“I looked around and felt like Washington really could be the best place in the nation to build a good life if people can actually afford to do that,” Sabio-Howell told The Urbanist. “I think that we could be a state where housing is abundant and childcare is affordable, our education and healthcare systems are world class quality, and we tax the record-breakingly rich corporations that build their wealth here in Washington to make that happen.” 

Sabio-Howell has spent the last three years as the communications director for Working Washington, a statewide labor advocacy nonprofit that fights to raise wages and improve labor standards. Working Washington was involved in the defense of gig workers’ minimum wage policy and flexibility protections when former Seattle Council President Sara Nelson tried to roll them back in 2024, a fight that Sabio-Howell said seemed impossible to win at the time due to lobbying from multi-million dollar companies. 

“We won anyway,” Sabio-Howell said about that fight, “because we saw that working people and the vast majority of Seattle, and I would also say Washington, believes in fair pay and good workplaces and an economy that works for working people. […] I have gotten used to taking on big fights against big money, particularly fueled by big corporations, and winning alongside grassroots people power.”

Sabio-Howell’s mother’s side of the family are immigrants from the Phillipines, and her father’s side of the family has lived in eastern Washington for generations. Both of her parents were educators. As a Millennial/Gen Z edge case, Sabio-Howell would be the youngest senator serving in the Washington State Legislature, if elected, bringing a fresh perspective to a body that tends to skew older. 

Sabio-Howell also has experience at the state legislature, having served as a legislative aide for Rep. Larry Springer (D-45th, Kirkland) and later as a communications specialist for the State Senate, working for five different state senators and the Senate Members of Color Caucus. 

“I could hit the ground running and would be eager to, because I think we need fighters and we need effectiveness, and we need a commitment to our community’s values,” Sabio-Howell said.

(Disclosure: Sabio-Howell has also served on The Urbanist’s election committee from 2022 to 2025, along with our Publisher Doug Trumm and Contributing Editor Ryan Packer. She served as co-chair for her last two years. The reporter of this piece has never served on that body.)   

A tough race

The incumbent, Pedersen, who is also the Senate Majority Leader, has served in the state legislature for almost 20 years. After a stint in the state House, he ran for the Senate seat in 2014. A gay man himself, Pedersen is known for championing LGBTQ+ rights, supporting the legalization of the sale of marijuana, and instituting more gun control measures at the state level. 

Pedersen is also a Yale-educated lawyer who practiced corporate law at Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) for 17 years. Since 2012, he has worked as general counsel and executive vice president at McKinstry, a Seattle-based construction and engineering firm.

Pedersen raised about $240,000 in donations during the last election cycle in 2022. Sabio-Howell contends that in this last legislative session, he has shown a willingness to cut deals with the largest corporations, citing the $550 million tax break buried in the “millionaires” income tax of which Pedersen is the lead sponsor. (This tax break has since been removed by the House.) 

Pedersen has also expressed support of rolling back the estate tax increase passed last session. He told The Stranger he does not support his seatmate Rep. Shaun Scott’s new tax proposal, the Well Washington Fund, which would institute a payroll expense tax similar to Seattle’s JumpStart, because it is not politically feasible. 

“I think that Senator Pedersen’s alliance with corporations is fundamentally out of step with our district,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell referenced the historical outcomes of elections and ballot initiatives in the 43rd district. 

“We have affirmed over and over again that we believe in taxing the rich, in a fair and safe community for all of us,” Sabio-Howell said. “That makes me really excited about what kind of visionary leadership could be coming out of the 43rd, and I want to offer that this is our first chance in 20 years to choose our fighter.”

An affordability platform

Rather than cutting, Sabio-Howell wants to expand state investments in child care, education, housing, transit, and health care, and she wants to pay for this by taxing the ultra-wealthy corporations in Washington.

“It doesn’t feel like enough to me to defend a system that isn’t working for us, or to just hold the line on already inadequately funded programs,” Sabio-Howell said. “We need to be reinvesting in those programs and building them out to make sure they actually can work for people, particularly working people.”

While Sabio-Howell supports Pedersen’s millionaires tax, she doesn’t think it is adequate, particularly because any funding from the new tax wouldn’t be available until 2029. Unlike Pedersen, she doesn’t support rolling back taxes on the wealthy, such as the aforementioned estate tax reduction, and she would like to see the legislature pass a wealth tax and Scott’s Well Washington Fund. 

She doesn’t support the sales tax rollback in the millionaires tax that would have downstream revenue hit to Sound Transit. 

Among Sabio-Howell’s priorities are making universal childcare a reality and better funding K-12 education. 

“The paramount duty of the state legislature is to fund basic education, and that needs to be a critical priority, just based on everything we know about how that then sets young people and families up for success in Washington, and saves the state money in the long run,” Sabio-Howell said. 

While Sabio-Howell supports a wide variety of means to make housing more affordable, she is particularly enthusiastic about the idea of a statewide social housing program, citing her district’s strong support for Seattle’s social housing initiatives. She said she was disappointed that last year’s rent stabilization bill was so watered down.

“I think for so many of us, having our rent go up by anything close to 10% is also totally unaffordable,” Sabio-Howell said.

In addition to her desire to see further rent stabilization, Sabio-Howell said she would support efforts to do more to incentivize upzoning and strengthen tenant protections. She’s a proponent of the failed neighborhood cafe and corner store bill, talking about the importance of community building and place making.

Sabio-Howell said she expects to be a renter herself for the foreseeable future.

“The dark joke of people who are young is that it’s almost a laughable idea that we would ever be able to buy a house here in Washington generally, but particularly in the 43rd, a place where it’s actually a big, exciting step to move out of a studio apartment into a one bedroom,” Sabio-Howell said.

When considering legislation to make housing more abundant and affordable, Sabio-Howell emphasized the importance of such laws having teeth and dedicated resources for enforcement to hold communities accountable. 

Sabio-Howell said it’s the state’s responsibility to provide resources for a robust transit system in the state. She’s interested not only in building out Sound Transit’s connections but also providing more frequent service, better pay for operators, and possibly even lowering fares. She mentioned the dearth of both renters and regular transit users in office at the state level and how that impacts policymaking. 

Health care is another area that Sabio-Howell is interested in making more affordable, citing the increasing number of people who are losing coverage or having to forego it because of rising premiums. 

“When it comes to protecting and reinvesting in health care, that’s a place where the state legislature is on the front line, is maybe both our first and our last defense against devastating federal cuts,” Sabio-Howell said. 

In addition to using funds from the Well Washington fund to cover some of these gaps, should that legislation pass, Sabio-Howell said she thinks the state could eventually accomplish universal healthcare. During her time as a communications specialist at the senate, she worked with Senator Emily Randall on passing the Universal Health Care Commission, a first step towards that goal, and she spoke about taking additional serious steps in that direction. 

Sabio-Howell expressed support for even-year elections for local offices and converting Washington’s very part-time legislature to a full-time year-round body, which she said would allow more working class people to serve in elected office. 

On public safety and immigration

Sabio-Howell would like the state legislature to revisit some of the accountability issues related to policing that the public organized around in 2020, citing the legislature’s rollback of police use of force standards and high-speed pursuit standards in subsequent legislative sessions. She also spoke about the ineffectiveness of the $100 million police hiring incentive that Governor Bob Ferguson insisted on including in the budget last year, under threat of veto. Recent reporting from The Washington Standard revealed that no new police officers have yet been hired as a result of that program.

With U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both expanding its surveillance apparatus and tapping into local surveillance data, Sabio-Howell says it’s important to protect immigrants from surveillance, along with the entire community. She also noted the need to protect consumers from surveillance surge pricing, referencing a bill that died earlier this session. 

“In general, government, and I mean this broadly, at the federal level, the state level, has really been so many years behind the ball when it comes to regulating big tech,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell comes from a mixed-status family, meaning a family with different immigration statuses. In the past, she has volunteered outside of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, helping people who had just been released without any money or means of communication, who often don’t speak English. 

“It’s extremely cruel,” Sabio-Howell said. “It’s a blight on our state, and it’s the state’s responsibility to do something about that.”

In addition to adding more parameters to protect data from ICE, Sabio-Howell outlined several steps she’d like to see the state take in response to ICE’s ramp-up of immigration enforcement. She supports the ban on law enforcement covering their faces, which has now passed out of both chambers. She’d like to either ban or severely limit ICE’s ability to operate in sensitive locations like hospitals, child care centers, and courthouses. She is interested in looking into stripping incentives from companies that work with ICE, making it more expensive to do so. And she wants more pathways for people to be able to sue ICE for violating their constitutional rights.

A way forward

Rather than trying to maintain the status quo in our state, Sabio-Howell believes in dreaming bigger and revitalizing and expanding the services that could make living in Washington and the 43rd LD even better. And she’s looking forward to presenting that bold vision to voters who might be ready for a different approach in leadership after 20 years. 

“It makes me really excited to think that we could opt into leadership that is moving in lockstep and shoulder to shoulder with our visionary values,” Sabio-Howell said. “Policy is something we build, not something that happens to us, and nowhere is that more possible or more true in our history.”

The post Labor Leader Sabio-Howell Launches Bid Challenging State Senator Jamie Pedersen first appeared on The Urbanist.

Julie Kang is running for the open seat in Seattle City Council’s District 5 this year, and is the first candidate in the race to qualify for democracy vouchers. She brings a successful career in banking, after co-founding Pacific International Bank, which focused on supporting Korean-American owned small businesses and grew to $200 million in assets before merging with Bank of Hope. 

While Kang emphasized that item when applying for an appointment to the Sara Nelson-led City Council in 2025, a year later in pitching herself to D5 voters, she is emphasizing her experiences in immigrant rights, education, and nonprofit work.

An immigrant from Korea and lifelong educator, Kang has a long list of professional, civic engagement, and volunteer experience, from serving as co-chair on the King County Immigrant and Refugee Commission to volunteering at her local food bank. She has never held elected office.

A passionate educator, Kang has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle University, training teachers to work with students who are multilingual and have diverse needs. 

“When we think about making decisions, policy decisions, I always say I put on my researcher hat, and I have to think about the whole continuum,” Kang told The Urbanist. “As a city council member, even though I am very active in my 32nd LD [legislative district] and the Democratic Party, we also have to think about all of the spectrum of political views and lived experiences, so I think that is a strength I bring as an individual.”

Kang is also a landlord, owning a single family rental property in District 5 that she told The Urbanist is her mother’s house. Public records show that Kang owns a third property in Lynnwood, in addition to the house in which she lives in District 5. 

Kang vied for the temporary appointment of the District 5 seat last summer following the resignation of then-Councilmember Cathy Moore. Moore served as councilmember for a year and a half before leaving, citing “health and personal reasons”. 

Moore was known for sponsoring the controversial Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone legislation, proposing a city-level capital gains tax, and supporting an update to the City’s Code of Ethics that would have weakened those rules: for example, by allowing councilmembers who are also landlords to vote on legislation that directly impacts landlords. 

In an unusual move, after her resignation, PubliCola reported that Moore sent in several questions to former colleague Councilmember Maritza Rivera to ask the potential successors to her seat. Moore also continued editing legislation after her resignation, with a special interest in expanding tree retention rules in the City’s growth plan.

The council ultimately chose to appoint Debora Juarez to the seat. Juarez had previously served as the District 5 councilmember from 2016 to 2023 and is now serving on an interim basis until the election this November. Whoever wins this race will serve out the remainder of Moore’s four-year term and will have to run again in 2027. 

Kang is facing off with climate advocate Nilu Jenks, who is running in the progressive lane.

The outcome of the race this year could shift the current power balance on the council. Right now the council is divided into three groups of three: Bob Kettle, Rivera, and Rob Saka constitute the centrist flank – along with the recently ousted Council President Sara Nelson – that ran hard on public safety; Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin compose the solidly progressive wing; and Joy Hollingsworth, Dan Strauss, and Juarez sit somewhere in the middle. 

Community building through council

Recently, Kang had been running a program that brought teachers from all over the country to the Wing Luke Museum in the Chinatown-International District to learn Asian Pacific Islander (API) history. But when Kang learned the program, formerly funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, had been defunded by the Trump administration, she realized she needed to do more. 

“I know as councilmembers, as elected officials, there’s so many squeaky wheels and so many things that the constituents are asking for, and we can’t get back to every single one of them, but we need to at least try, and we need to use our privilege and resources to get them to our constituents and our neighbors,” Kang said. “So for me, that’s why I want to run, because I am very fortunate to be in the space to have the knowledge, and I think I can be a bridge builder.”

Kang has been busy putting together whistle kits with ‘Know Your Rights’ information and distributing them to neighbors. Community members are disseminating whistle kits across the country in order for neighbors to alert those at risk of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions and allow for rapid community response. 

“What I have realized is that when you’re at the table where these discussions are being made at the higher level, we have more opportunities to represent our neighbors,” Kang said.

Kang pointed to her experience in banking and managing budgets as an educator as being illustrative of her financial literacy, a skill much needed by councilmembers who must deal with Seattle’s structural budget deficit. The City faces an estimated budget deficit of at least $127 million in 2027, with no long-term fix in sight. 

When The Urbanist asked about the ongoing budget hole, Kang first brought up Seattle’s sweetened beverage tax, questioning whether the proceeds of the tax are really going to provide healthy meals for Seattle’s students. The debate over the sweetened beverage tax has typically been between the harms of levying another regressive tax on Seattleites versus the health benefits of selling significantly fewer sweetened beverages in the city. 

When pressed further about Seattle’s budget woes, Kang suggested a combination of cuts with the option of new taxes. 

“We can’t just continue to tax, even though these are some opportunities to tax,” Kang said. “We have to look at what we are currently using, and are we making priorities based on the most needs of, for example, North Seattle? I think North Seattle has not always received our share of resources. Yet, I feel we’re getting more [than our] share of our challenges.”

Regarding the food desert in Lake City and food access more generally, Kang said at the food bank where she volunteers, they’re seeing people they haven’t historically seen before. She also mentioned the recent loss of the Amazon Fresh on Aurora Avenue N. Kang said she’d want to work in coalition with state electeds on bills and efforts to encourage grocery stores to stay. She didn’t have specific examples of what the council could do directly to address these food access issues.

Meanwhile, District 5 is getting a new Pinehurst light rail station at NE 130th Street, which Kang said is exciting. However, she emphasized needing more infrastructure to make density work. 

“Yes, we need the funding, but again, we cannot continue to fund to drive people out,” Kang said. “We need a city that works for working people. And we also have to prioritize how we’re going to think about all of our neighbors, starting with the young children who really need to get to school feeling safe to our elderly who want to stay in the neighborhood where they built a home for the last 30, 50 years.” 

Kang spoke about the difficulty of traveling from east to west in District 5 and wants to see some kind of connector or bus line that would address the issue. Later in 2026 after Sound Transit opens Pinehurst Station, King County Metro will launch Route 77, a crosstown bus connecting Bitter Lake, Lake City, and the light rail station. It’s unclear if Kang was referring to Route 77, or an additional improvement to the network.

She said she’s aware of accessibility issues like difficulty using strollers in areas of D5 or uneven sidewalks making it challenging for some elderly people to walk safely, and she also wants to be mindful of small businesses. 

Like her opponent Jenks, Kang would have supported Rinck’s Comprehensive Plan amendment last fall to add eight new neighborhood growth centers, calling it community building. The proposal was tabled but docketed to come back in “Phase 3” of the growth plan, following supplemental environmental work and community outreach process.

On public safety

With ICE detaining people off the streets throughout the country, Kang said she couldn’t currently support the use of surveillance in Seattle.

“Right now, surveillance cameras cannot work because even though we know, or we’ve heard, that the cameras function differently than the national ones and we are doing it the Seattle way, we should not collect data, because if we have it, if we’re ever subpoenaed, we don’t have control over it,” Kang said. 

Kang said she’d rethink her stance on surveillance if the sociopolitical climate changes, but right now the thought of surveillance causes people to feel anxiety and fear. 

Kang also disagreed with her predecessor on the SOAP and Stay Out of Drug (SODA) zones, saying she doesn’t support these policies. She cited the opposition of newly elected Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans to the SOAP and SODA zones, saying Evans is the expert. 

The SOAP and SODA zones were strongly supported by prior City Attorney Ann Davison.

“I want to make sure my constituents are on the same page, and if not, I worry more about the people who have different perspectives,” Kang said. 

As an alternative to supporting the SOAP legislation, Kang wants more resources to help with sex trafficking.

“I always say no mother wants to see their child go up and down [the street as a sex worker], but again, if their basic needs are not met today, do they know that they have options? Do we have enough resources?” Kang said.

Regarding gun violence, Kang thinks we need to educate and talk more about the consequences ahead of gun violence incidents. She spoke specifically about the danger to bus drivers who currently have to call King County to report incidents, with the county then reaching out to the City of Seattle, causing slower responses. 

“I think it’s important for us to see who owns guns, how are they stored, and then all of those stolen and unmonitored, the guns that we can’t account for,” Kang said.

In her statement of intent to be appointed to the D5 seat last year, Kang expressed interest in exploring “the possibility of a North Precinct location.” When The Urbanist asked about this idea, Kang said she liked the idea of moving the North Precinct to a location that is more visible and accessible and that might speed up response times. However, after speaking to Juarez, who has long been interested in something similar, Kang said that with the city’s current financial challenges, a new North Precinct probably wouldn’t be possible. 

Instead, Kang expressed the hope that between the expanded Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) team and increased police officer hiring, response times to 911 calls will still improve. 

Unfortunately, CARE Chief Amy Barden has said 911 response times won’t improve without dispatch independence, which has been prevented by the recent Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract approved in December.

Kang says she knows she doesn’t have all the answers, but she wants to make sure to put the constituents of District 5 at the center of decision-making. 

“With the current energy in the city, with leadership and the passionate and committed neighbors, I think we can build a district where people can live, work, belong, and thrive,” Kang said. “It just takes a leader who can voice that at the level where decisions are being made.”

The post Educator Julie Kang Enters Fray in D5 Seattle Council Race first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Seattle Transit Measure is up for renewal this fall, and expanding bus service could be a greater focus in that package, based on our conversation. Wilson hinted that more bus lanes could be on the way, noting that she campaigned for Denny Way bus lanes for the perpetually late Route 8 — a bus lane the previous administration sought to rule out.

In her role on the Sound Transit Board, Wilson also pledged to bring a collaborative approach focused on delivering results for riders regionwide and looking at the system holistically. She shared skepticism of the idea of dropping the second downtown tunnel from the Ballard Link project (in hopes of addressing its ballooning budget). Bolstering transit capacity and system reliability is key and the second tunnel brings that, she said.

FIFA World Cup preparations are another topic we dove into, with transportation and public space improvements in the works to accommodate the throngs of fans that will be in Seattle for the matches that the city is hosting. It sounds like some improvements have a chance to become permanent.

Note: We also asked Wilson about Seattle’s growth plan — as it has played out through the never-ending Comprehensive Plan process — but we opted to pull that question out and turn it into a separate article. Watch for that piece later this week!

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

Transportation department

Doug Trumm: What changes would you like to see at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and what direction did you give Angela Brady when it comes to running the department?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, there’s a lot. This year is very front-loaded with big decisions, big important things happening at the City regarding transportation. And I felt that it was very important to have someone at the helm who had really strong operational experience, and who was going to be able to just hit the ground running as we make some of these big decisions. And so I’m excited to work with Angela Brady on that.

Obviously, Sound Transit is a big part of what decisions need to be made about early this year, and I’m looking forward to taking up my seat at the board. Part of this is just wanting to make sure that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle and for our whole region in a difficult funding environment. So, we’re going to be working on that.

The Seattle Transit Measure renewal coming up, obviously, is another thing that’s very much on my mind. Our transit service is worse now than it was in 2020 when that measure was last passed. And that’s a problem. And so I really think we need to chart a course to getting back to 2019 service levels and better. So, that’s a very high priority for me.

As we think about levy implementation, we want to hit the ground running on delivering promised levy projects… because there’s so much there, right? And part of this is about just like doing the projects, delivering results, but I think really doing that through a lens of: what are the outcomes that we’re looking for? And we’re trying to improve mobility for people. So, as we look at the prioritizing on the levy projects, really making sure that we’re paying attention to what people are going to feel as they move around the city, and especially, of course, to the more vulnerable road users, and trying to improve improve safety, since we’re so far away from our vision zero goals.

So, that’s all fairly high-level things that are coming up early this year. But, those are some of the conversations that that I’ve been having with Angela.

Obviously, I’m also a big fan of bus lanes, and campaigned on bus lanes on Denny [Way]. And so I think another thing that we’ve been talking about is, what’s the low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the experience of transit riders in Seattle, making transit more reliable and more comfortable? And so that’s another thing that that’s going to be important.

Seattle Transit Measure renewal

Doug Trumm: You managed to answer our second question with your first answer, but I’ll just see if you had anything else to add. We wanted to see what you were thinking about the Seattle Transit Measure renewal measure. You mentioned getting service levels back up. Anything else that you wanted to add?

Katie Wilson: In my mind, the Seattle Transit Measure is about funding transit service. And so I know there’s a tendency to want to put a bunch of other stuff in there. I really do want to make sure that we are prioritizing getting our service levels and reliability back up.

I also have many, many memories from 2014 when we had a county-wide measure that failed, right? I care not just about Seattle’s bus service, but about our whole region’s bus service. And so I think having conversations with the county about how we get back to a regional measure and with advocates is also something that’s important to me. So, as we think about Seattle’s measure, we’re going to be having those conversations as well.

Obviously, affordable transit programs, transit access programs, which have been folded into that measure, also. I’m strongly supportive, and so we want to continue those. If there’s an opportunity to to expand on those, for example, by making transit passes available to more people who live in subsidized housing. I think that would be a great direction to move in as well.

Doug Trumm: Yeah, and I was curious, if wanting to partner with the county, is that something that’s still feasible in the 2026 timeline, or is that a future?

Katie Wilson: I don’t know. I had been assuming it wasn’t. If there’s a pathway, I won’t have that decision. [If not and] we’re just doing Seattle, then that’s a future conversation.

Seattle Library Levy

Amy Sundberg: I want to talk about the library levy, because that’s also a big one coming up. Of course, the libraries have suffered a lot because of the pandemic, and there are a lot of related library services that people don’t necessarily think about when they think about libraries that either are already funded by the levy or could be funded by the levy. So what is your broad thinking about that?

Katie Wilson: I love libraries. That’s probably going to be like the depth of my answer right now. So yeah, we haven’t really had a detailed conversation yet about what’s anticipated to be in the levy. I mean, I know there’s also some issues floating around about a levy lid, because there’s a several levies coming up, so it’s kind of that conversation. But yeah, we can maybe talk later in a more detailed way, once I’ve had more thorough briefing. But, yeah, I love libraries. Very supportive of libraries.

Sound Transit decisions

Doug Trumm: You’re taking the helm at a really sensitive time for Sound Transit. What are your top priorities heading into your first board meeting there? And how are you approaching the decisions made by your predecessors regarding the alignments, whether North and South of Chinatown-International District (CID), or others?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, high level, I think it’s really important that we are delivering what voters are expecting, and also funding problems are real, right? And so I’m going to be coming in, I’m looking forward to meeting with the other North King subarea folks, and just with all the board members. And I also think it’s really important to remember that we are building a regional system, and the whole system only works if the whole system works.

Seattle is the biggest in terms of people voting for the funding, right? So it is very important that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle residents and Seattle riders, but at the same time, again, the system only works if the whole system works. And so I don’t want to set up an antagonism between Seattle and the rest of the system. And so I’m looking forward to those conversations with all the board members, so that we can navigate these challenges together.

I’m very committed to building out the lines that we promised to voters. And we’ll be working with the other board members on the specifics of how we get there in terms of CID. My understanding of where things are at now is that we are still waiting for some analysis back from the agency around the North and South option, is that correct? And maybe the [4th Avenue] Shallow [option] as well. I’m looking forward to receiving that.

My position hasn’t changed from what it was during the campaign, which is basically, I want the best outcome for our transit system and transit riders in terms of connectivity, and also care about the impacts on the neighborhood and want to make sure that we’re developing stations in a way that’s minimizing the disruption and displacement. So, we’re going to be working with folks in the CID and paying attention to what Sound Transit comes back with making these decisions.

Doug Trumm: Lately some of the action has been around the single tunnel option, dropping the second tunnel in Downtown Seattle, and it seemed like the board chair and a few of his allies were like: let’s just not even think about that. But, there were other members who were interested in it. So it’s in limbo. Are you hoping that that is going to be at least an option for you going forward?

Katie Wilson: We need a reliable system, and I think it’s pretty clear that with the single tunnel, we don’t have a reliable system. And so as we’re building it out, we need that capacity, that a second tunnel seems to be the only way that we’re going to get that. I’m happy to have things looked at, but to me, it’s pretty clear that that’s the direction we need to go.

Homelessness and emergency housing plans

Amy Sundberg: Can we talk a little bit about emergency housing? I know one of your big commitments was 4,000 units by the end of four years, but I also had the understanding that you wanted to get moving quickly because of the World Cup. What can we expect that to look like? And what can we expect to see in the next three to six months?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, this is very, very top priority for me, something that my team is working on now. And, yeah, this is going to look like a few things. So, just on the defensive side, we need to not lose permanent supportive housing and shelter that we already have. And so we’re very engaged right now in the in the strategy and conversation around contingent care funds, and trying to make sure that we’re fortifying our permanent supportive housing against potential cuts so that we’re not adding to our homelessness problem.

I talked a lot on the campaign about tiny house villages, micro modular housing, being part of the solution. And so we’re going to be working on identifying sites, and that will mean looking at land that city departments potentially have at their disposal, and also working with partners, including the county, including the port, including the state, to try to identify sites that would be appropriate for tiny house villages or other kinds of micro, modular housing. And then, working with service providers that can operate that housing.

We’re also looking, right now, at the City budget, and figuring out what flexibility we have to funnel some money toward that. So that’s something that we will certainly have some announcements, more specific plans to share in the coming weeks. But yes, you’re right that there is urgency for us around the timeline of the World Cup and trying to make sure that we are opening up really significant numbers of new units before June, so that we can really help some of the folks who are unsheltered inside in the downtown core and adjacent neighborhoods, and neighborhoods around the city, but with a focus there, because of World Cup, and get folks the support that they need. So that’s part of it, and then there’s others.

I know that the Downtown Seattle Association and the PDA have a project in Pioneer Square around some new shelters. So we’re also trying to move forward and look for opportunities to open up other kinds of new shelter, not just tiny house villages. And this is really going to be a team effort, right? We’re starting the process of reaching out to potential partners, churches, faith communities, the business community, and we’re going to all have to pull together and identify space, identify operators, identify funding, and so, yeah, this is going to be one of the big things that we’re working on over the coming six months.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, it’s a big effort. I always say it’s not an intractable problem, but it seems like it has felt that way.

Katie Wilson: It has felt like that for a very long time. We’re going to try to break that logjam.

World Cup preparations

Doug Trumm: Zooming out a little bit, we’re curious about not just homelessness and emergency housing, but what you’re looking at for your first six months as key things to get moving, whether that’s World Cup related or just in general and whether transportation-related, public space, or amenities.

Katie Wilson: I probably won’t have as specific an answer to this yet as you want, but very much aware that we need to make sure that our transportation system is ready for the World Cup, and I think there’s some opportunities around public space to make improvements that will last beyond the World Cup — don’t have specific announcements yet.

Public bathrooms is something that I talked a lot about on the campaign, and I think it would be great if we could start to actually do something about that pre-World Cup. I think we’re gonna have a lot of people in our city walking around enjoying the city, and it would be nice if they had a place to pee.

Doug Trumm: That isn’t just a porta-potty.

Amy Sundberg: Or even just the porta-potty. [Laughter]

Katie Wilson: I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to think about the World Cup, right? There’s the emergency mentality of like: oh, this big thing is happening, we have to be prepared and make sure it’s not a disaster, right? So there’s that lens, which obviously is important from the City’s point of view, but then there’s also the economic opportunity lens where there’s going to be all this money flowing into the city, and we want to make sure that that is benefiting small businesses around the city and residents. And so there’s that kind of lens, which is something that we’re also thinking about, how do we get all the visitors, not just kind of huddled around the stadiums, but out into neighborhoods and experiencing our culture and history of the neighborhoods, and also patronizing small businesses.

And then there’s the games themselves, right? And wanting to make sure that Seattle residents are have the opportunity to be excited about the games and to watch them and get kind of swept up in the World Cup moment. And so that’s another thing that we’re thinking about: how do we make sure that there are watch parties that are accessible to people and that you don’t just need to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a ticket in order to feel like this is an event that you’re part of as well.

Yeah, I also have an idea about getting people playing soccer, and we’ll see, we’ll hopefully be able to do something along those lines, too.

Surveillance and federal overreach

Amy Sundberg: Related to the World Cup, surveillance is hot topic. With what’s happening federally, of course, it’s become an even greater concern than it was before. I know that at least one or two groups have already sent you letters saying what they would like to see and asking for you to act fairly quickly on matters of surveillance. So I was wondering how you’re approaching that topic, and what you’re thinking now that you’re actually mayor.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. My position from the campaign has not changed. I’m very, very concerned about the the risks to immigrant communities and other vulnerable folks from expanding surveillance, and also from some of the surveillance that already exists in our city. And so, you know, it’s my third day on the job here, so… I take this very seriously.

And so as we’re standing up our team in the mayor’s office and starting to get all the wheels rolling in terms of our policy shop and our work with departments, we’re going to be reviewing all the surveillance policies and programs that are in place, and talking to the folks who have written in with concerns and others, and coming up with a plan. And so I don’t have the details of exactly what that looks like, but it’s very important to me that we’re protecting people’s privacy and not unnecessarily handing tools to the federal government that could be used to target people.

Media Strategy

Amy Sundberg: One of the things that I’ve been interested in that I think is going to be really important for your office, is having a direct line of communication with Seattleites. We saw the first right-wing media attack [of your administration] a couple days ago. So it started right away. I expect that will continue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has just announced the Office of Mass Engagement as part of his strategy to deal with similar issues in New York. And so I wanted to know what your administration’s approach to that was going to be.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. I mean, there’s a number of pieces to this, right? There’s how are we getting accurate information about what we’re doing and why out to the public, and that is a challenge in our media environment, right? And we just saw that this week with the kerfuffle, if you want to call it that, around SPD and drug arrests. And I think it’s an all-of-the-above strategy. So we have to use traditional media as much as we can set the record straight, put out the statement that says: No, this is actually what happened, and hope that that filters out as much as possible.

And I think also there’s a very important social media side to this. A lot of people, that’s where they’re getting their news anyway. So if we can really build the mayor’s office’s and the city’s social media presence so that people are hearing from us directly in the videos that we make, or in the statements that we put out, and they can trust that, yes, this is actually from the mayor’s office, they’re talking to me, this is what they’re doing: that’s another important piece of that. And then also working through trusted community organizations and folks out in the community that have networks where they are also spreading news and information.

And yeah, we haven’t started an Office of Mass Engagement. Yeah, I’m just gonna be constantly compared to Mamdani, aren’t I?

Amy Sundberg: It was interesting idea. It’s a really big problem, right?

Katie Wilson: I think it’s very important that the city is working through ethnic media and non-English language media to make sure that we’re reaching communities that are not going to be like easily reached through traditional media as well. Again, getting out accurate information about what the city is up to and things that people need to be aware of. In this very challenging media environment, it’s going to be a multi-pronged strategy.

Also, I have this idea around public funding for local news outlets. And if we can get that going, that longer term, deeper project is strengthening our local news ecosystem so that news organizations actually have the funding that they need to do investigative reporting, to produce high-quality local news, then that also will help.

Police department, CARE, and culture change

Amy Sundberg: I wanted to ask about Seattle Police Department (SPD) Chief Shon Barnes. I know you decided to retain him for now, and he’s had kind of a rocky first year, and I’m sure you’re aware of all the reasons why that is. So I was wondering what expectations you’ve expressed to him in terms of what you’re looking for in his leadership of SPD?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, I guess I’ll say I’m really looking forward to working closely with him to move the department and to move the city’s public safety response in a good direction. And I retained him because I think we can do that. There have been some challenges, some stumbles over the last year, but really I think that there’s also responsibility for that to be put on the previous administration.

It’s very important that, as the mayor, I have a very close and trusting working relationship with my police chief. And this is a team effort, and I’m not sure that was really the case before. So, in terms of expectations, or the direction that that I think that I’m hoping that we can move, we’re going to continue hiring officers, right? And I think we’re also going to need to be really creative and intentional about how we’re using the force that we have to address the problems that people are experiencing in their neighborhoods and on the ground. So I’m really eager to be working with SPD and with stakeholders in different neighborhoods where there are persistent public safety issues to really get to a better place.

And we have some good models for how to start doing that, really in the work that’s going on in the U District and Downtown and several other neighborhoods. So I really want to build on that and make sure that we have a really good working relationship between SPD and the CARE [Community Assisted Response and Engagement] department.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, that was going to be my follow up, because I feel like it’s not there right now.

Katie Wilson: Correct. And again, I think that it’s really not useful to try to assign blame in this case, and it’s really the responsibility of The Mayor’s Office to develop that partnership and to oversee that partnership and to make sure that those two departments have what they need, including strong direction from the Mayor’s Office to work together and make sure that the appropriate responder is coming to a given call. Obviously, we are somewhat constrained in that by the recently approved police contract. But within those boundaries, we’re going to do everything we can to make the best use we can of our alternative response and then also collaboration with the service providers that do similar work in terms of outreach and alternative response.

Amy Sundberg: My understanding is if SPD wanted to cooperate more, the contract wouldn’t be quite as crippling as it might otherwise be, because they still have a choice [as to when to refer calls to the CARE team].

Katie Wilson: Right, and so I think that part of the work ahead is really working with Chief Barnes to make sure that SPD and all of our officers are on the same page around our goals and making good judgments in the moment. So that’s very high priority for me. In general, I think within SPD that we want being an officer to be a good job, not just in terms of the pay that you’re getting, but that officers are there feeling that they’re providing a public service, feeling that they have a relationship with the public, with the neighborhoods that they’re working in, and also that within the force, they’re respected, they’re, you know, not sexually harassed, right?

I think it’s important that SPD be a place that women, that minority officers have a good experience working in. And this is so important if we’re trying to create a situation where our force reflects the communities that it’s serving and feels that they have that relationship. And so there’s some work to do there.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, the culture there is another seemingly intractable problem. I guess we’ll find out.

The post One Week In, Katie Wilson Charts the Path Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

While Kwon came in first in the August primary with nearly 28% of the vote in a six-way race, his campaign’s message had been high-level and light on specifics. District 5 voters may not have a very firm idea of what Kwon hopes to accomplish at the County Council — at least beyond avoiding new taxes. (Kwon declined to return a questionnaire to participate in The Urbanist’s endorsement process.)

Kwon is facing off against Steffanie Fain in November’s general election for King County Council’s District 5 seat. Earlier this week, The Urbanist published our interview with Fain.

A current SeaTac city councilmember, Kwon spoke with The Urbanist in August about his stances on a number of issues, including Metro’s looming budget shortfall and affordable housing. 

Kwon questioned how King County could come up so short in revenue. Last year, he said, the County collected more than $10 billion in revenue, a record-setting collection number — “and this year, they came up $125 million short.”

“And so this year, they had to implement an additional sales tax in the name of public safety, the public safety sales tax,” Kwon said. “How can they be collecting the most amount of revenue, historical numbers, and yet still come up short? We need to do more of a deep dive into the finances and make sure that the budget is being balanced correctly and spent wisely, because at the end of the day, you can’t do anything else if you don’t have enough money to pay for it.”

Kwon contrasted the County’s decision to implement a new sales tax to support public safety funding with his own work on SeaTac’s council. When he was first elected 10 years ago, Kwon walked into a city with a shortfall of between $1.3 and $2.5 million — hardly the same level King County is facing, but, he said, “the city of SeaTac only has a population of 30,000, and so it was a lot.”

Kwon attributes his and his colleagues’ deep-dive into the City’s budget to create a managed reduction program that brought the City up to a $2.5 million surplus within six months. As a result, for the last 10 years, Kwon said, the City has not had to raise taxes or implement new ones. He said that it has had increasing surplus revenues since then, and has been able to pursue “major capital improvement projects,” such as expanding park space, hiring more staff, and providing more funding for human and social services. He said they are also discussing a new civic center.

The data Kwon sent doesn’t reflect increasing surplus revenues, but it does show that the city has not fallen into another deficit and that revenues have, to some degree every year, outpaced expenditures since 2016.

Kwon said that in his own experience, it pays to go through budgets line by line. For instance, he said, one of the things he discovered, after being elected, was that different departments all used different printing companies, rather than one printing company. These companies, he said, all charged different prices, and he found that there was no uniformity to the prices in a way that allowed for proper budgeting. He proposed that the city go with one locally owned, family-run company to meet its printing needs, rather than a different one for every department.

“As a result, the city was able to save somewhere around, maybe, 30% or more just on printing costs alone,” Kwon said. “And that was a lot, because it’s not a one-time saving, this was an ongoing saving year after year.”

Metro Transit

Kwon said that he thinks Metro’s biggest budget shortfall lies with fare enforcement, which had already showed signs of slowing before the Covid-19 pandemic, and fell off a proverbial cliff starting in 2020.

The Metro Bus Farebox Recovery data from the County’s most recent Metro performance report shows that Metro’s fare collection has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, and has stayed nearly stagnant for the last three years.

Kwon said that he supports elders and students not having to pay full fares, but that “able-bodied adults should be paying what the fare is.”

Metro has dipped into reserves to make up for declining revenue and rising operating costs, but that approach will soon become untenable. Even an optimistic scenario for increasing fare revenue isn’t likely to cover the gap on its own. Metro projects to have an estimated $500 million shortfall by the 2028-2029 biennium, fully exhausting reserves by the following biennium. Sales tax revenue is Metro’s largest source for its billion-dollar transit operating budget, while fare revenue is projected to bring in $100 million in 2025.

When asked whether he would support additional revenue for Metro, Kwon said that he might, but only after getting more information. As far as potential sources of revenue, he said, “there are federal transportation grants that are always available. There are also state grants that are always available.”

“There are also things like the lodging tax that could potentially be used for public transportation because it does support and promote tourism as well,” he said. “There are existing revenue sources that could be pursued that might be available. … It’s not something that I would be able to pinpoint right now and say, okay, this is the new revenue source.”

Kwon stopped short at increasing taxes, specifically because “the cost of living is just increasing. And that’s one of the challenges that I’m hearing from a lot of residents, especially in South King County, is that they’re getting priced out of the area.”

Affordable housing

Affordability is an ongoing issue in the Seattle area — and, increasingly, into South King County. A dearth of affordable housing options means that many King County residents are increasingly cost-burdened, as cost of living outpaces wages, and they are forced to pay more every year relative to what they earn to stay housed.

Earlier this year, InvestigateWest found that, across the state, landlords who operate affordable housing units have started serving eviction notices at historic levels, as pandemic protections expire. In King County alone, eviction filings in January 2025 were 66% higher than they were prior to the onset of the pandemic. This year’s state eviction rates are on track to outpace even last year’s, which was 53% higher than in 2019.

Kwon doesn’t support a county-wide measure to fund affordable housing that involves any new taxes. He said instead that he supports private-public partnerships, like the one SeaTac recently entered into at Angle Lake that serves those at 50% and 60% area median income. The building’s developer, Mercy Housing, funded the development through a mix of private and public sources, including Amazon, King County, and the Washington State Housing Finance Commission.

He said he also supports more private development of affordable housing, and pointed to Polaris at SeaTac and Adara, a mixed-use residential housing project, as an example.

Asked what kind of housing he would like to see built, Kwon said he would like to see “a lot more focus on redevelopment or new development of vacant, underutilized properties along light rail stations, along major transit routes, transit hubs, areas like that.”

“That’s what I would like to see more of,” he said. “I would also like to see more public-private partnerships so that everyone is working together to achieve a common goal. And at the same time, I would like to see more ground floor commercial space included in these new multifamily residential developments.”

Kwon said that if the County wants to solve its affordable housing crisis, it needs to focus on creating affordable housing in areas where there is also easy access to transit.

“And that would solve two problems: Number one, it would solve the lack of affordable housing,” Kwon said. “But number two, it would also solve the accessibility issue of folks who would like easier access to public transportation.”

With few exceptions, transit-rich areas are already where builders focus their affordable housing projects.

“Entire bus stops… are shut down [in Kent],” Kwon said, pointing to cancelled bus routes. He said he did not know why this was an issue, but assumed that part of it may be due to low ridership, low funding, and shortage of workforce.

“It could be a combination of all of those, right?” he said. “But at the end of the day, things like that are a disservice to the community, because when you see a public service or a public amenity that has been available, and then all of a sudden it’s taken away, that really, that really upsets a lot of people.”

At its Sept. 5 meeting, the Kent City Council took issue with King County’s proposal to cut Route 162, as part of its South Link Connections bus restructure ahead of the Federal Way Link light rail opening, as well as its assumption that elders and immigrants would know how to use the MetroFlex app, the Kent Reporter reported. Councilmembers said that the County is once again opting to try to cut a Kent bus route without addressing what one councilmember called “a transportation desert north of SE 240th and the overall transportation inequity in SE King County.”

Regressive taxes, vulnerable communities

Washington state ranks as the second-worst state in the country when it comes to regressive taxes, falling behind only Florida.

Kwon said that he will do everything he can to ensure that local taxes are not regressive, and that the cost of living is as low as possible for people, particularly those who are at highest risk of displacement. He said that this is an issue particularly near and dear to his heart, because SeaTac has “among the highest poverty rates out of any city in the entire county.”

And, of course, this does not mean increasing taxes.

“If you’re increasing taxes on the residents, that really doesn’t help everybody,” Kwon said. “In fact, it generally ends up harming the people who can least afford to pay. On the flip side, we need to make sure that we are providing the services that are available for the lowest income bracket.”

He would like to implement programs in King County similar to those in SeaTac. For instance, Kwon said, the city puts 1.5% of its general fund towards human service agencies that provide services and programs to the public, free emergency assistance like mobile home roof repair, and free public entertainment.

Kwon also said that he supports restoring and expanding a number of programs that President Donald Trump’s actions have severely hobbled, such as health care, food assistance, and housing, and those that Trump’s actions have put in jeopardy, such as access to family planning providers.

Before committing to any way to fund such programs — new or restored and expanded — Kwon said he would have to dig into the budget, first, and that he would consider private-public partnerships over tax increases.

Organizational restructuring

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) has come under fire recently for a suite of issues, including, recently, its director coming under investigation for alleged racial bias and creating a “toxic work environment.”

When asked for his thoughts on the agency, and what he would propose to do with it, if elected, Kwon said that he thinks there may be merit in combining KCRHA with organizations like South King Housing & Homelessness Partners (SKHHP) that appear to have “overlapping, perhaps even identical goals.” Since SKHHP is a partnership of South King cities rather than a countywide entity, such a merger clearly faces logistical barriers.

Kwon argued merging agencies or programs could be a solution for other organizations.

“How many other multiple organizations are there that are trying to do the exact same thing that are basically each independently being funded?” Kwon asked. “Can’t we combine all of this into one effort and achieve a better outcome, or a more immediate outcome, or make a bigger impact at the end of the day?”

It’s a similar refrain that policymakers have long made and that inspired the launch of the KCRHA in the first place. And yet, five years into the homelessness authority’s existence, synergies have been limited and many problems stubbornly persist.

The post King County Council Frontrunner Peter Kwon Averse to Taxes, Bold Plans first appeared on The Urbanist.

Fain is an attorney with Coopersmith Law and president of Harborview Medical Center’s Board of Trustees, and earned the Seattle Times endorsement to help propel her through the primary. Though she supports several of the County’s initiatives, including its plan to electrify Metro’s fleet and to create more affordable housing, her chief concern lies with funding — namely, where the money will come from. Generally, she shared a preference to squeeze money out of existing budgets, rather than raise new taxes.

However, as The Urbanist’s interview with Kwon will show later this week, Kwon is even more tax-averse. For either, it could be a tough position to hold as the County navigates a building fiscal storm, with numerous departmental budgets springing holes.

Fain spoke with The Urbanist in August about her positions on pressing issues facing the County, including how to best address Metro’s budget shortfalls and how to best protect the County’s most vulnerable residents from President Donald Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional overreaches.

Metro + Affordable Housing

Though she supports King County’s goal to electrify Metro’s fleet by 2035, Fain worries that the plan may be too ambitious, when factoring in the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and the unsteady-at-best fiscal situation at the federal level.

“Part of the budget assumes large capital investments,” she said. “We’re going in the right direction — we can still continue to do that — and if there is not enough federal funding coming, because those grants come from the federal government to pay for new fleets, then we have to reprioritize and rethink our plan. So, I want to continue on the path of electrification, but also make sure we’re doing it in a sustainable way to withstand some of the challenges we’re seeing at the federal level.”

Like her opponent Kwon, Fain said that she really couldn’t speak to specific solutions for Metro without diving into the budget. But unlike Kwon, she didn’t take increasing taxes off the table to fill the gap while the council decides what the best routes forward could look like.

Fain also reviewed King County Council Chair Girmay Zahilay’s proposals in his workforce housing initiative, called the Regional Workforce Housing Initiative. Zahilay is running for King County Executive and led the August primary with 44% of the vote.

Council-approved in November 2024, the initiative directs the County Executive to develop a plan to use $1 billion or more of the County’s excess debt capacity to partner with different housing agencies and developers to create permanently rent-restricted, multi-bedroom workforce housing. The plan will include an estimate of how many homes the $1 billion debt financing could create, when paired with rent revenue from the mixed-income buildings — and if this revenue could sustain such a model going forward.

When she spoke with The Urbanist in August, Fain said that she did not feel prepared to talk about either Metro’s budget or the affordable housing plan, though she did note that “there was a lot of information that came out of that, both supporting the proposal, but also identifying some funding concerns.”

When The Urbanist followed up with Fain in September, she said that she had had a moment to review Zahilay’s housing initiative.

“While the report makes clear that rental income alone wouldn’t cover the debt, I see real potential in carefully leveraging bonds and pairing them with new revenue sources to make projects viable,” she said. “I’ll work to ensure we explore this tool carefully so that we can provide more affordable housing in a way that doesn’t put the County at financial risk.”

Fain also highlighted the need to ensure that existing affordable housing in King County is already in good condition, even as the County works to create more. She said that many units have degraded to the point of substandard, unsafe living conditions, which means that they sit vacant — which ultimately narrows the housing market further. 

“We can’t afford to let those desperately needed units go unused when so many families are struggling to find a place to live,” Fain said. “We should also remove barriers that drive up the cost of housing, by streamlining permitting, aligning regional planning, and utilizing partnerships with cities, nonprofits, and the private sector to stretch every public dollar further.”

Fain also briefly touched on Metro budgeting, noting that the County’s supplemental budget allocates a little more than $26 million to the transit agency’s safety arm, adding security personnel and operator protections. She said that such investments are “urgently needed — just last week, a person was stabbed aboard a Metro bus in downtown Seattle — which underscores the importance of acting now to keep both riders and workers safe.”

Behind only Florida

Washington state ranks second-worst in the nation for regressive taxes,  behind only Florida. A regressive tax is one that takes a proportionally larger amount of low-income individuals’ earnings than  from high-income individuals. This is often seen in the form of a flat tax.

“Big picture, yes,” Fain said, when asked whether she wanted to see reforms to change the state’s regressive tax code. “However, my district, District 5, in particular, is very challenged by poverty, taxes, in general, because we traditionally have struggled to receive the same investment in our communities that we feel that we pay into King County.”

Fain said that “there’s a level of distrust that I hear at the doors — a lot of people feeling the squeeze and really wanting to make sure that before we go in for more, we’re investing the dollars that we have in a way that feels measurable.”

In initially answering The Urbanist’s primary election questionnaire, Fain sidestepped directly answering whether she would go to Olympia to lobby for the state to lift the growth rate on property tax collection. When asked again, she underscored what she had been hearing from District 5 residents in the course of door-knocking: Everyone is afraid of being priced out of their homes, particularly elders on fixed incomes and others who do not yet qualify for pensions.

She also iterated that she has been hearing a level of distrust regarding County taxes — “Why do we have to pay more, when we haven’t seen that same level of investment here in South King County?”

“I think there’s work to do to build that trust. I also think that the county [budget] almost doubled in the last five years. And so if we want to raise the property cap, I think that we have to show the voters exactly what we’re going to be spending it on,” Fain said. “I want to make sure that we are responsive to the concerns. I’m not even joking when I say it’s almost every door, every other door that I hit, that was such a major concern for folks — ensuring that we’re being clear on where we’re spending, where we want to spend those dollars and why and what we’ve done to be really effective with the dollars that we do have.”

She also said that nearly everyone who answered her at the door “had a number ready.”

“Everybody — offhand almost — recites the, ‘When I moved in five years ago or when I moved in 10 years ago … this is what I paid and this is what I pay now,’” she said.

Wealth tax

Washington’s lawmakers have for years resisted changing the tax code. Earlier this year, Governor Bob Ferguson torpedoed Washington House Democrats’ proposal that included a wealth tax, as well as a removal of the state’s 1% annual growth cap in property tax collection. House Democrats also proposed adding a surcharge to large companies, and Senate Democrats proposed imposing a new tax on large companies’ payrolls, while nixing some tax breaks.

However, Ferguson entertained the possibility of a wealth tax in a budget that relied on it for only $100 million of the total budget, in order to see whether it could withstand legal challenges — and stand up to political resistance from the wealthy folks facing the tax. Former Governor Jay Inslee encouraged lawmakers to implement a wealth tax, albeit on his way out of office.

Because reliable federal grant money is off the table, and Fain has heard from door-knocking that increasing taxes County-wide would further harm District 5 residents, few options appear available for the County to collect the revenue it needs to fund programs that serve its most vulnerable populations.

But a wealth tax doesn’t appear to be top-of-mind for Fain, either, who said that she has “several process and implementation concerns about proposals for a wealth or corporate tax.”

“First, any wealth or corporate tax would be collected at the state level, so none of those dollars would flow directly into King County’s budget,” she said. “That means even if the state adopted one of these taxes, we couldn’t count on those funds to close any gaps in King County’s budget to address housing, behavioral health, or human services needs.”

“Second,” she continued, “we’ve already already seen progressive revenue measures tied up in lengthy court battles. Building essential services on top of a revenue source that could be struck down or fluctuate dramatically from year to year is risky and it could mean sudden cuts to the very programs our most vulnerable residents rely on.”

Instead, Fain said, the County should continue to work towards “progressive revenue solutions that are legally sound, broad-based, and reliable.” She said that the House and Senate budget proposals earlier in the year were a step in the right direction, and that she would work with legislators and Ferguson’s office in support of fair revenue reforms that would bring in money for investment in South King County.

She also supports efforts to give different counties and municipalities greater local taxing authority. Fain said that she sees this as a way to address critical local issues without being dependent upon state-level decisions.

Trump overreach

Fain said that she would continue to support the King County Prosecutor’s Office in its work to defend the County’s residents against President Donald Trump’s illegal overreach, and noted his attempts to withhold vital grant dollars from human services programs that the County’s most vulnerable rely on.

But Fain again stopped short of another tax of any kind to support these programs. Instead, she pointed to the County’s own stipulations in awarding grant money to both providers and small businesses, and questioned whether they could unintentionally be imposing red tape in ways that stymied potential grantees from working together.

Fain said that ensuring that “grant dollars don’t inadvertently prohibit collaboration [is] my position across the board on all things.”

“So, for example,” she said. “If there are dollars that are, that we put in because we want to help a small business and we say, ‘a business of 15 or fewer [is eligible for this particular grant],’ that doesn’t preclude a small business from working with another small business on certain issues or collaborating together, and that inadvertently prohibits them from getting those grant dollars.”

Fain said that she would like to see the County incentivize collaboration among nonprofits and organizations providing similar services.

“There’s so many amazing small organizations providing services within our many, many diverse communities in District 5, but the infrastructure costs can be really high,” Fain said, listing off different necessary positions within an organization — human resources, billing, legal, and so forth. “I envision a place or a structure where the county could lead on providing the infrastructures so that the groups can focus on the services themselves and reducing their overhead costs. So, things like that where we’re really working together is going to be critical.”

Fain also said that some of the reporting and compliance requirements are burdensome and restrictive on certain providers, particularly those that operate without dedicated administrative staff — and, often, those are the providers that are part of the communities they serve, such as immigrant-and people-of-color-led organizations, family childcare providers, and neighborhood-based service organizations.

“For example, during Covid, many small childcare providers in my district struggled to access stabilization funds because the language barriers and paperwork burden was so intense,” Fain said. 

Fain said that she believes the County should support a shared services infrastructure or a centralized support model that provides bookkeeping, human resources, grant administration, and compliance services to community-based organizations.

Regional Homelessness Authority

Fain said that, throughout her campaign, she’s been asked whether she wants to get rid of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA). While she acknowledges the “strong feelings” many have about the agency, and the struggle for it to gain public trust, she doesn’t think it’s time to get rid of it just yet.

Fain thinks that the KCRHA has the potential to provide critical services — but it needs the tools to do it. Having a functional KCRHA is necessary, she said, because, otherwise, municipalities are left to their own devices to figure out how to address homelessness. Most of the time, the result is sweeping people in encampments from one community to another with no durable solutions that address the underlying problems. Homelessness advocates have long called for better solutions, including housing-first initiatives.

Fain said that a functional KCRHA is one that can be more flexible and encourage collaboration with services providers in the field. She sees this as one of the biggest stumbling blocks, and it again comes back to the red tape she said service providers and small businesses encounter in applying for grants.

“I have been trying to meet with as many groups working in this space and in the behavioral health space and I hear a lot of the same issues, which is that inadvertent inability to work together,” Fain said.

For instance, she said, one provider — whom she termed Provider 1 — may be providing services to someone who wants to go to a shelter, but Provider 1 is full. Provider 1 also doesn’t receive KCHRA funding.

Another provider, Provider 2, receives funding from the KCHRA, and has bed space.

However, she said, the restrictions of the KCHRA funding mean that any available beds are reserved for Provider 2’s clients, so the person receiving help from Provider 1 can’t go to Provider 2, if they continue to receive other services from Provider 1.

It’s this situation that Fain said she’s “heard several times defeats the entire purpose of the KCRHA — and so, how can we, as we look at the funding and look at the contracts and the grants, ensure that there’s more overarching collaboration from the top down from the KCRHA that encourages and provides enough flexibility to allow service providers to work.”

“They are all trying to achieve the same goal, which is to get people who currently are without homes into a facility,” she said.

Fain also supports co-responder programs. She said that she has been on a ridealong with first responders and witnessed firsthand how critical it is to have a mental health professional on-scene. She said it’s important to be able to build trust, and not force someone into a shelter or transitional housing without their understanding and consent. Taking time to talk with people to explain the services available, and asking if they want them is far more fruitful, she said —  “It shouldn’t just be a, ‘Hey you’re in crisis, now we’re whipping you over here to get services.’”

“So, how can we help and use time to allow them to move with their communities to transitional housing and then eventually permanent, supportive housing and stability?” Fain said. “If we can develop that relationship, that’s a win in my book.”

The post Steffanie Fain Makes Pragmatic Moderate Pitch for King County Council D5 first appeared on The Urbanist.

The resignation of Tammy Morales from the D2 seat led to the temporary appointment of Mark Solomon, who will serve until a new council member is elected in November. Whoever prevails will serve the remaining two years of Morales’s original term before the position is again up for election. 

District 2 is the most diverse district in Seattle, and Chunn brings strong progressive credentials to her campaign. Three other candidates are vying for the spot: Assistant City Attorney Eddie Lin, transportation advisor Adonis Ducksworth, and union steward Jamie Fackler. Lin and Ducksworth entered the race earlier in the year, giving them a headstart in raising campaign funds. 

Workers’ rights and food insecurity

Chunn is the daughter of immigrants. She says she was literally born into the restaurant business, with her mother bartending the day before going into labor. Chunn moved to Seattle in 1999 to attend the University of Washington. As a single mom, she was able to live in Seattle, use Apple Care for health care, and raise her daughter as she worked her way up in the restaurant industry. 

“That’s not really reality for folks anymore, unless they’re spending 50, 60% of their income on their rent,” Chunn told The Urbanist. 

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chunn was laid off from her job at the Sea Creatures restaurant group, after which she formed a restaurant coalition to support small restaurant owners and was asked to join the Independent Restaurant Coalition. In this position, Chunn was able to advocate for free outdoor street permitting, caps on delivery app fees charged to restaurant owners, and requirements that all restaurants require proof of vaccination for people to dine indoors. 

Chunn also worked with Working Washington on the Pay Up legislation – mandating a minimum wage and worker protections for app-based workers – and with Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s office on the JumpStart payroll tax. If elected, Chunn vows to protect the JumpStart tax from going to the City’s general fund instead of paying for its legislated spending plan, which includes investments in affordable housing and the Green New Deal. 

At the same time Chunn worked for One Fair Wage, advocating for restaurant workers to receive a full minimum wage with tips on top. Chunn’s work led to the elimination of the sub-minimum wage in Washington, DC and the state of Michigan. Chunn was also appointed to serve on the Labor Standards Advisory Committee and is deeply committed to making sure Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards is well funded. 

“We know that there’s wage theft happening that we can’t get to because [the Office of Labor Standards] is under-resourced,” Chunn said. 

Chunn also spent a few years at Northwest Harvest working on the problem of food insecurity. “We need to be advocating for policy changes that actually get to the system of reasons that we have food insecurity and so, namely, racism and poverty,” Chunn said.

Social Housing

Chunn voted for Proposition 1A for funding social housing in Seattle, which passed by a 26-point margin in February. Her opponents for the District 2 seat are split on this issue, with Fackler also voting for 1A, while Lin voted for 1B and Ducksworth declined to share his vote. All four of them now say they will support the Seattle Social Housing Developer in this popular endeavor. 

Chunn wants to make sure the project is properly funded. She lives in a community that is similar to social housing right now: a ten-unit, cooperatively-owned property in which four units are subsidized. 

“We have the most amazing community. So we are living an example of this every single day, and we are seeing the success of it,” Chunn said. “Not am I only fully in support of social housing, I see it working in our residents, and I want to see it working in all the neighborhoods.”

Chunn also pointed to the impact social housing can have on the public with its increased focus on community, neighbors communicating with each other when there are problems, residential support of thriving businesses, and more people out enjoying community space.  

Evidence-based public safety 

Chunn said that after watching both the actions of the City Council over the past year and a half and the second Trump administration’s actions, she felt compelled to run for office. 

“I just felt like I needed to be involved,” Chunn said. “I felt like I needed to be part of the solution and remind people that we can build a community that’s rooted in compassion and care, and we can build policies that benefit all of us, and I wanted to make sure that D2 wasn’t continually left behind.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck pushed to launch the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes to track the local impacts coming from the Trump Administration and strategize against them as necessary. Chunn said she backs this effort and wants to look for opportunities where the council can step in and make a difference. 

As an example of an intervention that decreases opportunity for criminalization and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to intervene, Chunn noted that, after the murder of George Floyd, she worked to put together a call sheet of resources that restaurant owners and managers could call besides the police when there were safety issues. She also paid for de-escalation training for restaurant workers to develop skills for when the police weren’t arriving in time.

Chunn is eager to address gun violence in District 2, which has the highest rate of gun violence in the city. She’s interested in implementing the recommendations in the City Auditor’s Office’s gun violence pattern report released earlier this year. The auditor described the investigative practices of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) as disorganized and lacking professionalization.

“I think that we need a candidate who’s not afraid of SPD and working with them to ensure that we can keep our community safe and also working alongside community-based organizations that are doing really amazing work like Community Passageways,” Chunn said.

Chunn also supports the CARE team providing alternative crisis response, and would like them to be able to respond to appropriate calls without police. 

“I think it’s an amazing program,” Chunn said. “I think that re-tasking that to people that are actually trained in behavioral health is extraordinarily important to get the services that are actually needed to the community.”

Chunn is against many public safety policies passed in the last year and a half, including the SCORE jail contract and the Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zones, which she says don’t actually keep our community safer. Chunn also wouldn’t have voted for the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract last year, which provided officers with 24% raises without commiserate gains in accountability measures. She’s interested in looking at ways to increase police accountability, including looking at a community-based accountability council such as the one in Chicago. 

Chunn is wary of the new surveillance technologies that were approved for use at SPD last year, including a large expansion of license plate readers, new real-time crime center software, and CCTV cameras.

“I definitely have concerns about surveilling our communities,” Chunn said. “I don’t think it’s a good use of resources. I think that I would rather see those resources directed to actual evidence-based solutions.”

Denser housing, fewer sweeps, and safer streets

The Seattle Comprehensive Plan presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to increase both density and diversity in Seattle. Chunn would like to see the City go bolder with this plan. She’d like to ensure “we have the housing density that we need to support all of the people that live in Seattle” while planting trees and building multifamily units throughout the city. Chunn argued  the South End had taken more than its fair share of growth. Census data shows D2’s population growth rate has been below the city average since 2010, with D7 (in the central core) the fastest-growing district by far.

Chunn is also against the large number of encampment sweeps conducted by Mayor Bruce Harrell, saying they are inhumane, ineffective, and expensive. Instead, she’d like to spend that money on additional services for unhoused people and follow evidence-based strategies for helping people become housed. 

“I would work closely with the people that are closest to the problems to have them help me identify what is the solution that is actually working,” Chunn said.

Chunn is also interested in policies that help people stay housed, including programs that provide assistance paying utility and medical bills and micro-loans. 

She is strongly opposed to any changes to the city council’s Ethics Code, especially given what’s happening at the federal level. 

“I cannot believe that, given the housing crisis that we’re in and homelessness issue that we have in Seattle, that we’re trying to move more people out of their homes,” Chunn said, referring to the rollback of tenants’ protections that is rumored to be behind the attempted weakening of the Ethics Code. “We should be protecting those tenants and ensuring that they’re able to stay…”

In terms of transportation, Chunn brought up Grand Street Commons as an example of needing to plan ahead and figure out a holistic approach to the area. She wants to use a 2020 study by Toole Design that was largely shelved to continue the work of adding protected bike lanes along the entirety of MLK Jr Way S.

“This is work that has already been done. Let’s just go back and look at it and pull out the good ideas,” Chunn said. “Why was it shelved in the first place?” 

Progressive values in action

On her website, Chunn writes that it’s important for elected officials to stand up for the progressive values that people vote for and follow through with making them real. 

Chunn’s support of new progressive revenue doesn’t stop with the JumpStart payroll tax for which she helped to advocate. She’s interested in other similar taxes, as well as investigating a commercial vacancy tax that would target large commercial developers. 

“I think that it’s high time that corporations pay their fair share in supporting our beautiful city,” Chunn said.

Chunn is also supportive of affirmative action. 

“Everybody’s seen the cartoon of the fence and the boxes and what actual equity looks like,” Chunn said. “We need to stand behind that and not be performative.”

Chunn is ready to put her energy and coalition-building abilities to work in service of the residents of District 2. 

“I feel like women of color, when we get to the place that we […] have some stability, we go back and get our people,” Chunn said. “And that’s why I’m here. I see what’s happening to our city, and now that I have some stability and my children are grown, I have the capacity and the bandwidth. I’m here and I’m saying, No more. You need to listen to us. We also need resources, and I won’t let you leave us behind.”

The post Jeanie Chunn Wants to Reverse D2’s Neglect in Seattle Council Bid first appeared on The Urbanist.

The winner of this November’s election will replace Mark Solomon, who was appointed to fill the seat on a temporary basis by the council in January. Ducksworth also applied for the appointment and finished as the runner-up after being nominated by Councilmember Dan Strauss. Strauss and D3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth have subsequently endorsed Ducksworth in his election bid. The election victor will serve only a two-year term before having to run for reelection in 2027.

Ducksworth serves as a transportation advisor in Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, and previously worked on communications and outreach at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) since 2016. As someone who helped to develop both the newly adopted Seattle Transportation Plan and the 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy, Ducksworth brings a deep background in mobility issues to the table, something that is lacking on the current council.

That expertise could also prove to be a big asset when it comes to District 2, which includes all of Southeast Seattle, Chinatown-International District and Yesler Terrace, and faces some unique transportation challenges — and opportunities. Ducksworth’s means of transport include skateboarding and biking — and he’s also a beat-making techno DJ, by the way.

But Ducksworth isn’t just running as the transportation candidate. He also has a vision for public safety more broadly, with a focus on early interventions with youth to reduce violence and increase access to opportunity in some of the city’s most neglected neighborhoods. Opening the Rainier Beach Skate Park is a top priority for him, and he wants to see the city’s next education levy include a focus on providing child care to ease cost burdens on working families.

“I’m all about kids, culture, and community and giving kids more opportunities so kids feel safer in the neighborhood, giving families more opportunities and supporting families,” Ducksworth told The Urbanist in an interview conducted at the Rainier Beach public library. “Supporting families with good wages, good jobs, good job opportunities, supporting families with housing options that they can afford, and supporting families with safe, reliable transportation.”

In order to fund his vision for better social services, Ducksworth has voiced support for some progressive revenue options, such as a capital gains tax.

Working in community on transportation projects

Ducksworth got his start at SDOT conducting outreach on the major overhaul of 23rd Avenue through the Central District that started construction in 2015. One of the biggest transportation projects the neighborhood had seen in decades, many small business owners along the corridor sounded the alarm around lost revenue from the construction schedule, which disrupted things along the street for nearly two years.

In the end, Mayor Ed Murray agreed to create a $650,000 fund intended to make up for lost revenue at the smallest businesses along 23rd. But many neighborhood residents and business owners saw that move as too little, too late, and also saw the broader 23rd Avenue project as another example of the neighborhood being dictated to, and not brought along.

For Ducksworth, the project taught him the importance of getting the nearby community onboard with work that impacts them before it starts.

“There is just a lot of history that is really important to understand in the context of the work that you’re doing,” Ducksworth said. “On the 23rd project, when you’re working in what was a historically Black neighborhood, and you’re only engaging with certain groups of folks, but you’re not engaging with the churches and [seeing] how important the churches in that community have been, you’re missing something there.”

In 2017, Ducksworth found himself in the middle of another contentious project, albeit at a smaller scale. Plans to reallocate street space adjacent to Asa Mercer Middle School in Beacon Hill, funded by the city’s Neighborhood Street Fund program, were met with significant opposition from nearby residents. Intended to slow down traffic and provide nearby school students with an easier way to get across the street, the plans included the elimination of a left turn that became the focus of significant ire.

Here Ducksworth also drew a lesson that can be applied more broadly around outreach. “That project got rolled out in such a way that we were already behind the eight ball in what we’re trying to do,” Ducksworth said.

When it comes to the eight years of transportation investments planned as part of the new transportation levy, Ducksworth is clear that the city can’t run on autopilot when it comes to engaging with community — it actually has to listen.

“We do a lot of outreach and engagement early on in our planning, to really get several things into the levy that people want, and voters voted for that,” Ducksworth said. “Well now we’ve got to go and implement those things. We got to build those things. But we also have to realize: it’s not a one-shoe-fits-all type of thing.”

A vision for a safer Rainier Avenue and a safer MLK Jr Way

Two of District 2’s most important — and most dangerous — north-south corridors will face significant decision points over the coming years, and Ducksworth has clearly thought a lot about what the future of both Rainier Avenue and MLK Jr Way should look like.

Rainier Avenue, which is seeing a building boom around Sound Transit’s forthcoming Judkins Park light rail station, remains one of the city’s most crash-prone corridors. While spot improvements are planned at the problematic I-90 ramps, the city has a bigger opportunity to make change as it starts work on a planned repaving project between Jackson Street and Walden Street in Mount Baker. Ducksworth wants to see changes up and down Rainier, specifically calling out the benefits that could come from making the street safer, and speeding up buses.

“If we can make Rainier safer, then that’s a priority for me,” Ducksworth said, referencing both a need to change the street directly but also encourage development along Rainier Avenue that is less car-oriented, with storefronts closer to the property lines. “I’m interested in all kinds of different options to slow cars down and potentially looking changing the built environment out there to make it better, so that you could have more walkable shops.”

While many stretches of Rainier Avenue already have dedicated bus lanes, the issue of speeding drivers using those lanes to bypass traffic has become a focal point of community concerns. Ducksworth said he’d like to see more buses in those bus lanes, as well as potential automatic cameras to ticket drivers illegally using the lanes. “That is one that you would have to work with the community down here about what that looks like,” Ducksworth said.

King County Metro is currently collecting data on how many drivers are illegally using the bus lanes on Rainier Avenue, as part of a pilot program, but the city would ultimately need to sign off on actual tickets.

Along MLK Way, Sound Transit has turned its attention to the issue of safety along the corridor where its light rail trains run at-grade, but most of the interventions that are being proposed are small-scale and focused on changing pedestrian behavior, not slowing down drivers. Here too Ducksworth wants to see more walkable redevelopments that encourage walking and biking along the street, and hinted that he could even see the possibility of protected bike lanes along MLK.

“You could have a situation where you have all modes working along MLK, if you catch what I’m saying. So that would be a vision for MLK, and that’s something that I definitely feel like I’m into working towards,” Ducksworth said.

Going bolder with neighborhood centers

When it comes to the subject of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan, Ducksworth was clear that we wants to see the Harrell Administration expand its 30 proposed neighborhood centers, which are focal points for denser multifamily residential and commercial development located near existing commercial hubs around the city. At only a few blocks wide, the potential of neighborhood centers will be severely limited by their size, and leave behind the potential for additional homes near transit and amenities.

“I think about how I grew up on Beacon Hill. We lived in a triplex two blocks off of Beacon Avenue and our place didn’t look any different than any of the other houses on the block. I had access to the park, and me and my friends, we skateboarded all through the neighborhood. It was great for a kid growing up,” Ducksworth said. “You can build along the transit routes. But I would offer to say you can go farther out. I think it’s 800 feet in some places, right? And I would say, go farther out and have more options for housing as you go farther out.”

The council is poised to vote on where neighborhood centers should be this summer, before Ducksworth would take office, but the entire plan is in limbo while a set of appeals from homeowner groups are worked out.

Implementing policies that ensure longtime residents are able to stay in the neighborhood is also important to Ducksworth.

“You have to think pretty critically about anti-displacement, so that we’re not displacing people, for very expensive townhomes and houses and other things that get built,” he said. “And so you have things like [Equitable Development Initiative] and helping longtime residents, older folks, stay in their homes and help them with tax assistance and that kind of thing.”

Ducksworth declined to state whether he’d supported the winning Proposition 1A ballot measure establishing a new high-earner payroll tax to fund social housing in the city, or whether he’d voted for the Harrell-backed alternative measure, 1B. But he said he’s fully on board with the idea of social housing, which would bring a new model for affordable workforce housing into the mix of the city’s subsidized housing options.

“I support social housing and will help make it a successful model in Seattle,” Ducksworth said. “I feel like we need every solution available to address our housing and affordability crisis. On Council I look forward to being a partner in making sure that we do what is needed to implement this new policy.”

His opponent, Eddie Lin, told The Urbanist that he supported Prop 1B, which included no new city revenues, over accountability concerns. However, similar to Ducksworth, Lin pledged to back the Seattle Social Housing Developer now that the dedicated funding measure has passed — and by a resounding 26-point margin.

More localized police recruitment and youth intervention

When the topic turned to public safety more broadly, Ducksworth declined to draw a major distinction between himself and the current city council’s majority bloc when it comes to the Seattle Police Department (SPD). He brought up the fact that Seattle is currently ranked behind other peer cities when it comes to the number of police per capita. But he said a bigger priority than hiring itself is having new recruits who understand the community they’re serving in.

“Looking at the data, probably [SPD] can stand to have more officers, right? But for me, it’s not so much about hurry up and let’s flood the streets with police. I would rather take our time to make sure that we get the right police. And so that means accountability. That means relationships and representation.”

It could mean a recruiting push to get more Seattleites to serve in their local police force. The vast majority of SPD officers reside in other cities.

“If I was elected, I would still like to do recruiting fairs in all the different neighborhoods to get people from the neighborhoods to look at law enforcement, whether it’s a uniform or non-uniform officer, because I think there’s something there for people who are sworn to protect and serve that come from the neighborhoods, that come from the community,” Ducksworth said.

But beyond just police, Ducksworth sees a significant role for the city in intervening early in the lives of D2 residents to keep them on the right track, with youth engagement a major priority if he were to be elected to the city council.

“The earlier we start supporting our kids and giving them opportunities, and their families as well, then you are putting some kids and families in a better position to not have to turn to the crime, drugs and other things like that,” Ducksworth said. “So obviously the Rainier Beach Skate Park is a huge one, to get that built and give kids another opportunity.”

The post Adonis Ducksworth Puts Safety Front and Center in D2 Council Campaign first appeared on The Urbanist.

Evans recently resigned her position as an assistant US Attorney at the Department of Justice (DoJ). Between the slew of executive orders from President Donald Trump, being told the DoJ were now Trump’s lawyers, and the insistence of US Attorney General Pam Bondi that her interpretation of the law is now how all DoJ lawyers must interpret it, Evans said she knew she needed to step into something else. 

“It brought me back to why I became an attorney,” Evans said. “It was to represent and serve my community.”

Evans decided she could best serve her community at this moment by running for Seattle City Attorney. 

“I’m the only candidate in this race with line-level prosecutorial experience, including the Republican incumbent, at both the city and federal levels,” Evans said. “I think this background makes me uniquely equipped to navigate federal and local laws and address public safety priorities and fight for justice in our communities.”

Davison now has three challengers to her left. Evans joins legal aid attorney Rory O’Sullivan and public defender Nathan Rouse to vie for the position.

All four candidates have indicated they intend to participate in Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program. Thus far only two candidates have completed the qualifying process and appear as eligible on the City’s voucher website: first O’Sullivan, followed by Rouse.

Rouse’s campaign announced in mid-March that they have collected 1,368 vouchers at that time, which they say is the most vouchers collected of any candidate challenging an incumbent in Seattle this cycle. However, the O’Sullivan campaign contends they are ahead, pointing to data from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission website.

Evans’ critique of Ann Davison’s tenure as City Attorney

Evans was vocal in her critique of many of Davison’s controversial “tough on crime” policies, citing Davison’s lack of experience as a factor. 

Billed as a fix for chronic shoplifters and other repeat misdemeanors, Davison’s High Utilizers Initiative cycles a small group of people, many with behavioral health issues, in and out of Seattle’s courts and jails. Evans doesn’t think the policy is working, especially given that the maximum amount of time a person can spend in jail for a misdemeanor is a year. 

“Just locking those folks up without any resources or treatment or doing a holistic approach to addressing underlying problems, that’s not how you solve it. But with what the Republican City Attorney is doing, she’s not doing it right,” Evans said. “There’s a smart approach to addressing folks that we know are having underlying issues, and it’s with treatment and services, and that addresses the underlying root cause.”

Davison has recently admitted that her Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zones have not been effectively enforced, with only three SODA orders and one pending request for a SOAP order since the legislation’s passage last year. 

Evans called the SODA and SOAP zones “ridiculous” and “not effective.” “We know the historical data on them — that they disproportionately affect Brown and Black folks,” Evans said.

Instead, Evans thinks the City Attorney’s Office should be working more with its federal partners and local federal prosecutors to pursue high-level traffickers. “Back to understanding the role of City Attorney, this is a misdemeanor court, and so I think there might be a misconception with the Republican City Attorney on what the role is,” Evans said. 

Evans said that, were she to become City Attorney, she would not be sending anyone to the SCORE jail in Des Moines, where 10 people have now died in the last two years. When it comes to the King County Jail, Evans emphasized that jail is not a good substitute for a treatment facility. 

“At the misdemeanor level, if it’s coming to underlying issues of needing treatment or needing housing or resources, [jail] is not the place to rehabilitate and help folks,” Evans said.

Evans agrees with criticism from fellow opponents Rouse and O’Sullivan over Davison’s handling of domestic violence and drunk driving (DUI) cases. Evans said when Pete Holmes was the City Attorney, domestic violence cases took an average of 25 days to file, whereas now, under Davison, that number has doubled. Like O’Sullivan and Rouse, Evans pointed out that DUI cases don’t require a toxicology lab report to prosecute, Davison’s excuse for the office’s backload of those cases.

“There’s a way to go forward on those cases, and I think it just comes with a lack of our Republican City Attorney’s experience,” Evans said. “This is how we’re going to go forward and make sure crimes that are seriously putting public safety at risk are being handled and addressed.” 

Davison’s team filed a blanket affidavit against elected Judge Pooja Vaddadi for all criminal cases, a move Evans characterized as “wild.” Other mechanisms exist when a prosecutor is concerned about a judge’s rulings that Evans thinks are more appropriate to use.

“It’s costing taxpayers more money to have other judges come in and paying a whole nother salary,” Evans said. “And it’s also affecting public safety, because not having all the judges to handle the DV and DUI, what does that mean? Then it means that those cases are taking longer.”

Evans doesn’t agree with Davison’s decision to write an amicus brief in the Grants Pass case, saying it’s against the values of Seattle to not offer shelter before removing homeless encampments. And Evans objects strongly to Davison’s belated decisions around joining lawsuits against Trump’s administration. 

“I think there was obvious hesitancy for the Republican City Attorney to even get involved in the first place. And that is really sad, because there’s people here in our city that are absolutely afraid right now,” Evans said. 

Evans’ background and experience

Evans began her legal career at the Seattle City Attorney’s Office under Holmes. She worked as a line-level trial rotation prosecutor, handling DUI, assault, and other misdemeanor cases. She was then promoted to the civil side of the office, working to defend the City from lawsuits. At the same time, she worked as a pro tem judge presiding at other city-level courts in Seatac, Puyallup, and Tukwila. 

In 2021, Evans went to work as an assistant US Attorney, where most recently she worked as a civil rights coordinator. She was responsible for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes in Western Washington as well as holding police officers accountable for issues such as excessive use of force. She also worked in the violent crimes and terrorism unit. 

Evans touts her boots on the ground experience, saying, “I’ve definitely been responsible for getting hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills off the streets, like high level drug traffickers and gun traffickers, with getting automated weapons and machine guns off the streets.” 

Her community leadership experience includes serving as the president of the Loren Miller Bar Association, a civil rights organization dedicated to the success of the Black legal community. Before law school, she volunteered at legal aid clinics to help people who can’t afford an attorney. She led a bar pass program for diverse law graduates leading up to their bar examinations and was a previous co-chair of the Charles V. Johnson youth in law forum, which provided education to youth for knowing their rights and learning how to find opportunities in the legal field. 

Most recently, she has been leading the Washington Leadership Institute, which works to accelerate young attorneys, typically from underserved backgrounds such as Black and Brown communities and LGBTQ+ communities, into leadership roles in Washington state.

Evans grew up in a Black working class, low-income household in Tacoma. She spoke about her family being deeply rooted in civil rights activism. She’s had loved ones deal with substance use disorder, and in 2017 her apartment building in Eastlake was shot up by police officers. 

“I think when we have those diverse lenses in life experiences, that makes government better,” Evans said. 

A new vision for community court

Evans laid out three priorities she would bring to the City Attorney’s office: public safety, a restorative justice model, and fighting back against the Trump administration. 

Evans is passionate about the idea of bringing a new, reimagined community court back to Seattle. She envisions something that isn’t located in an actual courtroom but instead is embedded within the local community, with a dedicated judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney. She referenced the community court in Auburn, Washington, which has many of the resources that would be needed by defendants at community court available at the same location, including medical treatment, help finding housing and getting inpatient treatment, and a fostering program for people’s pets. She says the Auburn community court has a very low recidivism rate. 

“We need to have services available for folks to be successful,” Evans said. “And that is absolutely the model that I would bring of reimagining [community court] in a way that works and as holistic wraparound services for folks to be successful.”

She said some of the services offered by such a court could be paid for with federal grants and partnerships with federally funded nonprofits. However, given the current uncertainty surrounding federal funding, it’s possible another funding source would need to be identified.

Evans would also like to see precinct liaison attorneys embedded into police precincts who are able to interact with both officers and community, providing training to prevent harms and pro-actively attempt to reduce claims against the City. 

Evans wants to hire more attorneys to staff units working to protect labor rights and tenant rights and prosecute wage theft. “That is work I will be a champion of, and we will beef up those units 100%,” Evans said. “And I think, just my lived experiences too, coming from a family that are involved in unions and being on the working class, low income side, we got to stand up for our folks.”

When it comes to the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract, the latest version of which disappointed police accountability advocates last year when it provided officers with 24% raises while not making many accountability gains, Evans says she’ll be a champion of the ongoing negotiations being in line with accountability and laws. Evans says she’ll also be an advocate at the state legislature for state law that would allow the Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) team to expand and operate according to best practice. She brought up House Bill 1816, which did not receive a House floor vote before the cut-off date, but would have smoothed the path to a CARE expansion, circumventing police guild resistance. 

Evans thinks even after Seattle exits the consent decree, it will be important to continue paying attention to accountability and holding true to the requirements of the decree, including making sure the Seattle Police Department is not engaging in biased policing. 

After two months of a stream of partisan and illegal executive orders coming from Trump’s office, Evans stressed the importance of actively protecting Seattle’s residents. 

“As City Attorney, I will absolutely fight back against Trump,” Evans said. “And as City Attorney I will ensure that our office stands against these attempts to erase progress and undermine our Seattle values of having this equity lens.”

Evans stressed the importance of challenging environmental rollbacks, Trump’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ban, and his executive orders around reproductive rights and gender-affirming care. 

“I know that I will use every legal tool and experience I have to fight against these unconstitutional federal policies that harm and threaten our city,” Evans said. 

Potential for a close race

With new headlines every day about Trump gutting civil rights, playing trade war games with former allies, pulling federal funding, and hamstringing government institutions, incumbent Davison is definitely on the defensive in blue Seattle. While Davison now claims to be an independent, her history as a Republican convert in 2020 and participant in the Walk Away movement (which sought to recruit Democratic voters to back Trump) is well known, as her opponents are not shy about pointing out. 

All three of her opponents are united in their criticisms of her policies and her muted reaction to even Trump’s most egregious executive orders. All three espouse the importance of addressing root causes of low-level crime and disorder, which constitute most misdemeanors dealt with by the City Attorney’s Office, while being more efficient about prosecuting the more serious crimes of domestic violence and DUIs. And all three want to see the office become more of a force for good when it comes to protecting workers’ and renters’ rights. 

Where the three challengers most differ, then, is in their experience. 

O’Sullivan has spent his professional career in legal aid, poverty law, and most recently, in helping workers seeking unemployment benefits. Rouse started out clerking for federal judges and working for two large law firms, before leaving that behind to become a public defender helping people who cannot afford legal representation. Evans has spent her professional career as a prosecutor, first at the office she’s now running to lead and later at the federal level. 

If she prevails, Evans would be the first Black Seattle City Attorney in a country where only 5% of lawyers are Black. 

“I knew what we need right now in the City Attorney’s Office is someone that understands the federal system, that’s worked in it, that knows how to fight back against Trump, someone that’s worked in that [City Attorney’s] office,” Evans said. “Everything that I’ve done in my life has actually prepared me for this moment.”

Update: The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission finished qualifying the Rouse campaign to redeem democracy vouchers around the same time this went to post. We updated at 9am Friday to note that they are now qualified.

The post Prosecutor Erika Evans Stresses Federal Experience in Seattle City Attorney Bid first appeared on The Urbanist.

“I’m just tired of the status quo,” Armstrong said. “I am tired of broken promises by people who are in the pockets of corporate interests.”

It’s a pattern that goes beyond Harrell, with Armstrong tracing the trail of broken promises back through Seattle’s last three mayors to Ed Murray, suggesting it explains the lack of progress on key issues. A queer trans person themself, Armstrong said members of the queer community asked them to run, since LGBTQ folks are especially at risk with many of the issues facing the city and country.

“My number one issue is housing and homelessness,” Armstrong said. “I remember when I was in college, Ed Murray calling an emergency on homelessness with a 10-year plan. Now it’s been 10 years, and homelessness is up 20% and specifically, I think youth, LGBTQ, homeless is up even more than that.”

Harrell pledged 2,000 additional homes for the homeless in his first year as mayor, piggybacking on Compassion Seattle, a ballot initiative that had strong business support but was struck down as illegal before it could appear on the ballot.

“I think [Harrell] offered 2,000 shelter beds in 2021 and never fulfilled that promise,” Armstrong said, boldly suggesting their administration could succeed where Harrell failed. “I want to do 1,000 shelter beds in the first 100 days.”

A campaign email from Armstrong underscored their shelter pledge and their hit on Harrell: the “current Mayor who promised 2,500 beds in their first term and has delivered 25 in 4 years.”

Armstrong was critical of Harrell’s statements that he would seek to collaborate with Trump and the praise he offered Trump’s tech billionaire inner circle as “smart innovators.”

“I will not compromise with Trump,” Armstrong said. “He does not believe that trans people like me exist. He wants to take us back to a time that never existed, because trans people have always existed in history.”

While Harrell has recently ramped up rhetoric against Trump, Armstrong was unequivocal that collaborating with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department was off the table. ICE is tasked with making Trump’s mass deportation promises come true.

“I don’t know what Bruce is gonna do in his actions, but I know what I would do,” Armstrong told The Urbanist. “You would have to put me in jail before I start letting ICE raid our citizens in this city. Like you would have to drag me kicking and screaming off to a concentration camp before I let anything happen to Seattle. I was born and raised here. This is my home. This is my place. So I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but I’m also prepared to fight.”

Armstrong’s 2023 run and resume of work

Armstrong ran for Seattle City Council’s District 3 seat in 2023, but finished seventh in that crowded primary to fill the seat Kshama Sawant vacated with her retirement. They also emphasized housing and homelessness in that race, going to far as to propose conscripting decommissioned naval vessels into service as homeless shelters, as noted in our 2023 interview.

The progressives that did advance in Seattle’s 2023 primary did not do well in the general election, with Tammy Morales the only councilmember to win on a progressive platform. Many observers (myself included) attributed the loss on progressive candidates being badly outspent and losing the messaging battle on key issues.

In response to 2023 losses, Armstrong banded together with other progressive candidates and operatives to found a new political action committee (PAC) called the Progressive People Power PAC. Armstrong served as the group’s board chair, until stepping aside to run for mayor. In 2024, People Power PAC raised $194,000 and spent it on behalf of Alexis Mercedes Rinck, a progressive who won election versus interim centrist councilmember Tanya Woo in a landslide. Rinck was still outspent, but not as badly as most 2023 progressive candidates.

Armstrong has also been working in union organizing and environmental advocacy: “As an elected National Councilor of AEA (AFL-CIO) and an MLK Labor Delegate of SAG-AFTRA, they have championed workers’ rights with integrity and purpose,” Armstrong’s campaign website states. “They not only serve on the Seattle LGBTQ Commission and Co-Chair the Board of Theatre Puget Sound, but they currently lead Sustainable Seattle (S2), one of our oldest environmental nonprofits, as their Co-Executive Director.”

Over the past year, Armstrong campaigned for social housing alongside House Our Neighbors, the nonprofit that engineered the 26-point victory for the Proposition 1A ballot measure in February, which will add more than $50 million in annual funding. In contrast, Mayor Harrell appeared on the campaign mailer for the effort to defeat Prop 1A. Meanwhile, Harrell’s approval rating — once vaunted — has tanked in recent polls.

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“I think [Harrell’s] going to fight social housing tooth and nail, because it does not help the chamber, and it does not help the richest among us,” Armstrong said. “I think that social housing is that missing tool in the toolbox. […] If I’m elected mayor, I will represent and support social housing 100% through and through.”

Investing in the arts

Not enough of the Mayor’s Downtown Activation Plan (DAP) has focused on arts and culture, Armstrong argued.

“I co-chair the board of TPS, Theater Puget Sound, which almost went under due to his negligence,” Armstrong said. “So that hits home with me, because I grew up auditioning at TPS. It’s been around since 1997.”

Ultimately, Theater Puget Sound was able to strike a deal, but it took a year of negotiating, Armstrong said, crediting Joy Hollingsworth and Marshall Foster with seeing negotiations through. But the brinksmanship with a key resource for artists was troubling in their eyes.

“TPS is going to survive and be great, but those affordable rehearsal spaces would have gone away,” Armstrong said. “The investments we make are not actually in artists, they’re in consultants or a nonprofit industrial complex that doesn’t actually see that dropdown effect. So we need a bottom-up approach to the arts, and that looks like social housing for the arts.”

For Armstrong, a better program would involve more opportunities for artists and musicians just starting out to get access to public venues, a marketing boost, and earn a living wage doing it. The County’s arts levy will help considerably, they said, but the City can do a lot more.

“Parks has this busking program with terrible marketing,” Armstrong said. “No one actually knows who’s performing where in which parks, and they’re paying these buskers to go play a set for two people. That means, actually, creating performance venues in our parks, like, right now you can’t. If I had a theater company and we wanted to go perform in all the different parks, like Shakespeare in the park, you can’t charge tickets for those, and you can’t do more than six for that one show performances in all parks in Seattle. So, the bureaucratic nature does not create a mechanism for arts to thrive, except for in the institutional spaces of STG, Benaroya, SAM…”

Economic revitalization and good governance

Downtown activation plans should be thinking bigger about pedestrianizing spaces and placemaking, Armstrong argued. They support adding the Center City “Cultural Connector” Streetcar and pedestrianizing Pike Place, and even floated the idea of creating something like New York’s High Line elevated pedestrian path that would ferry pedestrians from the market toward the core of downtown. Seattle voters rejected the idea of creating an elevated park by repurposing the old Alaskan Way Viaduct in 2016, a move The Urbanist agreed with at the time.

“People are walking from maybe Pioneer Square through the waterfront, up the [pedestrian] overpass, right, they get to the market, then they’re just kind of like, let loose into the city,” Armstrong said. “I think we could connect a version of the High Line that then goes up and takes a little to Westlake or like, let’s keep expanding what that experience could look like and make more pedestrianized spaces that people want to be in and experience.”

Echoing Lorena Gonzalez, the former Seattle Council President who lost to Harrell in 2021, Armstrong wants to expand economic revitalization efforts to focus on the entire city, not just downtown, as has been the mayor’s focus.

“Holistically, a big mistake that’s been made is that this huge four-year focus on revitalizing downtown to send us back into the past and pre-pandemic times is neglecting the neighborhoods,” Armstrong said. “Yeah, I think if we actually invested in our neighborhoods again and made more density in those spaces. […] This is a young, vibrant, innovative city, and if we invest in those neighborhoods, maybe people could find pathways to permanent, affordable housing and or even homeownership someday.”

Seattle is likely to keep growing and booming economically, Armstrong said, but the question is whether it will invest in solving its biggest issues.

“The mountain is out right now; this is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and one of the richest cities in human history, and yet we can’t house 16,000 people, and we can’t solve these crises,” Armstrong said. “Why don’t we have the willpower? And I think that comes from a mayor-heavy City Hall, and I want to step up to challenge that.”

While Harrell’s administration had been light on scandals until recently, Armstrong argued a pattern of mismanagement has emerged, pointing to a lawsuit over wage theft from unions representing many of Seattle’s 13,000 public employees. The suit contends the City has botched the rollout of a new payroll system.

“You have seven unions suing the city for payroll issues,” Armstrong said. “Why can’t our city run payroll? I just think it needs a next generation of innovation and leadership that’s going to actually follow through and build out proper systems that support people over corporate interest.”

Despite throwing considerable money at the Seattle Police Department, Armstrong noted Harrell was only able to increase staffing by one net new police officer in 2024, staunching the bleeding from years of losses but just barely. They said they’d like to see the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) department expanded more aggressively than Harrell has managed, and referenced Rep. Shaun Scott’s bill to circumvent the block on expanding CARE that the Seattle Police Officers Guild was able to negotiate into their last contract with the Harrell Administration.

“We need to innovate public safety in a new way — I think investments in community safety officers, which became, eventually, apparently, the CARE team,” Armstrong said. “I want to invest in a medical approach, community approach, I think we will call 911 — I mean Shaun Scott has the bill on that state level this year — but people struggle choose who arrives.”

Can a theater kid take down the football star?

The last two mayors were athletes, with Jenny Durkan a college basketball player and Harrell a star football player at Garfield High School and at the University of Washington. Harrell will clearly be the jock in the race, but Armstrong thinks a theater kid can win.

“I think the arts can be so healing, and I think Seattle just needs some healing,” Armstrong said. “Can I beat him in football? Someone in their 30s, someone in their 60s? I could probably try to take them, but can I throw a spiral? I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that.”

But jock vs theater kid is not the main differentiator in Armstrong’s eyes, even if it makes for a great high school drama.

“I don’t really want to see it as going up against the jock,” Armstrong said. “I mean, I really just see him as a homegrown person who had some success, and I don’t know. I’m not worth $15 to $18 million. I make $80k a year. So I think that just represents a different side of the city. I’d be curious on the campaign trail what we end up aligning on, if anything at all.”

The post Ry Armstrong Lays Out Progressive Contrast Against Mayor Harrell first appeared on The Urbanist.

For example, denser housing doesn’t just increase housing opportunities, it also makes room for trees and green space as the city grows, he pointed out.

“We have a robust economy; we’re going to continue to grow,” Lin told The Urbanist. “We’re going to have political refugees. We’re going to have climate refugees coming here. And so, yeah, we need to think big and to plan big. And that means density, and density is how we get the combination of trees plus housing plus livable neighborhoods. We can’t have a suburban lifestyle continue as we grow as a city. And I know that it’s hard to for us. It’s hard for any city to grow as very rapidly as we have, without real growing pains.”

Normally the D2 council seat would not be up this year or appear alongside the mayoral race, but Tammy Morales’ early resignation has created an opening that must be filled in the upcoming general election. The city council appointed Mark Solomon to fill the seat as a temporary replacement until election results are certified in November. Though the runner-up D2 candidate in 2019, Solomon has pledged to be a caretaker lawmaker and not run for election.

Also running for the seat is Adonis Ducksworth, a Seattle Department of Transportation staffer on loan to the Mayor’s Office as an advisor, who like Lin applied for the temporary appointment. Apparently, perennial candidate Tanya Woo recently filed, too, hoping the third time is the charm, after losing a D2 bid in 2023 and a citywide bid in 2024. The winner will serve for two years before facing reelection with the rest of Seattle’s district-based councilmembers in 2027.

For Lin, part of the inspiration to run was pushing Seattle to avoid the fate of the San Francisco Bay Area, where housing and affordability issues spiraled out of control. He experienced first-hand the high housing costs and displacement pressure long brewing in the Bay.

“We had our first kid down in Oakland, and were trying to buy a house,” Lin said. “This was like 2000 — very good for teachers salary and a secondary salary, and the housing boom down there… kind of saw that for the future of Seattle down in the Bay Area — the growing income wealth disparity and basically, kind of found ourselves economically pushed out from the Bay Area and came back to Seattle for law school.”

Zoning and growth planning

The Seattle Comprehensive Plan presents an opportunity to increase housing options and diversity, which Lin acknowledged, saying Seattle needs to distribute growth equitably throughout the city. Wealthier parts of the city have not been asked to absorb as much housing as D2, he said.

“I think we need to go bigger and for D2 in particular, I mean, if you look at the comp plan map, where the density is, there’s a ton in District 2, in terms of upzones,” Lin said. “I would really like to see those upzones in other parts of the city. One of the best anti-displacement things is for other parts of the city to have their fair share and prosperity of growth.”

Count Lin among the advocates for cities being cities, not suburbs.

“We can’t have huge parts of the city just continue to be more suburban in nature,” Lin said. “That’s just going to push folks down to South Seattle, and that’s just going to exacerbate the economic displacement of South Seattle.”

Permit applications have nosedived in Seattle, which points toward a slowdown in housing production. Even as construction continues to hum along for now, the housing pipeline is looking increasingly dry looking forward. And Lin pointed out this problem could have far-reaching consequences.

“We need to get housing development started again, and that will help with jobs, that will help with tax revenues,” Lin said. “Whenever there’s housing development, they pay sales tax. Often there’s [real estate] excise tax. So I think that that’s critical is to keep housing production going.”

After finishing law school in Seattle, Lin worked in real estate law in private practice before eventually got a job at the Seattle City Attorney’s office. For the last six years, he’s supported the City’s Office of Housing work, partnering with nonprofit homebuilders.

Lin expressed support for the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program, Seattle’s version of inclusionary zoning, and lamented that it hadn’t been put into place before most of the Amazon building boom took place.

Overall, Lin portrayed himself as a champion for taxing the rich and easing the tax burden on the working class, saying he would defend JumpStart revenue from being pilfered or cut. The revenue source has turned into a bit of a piggybank for mayoral priorities in recent budget cycles.

“We can’t shore [our budget] up by taxing our lowest income, our fixed income seniors, our minimum wage workers,” Lin said. “We need to lean in things like capital gains tax and protecting our Jumpstart tax, because there probably will be financial impacts from the feds. We might see a recession as well.”

Social housing

Having seen how challenging it is in the affordable housing sector also gave Lin pause when it came to Seattle’s recently approved social housing measure, Proposition 1A. Lin said he voted for Prop 1B.

“So 50 million, you know, no other sort of affordable housing developer gets 50 million year after year,” Lin said. “And so that’s what I do. Want to make sure it’s well spent. Voters have strongly approved it. I will strongly support it. But I did have concerns about this sort of ramping up too quick, and are they going to be able to? I just don’t want there to be some sort of stumbling where then that sort of has some sort of backlash on affordable housing generally, or progressive revenues generally… because again, I know how hard it is to ramp up. I know how hard it is to develop these and they are a new city model. And so that was my concern.”

Lin seemed aware his Prop 1B support might be greeted with some chagrin by social housing advocates who fought hard to pass their measure. However, Lin stressed he would support their work and respect the will of voters in a follow-up email after our interview.

“I couldn’t be more passionate about ensuring the Social Housing Developer and the House our Neighbors team are successful and the clear message delivered by voters,” Lin said. “And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to bring my experience and skills to support their work through strong support and collaboration at council.”

Transportation

Lin emphasized the need to move away from car dependence and improve transit, both in terms of safety and service. He expressed frustration that the Rainier Valley has at-grade transit while most neighborhoods have grade-separated transit. For Southeast Seattle, this has meant MLK Way has long been a hotspot for collisions involving trains — with Sound Transit boardmembers finally now pushing hard for safety upgrades.

“As a growing city, our streets are not going to get any bigger,” Lin said. “So we got to look at these alternative methods, whether it’s light rail, bus, biking, walking. I mean, this also gets back to the planning and why we need these walkable in more dense neighborhoods, because we just rely on cars. So it’s going to be a tough transition long-term to go from our car-oriented culture. And thankfully, we’ve made a lot of progress, and we’re one of the better cities, but we still have just so much to go.”

Lin seemed hesitant to get behind pedestrianizing Lake Washington Boulevard, but overall backed efforts to pedestrianize more areas of the city, with Pike Place recently earning the mayor’s vow of support.

“I would just love to see more parts of the city pedestrianized,” Lin said. “I really think it can reinvigorate the area. As we reimagine downtown, or reimagine our city, we really need to do this. I’m not a planner myself, but I would love to see like that this is part of that sort of long-term planning. How do we think big about our city? And, are there ways that we can really create these pedestrian experiences?”

Safety

Backing a balanced approach to public safety, Lin said safety interventions are necessary to reduce crime and substance use disorder.

“I do think we have an obligation to intervene,” Lin said. “I think the question is, what does that intervention look that intervention look like? And I think intervention does not look like just throwing people in a cold jail cell with no medical support, right? That’s, that’s brutal and unusual punishment, but it’s also not leaving them on the street where they’re they’re also at severe risk of dying from overdoses, as well as the elements and safety issues, right.”

Lin wants to expand use of drug diversion courts and reduce use of the SCORE jail in Des Moines, which has garnered criticism for the high number of inmate deaths. While pushing for more diversion and civilian crisis response, he wasn’t shy about saying police recruitment was part of his vision, too.

“I do believe we need more police,” Lin said. “We’re very short-staffed on police compared to other cities our size. And so when people call 911 because of a public safety issue, we need police to be able to respond. We do need the other responses, social workers, healthcare workers, to be able to respond to things that don’t need a police officer with a gun.”

Among his proposed upstream solutions is a renewed push to expand tiny home villages and homeless shelters.

“In terms of public safety, it’s probably our homeless that are suffering the most,” Lin said. “So, that’s where, again, you get back to housing supply on that part. But I do think we need a lot more shelter, emergency shelter, transitional shelter or tiny homes. Would really love to work more with our faith communities.”

Expanding tiny house villages is an idea that has long been floated, with former Mayor Jenny Durkan making it a centerpiece of her homeless plan in her 2017 run and former Councilmember Andrew Lewis pushing her administration to follow through. Nonetheless, expansion has been tortuously slow. Meanwhile, the Compassion Seattle initiative campaign, which Mayor Bruce Harrell said he would enact as mayor, promised 2,000 additional units of housing for homeless people in one year, but he also fell short.

“What you can accomplish in two years is also just changing the dialogue,” Lin said. “It’s not just going to be me. It’s gonna be working with community and laying the groundwork. A lot of this is going to be long term, but it would be about getting the community tapped in. And perhaps, for me, I think that as a lawyer and understanding how government works, I really want to bring that information and knowledge to the community, a strong bench of folks who are ready to have this information and lead.”

For more on Eddie Lin’s campaign, check out his website.

The post Eddie Lin Pushes Housing in Council Bid to Represent Southeast Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.