In mid-January, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the city had awarded $22 million in grants to 42 organizations as part of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative (EDI), a program launched 2016 to prevent displacement of marginalized communities and help those communities reduce disparities and build generational wealth. It was one of the first programs in the nation to dedicate significant dollars to programs designed to address systemic racism, funding more than $116 million in grants since its inception.

EDI funds a variety of capital-based initiatives, including affordable housing, community centers, arts and cultural spaces, child care and education centers, and outdoor spaces and environmental remediation. The program relies heavily on partnerships with community-based organizations and is managed by the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD). 

Seattle’s EDI program was briefly in the crosshairs of Councilmember Maritza Rivera (District 4) last fall during the council’s search for programs to cut or reduce spending on in order to address a $240 million deficit. Rivera initially insinuated the program was poorly run and too slow in delivering results. 

Rivera’s attempt to place limits on the program didn’t succeed, and she walked back her criticisms as community groups pushed back. Still, the program could fall victim to cuts in future budget cycles, with centrists like Rivera and Council President Sara Nelson pledging to trim programs rather than raise taxes.

OPCD Director Rico Quirindongo said that even though the 2025-2026 budget cycle was “a difficult time for the city,” he portrayed Harrell as “very committed to and excited about this program. He is passionate about what he sees related to the program affecting positive change and positive support for our diverse communities.” 

Harrell’s final budget passed by the council increased EDI funding to $26 million for 2025.

“Our city is steadfast in its commitment to delivering real results for communities disproportionately impacted by displacement,” Mayor Harrell said in a press release announcing the grants.

However, as reported by PubliCola in April, the Harrell administration removed more ambitious plans for new anti-displacement programs from its early drafts of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan – so EDI remains the city’s primary tool for meeting its racial equity goals. 

The lion’s share of the current EDI funding cycle is intended to help existing partners complete capital projects or build their organizational capacity, EDI director Jenna Franklin said. “We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the need to help people close funding gaps,” Franklin said, noting that OPCD also increased technical funding to assist organizations navigate the world of nonprofit management and fundraising. 

The list of this cycle’s capital grant recipients, which generally range from $300,000 to more than $1 million, is loaded with prominent projects in predominantly communities of color across Seattle, including Africatown Community Land Trust (completing the Africatown Plaza development), Cham Refugees Community (completing a Cham community center), Rainier Beach Action Coalition (completion of the Food Innovation Center), the Somali Health Board (assisting construction of the Somali Community Cultural Innovation Hub), and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network (to build House of Constance, a place for housing and support for trans and queer people of color).

In addition, in this cycle, OPCD awarded smaller capacity-building EDI grants in the $35,000 to $150,000 range to wide variety of organizations, including ARTE NOIR (to support building a recording studio); Wa Na Wari (capacity building for the Central District arts space); Friends of Little Saigon (in support of the Little Saigon Landmark housing and community space); and Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (to help create a demonstration biofuel systems project).

EDI is funded largely by the JumpStart Tax on high wage earners at large Seattle companies – by law, 9% of JumpStart revenue was designated toward EDI — though subsequent mayors and council have raided the JumpStart fund for other priorities, depleting resources for EDI and affordable housing investments. 

Franklin said that the EDI program is an integral part of the city’s strategy to combat displacement and helps grassroots organizations develop the skills, knowledge and reputation to attract other funding. She notes that Chief Seattle Club, prior to receiving an EDI grant, had difficulty even getting meetings with funders.

“They told us: ‘We got laughed at, we got hung up on. We’d finally get a meeting and no one would really listen. We’d get 15 minutes and then be told to leave,’” Franklin said. “Then they got their EDI award, and suddenly people were willing to take the meeting, and they ended up building affordable housing and a community-serving space that has health clinics and all kinds of other amenities.”

The latest round of EDI funding comes as the Trump administration is rapidly shutting down, erasing, and de-funding anything in the federal government associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs directed at combating systemic racism. Quirindongo made it clear that the federal government provides no funding to Seattle’s EDI program.

Franklin believes EDI is needed more than ever in the current political climate. “The marginalized and socially vulnerable populations that our organizations primarily serve or exist to support are the populations who are most impacted by all forms of oppression and all sorts of regressive policies.”

Franklin also noted the durability of the groups funded through EDI, noting that of 77 projects admitted to the program, 75 are still operating. “Our grantees are completing their projects in roughly the same timeframe as market rate developers,” she said, “while they’re simultaneously capacity building, learning development, and completing a project – which is pretty awesome.”

Quynh Pham is executive director of Friends of Little Saigon, which received a $75,000 EDI grant to help complete the Little Saigon Landmark Project, a cultural and economic center for Seattle’s Vietnamese American community. Pham said that her organization, which first envisioned the center more than 10 years ago, was an early participant in the creation of the EDI program.

“Before we received any funding, we were actually part of the initial demonstration projects and helped to pilot and launch the EDI program,” she said.

Pham noted that rising real estate prices and rents are putting pressure on the International District’s Asian American population. To address this, the Landmark Project will also include 71 units of affordable housing.

“We’ve lost a lot of our social, cultural, and economic assets in the neighborhood,” Pham said. “So this project is bringing back all those elements. The cultural center will offer small business opportunities, cultural programming and social programming.”

Though affordable housing is critical to addressing displacement, Pham said that EDI supplements existing housing levy funds by favoring projects that strengthen Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. “Housing is definitely a big priority,” she said. “But we need resources to support projects like cultural centers and community spaces that aren’t tied to housing, and EDI fills that gap.”

During the city council debate over EDI last fall, Pham co-wrote an editorial defending EDI. 

“What is happening in Seattle is a wake-up call to all cities using a racial equity lens to plan for and fund equitable growth and public goods. Other cities and communities across the country must organize and prepare for similar backlash,” Pham and her co-authors wrote.

In January, OPCD released an impact report on the program, noting that “EDI program is a powerful tool for inclusive growth, cultural preservation, and economic development that shifts power into the hands of marginalized communities.” The report found that 90% of EDI grant recipients found additional funding sources outside the program and that 15% of projects are now self-sufficient and have grown beyond the need for EDI funds.

Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC) received a $300,000 EDI grant in this cycle to help complete its Food Innovation Center. The center, located near Rainier Beach’s light rail station, will increase access to local, healthy, organically sourced food in the community. RBAC managing strategist Gregory Davis said the grant will help the organization expand its facility from 4,000 square feet to more than 48,000. The second phase of the project will offer condominiums affordable for families earning between 80% and 120% of area median income, he added. 

“The idea is to have it in the range $250,000 to $300,000 – something that somebody coming out of college earning $70,000 should be able to do,’ Davis said.

The EDI capital grant will help RBAC leverage additional funds for housing as well as addressing the issue of the longtime “food desert” in Rainier Beach where fast food restaurants have proliferated. RBAC works to build networks connecting local, BIPOC growers with community members, while also fighting displacement. 

“This climate for development is really a challenging one, even for private developers, let alone nonprofit developers, let alone community based organizations, who are in many cases, getting into it for the first time,” Davis said of rising land prices in Rainier Beach. “[EDI] helps to support them to build their capacity as an organization around development, as well as having a substantial anchor facility for the neighborhoods they serve.”

Davis observed that last year’s council fight over EDI funds demonstrated at OPCD and the organizations supported by EDI need to do more to tell their stories.

“One of the challenges we have is, how do we make sure those stories are durable?” Davis said. “When a city council district changes leadership, what’s happening to communicate with that incoming leadership about what has happened before?”

Franklin said that funding equity developments through community-based organizations isn’t the same as simply funding and building an affordable housing project. “If an organization is struggling, we’ll help them figure out what’s going on and make sure they write their operating plan to keep it successful,” she said. 

“When they hit a challenge, they can come to our project managers for resources and support because they know we’re really genuine in our sense of partnership,” Franklin said.

“For a program that’s only been in existence and awarding funds for eight years, we’ve done a lot,” Quirindongo said. “I’m excited for the future.”

The post Seattle Awards $22 Million in Equitable Development Grants Aimed to Combating Displacement first appeared on The Urbanist.

The groundbreaking was filmed by Converge Media, whose Omari Salisbury interviewed Wyking Garrett, President and CEO of Africatown, about the event during Converge’s February 7th episode of Morning Edition.

“It’s not just about the Central District. You got to start somewhere so we started where we started, right, and preserve that legacy. But it’s really about developing new models for Black community to thrive,” Garret said. “So long our experience here in this country has been about surviving; getting in where we fit in, making a way out of no way, but what does it mean to design? With our unique experiences and ways of being in the center of what we build. You’ll see that in the architecture. We were fortunate to bring together brilliant Black architects.”

In his speech at the groundbreaking, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay said Africatown was a model to emulate that had inspired him in his work. “You love to see it,” Zahilay repeated. “Today is about deepening our roots in the historic epicenter of Seattle’s Black community.” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and other officials also attended and spoke at the event.

“I think this moment just signifies what’s possible. When we have a thought, we come together around that thought and we take that and rally and push it forward to make it real. I think that’s what it represents: possibility,” Garrett said to Converge.

Africatown Plaza will be next to Lake Union’s Midtown Center development which will soon offer 428 market-rate and affordable apartment homes centered on a plaza open to the public. Thirty percent of the units (138) will be affordable through the Multi-Family Tax Exemption Program for households earning $40,000 to $65,000 annually.

Midtown Center’s retail clients will include a new incarnation of beloved hangout, The Neighborhood Lady, previously located across the street, Raised Doughnuts, which will be moving across 23rd Avenue into their new space, All the Best Pet Care, Jerk Shack, So Beautiful Salon, and Arté Noir, an arts center.

Washington State Department of Commerce to fund 1,500 affordable homes

The Washington State Department of Commerce announced on February 7th that it will provide $18.6 million in funding for 16 affordable housing projects. The 1,500 affordable homes created through these projects will be located across seven different counties and were selected from 40 applications.

“The communities receiving grant funds have already made affordable housing a priority with local tax levies. This program supports and helps accelerate that work at a time when affordable housing projects throughout the state are facing significant cost increases,” said Lisa Brown, Commerce Director, in a press release.

Examples of developments that will receive funding from the Department of Commerce include:

• Eastgate Permanent Supportive Housing, a 95 unit development by Plymouth Housing and the first permanent supportive housing project to be built on the East Side;
• Redondo Heights, a transit oriented development of 202 affordable homes with an onsite playground and food bank developed by Shelter Resources in Kent;
• SeaTac Center Affordable Housing, bringing 365 affordable homes and a daycare to the Polaris development in SeaTac. One of the largest transit-oriented housing developments to be built in King County in recent years, Polaris offer a total of 585 homes and 27,000 square feet of new commercial space in the neighborhood near the Tukwila International Boulevard Link light rail station. 

Built-to-rent single-family home industry booming

According to a study published by RentCafé, Seattle was among the top 20 U.S. metros with built-to-rent single-family housing rentals. RentCafé estimates there are just over 1,300 single-family homes located in rental only communities in the Seattle area. While that’s a far cry from number one-ranked Phoenix, which has about 6,400 rental homes, it was still enough to rank Seattle 17th in the nation.

A confluence of factors, ranging from the lack of affordable housing for sale, to a desire for more space fueled by the Covid pandemic, has caused the built-to-rent single family housing industry to boom to previously unforeseen heights in the past year. Rentcafé has called it the “hottest trend in housing.” An industry that creates rental housing marketed as “luxury” for renters whose desire single-family homes, but cannot afford to purchase them, to some, the built-to-rent industry feels like a cruel twist on the “American Dream” of the mid-20th century, spiked with a healthy dose of climate crisis denial.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a suburban trend with about 84% of built-to-rent communities are located in the suburbs and 14% in urban areas nationally. The Seattle metro area closely follows this trend of most built-to-rent homes being located around the big cities. For example, Redmond and Puyallup emerged as some of the top suburbs where renters can find what some in the industry call “horizontal apartments.” About 560 single-family rental homes are located these two suburbs alone, while another 210 houses are located in built-to-rent communities in Tacoma.

A search of built-to-rent properties offered by American Homes 4 Rent in suburban Puget Sound cities like Puyallup, Spanaway, Arlington, and Enumclaw reveals prices ranging from $2,300 to $3,000 per month. Most of the rental houses in their portfolio are large, with some offering five bedrooms.

A “living” office building designed with pollinators in mind

It’s not housing, but 570 Mercer is an office building in the works in Seattle worthy of mention. Part of Seattle’s Living Building pilot program, 570 Mercer, which will go for design review on February 16th, aims to achieve petal certification with a range of innovative environmental features, including onsite energy production, water conservation, environmentally safe construction materials, and space for beehives and pollinating plants on the roof. Attend the meeting and learn more about how the architects are designing with sustainability in mind.

The post Housing Notes: Africatown Plaza Breaks Ground, Built-to-Rent Single-Family Home Boom, and Living Office Building first appeared on The Urbanist.

Last summer more than 200 volunteers participated in a painting project that transformed the empty parking lots and shuttered buildings of Midtown Center into the Imagine Africatown Pop-Up Plaza. The project announced the beginning of the first Africatown Community Land Trust Design Weekend, in which community members and professional designers teamed up to imagine what vibrant, Afrocentric development could look and feel like in the heart of Seattle’s historic African American community.

The weekend culminated in a striking community dinner set on the pop-up plaza in which people shared food and stories at long tables, admiring the colorful setting.

The 2019 Imagine Africatown Design Weekend was a quieter affair that took place in Washington Hall, a little over a mile away from where bulldozers have begun to rip through the 23rd and Union site in preparation for construction of Lake Union Partners’ Midtown Square project (formerly called the Midtown Commons).

The 2019 Design Weekend was also a more reflective event which participants learned about transformative plans for original Africatown in Mobile, Alabama. Urban designer Renee Kemp-Rotan described how the discovery of the Clotilda, the last ship that transported enslaved Africans to North America, has catalyzed efforts to construct an Africatown living monument over four sites, including a full scale replica of the Clotilda, a convention center, pavilion, environmental jobs center, African Museum, permanently affordable housing, and more. An international design competition is slated to open this September.

Saki Mafundaikwa, a professor at Cornish College of the Arts and founder of first school of graphic design in his native Zimbabwe, gave a presentation on African writing systems and typographies. Both guest speakers’ presentations emphasized the importances of the arts, culture, and design in the efforts to preserve and grow the presence of the African American community in the Central District.

Africatown’s Designs for 23rd and Spring

As part of that effort architect Laurie Wilson shared her plans for the parcel at 23rd and Union owned by the Africatown Community Land Trust, which was created with the goal of acquiring land that would ensure a permanent future for the African American community in the Central District.

Wilson worked with the Africatown community to create a design that eschews more angular “eurocentric” architecture for a rounded design intended to be reminiscent of traditional African architecture. The earthen tones also break from the modernist palate more common in recent Seattle architecture.

“The goal was to create an iconic building that doesn’t look like the typical building you see in Seattle,” said Wilson. The Africatown project is intended to be a seven story approximately 130 unit mixed-used development with street level retail. Initial permits for the development were filed this summer.

Midtown Square will showcase public art

One of Seattle’s largest planned mixed-use developments, Midtown Square will include 432 apartments and 16,000 square feet of retail space centered on a large publicly accessible square that will be open 24 hours a day.

Often cited as a flashpoint for gentrification in Seattle, the corner of 23rd and Union has undergone significant changes in recent years, a large part of which can be attributed to Lake Union Partners, which already has three mixed-use developments within a stone’s throw of the intersection: The Stencil, East Union, and The Central.

In addition to acquiring the land at the south end of the site to retain for permanent community ownership, Africatown Community Land Trust has also urged Lake Union Partners to be accountable for how its developments impact the surrounding neighborhood and African American community. In 2017, Lake Union Partners entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Africatown Community Land Trust and Forterra. The MOU is a non-binding document that “details the goals for maximizing the contributions of the Central Area African-American community to the project.”

While the MOU has resulted in a number of wins for the community such as designating 30% of the housing units as affordable, promising best efforts are made on the part of Lake Union Partners to ensure commercial space is designed and operated to prioritize affordability for small African American owned businesses, and coordinating with Africatown to “maximize the participation of Black owned consultants, contractors, and other workers.” One of the most striking impacts of Africatown on Midtown Square project can be observed in how the project design has changed over time to adapt to community feedback.

Last summer, a number of community participants registered dismay at renderings, in particular design plans for the corner of 23rd and Union, which was criticized for not highlighting the corner as a “sacred space.”

Since then Lake Union Partners has committed about $230k to pay for commissions and materials for the eight public art areas identified throughout the site, including what is now referred to as the 23rd and Union corner plaza site. Proposals should intend to collaborate with local African American cultural and historic organizations, such as the Black Heritage Society, but also seek to “extend the significance of the corner’s heritage to the next generation.”

The post Africatown Finetunes Its Designs for Midtown Center first appeared on The Urbanist.

In 2009, a group of artists, journalists, and community activists erected an open air photography and audio recording installation on an abandoned lot on the corner of 23rd and Union. Simply called “The Corner,” the installation was a source of community curiosity, pride, and criticism for about a year.

The website for The Corner still exists, and it provides a fascinating time travel experience. Dozens of audio recordings saved on the website address questions of belonging, memory, and change. The makers of The Corner called it a “public radio documentary,” describing it as a compilation of over 200 messages that “collectively depict a rich and complicated place.”

These messages transport listeners back to a time before Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop’s neon lights and billboards dominated the corner’s evening landscape. When 23rd and Union was known more outside of the neighborhood for street crime than a battle over the opening of a gourmet grocery chain criticized for bad labor practices.

Just a year before the installation of The Corner, Philadelphia Cheese Steak restaurant owner Degene Barecha was gunned down in his business at 23rd and Union during the daytime. It was shocking crime with a tragic twist; Barecha had been running the business for nearly five years on his own after the shooting death of his business partner, Troy Hackett, which also occurred in the Central District. Both of the men had been well-known and liked in the neighborhood.

Listening to messages form “The Corner,” it is clear that the Barecha’s murder was still on the mind of the callers, as were drug sales and other crimes. A particularly incendiary editorial in the Seattle PI from this period describes 23rd and Union as a place “where drugs and cash change hands out in the open, protesters take to the streets for justice, and bullets too often fly.”

These days the atmosphere is very different at 23rd and Union. Developer Lake Union Partners have already built three major projects at the site, The Stencil, East Union, and The Central, all of which are market rate apartment buildings with commercial space at the ground floor. These three developments have greatly changed the corner. Uncle Ike’s, while still a visible presence, no longer dominates the business corridor. On any given night a passerby is as likely to be headed to 23rd and Union in search of tacos as weed.

But while new development has flourished, small mostly African-American and immigrant owned businesses have shuttered and disappeared, and the question of who this corner belongs to looms larger than ever.

During the recent ribbon cutting for the Liberty Bank Building, which honors the first African-American owned bank opened west of the Mississippi, speakers like Dr. Marcia Tate Arunga referenced the history of the area and called for reinvigorating 23rd and Union as a hub for Black culture.

While developments like Liberty Bank Building and the Africatown Community Land Trust have focused on preserving the business corridor’s African-American heritage, it is unknown at this point much impact they will have in the face of other larger developments, Midtown Commons in particular.

What is Midtown Commons?

Spanning an entire city block, the Midtown Commons project is one of the largest, and most ambitious new developments slated for construction outside of Seattle’s downtown core.

The project includes 432 apartments, 30% of which (130 apartments) will be relatively affordable units, 25,000 square feet of retail space, 227 below grade parking spaces, and a 16,000 square feet publicly accessible square in the center of the project.

To put the square’s size in content, it will be similar in size to Occidental Square in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. According to Lake Union Partners, “The square will be lined with retail shops and is intended to be an active community gathering space from day to night.” However, while the Midtown Commons square will be accessible to the public, it will still be under private ownership and management, raising questions over who will be able to use the space and how it will be used.

Perhaps in recognition of the minority owned businesses were displaced from the site when the existing Midtown Center was closed, Lake Union Partners has made a commitment to prioritize African-American small businesses in the retail spaces along the square, and is currently conducting outreach to business owners.

Lake Union Partners also undertook an extensive neighborhood engagement effort during its design process. It was a sensitive project that attracted a lot of community attention. Midtown Commons actually went through full design review twice before finally being approved the third time around.

According to their media release, “substantial changes to the design of the buildings” were made so that the project would be “more reflective of community input and preferences.”

However, the bulk of the changes made in response to community feedback have been focused on the incorporation of artwork into the development, rather than adjustment to building and landscape design. Eight different pieces of art will be installed on site. These artworks will be connected to themes of “Reverence and Discovery.” According to Lake Union Partners, the article will be reflective of ” the community’s desires for a project which functions as a community space that is friendly, representative of an aesthetic that recognizes the area’s rich heritage, and welcomes multi-generational interaction.”

Midtown Commons will be sharing space with the Africatown Community Land Trust, which aspired to bring permanently affordable rental and ownership housing to the corner of 23rd and Union. This project is being completed with assistance from Capitol Hill Housing; however, design plans and an estimated timeframe for completion have not been released yet.

Midtown Commons will break ground in July of 2019. Construction is anticipated to take about two years to complete.

Standing at the future Midtown Commons site today, it is hard to imagine the scale of the changes to come. In future years, what will Seattleites think of when they hear of the corner at 23rd and Union? Will Midtown Commons be seen as a high-water mark for gentrification, or the beginning of a more inclusive approach to development that recognizes the history and significance of the land that lies beneath it and the people who have made that land their home?

The post Midtown Commons Breaks Ground at 23rd and Union This Summer first appeared on The Urbanist.

Last week’s ribbon cutting for the new Liberty Bank Building in the Central District featured an impressive list of influential Seattleites as speakers. Even so, fourth grader Jet Evans managed to steal the show.

A natural public speaker, Jet Evans captured the crowd’s attention with his description of the many early mornings he had spent sleepily waiting in the car while his father, Ted Evans, painted the building before taking him to Madrona Elementary. However, now that Evans family is among the first group of residents to move into the new Liberty Bank Building, all those early mornings have proven to be worth the wait.

“I’m going to be living in a place that his fingers touched already,” said the young Evans of his father’s work on the building. “I’m looking forward to living here- it’s just a great area with great vibes.”

Ted Evans, an activist who grew up in the Central District, is thrilled to have the opportunity to raise his son in the neighborhood’s redevelopment.

Growth and redevelopment were frequent themes invoked by speakers at the ribbon cutting ceremony. Former State Representative Dawn Mason likened the new Liberty Bank Building to a “phoenix rising out of the ashes,” and Evelyn Allen of the Black Community Impact Alliance called it “tangible evidence of progress and change.”

Once the site of Seattle’s first African-American owned bank, the new Liberty Bank Building will provide 115 apartments for individuals and families earning 30% to 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI). It also offers retail space for three small businesses. The first tenants will be Earl’s Cuts and Styles, That Brown Girl Cooks, and Cafe Avole–all of which are African-American owned.

Because of the success of affirmative marketing policies that reached out to people of color with connections to the Central District, 87% of the building’s new residents are African-American.

While that represents a significant number, especially since the Central District’s African-American population has shrunk in recent decades, plenty of reason exists to believe that the level of demand for affordable housing from the community far outpaces current supply.

“When the phone lines opened on November 1st, thousands of calls came in and the lines shut down,” said K. Wyking Garrett, CEO of the Africatown Community Landtrust, which is also in the process of developing Africatown Plaza as part of the Midtown Center block across the street.

Garrett believes that the redevelopment of 23rd and Union as a hub for Seattle’s African-American community will create a village-like atmosphere in which people can heal from the “trauma of displacement.”

“When a plant is uprooted from its environment, and it struggles to grow, we call that root shock,” said Garrett, making the reference to pain he has observed as many African-Americans have been forced by rising costs to move farther and farther away from their family, friends, and cultural institutions.

What was “Weed and Seed”?

However, for those who are familiar with the US federal governments urban renewal tactics of the 1990’s, Garrett’s remarks have an added significance.

Operation Weed and Seed was a multi-agency effort led by the US Department of Justice that aimed “to prevent, control, and reduce violent crime, drug abuse, and gang activity in designated high-crime neighborhoods across the country.”

Beginning in 1991 with three sites, the controversial program quickly grew to include over 200 sites nationwide. It was first implemented in Seattle’s Central District in 1993.

High crime rates in the Central District were stated as the reason why then Mayor Norm Rice–Seattle’s first and only elected African-American mayor–advocated for the program to be implemented only in that target area, while other cities like Atlanta, Denver, and Cleveland implemented Operation Weed and Seed citywide.

According to the Seattle Case Study, the Central District’s average crime rate prior to the start of Weed and Seed was approximately 1.5 times greater than the entire city of Seattle and approximately 2.5 times greater than the United States. 

Crime in the Central District was connected to an increase gang-related activity, which was “associated with the influx of gang members from California who move to the Seattle area and continue their criminal activity.” (In case you thought blaming Californians for civic ills–like driving up housing costs and clogging I-5–was just a new phenomenon.)

According to the report, these gangs were involved in the “street-level sale of narcotics,” particularly on Cherry Street, where a range of narcotics were sold to both neighborhood residents and people who traveled in from other parts of the city and surrounding suburbs to make their illicit purchases. As a main east-west arterial, Cherry Street was identified as a convenient stop off location for drug buyers who “commute to downtown Seattle for work.”

Did “Weed and Seed” uproot a community?

Operation Weed and Seed focused its strategy on two efforts:

• Weeding—Concentrated and enhanced law enforcement efforts to identify, arrest, and prosecute violent offenders, drug traffickers, and other criminals operating in the target areas.
• Seeding—Human services—including afterschool, weekend, and summer youth activities; adult literacy classes; and parental counseling—and “neighborhood revitalization efforts to prevent and deter further crime.”

Seattle differed a bit from the national averages in its distribution between these two areas of activity. While nationally most Operation Weed and Seed programs spent far more money on law enforcement oriented “weeding” activities, in Seattle “approximately 70 percent of the grant funds were allocated to seeding activities, and the remaining 30 percent were allocated to weeding activities in the Central District,” although to be fair some of the “seed” funds actually paid for community police officer positions.

Nevertheless, the choice to only implement Operation Weed and Seed in the Central District was very unpopular with residents, who quickly sprung to action, forming the Coalition to Stop Weed and Seed. In his book The Politics of Community Policing, William Lyons wrote that members of the coalition were concerned that Operation Weed and Seed would lead to a “more powerful, but less accountable, federal policing presence in their communities.” They rightly noted that federal laws of the era issued much stiffer penalties and sentences than Washington state law did.

Thus, in their point of view, the choice to only implement Operation Weed and Seed in a majority African-American neighborhood subjected African-Americans to a harsher form of justice than white neighborhors experienced.

Despite criticism, implementation of Operation Weed and Seed in the Central District moved forward and was even spread to locations in Southeast Seattle in subsequent years, tracking with Black migration patterns.

Even today, whether or not Operation Weed and Seed was effective in reducing crime in the Central District remains open to debate. While it is known that “total levels of homicides, robberies, and assaults have dropped substantially” between 1992 and 1997, an accompanying decrease in population in the area was said to “preclude the ability to make any definitive conclusions about the overall risk of crime…”

Additionally, while violent crime decreased, the number of property crimes remained “relatively constant.”

According to police anecdotes, the decrease in violent crime was largely attributed to two factors, one being that increased police patrols in the Central District simply shifted crime further south. Additionally, police observed that customers stopped traveling in from different areas to buy drugs in the neighborhood.

Many African Americans felt harassed and unfairly targeted by the increased police presence in the neighborhood. In a recent reflection War Against the Poor and Weeding of the Emeralds, Villiainus wrote:

“Incarceration Station” is the only way I can describe my teen years. It was clear to our whole community that we were targeted by the police, politicians, government, and those of high economic status. They would use multiple unprincipled tactics to drive our communities out of our homes. 

While the effectiveness of Weed and Seed on reducing crime remains controversial, it is clear that many African Americans left the Central District during this same time period. In fact, the number of African Americans who participated in community surveys dropped from more than one-half in 1995 to just one-third in 1997.

This data is supported by the US Census, which found that the number of African American residents in the Central District decreased from 55 percent in 1990 to 36 percent in 2000.

One frequent criticism of the after effects of Operation Weed and Seed is that is fueled gentrification in the Central District by creating conditions in which homeowners felt pressured to sell their homes or even had their homes taken away by the state. Civil forfeiture laws allow for police to seize property that is associated with criminal activity, and homes associated with the drug trade or sex work were frequently seized. Washington State has earned “D-” from Institute for Justice for what have been described as lenient and frequently abused civil forfeiture laws, raising big questions about the ethics surrounding such seizures.

In her article, Landscaping Neo-Liberalism: The Weed and Seed Strategy, Julie Garfield described how Operation Weed and Seed originated under President George H. W. Bush, but was first implemented under the Clinton administration. The policy sprang up shortly after the government adopted legislation created Enterprise Zones, in which tax breaks and other financial incentives were provided to businesses and investors in order “to encourage entrepreneurial development in poor neighborhoods.”

Some critics viewed Operation Weed and Seed as a strategy by which poorer communities could be removed from valuable urban land. Supporters of this theory, such as Garfield, cite the fact that “[t]arget neighborhoods for Weed and Seed implementation were selected based on indicators of underdevelopment and economic promise.” The Great Recession continued this pattern of uprooting Black households and seizing their land. The 2008 Housing Crisis hit Black households hardest since they were often unfairly targeted for subprime mortgages–and thus felt victim to huge losses in home equity and to foreclosures as the government bailed out banks but not mortgage holders.

While not ascribing to the belief that Operation Weed and Seed was fueled by an urban land grab, the Urban Institute has argued that “placed based approaches” to reducing crime and other indicators of poverty have both “promise and limitations,” and should be implemented alongside more comprehensive reforms.

Regrowing African-American community in the Central District

According to K. Wyking Garrett, after his father, activist Omari Tahir Garrett, learned of the closure of the Key Bank branch on the Liberty Bank site, he quickly swept into action, pulling the old Liberty Bank sign out from storage and mowing the grass on the property. It was the Garrett family’s vision that the land would be returned to the African-American community.

Thanks to the efforts of a strong coalition of partner organizations and a historic Memorandum of Understanding, that vision is becoming a reality.

Not only have partners Capitol Hill Housing, Africatown Community Land Trust, Byrd Barr Place, and the Black Community Impact Alliance committed to making the project a model for equitable and inclusive community development, they have also created a plan in which the land can be secured permanently for the good of the African-American community.

According to the language the historic Memorandum of Understanding, in fifteen years, nonprofit developer Capitol Hill Housing will offer first right of refusal for the building’s ownership to Byrd Barr Place (formerly Centerstone), which was renamed in honor of Roberta Byrd Barr, a prominent African-American educator and journalist.

The Rise Together capital campaign is currently seeking donations to ensure that the Liberty Bank Building’s vision succeeds. Donors who give $25 or more by April 1st, will have their names written on the wall of “a living monument to community and cultural resilience.”

The post New Liberty Bank Building Seeks to Anchor an Important Legacy first appeared on The Urbanist.

When we live in an environment which is dominated by ideas and actions that are contrary to our well-being, then we have to design spaces and places that are conducive to and promote our well-being. —Wyking Garrett, President of Africatown Community Land Trust, Africatown Design Town Hall, 2018

Drawing on Technical Assistance

A critical part of Africatown’s strategy is to “bring brilliant people from our diaspora into our community to inspire and give us more ways to go about creating the future we want,” Wyking Garrett said.

As part of this mission, Garrett traveled to Harvard University, where he shared his vision for Africatown with a group of distinguished design professionals. It was through this presentation that Nmadili Okwumabua first became acquainted with Africatown.

“I reached out [to Garrett] and he was like Nmadili, I’ve already heard of you. Let’s connect,” Okwumabua said.

The result was quite literally a convergence of two visionaries. Just as Garrett’s work seeks to redefine the design process, Okwumabua’s work at CDPI Africa centers on the ambitious vision of foregrounding the influence of African architecture, planning, and design on an international scale.

Frustrated in design school by a lack of recognition of the contributions of African culture and aesthetics, Okwumabua chose to pursue a different path. “Architecture is a reflection of a culture’s aesthetics, experience, and identity, but not for Africa. I left design school for that reason. It just didn’t make sense,” Okwumabua said.

Inspired by Professor David Hugh’s seminal publication Afrocentric architecture: a design primer, Okwumabua chose to study African history and the contributions African cultures have made to design. After recognizing that the lack of interest in African architecture and design stemmed from a scarcity of customers requesting African concepts, Okwumabua made a radical choice.

“I decided that I would become the client. I would create CPDI Africa, which asks architects to create these new languages and modern translations of African architecture,” Okwumabua said.

The result was the creation of the CPDI Africa Competition, which has been a huge success.

“Architects loved the idea and responded from around the world,” Okwumabua said. Past winners and finalists have come from across the African continent and diaspora, but also from countries such Vietnam.

Okwumabua’s presentation at the Imagine Africatown Design Town Hall featured compelling images of the architects’ renderings. These designs have also attracted the attention of clients.

“When architects shared their work the audience became excited. Potential clients said, ‘This is beautiful. How can we get one of these?’  My friends, partners, and colleagues saw we were on to something they also believed in,” Okwumabua said.

CPDI Africa’s work also entails curating an online library of African architecture and design with the intention of creating a resource for architects, planners, and designers across the world. An exhibit called the “Art of African Architecture” has been touring the country. The current plan is for the exhibit to come to Seattle next winter and to be shown in partnership with Africatown.

However, this is not the only future connection envisioned for CPDI Africa and Africatown.  

“Africatown is really pioneering what CPDI Africa is doing,” Okwumabua said. “Let’s make a conscious decision to reach back and pick up from where we left off as a people. Pick up elements and fast track to the future.”

With that goal, CPDI Africa is committed to offering technical assistance to Africatown. “We are looking forward to bringing in architects from around the world and getting their input,” Okwumabua said. “There’s a lot to learn from their research and expertise.”

It will be interesting to observe how the cross-pollination between Africatown and CPDI Africa develops overtime.

“We are definitely there for the community,” Okwumabua said. “I wish I could move to Seattle right now. We want to bring everything we do to the table. This is what we are passionate about.”

Imagination and Provocation

Local design professionals are also offering up their expertise in the service of Africatown’s vision. “Coming Soon” an interactive public art project dreamed up by Zewde as an opportunity to provoke the community into action, has made a presence on sites throughout the CD.

“As I was attending community meetings, Wyking [Garrett] would always ask people, ‘What is your vision of Africatown?’” Sara Zewde said. “People had these very vivid descriptions. Everybody was talking about the same place. It was like a parallel universe that doesn’t exist.”

Peoples’ visions were compiled by Garrett into an excel spreadsheet, which Zewde shared with friends from the design community. The community input was used to generate a series of playful, provocative, and surreal re-imaginings of sites in the CD such as Pratt and Blanche Lavizzo parks.

Billboards were placed on-site that mimic developers’ signs; however, instead of presenting information on proposed developments, the billboards “showcase an Afro-utopia,” Zewde said. “The website continues the fiction.”

Community members are encouraged to pick up the postcards mounted on the billboards, draw on them their visions for Africatown, and mail them to the address provided.

“The project will live on through the postcards we are distributing,” Cox said. “Hopefully we will collect many of those and it be a corollary to that project.”

Re’Union on Union

Though the potential impact of Africatown could spread well beyond Seattle’s borders, its largest presence is still found on the corner of 23rd and Union, where the parking lot, painted in vibrant colors highlighting African aesthetics, and a large “Africatown” sign attract the attention of residents and visitors alike.

The paint, which serves as an activation of the public space, was completed by a team of 300 community volunteers. “It was definitely a highlight,” Zewde said. “We had grandparents and grandchildren volunteering together.”

The painting took place the weekend before the Imagine Africatown Design Weekend and served as the kick-off to the event for the community. The following Saturday night, July 14th, the community once again gathered at the corner to celebrate the event’s closing with an outdoor dinner.

“Not only was it just a community dinner, it was a reunion,” said Malaysia Marshall, who organized the event with Curtiss Calhoun. “An opportunity for those to reflect on the past, present, and future state of their community, their neighborhood, the Central District. People just want to be involved and included, especially in the planning and sustainability of a space that nurtured their upbringing and still holds valuable memories.”

The 3D models created at the design cipher earlier that day were displayed, and participants strolled over to observe the models and discuss their own ideas for Africatown’s future, while enjoying the wide variety of food and beverages shared at the potluck.

TraeAnna Holiday is local filmmaker who has spent nearly a year gathering footage for a documentary on the CD, which she plans to release next year. Her family was displaced in 2003 as a result of gentrification. “It’s so funny,” Holiday said, “I was driving around the CD today, and I thought, man, as a child, we didn’t know how good we had it.”

In the CD of Holiday’s childhood, neighbors were connected to their neighbors.

“We knew our neighbors. We knew the storeowners. They knew us and they knew our grandparents and parents. The connectivity of community is what’s lost. I don’t care if its all black folks or whatever. But what happened was, when white folks started move into the community they built walls up. They didn’t want to get to know their neighbors. That broke down the sense of community almost immediately,” Holiday said.

Holiday’s vision of Africatown is a return to the interconnectivity of the past. “I think that some of the work that we did today [at the design cipher] speaks to that,” she said. “Open public spaces. Open amphitheaters. Things that are affordable for people to utilize as resources.”

On this rare warm summer night, Africatown’s vision has come to life. A diverse of group community members, ranging from longtime residents to new arrivals, sit together a long series of tables covered by white tablecloths and bouquets of flowers. A DJ spins music from under a green tent decorated with the Africatown logo, while grandparents take the hands of their grandchildren and dance.

Garrett, pausing the music for a moment, takes the microphone into his hands. “We have been here since 1882,” he says, referencing the black pioneer William Grose, who lived and owned land along Madison Street, “and we will be here for at least another eighty years.”

The crowd cheers.

At a moment of what might be unprecedented change in Seattle, this is a bold proclamation to make, but it also one that is backed up by Garrett’s rigorous and proactive approach.

This is a truly a community centered design approach that everyone who cares about Seattle’s future should be paying close attention to.

Community Resident Preference Policy and the Fight Against Displacement in Seattle

The post Africatown Designs Its Future: Part 2 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Fundamental to Africatown’s design approach is the creation and facilitation of a distinctive process that works hand-in-hand with community members, while also drawing on technical assistance from professional designers. The result is an intentional approach that honors the CD’s past as a vibrant African American community and keeps an eye firmly on the future.

“That’s something you see in a lot of historically black neighborhoods,” Sara Zewde said. “The future is rooted in the past. As a designer that’s an element of black urban culture that I have focused on and pushed for. We want community designers to articulate that vision.”

Zewde, a landscape architect, urbanist, and board member of Design in Public, has been involved with Africatown since serving on a speaker’s panel with K. Wyking Garrett at the Seattle Design Festival. Debra Webb, Director of Design in Public, said Zewde has been instrumental to forging the partnership between Africatown and Design in Public. “We want to amplify our mission of building bridges through design,” Webb said.

In response to the current political and social climate, this year Design In Public has chosen the theme of “trust” for the Seattle Design Festival.

“I think there is great mistrust among African Americans and the African diaspora in our city toward designers and the built environment,” Webb said. An underrepresentation of African Americans in design fields and past abuses ranging from widespread demolition of African American neighborhoods for interstate construction, to national policies such as Weed and Seed, have all contributed to this climate of distrust.  

Africatown, however, seeks to redefine how African Americans think about urban design in Seattle by eschewing the conventional “paternalistic” model of community engagement for something much more radical. “Usually what happens is the architect and developer propose something and the community is for or against their proposal,” Zewde said. “Instead we wanted the community to make a proposal. What we want is to get people actually designing. We also want to force designers to design in front of other people.”

Given the boldness of Africatown’s approach, the impact of their work could result in paradigm shift in how design is approached not only in the CD, but also throughout Seattle as a whole. In a city where rapid development has resulted in new buildings that critics, such as The Stranger’s Charles Mudede, have labeled as bland and ugly, widespread implementation of the Africatown design process could represent a different future for the city. In its most utopian form, it could mean the restoration of communities fragmented by displacement and the creation of architecture, landscape, and urban design that celebrates history, diversity, and identity. At a moment in which some longtime residents feel like the city is spinning out of control around them, Africatown’s vision for a city of distinctive, community focused spaces should have broad appeal.

Echoing the sentiments of many Seattleites, Webb captures the fears that many feel as they watch new the developments rising around them. “Everything can’t look the same,” Webb said. “Everything can’t be budget driven.”

Design Ciphers

For professionals and design enthusiasts, the term “charrette” is a common parlance, a term that refers to an interactive session in which community members engage with design experts, often providing feedback and raising issues with proposed designs.

The term, which comes the French phrase “en charrette,” first arose in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts, where architectural students were known for frantically working on designs even after carts arrived to take them away. It is a term that is steeped in the same Eurocentric tradition as most of the design fields. Even in an era of increased globalization and multiculturalism, design around the world remains stubbornly Eurocentric in its outlook.

“Are architecture students in Africa studying the design contributions of African architecture? No they are not,” says Nmadili Okwumabua, founder of Community Planning and Design Initiative Africa (CPDI Africa) and keynote speaker at the Imagine Africatown Design Town Hall. “Most design schools around the world do not focus on the contributions of Africans. Architects are graduating having acquired the designs and schools of European architecture.”

“Designers are trained with a particular set of cultures and histories in mind,” says Zewde, “It’s rooted in Western European perceptions of space. When you see community members dissatisfied with design that is largely why. There is a gap between design and culture. My role and methods of designing for culture is to try to work within that chasm.”

Discarding the term charrette, Africatown instead uses the term “design cipher” to describe its community design sessions. In hip-hop, a cipher, or cypher, is an improvised freestyle cyclical rapping session in which both rappers and the crowd participate. It is more relaxed than most freestyle rap sessions and does not adhere to specific beats.

“Basically the concept is based on a design charrette, but we wanted to reframe it as a cipher because it emphasizes the blackness of the interaction,” said Azzura Cox, landscape architect and co-creator with Mark Mappala of the Africatown design cipher concept.

Unlike in a typical charrette, where design professionals often take the lead, Africatown’s design ciphers cultivate a more dynamic approach.

“There is not one performer, instead there is a call and response format, a dialogue, which makes more of the dynamics that we want to encourage possible,” Cox said. “It’s a new way of framing the charrette. The cipher is more culturally relevant.”

During his remarks as a keynote speaker at the Imagine Africatown Design Town Hall, Walter Hood, landscape architect, professor, and creative director of Hood Design Studio, made reference to the importance of improvisation in black culture.

“In the cultural arts, particularly from Africa, there is one process that people have written about that is true to the diaspora and it’s improvisation. And improvisation, if you define it, is reshaping old into something new. That’s all it is,” remarked Hood. “Reshaping something that exists so you don’t fabricate it. You reshape it through what you see. And that’s what black folk do very well.”

Over the course of four design ciphers, Cox and Mappala have been perfecting their improvisation based technique, creating a highly structured process aimed at “putting everyone on the same playing field.” Cipher groups are mixed between architects, urban planners, developers, and community members with no distinctions drawn between participants.

“The idea to create a balance between everybody,” Zewde said. “The vocabulary and language we are using is open so everyone can be involved and learn. We want people to be design literate.”

The process uses a range of media and moves from “abstraction to a concrete product.” Along the way, groups participate in site walks, engage in discussion, create collages, and finally craft a 3D model of their imaginative vision for the site.

“We think those guided steps really help people from all backgrounds come to the project with their own skills and imagination, and translate them into a real proposal,” Cox said.

The products of the design ciphers have been shared with developers and city officials, and they are making an impact. At a design cipher last November, a participant described how essential the corner at 23rd and Union has been for history and identity of the CD.

“He became emotionally moved and teary-eyed. It was a really powerful moment, but it speaks to how space takes on these intensely personal and symbolic meanings to the people who have shaped and lived in it over time,” Cox said. “This is why we have to be mindful of these meanings. We have preserve this essence that keeps these spaces sacred.”

Developer Lake Union Partners and site architects Weinstein A+U are in the process of revising their concept for the Midtown Center at 23rd and Union with a focus on how to design the space so that the corner receives the recognition the community desires.  After their second design iteration was recently met with criticism from community members, they are being called on to make the Midtown Center development less “linear,” “Eurocentric,” and “South Lake Union.”

The theme of sacred space has also been integrated into the core of the design cipher process. Along with paying consideration to practical design features such as street connection, participants are asked to contemplate questions related to sacred space, such as “What is one of your favorite spaces/places that makes you feel special?” and “What activities hold a special place for community and connection?”

Africatown hosted its most recent design cipher on July 14th, and it was the largest yet. The techniques, which had been adapted over the course of the previous ciphers, were embraced by participants.

“I was just so blown away by the level of energy in the room. People were producing, talking, and really diving deep into the sites,” Cox said. “What came out of it was really inspiring.”

Africatown also currently seeks to influence the design of significant upcoming projects in the CD beyond 23rd and Union, such as the pending redevelopment and expansion of affordable housing at Bryant Manor and the proposed reconstruction or repurposing of the Seattle Vocational Institute. On a smaller scale, Africatown is also committed to helping local churches take advantage of “the opportunity to revise their presence in the neighborhood,” Zewde said.

The design ciphers will be an important component of what comes next.

“What is nice about Africatown is that its both this vision, this futuristic vision of joy and expression and identity, but it is also a really grounded strategy,” Cox said. “It is equal parts strategy and includes the nitty-gritty parts of getting things done with a city. But it is also proactively advancing a vision for change, an uplifting of the community through imagination and joy.”

To be continued tomorrow.

MidTown Center Deal Emerges With 20% Africatown Stake

Africatown Organizers See Opportunity With Liberty Bank Site

The post Africatown Designs Its Future: Part 1 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Excluded from other neighborhoods and cities with racial covenants and discriminatory lending practices, African Americans called the Central District home because they had few other options. As recently as 1970 the Central District was 73% Black, but it’s now estimated Blacks make up less than 20% of the neighborhood. With a shrinking Black population and mounting displacement pressure, Africatown has made it their mission to write African Americans into Seattle’s future. Many in the Central District’s Black community sees owning the land as key to changing the pattern of displacement and exclusion.

“We need to get our own cranes up,” Black Dot’s community manager Britney said at a protest at MidTown Center after Seattle Police Department dispersed a group camped inside the now re-located Black Dot, a community space and business incubator.

“If we don’t write ourselves into the future, there’s a good chance we won’t be in the future,” Africatown CEO K. Wyking Garrett said last year. “There was intentional exclusion, and now we need to have intentional inclusion.”

The Midtown Center deal propels Africatown toward that goal and vision for the Central District. Forterra and Africatown plan to build 135 affordable homes atop several storefronts and perhaps a small business incubator on their portion of the site. They will use a community land trust model to allow moderate-income residents a path to ownership. Meanwhile, Lake Union Partners aims to build at least 420 apartments, about 125 of those affordable via Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) and MFTE (Multi-Family Tax Exemption).

Lake Union Partners plans 420 apartments w/ about 125 affordable units, some of which would be req'd w/ MHA, and some likely MFTE. #HALAyes pic.twitter.com/WRSgh9mr0Z

— The Urbanist (@UrbanistOrg) May 24, 2017

“This is a huge deal,” Councilmember Rob Johnson tweeted, “They plan to perform instead of pay AND 20% of the land will be for a community driven housing project. MHA at work!”

The Central District has not yet had its MHA neighborhood rezone, but the Seattle City Council appears set up to give an ordinance to implement MHA there, with its first hearing in the coming weeks. The affordable requirement–which Johnson said the developer has pledged to do on-site–will be 10% and the Lake Union Partners sees that as viable, as David Kroman reported:

But according to Joe Ferguson, a principal partner with Lake Union Partners, anything higher than 10 percent would have prevented the Midtown project from going forward. “From our perspective it would be extremely difficult to go above that, still make this partnership work and still have a viable project,” he said. Even the 10 percent threshold, he continued, means they will have less parking than they might otherwise build.

With or without a neighborhood-wide rezone, adherence to MHA would be triggered by the rezone Lake Union Partners wants from existing NC2-40 to NC2-65 zoning, gaining 25 feet in buildable height. The MHA draft map shows Mid-Rise (MR) zoning on the site which is functionally similar to NC2-65, allowing more height, but slightly less floor area ratio (FAR) which effectively caps height or the usage of the whole lot. If the Central District rezone is delayed, a contract rezone could be a possibility for the MidTown site.

At 10% of about 420 units, the 42 MHA units would be restricted to households below 60% of area median income (AMI) for 75 years. Whereas, the MFTE units making up 20% of the project (about 84 units) would be reserved for households below 75% of AMI for one bedrooms (85% AMI for two bedrooms and 90% AMI for three-bedroom units) for up to 12 years–the developer can opt out earlier but would lose the property tax exemption by doing so. Also note the MFTE requirement would be 25% if the developers does not includes enough “family-size” multi-bedroom units to qualify for the lower percentage. Together MFTE and MHA allow Lake Union Partners project to produce 30% affordable units, granted the MHA units will be guaranteed as affordable much longer. And that’s in addition to Africatown’s 135 units made affordable through a community land trust.

Ferguson’s comment suggests 10% inclusionary zoning requirements–which the City went with in high cost areas after pushback that the original 5% to 7% framework was too low–are not just viable in the Central District, but also may encourage developers to downsize underground parking, a frequent rallying point for urbanists. Downsizing parking structures rather than inducing demand for car ownership is a good way to make our neighborhoods more pleasant places while also cutting carbon emissions and helping our environment. Perhaps MHA will push us toward that goal and break developers out of their bad habit of oversupplying parking.

MidTown Center is kitty-corner from Liberty Bank where Africatown has partnered with Capitol Hill Housing among other organizations to redevelop the site of the region’s first Black-owned bank. The Liberty Bank Building will not only include 115 affordable apartments and a handful of storefronts, but also act as a gallery space for African American art, with some promising pieces coming together at the art open house last month. The Liberty Bank Building partners were also intentional about hiring minority contractors while bidding construction contracts. That attention to detail both in encouraging minority hiring and in honoring the Central District’s cultural heritage is why many are lauding the Liberty Bank Building as a model for development in the Central District.

23rd and Union has been called ‘ground zero for gentrification.’ Uncle Ike’s pot shop across the street has been a frequent site of protest. To some extent, we are still quibbling over what gentrification means. Some anti-gentrification groups have taken stopping gentrification to mean stopping all private development. Urbanists often point out that development reinvigorates neighborhoods and takes pressure off older housing stock and point to studies showing gentrifying neighborhoods with more private development have less displacement and better outcomes. Joe Cortright argued in The Atlantic gentrification is categorically a good thing. Nonetheless, the issue of ownership and cultural identity remains as black and brown people in historically red-lined areas like the Central District watch their neighborhood change. Africatown’s Garrett told The Seattle Times: “Normally people just throw their hands up and say, ‘Gentrification is inevitable and part of the market.’ We can do something different, and we will.”

Projects like Liberty Bank Building and deals like Africatown just brokered at MidTown Center suggests there’s a way out of the gentrification trap: We can build without losing the soul of a neighborhood.

The top featured image is by Kidder Mathews.

Africatown Organizers See Opportunity With Liberty Bank Site

The post MidTown Center Deal Emerges With 20% Africatown Stake first appeared on The Urbanist.

On the southeast corner of the intersection is the Midtown Center property, where a national for-profit developer is planning nearly 500 units of housing, a grocery and several small retail spaces. The big news here is that the developers are reportedly finalizing an agreement with Central District nonprofit Africatown to include up to 120 units of affordable, community-owned housing. And that’s in addition to the 10% of units that will be required to be affordable for 75 years under the new Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) rules.

This voluntary collaboration between for-profit developers, nonprofits and community groups is rare and inspiring. Africatown will collaborate on the building design and run the community land trust that will own the affordable units. Funding will be coordinated by the nonprofit land conservancy Forterra, which made its first move into assisting with affordable housing development just this year through a partnership with El Centro de la Raza.

Across the street from the Midtown Center is the 115-unit Liberty Bank project, by non-profit affordable housing developer Capitol Hill Housing. These low-income units are funded by Seattle’s Housing Levy property tax, leveraged with state and federal money. And Africatown is involved in this project as well, brokering an agreement on community development goals and eventual community ownership.

Finally, the area is also home to three mid-rise apartment projects from for-profit developer Lake Union Partners: The Central on 23rd & Union and Stencil on 24th & Union are finished, while a third project at 23rd & Union is under construction. Both The Central and Stencil participate in the voluntary Multi-Family Tax Exemption program (MFTE), which sets aside 20% of the units as below-market rate affordable housing for 12 years.

Taken together, Liberty Bank, Midtown Center and the three Lake Union Properties projects represent three complementary approaches to funding affordable housing. The Lake Union Properties projects use voluntary tax subsidies through MFTE. The Liberty Bank uses public funding from the Housing Levy and state and federal sources. And the Midtown Center project will be built under the new MHA program, which combines mandates for affordable units with allowances for more market rate housing.

Each of these programs is a prominent component of HALA—the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda—which is currently working it’s way through City Council. This makes 23rd and Union a good place to glimpse the likely future of affordable development in Seattle. The combination of mandates, tax incentives, public funds and innovative private funding will all together produce over 300 units of affordable housing and 500 units of market rate housing. And Africatown’s impressive successes negotiating with developers should lead to projects that better address neighborhood equity issues. If 23rd and Union represents the future direction of development in Seattle, then we have every reason to be optimistic.

Correction: a previous version of the article stated incorrectly that Forterra was behind the recent El Centro de la Raza development in Beacon Hill.

Community Ownership Event Energizes Housing Advocates

Africatown Organizers See Opportunity With Liberty Bank Site

The post Community Pushes For Equity In 23rd & Union Development first appeared on The Urbanist.

Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Puget Sound Sage Director Rebecca Saldaña (who was just appointed 37th Legislative District State Senator last night) moderated the event with four panelists each bringing a unique perspective. The event wrapped up a day of workshops focused on distilling lessons from successful national models of community ownership. The video is available below via the Seattle City Council recording and via this higher quality Seattle Channel video. (Also, check out my tweetstorm here.)

To kick off the panel, Sandra McNeill shared her experience leading T.R.U.S.T. South LA, a non-profit focused on using a community land trust model to make new housing in and around Downtown LA more inclusive and affordable. McNeill said the scope of the problem is enormous in Los Angeles with more than 40,000 people living on the streets. Putting land into a community land trust helped shelter some Los Angelenos from the displacement driving them out of their close-in neighborhoods as they gentrified and rents spiked.

Meanwhile, Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) Director Andy Reicher focused on the limited equity housing co-op model which he’s been promoting and growing in New York City for almost forty years. Reicher said initially divestment and abandonment plagued cities like New York back in the 1970’s and 1980’s and UHAB focused on rehabbing building in various states of disrepair and converting them to co-ops. As the City of New York abandoned some of its public housing stock, co-ops proved a major stopgap for low-income households. Reicher said co-ops often stabilized neighborhoods, providing an anchor for revitalization as the dial flipped from divestment to gentrification. Co-ops were able to stay relatively affordable even as housing prices skyrocketed in the private market in a booming Big Apple. One of Reicher’s key pieces of advice was to organize; elected officials listen when tenants are organized, he said.

Perfect segue to Violet Lavatai, Membership Coordinator with the Tenants Union of WA, who spoke about what the union’s effort helping tenants organize to take ownership of their buildings. The successful model that the Tenants Union is seeking to emulate is A Place To Live community run by the Benton East Support Organization in Kent, Washington. A Place To Live is a cooperative community of 32 affordable duplexes that was launched in 2002 with public and private funding. Lavatai stressed repeatedly the importance of tenants seizing their power and seeking a community ownership model to exercise it. Look no further than Renton for a cautionary tale for tenants: investment companies buy up relatively affordable properties, puts corporate property management companies in charge, and seek to deny the vouchers of its low income tenants. Now tenants are organizing and pushing back.

Also sharing his experience organizing in Seattle, Wyking Garrett discussed Africatown-Central District Preservation & Development Association’s efforts to empower and honor the culture of Black Seattlites by harnessing development projects in the Central District. The Africatown vision looks like it will come to life in the Liberty Bank Building site that Capitol Hill Housing is developing with special attention to the bank’s history of serving the Central District’s African American community. Garrett was perhaps the most incisive speaker of the night: “Seattle has three companies trying to figure out how to solve the problem of building condos on Mars, so we think there’s brainpower here to keep our communities in place and grow and thrive.” Garrett added people talk a lot about equity and shared prosperity but that it was time to “make the rhetoric real.” A municipal bank would be one option to get more affordable housing projects off the ground, Garrett suggested. And Garrett’s blunt suggestion: tax the rich to fund affordable housing played very well in the room.

All in all, the event seemed to energize the advocates gathered to strive for greater power for tenants and low income households in a market that isn’t very forgiving for them otherwise. Community ownership models, like the community land trust and housing co-ops emphasized, provide a path to do that while at the same time building more housing to close the shortage felt strongest by those with the least means. That said, the models discussed didn’t seem to just be about building more housing–though that’s certainly crucial–but also about shifting paradigms so that tenants are seen and see themselves as community assets, agents for their own change, and a political force when they rise up in numbers. As a few speakers reminded everyone: Seattle is more than 50 percent tenants.

Seattle’s Homestead Community Land Trust handed out pamphlets for an “Deep Dive” event on February 3 from 10 am to 2 pm to keep the momentum going. Those interested in attending are instructed to contact Director Kathleen Hosfeld at kathleen@homesteadclt.org.

Andy Reicher said elected officials listen when tenants organize. (So ORGANIZE!) #HousingIsAHumanRight

— The Urbanist (@UrbanistOrg) December 9, 2016

Africatown Organizers See Opportunity With Liberty Bank Site

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