Speaker 0: Thank you. The bill passed and show sign it. Please read the next item to the record.
Speaker 4: Agenda Item nine Council Bill 119196 An ordinance amending ordinance 125475 which adopted the 2018 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels all by a three quarter vote of the city council. The committee recommends the bill passed as amended.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And this is the appropriations bill analogous to Scripture, the Bass bill, and I believe Councilmember Skinner will present an amendment. I note you're correct. Of course my notes have been corrected. It's better watch out. This council bill 119196 amends the 2018 Budget Adoption Ordinance by modifying appropriations for the Department of Finance and Administrative Services and Finance General and the Office of Housing and the Human Services Department. It basically dedicates funding from the sale of the communication shop property to, number one, the relocation of the communication shop, a number to the Seattle Rental Housing Assistance Program, which will support people who are on the FHA voucher waitlist and whom are at risk of becoming homeless through the rental voucher system and the Office of Housing Staff support. And this ordinance passed out of committee with three yes votes and four abstentions. Since the committee, there has been various amendments and discussions. And so I know Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Skate and probably everyone on the dais may have something to say about that. But I think we are trying to get to a place where we fully recognize the plight that many are experienced out there of homelessness. And so with that, I will turn to who's speaking first, which I think is Councilmember Mosquito.
Speaker 6: Wonderful. And thank you, Mr. President. I move to amend Council Bill 119196 by substituting version five for version 2/2 been moved.
Speaker 0: It's been moved in second to make the amendment. And Councilmember Mosquito, you describe what we're doing.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. President. There have been a number of conversations that have taken place over the last few days. And first, I want to thank the folks who have testified not just today, but the folks that I've talked to over the last year and a half. Housing and homelessness are the press is the pressing issue in our city right now. Creating a more affordable and equitable city is our goal. I want to thank not just the folks who testified today, but the leadership that I had the chance to speak with and Nichols ville last Friday. And also, I want to thank the mayor for her comments earlier this morning where she said that we must create a city where we act with urgency on short and long term housing needs. And if, Mr. President, if you don't mind, I'm happy to make comments now or later, however you suggest.
Speaker 0: Now might be a perfect time.
Speaker 6: Great. I want to be really clear as we enter this conversation about the sale of this parcel of property that as a general rule, I believe that public land should stay in public hands. I also believe that given the limited amount of land, we as a city should be looking at how we preserve all of the parcels of available land to create affordable housing. Given that the high cost of land impedes our efforts to create more affordable housing for low and middle income residents, and I'll be working with my council colleagues, the mayor's office and the community at large to bring forward greater clarification and expectations and processes so that we can prioritize our desire to see more public land, stay in public hands, to create public housing. As we think about the opportunity that's in front of us today, and given the various considerations that have been put forward from the mayor's office and from this council, it makes sense to me that this small parcel of land, which has limitations on it in terms of our ability to create affordable housing, that we consider selling it and that we have conditionalities associated with it, that it goes into providing housing for short and long term health care needs, housing both in creating long term structures that can house individuals now and into the future, and funding for critical services in our community. For those who are unsheltered, this can support is conditional. And when we have one time revenue, I believe we must focus investments on capital improvements, capital improvements into homeless shelters and services and create stable programs and stable structures that can provide the housing that many folks need and also prevent folks from falling into homelessness. I want to thank Councilmember Herbold, especially also Councilmember Brian Bagshaw, Suarez Gonzales and myself. We've heard your comments and we've heard the committee public testimony over the last few months. This amendment that you see in front of us is reflective of the need for hygiene infrastructure, for short term housing and emergency shelter needs for long term. Housing and infrastructure needs in our community. It builds on what the mayor proposed to us, and it helps to make sure that we're looking at stable, progressive revenue in the future so that we can increase, not just maintain, but increase programmatic and operational costs associated with services for the unsheltered low income and moderate income. This version of the bill ensures that we authorize the spending of the proceeds for immediate needs and long term housing needs, and that we're committed to identifying clear, stable funding streams for programs and operations in the future. This version also makes it clear that capital investments should be made on structures, shelters, housing and additional capital projects, not disproportionately on short term projects or short term infrastructure like tents. I believe we also must broaden our scope of what structures we're thinking about as we think about housing those who are unsheltered and in need of affordable housing, including tiny houses like the one that I saw on Friday, identifying more locations for tiny house villages, making sure that we're investing in backyard cottages such as the block project. Identifying opportunities for us to build modular housing, housing that can be mobile and structures that last for 20 years or more. This is the innovative type of new investments that we need to be thinking of. Let's also think of how we can purchase and build single room occupancy buildings, multi-family housing options, and let's build those structures for the community that needs it now and the community that needs it in the future. These are new and innovative structures that we must take on because business as usual is not working. Creating affordable units that are five over seven or seven floors tall is not going to address the housing crisis that we have in front of us. We got to work with our nonprofit partners and think of ways that we can create short term and long term solutions for our community, who needs affordable housing units and childcare and places to go and enjoy and community settings so that we can continue to organize? So all options must be on the table for consideration as we move forward. If we're going to truly create long term, meaningful, affordable change so that all of Seattle can live here, I'm committed to working with my colleagues. I'm committed to working with the mayor. I'm committed to working with all of you and the community at large so that we can identify ways that we can build the housing that we need and that every parcel of available land is developed into affordable housing options or public assets for our community to enjoy. Again, I want to thank Councilmember Bagshaw, who shepherd us through last Wednesday's conversation and Councilmember Herbold for her work over the weekend. In the last few days, Councilmember Gonzalez for her work to continue to identify ways that we can ask the right questions to make sure that we're getting the right funding and right conditionalities associated with this . And I really I really want to also note the central staff who worked over the weekend on this. Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Tracy. Just a quick thank you to my team as well, to Michael Maddox and Councilmember Herbold, same as well. I'll be voting in favor of this. And this is not just for a short term investment, though. This is a long term commitment and this is just the beginning.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember skater Katherine, make sure I recognize your moment if you'd like to speak. But I have a few hands going up, so I'm going to recognize Councilmember Herbold.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Council President Harrell. The substitute bill itself adds 1 million in additional bridge funding for emergency shelter and drop in hygiene services. It also adds some recitals outlining potential public health concerns and addressing the need for bridge funding for service providers who either receive decreased funding or whose funding was not renewed via the homelessness investments RFP. In addition, the bill itself will preserve all $5.3 million from the mayor's original bridge housing proposal as it relates specifically to the hygiene services funding. You know, we all know and we've heard today that hygiene services are an essential part of our region's public health response. It's important that we learn from the hepatitis A outbreaks in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Cruz. Doctors Bill Daniel and Dr. Ben Danielson of the Seattle King County Board of Health in an October crosscut wrote. This does not look like an emergency response to us as medical and public health professionals. We stress that people will die unnecessarily if they are left on the streets while hoping and waiting for permanent housing. The risks for people living on the streets and the need for emergency action are grimly illustrated by ongoing outbreaks of Hepatitis A in California. The San Diego outbreak has yielded more than 500 cases, with 70% requiring hospitalization and 19 deaths. Homeless people and drug users account for a large majority of cases and outbreaks followed in Los Angeles, in Santa Cruz. And the California governor just declared a state of emergency over all of the outbreaks. Unlike Habitat. It is has B and C. Hepatitis A is spread through close personal contacts. Theses and limited access to hygiene resources. This spread can be prevented with basic sanitation and hygiene. A public health crisis like this in Seattle is absolutely preventable. Hepatitis A is is spread through close personal contact and limit, exacerbated by limited access to the kinds of hygiene services that we are looking to ensure that there is continued funding for. With this budget action, HST has confirmed that the majority of the additional funding for hygiene services announced in its December RFP announcements are for people who are staying at shelters that received increased investments. These are not drop in shelters. These are services that are available for folks who are clients of those shelters, so are great. We have a continued great need for hygiene services for folks who are not clients of any particular shelter. Considering we have upwards of more than 3000 people who are unsheltered in our city without this vital funding, this important tool in our public health response will close without a clear plan of how to support the people currently accessing these services to get their basic needs met. As it relates specifically to the shelter investments in this in this legislation, I've said before and I'll say it again, I am absolutely supportive of HST Pathways Home Initiative to increase funding for 24 seven shelter and low barrier shelter. But I'm only supportive with a concrete proposal to provide a realistic transition plan for the people who are currently accessing services at the sites that did not receive funding. Efforts to transition people to other services should occur and be demonstrated as successful before bridge funding is terminated. The emergency shelter bridge funding outlined in this bill would allow organizations such as Share Wheel to maintain essential shelter services through 2018. I also really want to thank share wheel residents and church hosts of Cher. We'll Shelter's for your advocacy and your education to us of how your services make people safe in community, how your shelters are more than just mats on the floor, how your shelters have a good track record of access to stable housing, and how important it is to the housed residents in Seattle and our city to have a way to partner and welcome the unhoused into our communities. Kathy Olson of the Woodland Park United Methodist Church said it well at Councilmember Sawant's special evening committee meeting last week. She said, They are part of our community and we are part of theirs. I want to extend my thanks to Councilmember Sawant for keeping the focus on the needed addition of funds for emergency shelter and hygiene services , as well as services for homeless women. And her efforts specifically last week to bring impacted parties into council chambers and hear directly for them from them on how these services improve their their day to day lives. I want to also thank Councilmember Mosqueda for giving me the chance to work with her on some shared interests that we have around this legislation. I also want to thank Councilmember Gonzales, who although she's not here today, by getting a majority of councilmembers to vote for a delay on the allocation of the 5.2 million gave us the room to have the conversation that we needed to have about how to focus this legislation on not just the council's interests , but the public's needs. And again, also extend my thanks to essential staff, my staff, Shannon Perez, and as well to to Michael in Councilmember Mosquito's office.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Herbold. Any further comments from any of my colleagues? We are going to vote on the just the substitution in a second. We have another opportunity so we could talk to we could do the substitution first and then come back to the amended and then, okay, so let's just do the amendment, the substitution first because it started and moved in second and that's on the floor. All those in favor of the substitution, please say I am not opposed. So we have a substitute, a version and I saw a councilmember whereas. And then Councilmember Sharma was Sharma. That's what it was. I saw it first. But am I seeing things?
Speaker 3: So I'll go. You'll let Councilmember Debra go? You said Councilmember Sharma.
Speaker 0: I know. I said Councilmember. Whereas. And then Councilmember Sharma. I thought.
Speaker 3: I did, but. So what?
Speaker 0: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I'm just giving you a hard time.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Deborah.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I just briefly want to say this on a on a more of a professional and a personal note. In the two years that I've had this job, it's the first time that I had an opportunity to sit down with Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Mosqueda on more than one occasion and actually caucus. We actually sat down and said, got together and each talked to each other and said, What can we live with? What can't we live with? What can we do? What, what? What needs can we meet to do this collectively? To really show that Seattle City Council does care? There's no one has cornered the market about who cares more about your issues. We all do. As you know, we're within the constraints of being elected leaders in a budget and how we move forward. I had the opportunity to sit down with Katherine Lester for 2 hours and be able to to learn. I've learned a lot, but to be able to infuse those ideas into my conversations with my colleagues. And so I'm very I'm very happy. And I'm hoping that this trend continues, that your leaders up here spend time talking to each other about important issues. So we do have legislation and audiences that produce something where we can agree on what's best for our city and do it together. I don't always think there has to be animosity. I don't think there has to be negativity. I don't think that people have to be unkind. I think we just have to talk. And as I've said this once and I'll say it again, and what I've learned and what I know to be true in Indian Country is that language is culture and culture is behavior. And if you change the language, you change the behavior. So I'm very, very happy today to be able to support this. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Walsh. Councilmember Swan.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian Harrow. I support this amendment because it restores most of the funding that was lost by Cher real shelters and the urban rest jobs during the Human Services Department's last homeless funding grant. It will mean that showers and laundry services for the people who rely on them for their jobs will be open for more hours of the day. And it will mean that the shelter beds that were outrageously scheduled to be eliminated this year will remain open. It is not unfortunately enough in the sense that it funds 1 million, which is a really big improvement, but the providers estimated 1.2 million to fully restore their funding. And I only point this out because we I don't think the council and elected officials should be nickel and diming these essential services like that. But I think the paramount take home message from what's happening today in terms of this amendment is exactly what one of the speakers in public comment, Emily MacArthur, said, which is that when we fight, we win, as Councilmember Herbold mentioned. We are here just eight days after the big town hall that we did on Monday last week, where over 250 people attended. But what was most important was who was at the table. We didn't have, you know, bureaucrats or department executives at the table. We had service providers themselves and the service users themselves. Queen Bee was at the table, for example, and Nedra Freeman was a table with the table Michelle Martian, who helped John was at the table. And I think what we heard was quite eloquently described by council member Herbold. And I thank you for attending the town hall analogy, then, Councilmember O'Brien, for sending a supportive message. That means a lot. I don't want to focus on the amendment itself because of course we are in support of that. But more raise the question of pathways home that Councilmember Herbold alluded to. And for council members who haven't who weren't who weren't there at the town hall on Monday, I really urge you to watch the Seattle Channel video. Formerly homeless people who use the share will share animal shelters in the past talked about the community and stability they have found. They're using that, allowing them to transition to permanent housing. So the what's happened is a Human Services Department explained last December that their decision, based on the Pathways Home approach to defund, share and real was because their funding applications did not show anyone that transition to permanent housing. If that is the case, then it is a problem with the application, not with the reality of the program, because we met individuals on Monday who had transitioned successfully to housing. I wanted to quote from Michelle Marshawn, who runs real and my office she spoke at. She was at the table and she spoke about this about Pathways Home. And my office transcribed a portion of what she said at the table on Monday. And so I'm quoting her now, The Pathways Home report that has become the roadmap for the Seattle Human Services Department blames us for the intractability of homelessness and completely ignores the deep economic divisions and housing injustice of our city today. Pathways Home is a cruel euphemism and shocking reversal of decades long partnerships and hard won progress in our community. It forces competition among people and programs to gain scarce housing resources in order to keep city funding. It is not a pathway, and it does nothing to create a home. Pathways Home was not demanded or reviewed by homeless people themselves. It's not like homeless people themselves rose up and said, Hey, why don't you all go to hundreds of shelter beds, clothes, hygiene programs and don't limit all of us to force us to compete for too few housing spots. Again and again, the speakers in public comment and at the table pointed out the irony of saying we should transition people to housing and that's why we're going to cut shelter funding at a time when housing has never been more unaffordable than now. Homeless women and men because of these cuts are suffering and at risk today because of the slashing and shuttering of their basic survival service network. It is not by accident that Women in Black will stand for the greatest one month number of outdoor violent homeless deaths. 15 people this Wednesday, one month into the Pathways Home Changes Pathways Home I'm still quoting Michelle Broadway's home was not demanded, reviewed or analyzed by workers who spend many years on the ground doing this work. The department that led this process of defunding defending programs under this euphemism, whose leaders are not even here to listen to us tonight, lacks foundational experience, full knowledge of the realities of homeless people and the work being done to keep people together and safe. There are if we had lofty rhetoric about valuing and prioritizing continuing homeless leadership to the highest levels of provider agencies. But they did not involve homeless people in the original report. The creation of the RFP and the defunded the only homeless led agencies will ensure that exist in Seattle today. So I think really what for me, two things are important out of what's happening today. One is that when we actually build a fighting movement, we can win sometimes in record time. So let's remember that. And two, we need to look closely into this Pathways Home program, and we should not accepted. I mean, today's victory shows that we should not accept anything as a done deal. The mayor's office may say it's a done deal. The Human Services Department is it's a done deal. Many council members may say it's a done deal, but it's our duty to fight for what's right. So I will be in my committed to Human Services, Equitable Development and Renters Rights Committee. I will be holding discussions in the coming months to review Pathways Home and its outcomes. And we so we will we will be doing that in a serious way. And I really urge councilmembers to participate in it, and especially thank Councilmember Herbold for continuing to highlight the problems in the based home logic and more than anyone else . I want to thank all the activists, organizers and the regular people who came out last Monday and were the people who were instrumental in winning today's victory. And bottom line, if Pathways Home and if the mayor wants to talk about housing, we love housing. We want housing. That is why we are demanding that the city council pass a strong $200 million progressive revenue tax by taxing big business very soon so that we can build over a thousand units of permanently affordable housing. You know, automatically if it's publicly owned, it's automatically rent controlled housing. So if we build over a thousand units every year, then we can actually begin to tackle. That's not going to be enough. But that is far more than we could be doing today. So I would urge us that we continue building this movement so that we can win a $200 million tax on big business so that we can actually address the affordable housing question. Thank you.
Speaker 7: To. Okay. We're about to vote.
Speaker 0: Councilman Baxter, did you want to say any words before we vote?
Speaker 3: I'll just be really quick. Thanks to all of you, first of all, for letting me call in and vote and to listen to public comments and to all of your comments. I really want to focus, too, and say thanks to council members Mosqueda Herbold and whereas, because really what you guys did was help us identify the problems and find solutions that we could all live with. And that's a real key. Also, I want to acknowledge the mayor for her commitment to getting people inside fast. That's a big change from where we've been over the last couple of years, and having her support is going to be invaluable. So I'm certainly supporting this. Of course, I want to continue with these short term options that we've all been talking about. And as council members watch has said, getting more permanent housing is key. It takes everybody coming together and not fighting each other, but finding the solution. So I'm with you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Casper Bagshaw and Councilmember Brian.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm also really appreciative of the work of colleagues to get to the place where we are today. It's exciting. Only a few days after that last discussion to have some resolution around this, to be able to make a commitment to something. The folks in our community, including those who showed up today to extend the bridge and make these investments, we need to make both an affordable housing and an emergency shelter.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Casper and Brian. Okay. I think we are ready to vote. Excellent. All great comments. So at this point, I would ask the clerk to please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill.
Speaker 3: Sergeant Bagshaw. Hi.
Speaker 1: Herbold. I was. I was Darragh O'Brien.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 1: President Harrell. Hi. Seven in favor and unopposed.
Speaker 0: Great. The bill passed and sure was silent. Thank all of you for your advocacy and your fight. Please read the next gen item into the record, please.
AN ORDINANCE amending Ordinance 125475, which adopted the 2018 Budget; changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels; all by a 3/4 vote of the City Council.