll speak to it. I moved to amend Council Bill 119444 Attachment two by substituting version five for version four of the reference map and by adding a new map, a I that excludes a site located at 7009 Greenwood from the zone as presented on the Distributed Amendment 5/2. Moved in second to pass amendment number five comes from Brown. I'd like to explain a little. More about thank you. This refers to a project that's going through a contract zone process. Colleagues, you may recall last year we proved that contact free zone as part of a quasi judicial process. Most of the contract reasons I believe that are currently underway have been excluded from the maturity bill to allow them to be the additional height and the affordable housing requirement to be required as part of those negotiated deals. This this particular parcel was actually left out of that pattern. So this would put that back in here. The the project is still quasi judicial. It has our decision last last year has been was appealed to the superior court and that has since been remanded to us just last. Last week. So we will be likely taking something up in the next few weeks by excluding it from MHRA with that allows us to continue to do is to address the affordability and height changes along with other design standards that we previously had addressed in the property use and Development Agreement. And my recommendation would be to continue down that path, since that path is what we've been exploring to date and I think makes the most sense for this particular process puzzle. Very good. Thank you for that explanation. And any other comments on amendment number five? All those in favor of amendment number five, vote i. I. Those opposed vote no. The ayes have it. Councilman Johnson, do you have any other amendments? Just one more. This amendment, Amendment four, went out of finding of fact, which would recite the background and legislative history related to images implementation. Describe the planning and context for the rezone and implementation of energy and the zone area and address the relationship of the ordinance to RTW. 36.7 .54 Amendment four as shown in attachment E of the Central Staff Memo. And this would again just add some findings of fact. So I would move to amend Council Bill 119444 by adding a new Section 124 which adds a new attachment three funding as a fact as presented on the agenda. Second has been moved and Second Amendment number four has been moved in second hand. Describe it, Councilor, and just any further comments. All those in favor of amendment number four say I buy those, oppose vote, no emotion carries and that amendment is approved. Council President I will now defer to others that might want to make closing remarks and I'd ask for the privilege to close out those closing remarks before we take final action on this bill. Absolutely. So we have an amended counts bill, 119444 and within it comes from would like to speak on the. The the overall amended legislation. Now. I'll outwait you. This would be the time. So, Councilmember O'Brien, please lead us. Thank you. Councilmember Johnson, I want to start by thanking you for your leadership and your dedication to this quite thorough process over the past few years. And I appreciate the remarks he made. And so many people, both city staff and citizens, members of the community who live and work here, have worked hard on this. There's a lot of work and compromise that's done. I want to just speak to to my involvement of this around affordable housing, which goes back even a few years prior to that. In the spring of 2013, the city was considering up zones to South Lake Union. And as part of that process, we had previously received a report from a consultant who did some analysis on the incentive zoning process at the time. And that report pointed out that we could charge higher fees for incentive zoning at the time without impacting the amount of housing that was being built or other construction that was happening as a result of that process. There was a lot of deliberation on the floor at this time, ultimately resulting, and my recollection was a54 vote to increase the incentive zoning and the amount re the amount of the additional housing we required was limited by the analysis we had done in the ability to get to five votes on that. But simultaneously, the Council passed a resolution, resolution 31444 in May of 2013 that passed unanimously and established a work program for us to upgrade update our city's affordable housing incentive program. From that, we went and hired consultants three different sets of consultants who worked through to 2014, ultimately releasing reports that talked about a linkage fee program . And in October of 2014, the council passed Resolution 31551, indicating their intent to pass a linkage fee program. Our program outlined different tiers similar to the legislation we see today, high, low and medium tiers and different levels of requirements for affordable housing at that point. The soon to be new mayor, Mayor Murray, I guess he was the new mayor at that point, formed his own group to come up with a counterproposal. And I'll tell you that personally, I was committed to the linkage fee program because it produced significant number of housing's, significant affordable affordability levels. And in the back and forth, I said I was continue to be open to new proposals if they produced more affordable housing at deeper affordability levels. And the agreement that Mayor Murray brought forward back in summer of 2015 was the program that we are looking at today. Now, that program, the commitment was to pass that 18 months ago. That has been delayed significantly for a variety of reasons. But I'm really thrilled that we have a comprehensive program today, that I have the support colleagues, current and past. It's been a pleasure working on this with all of you. I'm really proud of the piece of legislation we have today. And again, Councilmember Johnson, I want to just reiterate the amount of work you've done in the past few years to get us where we are today. It's no small feat. You were not on the council when I remember Councilmember Murray said, we will do this and it will require up zoning in every single neighborhood. And I said, I do not know how that will happen in that timeframe. And frankly, Councilmember Johnson, we wouldn't be here without your leadership to get us here. And thank you for that work. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Beck shall. Thank you. A number of people have already been recognized by my colleagues, but I also want to say that there are people that are hiding in the back. FELDSTEIN You got us started. Thank you, Steve Walker. I think you were there as well. And I appreciate that. There are so many. Emily Alvarado, you're back there as well. This has been a long journey, as Councilmember O'Brien said, we got started on this really very much in the beginning of our terms. At the beginning of 2010, people were talking about this. There were some fisticuffs at that point. And we've really made a lot of progress here. We all know why we're doing this. We're trying to link getting more affordable housing to keep up with the growth. We've had thousands and thousands of new jobs in our area, which is great. We need thousands and thousands. In fact, we'll be talking about the number I think is 244,000 across our region is what we're going to need. You're going forward. I regard this as a very important drop in the bucket. Frankly, we've done some great things, but there's something about this process that's made me grumpy. And I'm going to tell you about that in just a moment. But again, I want to acknowledge Councilmember Johnson. Thank you and your staff, Amy, who's there? Noah, Jerry and our council central staff. Thanks to Ali Pucci, Kyle Freeman and Lish Witz and Eric McCarney and Yolanda Yau. Thank you all because you've made a huge difference. Now, here's what here's where I am. Yesterday in Seattle Times, Councilmember Johnson wrote a pro article I thought was great, explained why we're doing what we were doing and the number of times that we have been meeting. You've already heard a lot of that. I don't need to repeat it all. But here's what's made me grumpy. There have been so many things that have been said on the con side of this that I just think have gotten in our way and repeating untruths over and over again simply doesn't make something. So at the beginning of yesterday's Seattle Times con article, it said, Railroading neighborhoods is not the way and the dictionary definition of railroading. We all know what it is. It's to force somebody to do something or to force an action especially quickly. I don't think four and a half years worth of meetings and 200 community engagement meetings and 20 meetings of the select committee in any way qualifies. We also have reached a point where there's things have gotten conflated, and I want to acknowledge something that I think is really important. I personally supported up zoning in that our downtown, my neighborhood years ago. I feel that across our city and certainly across our region, we have need we really need to be making space for our kids and grandkids. My kids want to come here and it is a struggle with a college education to be able to afford something . And it's so difficult if you are behind the eight ball in any way. So I want to say thank you to all of you who have shown up over and over again and block by block with the 80 amendments. But here was a statement in yesterday's paper. This is this will eliminate all single family zoning. Nothing, nothing could be further from the truth. We are going to be retaining 94% of single family zones. That's remaining short of 6% of single family zones is going to be changed to our MHC. But that's existing and proposed. Urban villages and thousands of units are going to be added for rent restricted units across our city over the next decade. We have heard complaints, pro and con, about the in lieu fees. People said you don't do enough. People say you do too much. But what we know is that thousands of units are going to be added. The in lieu fee allows us to leverage the money that the city puts in. Three really great examples and I want to say I think Daniel Beekman is here. You've done some great reporting on this and the three items that you brought up were our three projects, the Liberty Bank building, where we're leveraging almost 3 to 1, the Hirabayashi Building in the international district, almost 5 to 1. We're leveraging in the Arbor a court in the U. District, almost 6 to 1. This is going to make a huge number of difference. Another argument that was brought up in the con side of the article yesterday is that we are eliminating single family housing regulations and we're going to have a new legislation today that is going to destroy all of this. The two legislation isn't even part of this today. The hearings are going to start next week. The changes are voluntary. It's going to allow people to make right size choices for their families in the properties that they have owned, in some cases for decades. So also there was some, I think, misstatements about the planning commission not liking these ideas. What we hear is that the planning commission all along has been consistently in favor of both what the MHRA is doing today and the prospective EU legislation, which isn't part of today. So please, let's try to get this straight. And lastly and I want to say, as one of the people that was charged with being a lame duck politician yesterday, I am anything but a lame duck. And my colleagues over here who are also been working so hard, you will see us working through the end of this year . We have been working on this for five years to vote today, and I am actually as pleased as could be with the amount of work that has gone into this and the hard work that you have demonstrated. I want to say. Councilmember Johnson, say say thank you to Katie for me and the girls, the number of nights that you have not been home. But working on this, we are working hard. We are dedicated to making this city as wonderful a city as we possibly can for everybody that is here, people who are coming irrespective of income. So to my colleagues and to all of you who have been part of this, many thanks. Thank you. As I said. A skater. Thank you very much, Mr. President. And thank you, Councilmember Bagshaw, for those words. I think this is such an exciting day. Councilmember Wise and I were over here talking about the amount of work that has gone into making this vote today possible. So thank you. Because today we're able to vote for a more inclusive Seattle. Thank you for helping to respond to Seattle's growing population and the housing crisis. We know that change is inevitable, but change and development is happening right now and it's happening over the last few years because we haven't been able to include MJ. It has not been the change that many of our community members have wanted. In fact, much of what we have heard in terms of concerns about MJ haven't had anything to do with MJ at all. In fact, what they've been asking for are things that we are now able to say are on the books such as child care and new buildings, such as health care clinics and new buildings such as set back. So there's greater green space, such as the ability to make sure that we have more pedestrian zones. These are things that you have wanted to do, Mr. Chair Johnson, for a very long time and have been stymied and today were able to take the steps to make sure that development is done right, that MJ ensures that we grow, and as we grow, we do it more inclusive. MJ now requires, because of the amendments that this Council has put forward, because of the feedback that many in the community have asked for, not just affordable housing and income and rent, restricted housing, but creating more homes overall. And it includes the vision that you all have put forward after years of making sure that it's not just homes that we are building, but we're creating truly inclusive units or buildings. We're talking about buildings now are transportation centers, child care centers, open spaces, grocery stores. This is what we need to thrive in our city, not just survive and have a home to go from place of work to home. We want communities that will be thriving centers and through MJ, we have begun to build the building blocks of what a truly inclusive Seattle and neighborhoods look like. This helps make sure that as we're developing, we're meeting the needs and the values of our community. I was really excited to work with Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez as we worked on creating inclusive space for child care facilities. This is the number one thing we hear of not just from families who need childcare, but from business owners who say that their workers have to commute 90 minutes, 2 hours to get to their homes and their kiddos place of childcare when we ought to be able to create affordable housing in the city that includes childcare. This is why I'm really excited to vote today, because we've included setbacks and additional greenspace. We've included opportunities so that we're creating healthy pedestrian environments so that people can really commute on foot or by bike or by scooter or by bus and have the opportunity to have a healthy environment. I'm really excited today because we've included additional commercial space on the ground floors and we've included set back so that people can have seating areas outside. We know that small business owners need affordable places to start their own businesses, and right now they're getting the size of a unit that's good for the next five years when we really need the size for the next two tacos. Like my family started 60 years ago in a small hole in the wall. We need small commercial spaces that are affordable so that people can truly get out of generational poverty. We know that this is not about buildings. Today we're making a vote about people. We're taking a step to make sure that we can actually live our values. And Councilmember Johnson, I want to say thank you again so much for your help to champion this through here. I've only had the chance to work with you on this, specifically sitting on council over the last year and a half. But I know many in the audience have had the chance to work with you over the last few years. I want to thank your staff as well for their intense work on this. You already mentioned the central staff. I want to thank my staff. Erin House appropriately named in the back for fighting for additional affordable housing and my former staffers as well. This is really an incredible process here is of intense policy development, extensive community engagement, the most extensive earth analysis ever conducted on Seattle's land use policy in our history, a legal battle that lasted an entire year. And even though we struggled through some of the amendments and I didn't end up supporting some of those, what you have today is a comprehensive package that includes the vision directly from the community involved and what's happened in the meantime, since we've waited for for five years now to actually pass this legislation, we've seen that people have been displaced. People have been pushed into the streets. Our community members have had to leave the city because there's not enough affordable housing. We have seen because of the delay, upward pressure on the cost of housing, because we have failed to be able to create enough affordable housing. We haven't rezone to create the density that we need to not only respond to those who are coming, but to create the affordable housing for those who are here. I talked to the firefighters the other day that said, you know, I do want to make sure that we welcome new folks that are coming. But I'm concerned about the folks who are here. We're not building enough affordable housing like. Remember, Bagshaw said. So that our kiddos can afford to stay. Or that we can take care of our elders in place in the city. The consequence has been that there's been a dramatic increase in the cost of rent, and we know that a $100 increase in the cost of rent equals a 15% increase in homelessness. In fact, the Chamber of Commerce, thank you for testifying today. Your own report said that there was a 96% correlation between the cost of housing and homelessness. This is part of our response to the crisis that we see every single day. And for the folks who are asking what we are doing and how we are trying to respond to the crisis of housing and homelessness. This is one element. But we've been delayed for years, and today we finally get to move forward. Obviously, we need additional housing, shelter and health, but this is one component. So we're going to continue to work collaboratively, aggressively, collaboratively with our friends at the state and the regional level to make sure that we're building affordable housing, that we get additional funding in place to create that housing, and that we get the zoning changes that we need also at the state level to match what we haven't been able to do at the city level. I applaud Representative Fitzgibbon, a Senator Palumbo, Representative Gregerson, Representative Macri who are really working hard to try to lift that floor at the state level. And I am I'm sad that we're not actually having a conversation about city wide changes. I think that is the next conversation to have. I think some of those amendments that we were talking about wouldn't have been so challenging for me if we were talking about larger changes that really create a more inclusive Seattle. Well, again, this is just an effort to look at 6% of the single family zoning in our in our city. And I want to pass out again for the viewing public and for our colleagues here that this is an effort to truly right the wrongs in our city. What we have done over the last few decades is we have zoned our city backwards. We have actually expanded the amount of land that we have included in the city for single family use. Now we have two thirds of our residential area throughout the city of Seattle that is included exclusively for detached single family homes. Basically blocking or prohibiting the type of apartment that I currently live in a 1902 beautiful brick building, as you've heard me talk about before, only four storeys high that has eight units in it. We are prohibited from building that kind of gentle infill density because we have actually scaled back. So as we talked about before, we are trying to actually look at the fabric of our city, look at the history of how we've created an inclusive city in the past and try to right some wrongs. In the 1920s, as the Housing Commissioners Seattle Planning Commission report said, some residential areas began establishing racially discriminatory covenants to prevent people of color and other ethnic and religious groups from buying houses. In 1923, Seattle's first zoning ordinance is passed, which establishes two residential district. One allows detached single household structures, and the other that allows apartment types. These are the types of historic wrongs that we're trying to correct today. The report goes on to say Seattle's popularity and existing zoning is resulting in the construction of large, expensive homes at a time when more people need more affordable places to live. They say this is not just an issue of addressing the legacy of discriminatory housing and land use practices. It is about building an equitable Seattle for the present and future generations. So today, I think as we've talked about before, this is our effort to try to right some of those historic wrongs. But again, it's just the beginning of that effort. We're going to continue to work in my committee, and I believe in the planning committee on greater inclusive opportunities, homeownership opportunities, which we just amended today, so that more folks can actually have the chance to live in the city, to thrive and not just survive. Thank you so much for all your work on this. Thank you, Katherine. In the state of. Thank you for those words. Okay. A cancer herbal. Get my stuff together here. So I want to just underscore a little bit of what we heard in public comment today. The history of this legislation dates back further than than five years, further than 2013. It actually dates back to 2007 when the city started passing incentive zoning programs throughout the city. And many people at that time, when we were doing incentive zoning, that's when not when you provide the up zones and then require the the housing affordability requirement. It's when the additional zoning capacity is available. And in exchange, the developer invests in affordable housing even at that time in 2007. Many of the people in this room today, including the Housing Development Consortium in Puget Sound Sage, were advocating for a mandatory program so that we could capture an increment of the value of additional zoning and devoted to housing. That call from committee members and former councilmembers then helped pave the. Way for where we are today. I am going to share some of my concerns, but it doesn't. It shouldn't be interpreted as lack of support for inclusionary zoning. My concerns are based on what's happening in high cost cities across the country, including cities that have inclusionary zoning. We all see the same problem the lack of affordable housing. But we have disagreement on the impacts of our approach to deal with that lack of affordable housing. I don't believe it's just fear of change. I believe it's legitimate concern that this bill won't raise enough affordable housing. And too much will be torn down to make way for new buildings that are actually out of range of most renters to afford an average two bedroom apartment in Seattle. Two workers need to earn $20 an hour, or one earner $40 an hour. A recent study cited in the Seattle Times reports that 85% of new housing built in this region is luxury housing. With this legislation today, we're going to we're going to shift that a little bit. We're going to it's not I probably won't be 85%, but it's still a lot of housing being built for folks who can't afford to pay their rent. We talked so much about making it possible for people to live where they work, but are we making sure that low income people will also be able to live where they work? We refer every day to the. Thousand people a week. That moved to this. Region. But as Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, we don't talk enough about the people who have been pushed out of Seattle. Heck, we don't even count them. I wish. I wish the affordable housing contribution was more 5 to 11% of units as well as the payment in lieu fees does seem low when compared to other cities. But to my knowledge, no other city ensures inclusionary zoning in all residential and commercial development. So I'm hoping that the comprehensive nature of our bill can counterbalance that the developer obligation per project seems rather low. We've also heard concern about the division between performance and pay in lieu. As you know, we've set the. Goal for the the. Split between number of developers who pay in lieu and the number of developers who perform. As a as a goal, a 50. 50% split. I think we've included in this slide, I know that we've included in this legislation an amendment that requires us to monitor that and to make adjustments if we're not hitting that goal. And then finally, as folks have testified today, I will be continuing deliberations around a bill that would help address and help protect existing housing that might otherwise be redeveloped. And I would really urge the folks up here with me today, as well as members in the public, to take a look at what's happened in California, in the state legislature. Over the last. Year or so. Last year, Senator Wiener had a bill called Senate Bill 82 seven. And this is a bill that statewide would require all municipalities to do high density development in certain areas, areas like transit areas and within certain watersheds. That bill did not get the support it needed last year because of the concerns of what I refer to as, you know, people who think of themselves as urbanist, but I think of them as social justice urbanist. They are people who are really concerned about just opening the floodgates to development without having measures in place to protect existing housing tenants, organizations, the local Sierra Club, local mayors. We're all really concerned about the impact of this bill. So there's been a new bill that's been brought forward this year and it's called Senate Bill 50, and it's got enshrined in the bill itself a prohibition against using this new authority in areas where there is any housing development. It doesn't make a distinction for affordable housing development, and it actually requires a look back for seven years. So if there has been housing in that location for seven years, and that's that's a that's one way to make sure that landlords don't use other unfair ways of moving people out of out of buildings in order to redevelop them. And as a result, everybody's coming together and supporting it. And so I really think it's really critical that we look at what other cities and states are doing to address this problem. Because, you know, again, simply. Building more housing and earmarking a small amount of it to affordable housing is not sufficient to address the growing need in cities that have extremely high costs of housing. So I look forward to working with my colleagues more on that in the upcoming weeks. Thank you. Considerable. Because were. So what was it like to speak. To. The first one when she hands gone up? Thank you, President Harrell. I thank the tremendous amount of work that was done by city council central staff on this. On the whole body of work that is represented by the mandatory housing affordability legislations. I grew up in Mumbai, where my family lived in a 450 square foot flat, which was the only affordable housing four available for working people like my parents. I think density is a good thing for cities and metropolitan regions, both for affordability and for sustainability. That is why I am glad to be voting in favor of this legislation. But. It is also my duty to point out the affordability that will be generated through this. Has been described in inaccurately grandiose and greatly exaggerated terms by many of the elected officials. What will be implemented is small, affordable housing mandates on the big real estate speculators and developers who have driven up rents and other housing costs and who are directly responsible for displacing and evicting tens of thousands, or maybe even if you add up hundreds of thousands of our neighbors. The affordable housing requirements in this legislation are totally insufficient to even prevent Seattle's hemorrhaging of affordable housing, never mind actually bringing rents down. However, it is better than nothing and I support every single affordable home we can rent, as I have always said. It is important to remember where MJ comes from and not the Chamber of Commerce's version, but working people's version of where images came from. In 2014, after a grassroots movement won the $15 an hour minimum wage. It became clear that the next big struggle would be and would have to be over the accelerating loss of affordable housing in Seattle, which and the laws had started ballooning in 2010, even though it happened long, it had started happening long before then. To solve the affordable housing crisis. Our movement knew that we would have to fight. And we still do have to fight for a major investment in social housing, which is publicly owned, affordable housing paid for by taxing big business and also for city wide rent control. To undercut that movement that had just begun. Seattle's biggest corporate developers and former Mayor Ed Murray of the Democratic establishment launched the so-called Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Committee, otherwise known as the Holler Committee. On that committee were some affordable housing advocates, but also big developers. And in the end, as these things go. When you bring. Corporations to the so-called table. The corporations will be given a virtual veto on the recommendations of the committee. At that time, the city council that passed a resolution, as Councilmember O'Brien mentioned, supporting linkage fees, which is basically a type of impact fee that would have required all developers in the city to pay towards affordable housing. The big developers on the whole are committee vetoed that. They vetoed rent control. They vetoed any taxes on big business to fund social housing. MJ came out of the committee because that was the only thing that big developers were willing to accept. And the reason, simple reason that they were willing to accept it is because it is so limited, so very limited in what it accomplishes for affordable housing and it has zero impact on their ever expanding opportunities for profit. MJ was delayed for years during the development boom and as a legal mechanism is extremely limited, especially in how it is done in Seattle. On how much affordable housing it can generate. But big developers scored their biggest victory through the fact that when Hala was brought forward, they were successful in disorienting the movement for rent control by getting affordable housing advocates to well-meaning, affordable housing advocates on both sides to fight each other over whether the zoning changes will result in more or fewer affordable units. Some excellent affordable housing advocates have subsumed their demands into the support for the energy hub zones binding to Seattle's population growth, and suggesting that the market will bring rents back down once developers are encouraged to build enough zoning. Let me be very clear. As an economist, there is zero zero evidence from anywhere, anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world that that would prove the hypothesis that you led for the for profit market, expand construction, and at some point in the future, rents will come down. There is no such case. I. I if you can. If you can find out. Show it to me. And I'm happy to. I'm happy to correct my position. But my position is based on hard evidence that there is nothing no no hypothesis of no such hypothesis has been proven. Rents don't go down because forward profit development continues. There is no such case in the past and I doubt that there will be in the future. As a matter of fact, at the same time, you know, just to give you a snapshot, since 2010, construction has boomed in this city. At that same time, rents have skyrocketed by 69%. Housing has not become more affordable. Affordable, it has become less affordable. And at that same time, the same time that people are being evicted from their city, you know, economically evicted because they can't afford the rising rents. There have been double digit vacancy rates in many neighborhoods. Why is that? If there are empty apartments, then why aren't people moving into them? That's because they can't afford. And so let's not let's not buy into fake and mythical supply side arguments by neo liberal economists because there is no evidence to support that that that idea. It is true, undoubtedly, that we need more housing. Absolutely. There is no question about that. But what we need is affordable housing. And the for profit market under capitalism is not interested in producing that. So it is no there's no point in holding our breath that someday the for profit market will make housing affordable. As a matter of fact, Mike Rosenblum of the Seattle Times has already said, and I'm quoting him, because I want to quote a non socialist who said that it is, it is, you know, it is, it is. You know, it's imaginary thinking, medical thinking to think that rents will come back down because that has never happened. What is happening is real estate, speculative speculators getting a better return on their investment, building luxury units. And by luxury, I mean not necessarily high quality. I mean, they may or may not be, but what I mean is expensive units, units that are out of the reach of ordinary working people. Seattle has been the construction green capital of the world. And at that and during that time, rents have gone down and the MJ payments that this legislation will require of developers will be available to build publicly affordable housing. Yes. So some publicly affordable housing will be will be the result of this, a major, but nowhere at a scale sufficient to address the massive need. And not to mention that there is no accounting, there is no statistical accounting of market available, affordable homes that are going to be lost in the same process. And again, to be precise, market available, affordable housing is going to be a major or not a major because of the for profit market. It is not because ah, despite a major, it is because of the for profit market. And to the extent that a major state to the for profit market, it has the same limitations and failures. The Regional Affordable Housing Task Force recommendations that will be voted on in today's meeting show that 156,000 affordable homes are needed to meet the city, meet the need countywide, and the need is 244,000 affordable homes by 2040. This is an official study by King County. The couple hundred each year built by Seattle will literally never solve the problem. The problem will keep increasing in size. Working people will keep getting this place, and Seattle will continue to be a place where only rich people can live. And that is why we need massive policy, you know, and bold, bold policy to fight like rent control and taxing big business, to have a massive expansion of social housing, which is publicly on permanently affordable housing so that people, working families, no longer have to remain at the whim of for profit developers. And so I think that, you know, when you look at every piece of evidence, it shows that MJ is not far from the solution that we need. I will be supporting it because I support density. But I want to be very clear our real fight for our movement. If you are interested in fighting for affordable housing for yourselves and your neighbors and other working people, then we need both. But we need to fight for rent control and social housing. Affordable housing advocates are correct to warn that, and I just want to clarify that for profit development is not going to solve the affordable housing crisis . But we should also I don't agree with opposing the MJ zones either, because it's not you know, it's not the main problem here. The main problem is the for profit market. At least with the MJ, the developers will have to pay a small amount towards affordable housing. And as I said, I want a for every affordable home we can win. And that is why I have and continue to support the image absence. But at the same time, it is crucial that we now as affordable housing advocates, we avoid falling into the corporate rat trap of thinking that this is any kind of fundamental solution to the massive affordable housing crisis in Seattle. A focus on MJ has been used to disrupt the most impactful demands of the affordable housing movement. As I said, particularly social housing, by taxing big businesses like Amazon and rent control. And I can guarantee you big business is not going to support either of those demands. And you know what? That's a rule of thumb. If big business does not support it, you're probably on the right track to do something good for ordinary working people. So I am glad to be voting yes. Yes on this legislation. I vote yes because it will you know, it is pro density and I and I favor density. And for working people, I vote yes because it will help raise some funds for affordable housing. But I am also glad with this vote that I and I hope that now affordable housing advocates can and will focus on the real fight, which is for rent control and for taxing big business, for massively expanding social housing. Thank you so much once. Councilmember Gonzalez. Thank you. So before I give my remarks, I just wanted to thank approximately 75% of the city of Seattle staff who worked on the mandatory housing affordability legislation over the last four and a half years. I really appreciate all of the work that our staff across the city family has contributed to getting us to this point today . I hope that you all are proud of the work that you have done. And and I hope that you hear from us up here that we're proud of the work that you have done and indeed spent a lot of time away from your own families and friends to dedicate yourself to this work. So thank you so much to the entire city family for all of the work you have been putting into this and all the sacrifices you have made both in the in the Legislative Department and on the executive side to get us to this point. So. As I usually do in my tradition, I'd like for us to thank the city staff with a round of applause for getting us this far. And. Council President Harold colleagues and members of the public. Today is a significant day. After four long years of legislative, legal and community engagement processes. We have arrived at a place where I believe it is time for us to say yes to more density, yes to more affordable housing, and yes to more neighbors in 27 additional neighborhoods throughout the city of Seattle. For some, this mandatory housing affordability legislation goes too far. For others, this mandatory affordable housing legislation does not go far enough. So let's chat a little bit about that dynamic. Contrary to the name of the Select Committee on Citywide Energy, this legislation is not even close to citywide. There are approximately 127 neighborhoods in the city of Seattle. This legislation only relates to 27 of those 127 neighborhoods, impacting a total of only 6% of existing areas currently and strictly zoned as single family homes zones adjacent to existing urban villages. That means that even with the passage of the mandatory housing affordability legislation, approximately 60% of the city of Seattle is still under the cloud of exclusionary zoning laws. So let's talk a little bit about this city's history with exclusionary land use and zoning laws across the country, including right here in Seattle. Racially restrictive housing covenants became common in the 1920s. Those covenants were challenged in the courts. And in 1926, our U.S. Supreme Court put a stamp of approval as a stamp of approval on those racially restrictive covenants. Layered on top of these covenants were financial lending policies that prevented the sale of single family homes located in a racially restricted area from being sold to a nonwhite person. This is how redlining came to be in Seattle and across the country. According to our own City of Seattle archives, a typical racially restrictive housing income covenant reads as follows No person or persons of insert your race, blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property, except a domestic servant or servants who may actually and in good faith, be employed by white occupants. Check your deed of trust. That language is still there. The effect of these widespread, racially motivated practices is still felt in every major city across the country today. In Seattle, it meant African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian-Americans were prohibited from living in neighborhoods outside of southeast Seattle, the Central District, and the international district. Meanwhile, neighborhoods like Ballard, Broadmoor, Green Lake, Laurelhurst, Magnolia and Queen Anne were historically off limits to people of color. 22 years after the Supreme Court said yes to racially restrictive housing covenants in 1948, the Supreme Court held that these covenants were not enforceable. It was not until 1968, an additional 20 years later, that the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed and that law prohibited, quote, discrimination of sale, rental and financing of dwellings and other housing related transactions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, close quote. This law officially made the use of racially restrictive covenants in housing illegal 1968. And in 1968, the city of Seattle followed suit with the passage of the Seattle Open Housing Ordinance. After a hard fought grassroots civil rights movement that spanned from 1959 to 1968. So let me be clear. I'm not calling anyone a racist. I am, however, calling out the reality that we are living in a city that has a history of implementing and preserving housing laws, design designed to keep certain people out of certain areas of the city. And as a policymaker, it is my duty to understand this history and to support legislation that will begin the process of dismantling exclusionary zoning laws that are historically rooted in the intention to exclude people who look like me from owning or living in a single family home. I acknowledge that these covenants are no longer enforceable, but the vestiges of segregated Seattle surround us. The question is, what are we willing to do about it? Seattle is home to some of the richest people in the world. I don't have to name them by name. You know them. But that prosperity is not equally accessible to all. Equitable access to home ownership and housing stability is not a reality for many in our city, and this is in part due to increasing income inequality. And this makes it harder for everyday people to afford to live in the city they work in. People are housing insecure or experiencing homelessness, in part because we have a housing shortage crisis, especially for our residents that are that are in the extremely low income category. According to a National Low Income Housing Coalition report released just last week profiling the housing gap in Washington. Across the state, 234,362 renter households are extremely low income, and 71% of those renter households are severely cost burdened. Across the state, there's a shortage of 165,345 affordable and available rental homes for extremely low income renters. Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue are experiencing the brunt of that shortage, with an estimated shortage of 89,000 affordable and available rental homes. Increasing development capacity is just one policy tool available to this City Council. To address the housing gap for people across the income spectrum, we must build more affordable housing and market rate housing to meet the demands of the people currently here and those that are still coming here. This mandatory housing legislation is one tool in our toolbox to both incentivize the construction of affordable multifamily housing or capturing precious and limited dollars to provide our nonprofit housing developer community the tools they need to meet the demand to construct more affordable multifamily housing throughout our city, and especially in neighborhoods of high opportunity. This legislation, in my mind, does not destroy neighborhoods. This legislation will enhance neighborhoods by creating a path for families, workers, students and others to call our urban villages home. I want the thousands of Jessica's marlins, Natasha's, Laurens and Mats to be able to call Seattle home. For four years, we have listened to concerns regarding livability by taking into consideration issues related to bulk and scale and consistent with the environmental laws and where it makes sense, make those modifications into this proposal. So what we have before us now is the policy that not only impacts a total of 6% of single family home zones , zoning around the edges of existing urban villages, and increases development capacity within those proposed boundaries. This is good for Seattle. In 2010, I rented a condo in the West Seattle Junction, Orange Village. In 2011, I bought one of the few condos on the market, literally at the end of the block where I'd been renting for a year . It seemed like a miracle. It still seems like a miracle to me. Would it be possible for me to own a small piece of the junction and call it my own? I was thrilled then, and I'm still thrilled today to be able to call Seattle and The Junction my home. Every morning I catch the 55 right in front of my condo building, or I can walk a block to catch the sea line or the free shuttle to the water taxi. I live within two blocks of multiple grocery stores Safeway, QVC, Trader Joe's. My husband, he's a service worker. He works in a restaurant. He serves expensive food to people in our neighborhood. He makes minimum wage plus tips. He walks 3 minutes to get to work and sometimes takes his bike. We get to enjoy bike rides to Lincoln Park or down to Alki. This is the Seattle that I want to see built. It's the Seattle I believe we can build if we do it together. It is the Seattle that I think is possible for far too few people. And through this legislation, we take a step towards allowing this to be an opportunity for more people in our great city. DeLay doing nothing, stopping development. All of those things take us backwards, not forward. All of those options ask us to pretend as though growth will magically stop or delay. Today we have a chance to move, finally move forward as one unified city and as a Seattle that can be for everyone who chooses to live here. So today, I look forward to voting yes for the mandatory housing affordability legislation. And I want to express my deep gratitude for the leadership of Councilmember Johnson and for the sacrifices that your family has had to make in order to allow you to lead this city council and our entire city through what has been an exhaustive and intensive process to put forth in front of us as your colleagues an opportunity to correct some of those historic wrongs and to make space for new neighbors and new families. So thank you so much, Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Councilman. Or worse. Thank you. Council President. I'll be brief. I just want to say that I will be voting yes today. And I want to thank Councilmember Johnson for all the hard work. A lot of these means have been contentious, difficult, emotional. We've had them all over the city. And I'm glad that we're coming to a close. And thank you, Councilmember Gonzales, for reminding us of what our what what the history was of how this city was deliberately planned. And I'm glad we're moving forward in an enlightened way and in a good way. I want to end this on one note with words Councilmember Johnson left us with when he asked us the question, who is this city for? This city is for all of us. Every one of us. Long after I'm long gone. And my kids, who are 28 and 25, have children and I have grandchildren. That's what we're looking at today. And is it perfect? No. Do we have more work to do? You bet. We'll learn more about our neighborhoods and the density and when light rail comes in. But I just, again, want to say thank you, not only to staff, but again to Councilmember Johnson and all his hard work. The times that he's been in my office, the times I've been in his office, the times we talked about amendments. And I can just say that I'm really proud of my city today. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, where is. Councilman Johnson would like to close debate. So I want to say how grateful I am colleagues for those very kind words. This has been a labor of love for many of us, and I am proud to have helped shepherd this important piece of legislation across the finish line. For me, the idea of a major is a simple one. We want to give everyone in Seattle access to neighborhoods with great parks, reliable transit, outstanding schools, green playgrounds, affordable housing, quality groceries, robust infrastructure, and a health and sustainable environment. And passing image begins the job of creating that universal access for people throughout our city. Two years ago, we passed some specific images of zones. They're working. They're generating thousands of new units. And in 2018 alone generated more than $13 million for affordable housing. If we've been able to implement the program a year earlier, we would have been generating $90 million for affordable housing, affordable housing that at a time when we desperately need it. Where Steve Walker would desperately love to be able to fund more of the bellwethers and the Merce's and the Capitol Hill housings of the worlds who want to be building more of our affordable housing units all throughout the city. But now, by taking the zones citywide, we're starting the process of dismantling walls around our neighborhoods that have given exclusive groups so access to the resource rich communities around our city. And as Councilmember Gonzalez so eloquently reminded us, the hard data shows us that that privileged group has been predominantly white, and the ugly history of redlining and racial segregation shows that that exclusionary approach was sometimes intentional. It's out of sync with Seattle's values. And so I think this is a city wide zone for citywide equity. Yard signs around our town say that we're a welcoming city and we don't support walls, while zoning is both a metaphorical and a literal wall around our communities. And today we begin to take those walls down. Given the broad consensus we've reached on MJ, it's clear to me the council is poised to create even more city wide equality. Cities such as Minneapolis are already eliminating their exclusionary zoning altogether, and our city needs to take a look at that policy. As the councilmembers shepherded this legislation across the Council finish line. It's my sincere hope that today's vote is a vote not just to embrace growth and a proactive housing policy, but a policy that's intent on undoing barriers to universal equity, a policy that's intent on allowing more and much more housing for everybody in our city. Throughout this process, we've talked about allowing more housing in Seattle's transit rich neighborhoods, in our asset rich neighborhoods and in our resource rich neighborhoods. But today, by passing this legislation, we're recognizing that there's something more important than transit rich neighborhoods and resource rich neighborhoods. It's housing rich neighborhoods. The only way for us to create that universal access to housing is by building a housing rich city. And that means allowing a wider variety of housing types, such as townhouses and mid-rise condos and low rise buildings. Buildings that are known as missing middle housing can really help ensure that Seattle values, like inclusion don't ever go missing. So let's simply stop talking about moving people to transit rich or resource rich neighborhoods and talk instead about giving people housing rich neighborhoods. Because a housing rich city is a city that welcomes multifamily housing, not a city that's wary of it. A housing rich city is a city that supports multifamily development. Not a city that's segregated housing rich cities, a city that shares its neighborhoods, and not a city that sequesters its neighborhoods. And mandatory housing affordability is the first step in establishing a housing rich Seattle. And I believe that housing rich Seattle is adjusts. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Johnson. Okay. I think we are ready to vote. Call the role on the passage of Council Bill 119444 as amended. By Shanghai Gonzalez Herbold. JOHNSON Suarez must get a high. O'BRIEN So on. President HARRELL All right. Nine in favor, nine opposed. But that. Was. No sense. Please read agenda item number five, the short title.