Speaker 1: The bill passes and the chair will sign it. The report of the Select Committee on Housing Affordability. Please read item number one.
Speaker 2: The report of the Select Committee on Housing Affordability Agenda. Item one Council Bill 118498 relating to land use and zoning. Adding a new chapter to 3.58 B of the Seattle Municipal Code to establish the framework for an affordable housing impact mitigation program for development, for commercial development and amending some subsection 23.4 0.0 20a subsection 20 3.76. 06b . Subsection 20 3.76. 06c and subsection 25.0 5.6 75i of the Seattle Municipal Code. The committee recommends the bill pass as amended.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember O'Brien. Thank you. First of all, I just want to thank all of you for being here today and testifying in Kalamazoo, Burgess, for extending time to. It's really powerful for us to sit here and listen to so many different perspectives and stories about how the lack of affordability in our city is fundamentally changing. What I think of, and I think we all think of as as what Seattle should be. And we have a lot of work today, and today is a big step forward. Colleagues, I want to first address an amendment that's proposed for this legislation. And I would like to move this amendment, which is in our documents, and it would add a section one and then remember the the remaining sections. They would make the findings of fact and Attachment A and attachment A is about 15 page document that lays out the history of the recent history of where we've been on affordable housing and the work that's led up to this and what comes next. It's a great read for anyone who wants to read, and I hesitate to call 15 pages of summary, but it really is a summary of all the work that's been done and we're planning to do on affordable housing. So I'll go ahead and move that amendment. I'll second that amendment, and it is a great read, by the way. It's the whole history of what we're doing here and why. Any questions or comments on the amendment? All in favor of the amendment. Vote I. I oppose vote no. The amendment is unanimously adopted. So today before us now we have this amended bill and the next piece of legislation is a resolution we will take up, which lays out the framework for what we're going to do next year. This bill is around establishing the commercial linkage fee, or we're now calling the mandatory housing affordability commercial program. What this does is it sets a schedule of prices, fees that new development will need to pay towards affordable housing. This is a great step forward, but this bill alone will not produce any affordable housing. The resolution identifies the other steps that need to happen in order to make this bill work. What will have to happen is modest zoning changes throughout the city will need to take effect and refer to this bill before the affordable housing can be produced. We anticipate that the first changes will happen in South Lake Union and downtown and that that legislation would happen in the beginning the first half of next year. As soon as that legislation is adopted. All new construction in those zones would then be required to provide affordable housing. Similarly, there will be other zoning changes that happen. The majority of those will probably happen in 2017, and this is all in the commercial side. The resolution I'll talk about in a second will also indicate that we intend to pass an ordinance early next year to have an inclusionary housing program on the residential side that will similarly take effect as we make those zoning changes in the same neighborhoods going forward. I think that's all I'll say now. I imagine there's others that want to speak to this and then maybe I could wrap up and we're done. Okay, thank you. Any other comments? Councilmember Okamoto.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. I'm in support of this resolution and I'm pleased and privileged that I get to vote on it. The city has been doing an enormous amount of work in the housing affordability arena. I was had the opportunity to be an alternate on the PSR Sea Growth Management Policy Committee meeting last week, where I heard about efforts throughout the region and the tools being used to fund housing affordability. And what I discovered is there are a wide variety of tools being used, many of them that we are just beginning to adopt that are in place elsewhere throughout the county. Well, this will be one of my last meetings on the council. This is also a statement and my hopes and aspirations for my colleagues that remain here and for new council members to come in, that this is the road map to help us get to more housing affordability. And while I won't be here on the dais, I may be out in the audience like you and hope that you hold this council accountable to implement these recommendations and those that are coming.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Council members.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you, President Burgess. Mandatory inclusionary zoning and all the recommendations from the Harlow committee are a good step forward, and I will be voting yes on the ordinance and the resolution. But we have to note that compared to a robust linkage fee with no phase in the measures proposed by the Harlow committee will take longer to implement. And that will mean that the people who are in need of affordable housing will either be without a home at all or will remain in unaffordable conditions for longer. The main arguments that we've heard for using the legal devices recommended by the Harlow committee and not going beyond that at all, is that this has been the grand bargain and that big developers have agreed not to fight against it. First of all, I thank everybody who every single one of the housing justice activists, some of you are here today who worked on housing issues for years. Some of you were on the committee. All your service is greatly appreciated. But we have to remember also that if we content ourselves with only demanding what big business agrees not to oppose, then we will not actually eliminate homelessness. We will never have enough affordable housing and working people will never get out of the relentless grind of living paycheck to paycheck. The goal has to be making housing affordable for all. The goal is not what is big business happy with. And so while I completely support the measures we are passing today, I don't think that we should stop here. Furthermore, if we believe that big developers will stick to the their end of this so-called grand bargain, then we are fooling ourselves. Every example from the past shows that they will try to get out of these agreements as soon as they can in the $15 discussions. We saw last year that big business fast food chains sued the city of Seattle to try and stop the minimum wage, despite the so-called bargain that was struck by the Income Inequality Advisory Committee . Just today, council members have received email from developer lobbyists arguing that the mandatory inclusionary zoning is charging too much. In other words, we will see them wriggling out of the bargain the first chance they get, and it would be foolhardy on our part to put any reliance on their word. I think we should be fighting to get this, but a lot more. And in addition to passing this resolution, we should revisit the linkage fee question in 2016, and we should be passing strong housing policies until we are able to say confidently that there is nobody homeless in Seattle and that everybody who has a home in Seattle has affordable housing.
Speaker 1: Other comments? Questions. So I'm just going to share a couple of comments about Council Bill 118498, which sets up essentially impact mitigation fees. There are 99 zero findings of fact attached to this ordinance, and several of them are critically important. Finding number 41 indicates that Seattle's population is projected to increase by another 120,000 people, and the city is projected to add an additional 70,000 housing units and 115,000 jobs by 2035. A significant portion of the additional households will be lower income individuals. Part of the demand for affordable housing is caused by commercial development. That's finding 42 finding 70 states that the purpose of this Council bill is through regulation to mitigate a portion of the impact of development of new commercial floor area on the need for affordable housing. Recognizing that the new lower wage workers associated with new commercial development increase have a demand for affordable housing. And I think it's important that the council's intent in passing this legislation is clear that we are establishing an impact mitigation fee to address these issues. Councilmember O'Brien Thank you for highlighting that. Councilor President Burgess. I want to just conclude by saying thank you to all the citizens who are member of the hall a process. This is one piece of that work that we can advance today. I want to thank Cato and the rest of central staff who's worked on this. This work goes back, frankly, to a resolution this council passed about a year ago. And they're a different framework, but a lot of the same a lot of the same work was done on that. I also want to thank Esther Handy, who's not here today, but formerly of my staff, who put a lot of work into getting this legislation to where it is. But mostly I want to just reflect on what I hear from the folks who showed up today and what we've heard and a lot of comments that this is a good and important step, that this alone will not do anything. There's a lot more work to do, and the work has to be much broader than just what we're talking about. It's great that this step is we're almost there to take this step that will require that all new development in our commercial and multifamily zones will be contributing towards providing affordable housing for the first time in the city's history. That is something to be really excited about. And yet we heard today that the challenges around affordability throughout the income spectrum for folks that have experienced homelessness or are currently experiencing homelessness to folks that are going to school. Two Working full time jobs. We're all struggling with how we managed to afford the city and we need to have to do a lot of work around this and the other recommendations that came out of Holla. With that, I look forward to voting on yes, on this. Thank you. Please call the roll on the passage of the bill.
Speaker 4: Lakota.
Speaker 1: Hi. O'Brien Hi.
Speaker 5: Okamoto Hi.
Speaker 2: Rasmussen Hi. So want I back to my garden? I Harrow and President Burgess nine in favor and unopposed.
Speaker 1: The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Please. But there's more. Please read item to.
AN ORDINANCE relating to land use and zoning; adding a new Chapter 23.58B of the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC) to establish the framework for an Affordable Housing Impact Mitigation Program for commercial development; and amending subsection 23.40.020.A, subsection 23.76.006.B, subsection 23.76.006.C, and subsection 25.05.675.I of the SMC.