AN ORDINANCE amending Ordinance 125493, which amended the 2018 Budget (Ordinance 125475); changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels; and creating positions in the Human Services Department.
The report of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee Agenda Item one Council Bill 119275. An ordinance. Amending ordinance 125493 which amended the 2018 budget, changing. Appropriations to various departments and. Budget control levels and creating positions in the Human. Services Department. The committee recommends the bill pass. In back. Show. Thank you. Council President Harrell. I first want to move to amend this council bill 119275 by substituting version three for version two. And what this is doing is a technical amendment identifying which fund the moneys will come from. And instead of general fund, the proposal is through the Finance and Administrative Services Fund. I guess their second. There's a second. Thank you. It's been moved in second and to amend counts bill 119275 by substituting version three for version two. Any further comments? Although it comes from a skater. I'm sorry. Okay. All those in favor of the amendment. Please vote. I oppose. The ayes have it. The versions are substituted. Cancel my back show. Thank you so much. What this bill will do is to frankly embrace the evidence base housing first philosophy that we have been proposing and promoting for the last couple of years. And all of my colleagues know that when we supported the sale of the coffee shop property, that we had dedicated money that would be going into bridging this gap for housing for all. I want to acknowledge Sharon Lee and Rebecca Elmo in the front row. Thank you both for your good work on these tiny homes. They are getting better and better. And we know that getting people out of the mud is way more important to give them something, a stable place to go. And as someone mentioned at our committee last week, an individual who is in one of your tiny homes someplace stable is five times more likely to get into permanent housing than if we can't find them, can't give them support, can't get them the services they need. And we always underscore that we do not believe the tiny homes are. Those are the ending point. It is a middle point to get people up, get them stabilized, provide them what the help they need and then move forward. So what this legislation will do is to help us invest in affordable housing services and get put 6.3 million into bridge housing and investment strategy, $2 million to address our housing stability for those who are on the verge of homelessness by piloting the Seattle Rental Housing Assistance Program. There will be 3.2 million dedicated for affordable housing. We know once again that this is just a fraction of what we need to really create more affordable housing for people because we've got to be able to have a whole pipeline. And as we have been discussing now, not just the last six months, but four years preceding that. Having more housing available in the city, in the county and in our tri county area is what it's going to take. But in the meantime, getting another 500 people off the street is a very welcome opportunity so we can talk more. I was happy to answer questions. I want to specifically say Thanks, Councilmember Mosquito, for coming to the meeting and Councilmember Gonzalez last week. It made a big difference to have you there. So I'm going to move adoption of this amendment. And it's council bill 119275. Very good. The actual legislation has been amended, so we're pretty good shape there. Any further comments on this legislation? Councilman. Councilmember skater. Would you like to comment on this legislation? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. And I want to thank the good the folks from Lehigh. I have now now the chance to go and visit a tiny house village twice in my short tenure on council and really appreciated the leadership and the governance model that was shown and exhibited in my in my time at the camps and really look forward to working with you. Mr. President, if I may read from the attachments that we received with this correspondence from the mayor as well, just to underscore a point about the importance of this. Please do. Thank you. Thank you. In a letter from the mayor on June 1st, 2018. The mayor writes, Yesterday, we learned that there are about 4500 people living unsheltered in the city of Seattle, an increase of almost 650 people over the last year. We must prevent people from falling into homelessness. We must build more affordable housing. We must increase resources for mental health and behavioral health treatment. And in the fiscal note that we have that accompanies this ordinance, the first page reads, The city recognizes that there are not currently enough resources to address the housing needs of everyone who is experiencing homelessness and therefore seeks to invest new innovative bridge housing strategies that address the immediate shelter needs of people living unsheltered until permanent housing can be secured. I read this to underscore the importance of not only investing money into short term in terms of shelter and emergency services and hygiene centers, but the ongoing need that's been expressed by this council and the mayor and the county to find additional resources, because these dollars alone are not going to actually provide the long term housing that folks need to be stable. We need to make sure that we're creating every opportunity for folks to get inside, get off the streets, get out of parks, and to feel safe and respected and secure in their homes. But we cannot warehouse the homeless for years and we cannot sweep them, the folks who are homeless out of sight just for the short term. What we actually need to do is invest in the long term housing, and I am incredibly supportive of moving this $7.2 million today into the emergency services and encampments programs that have been specified and then memo from central staff. But what we also see here is that there is no money going into outreach, prevention, permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, transit, transitional housing. And when you see zeros in these categories, I think it just underscores the point that so many of us have made over the last few months, that we must have long term funding, progressive funding, like the funding that would have been provided from the employee hours tax so that we don't have to think about the heartbreaking reality when the money runs out at the end of this year. I want this bridge programs to be successful. I want us to think short term and long term so that we're not actually creating a bridge to nowhere, that we're creating a bridge to housing. So we're creating the bridge today. We are investing in the infrastructure that we need to get folks off the street and stable. Let's make sure that there is a bridge that leads to housing. I'm looking forward to ongoing good faith negotiations with the mayor, with the county. We want those dollars that had been earmarked for the Mariners so that we can actually house folks. We want to think about long term housing solutions so that we can get folks inside and treat this as the emergency that it is. So with that, I think a good chair for her work to highlight the need for us to make sure that people feel respected, that they're safe, that they're in somewhere warm, and that this is a good first step today. But clearly, in order for us to be able to make sure that we're creating a bridge into housing, we must continue to get to work. Thank you. Catherine Mosquito. Any other further comments before we take a vote? Cast members who want. Thank you, President Howell. I intend to vote yes on this ordinance because it's very important for the tiny houses. And I want to thank Sharon Lee and low income housing as you and everybody else who's there who spoke on this issue and who has been working on this for years. It's incredibly important the service you are providing on the ground. I also wanted to be clear about what the legislation does and what it does not do. It uses funds from a city owned property sold last year for shelter beds and dining houses for a year. These are absolutely essential services because there are thousands of people sleeping unsheltered today with nowhere to go. And it is our social, moral responsibility to do something to help our community members. And and in that sense, it is absolutely critical. However, this legislation does nothing to fund services after that first year, and it does not create the affordable housing that is so desperately needed to get people out of homelessness and to stop the ongoing displacement of working class people. That that is you know, that's really just an ongoing pipeline towards homelessness. People who want homeless do, you know, to start with this year are probably going to be homeless at the end of the year because they're facing such challenges due to skyrocketing rent or also called the attention to councilmembers attention. The recent study from UCLA, which is a California wide study, but which showed an incredible statistical link between rising rents and rising homelessness. And the only way to fund do to address this problem, first of all, is to to build social housing, which is publicly funded, permanently affordable housing. And the only way to fund that housing at the scale that we need. As we have discussed many times, is to tax big business and the super wealthy. It is deeply unfortunate that seven of the nine council members here decided to repeal the tax that we had passed on May 14 on Amazon and other big businesses, in fact, the 3% largest businesses to fund social housing and essential homeless services. It is really sad that that did not happen. And at the same and I also I want to say that the sweeps of homeless people are ineffective and inhumane and need to stop. In the meantime, we need these emergency services to mitigate the harm of the housing crisis. And for that reason, I will be voting yes on this ordinance. Thank you. Councilor Swanson. Any other comments? Before we pass the vote. Okay. Well, might have been short. Just. Thank you. Thank you for lending your expertize. And thank you for not only expertize, but making sure that a lot of people in the public want to know how they can help in this. These kinds of efforts allows sort of an opportunity for so many people in this city to chip in, which I think is critically important to us moving the needle. So having said that, I will move to pass Council Bill 119275 as amended. Is there a second? Please call the roll on the passage of the bill. Whereas. Rosetta O'Brien. I so. Want Bextra Gonzalez. Herbold High. Johnson President Harrell High nine in favor and unopposed. The bill passed and chair will at least signage. Please read the next urgent item. The Report of the Gender Equity Safe Communities.