Category: Guest Contributor

Density, Development, Guest Contributor, housing

Ten Questions to Ask About the City’s Draft Comprehensive Plan Update
A satellite view shows a typical suburban-style north Seattle neighborhood, with one detached single-family home per lot.

By Andrew Grant Houston

It’s December 2023, and as a local architect and housing advocate, I—along with many  other Seattleites—have now been waiting more than eight months since the city’s initial April release date for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the Housing Element of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan Update. 

The DEIS currently identifies five possible paths for Seattle’s growth over the next 20 years and how that growth—or lack thereof—will impact our urban and natural environment.

Although the Comprehensive Plan is a complete vision that includes a number of elements (as defined by the state’s Growth Management Act), typically the most contentious and complex of these elements is the Housing Element, which sets the upper limit for how many housing units Seattle will plan for in the next 20 years. This element, and the public engagement that will come with it, is a once-in-a-decade opportunity for Seattle residents to voice our views about whether that the number of homes in Seattle is sufficient or insufficient for us as well as future Seattleites, and to weigh in on where new homes should be added. 

The city of Seattle has delayed releasing the draft statement multiple times, which should tip you off as to just how critical the Housing Element update is. But if you aren’t the sort of person who spends their time either wishing Seattle looked more like Paris or hoping your neighborhood will be preserved in amber until the end of time, what are the questions you should be asking yourself as you attempt to engage with such an important topic? There are certainly a multitude, but here are my top 10.

Population Growth

In May, the Seattle Times reported that, according to census data, Seattle is the fastest-growing large city in the United States. How does this news change the proposed number of housing units in the EIS draft, given that people are moving here faster than new homes are being produced?

Planned Growth vs. Actual Growth

How does the housing allocation proposed in the previous Comprehensive Plan, compared to actual housing production since that time, influence the proposed number of units in the Draft EIS, given our current housing deficit?

Zoning Capacity vs. What is Actually Built

New buildings typically have a lifespan of 50 to 100 years, meaning that there are tracts of land that have been developed since the previous Comprehensive Plan that may see zoning changes but will not see any actual increases in housing over the next 20 years. Are these parcels included in calculations around achieving increased housing capacity as part of the Draft EIS, or are they excluded?

Mandatory Housing Affordability

How is the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program being factored into the number of proposed housing units, given that the Community Indicators Report (September 2020) released by the City’s Equitable Development Initiative identified a need for 68,000 “affordable” units at all income levels below 80 percent of Seattle’s area median income, as well as the latest numbers from the city on MHA showing that just 7 percent of all housing units created over the last year qualify as “affordable?”

Homelessness

King County’s Point in Time count showed an increase in unsheltered individuals in 2022 compared to 2020, from 11,751 to 13,368. How does this increase in unsheltered homelessness influence the types of housing allowed as part of the Comprehensive Plan, as well as the allowed uses across Seattle?

The Urban Village (UV) Strategy

The Seattle Planning Commission’s 2020 paper “Evolving Seattle’s Growth Strategy” noted that the current Urban Village strategy perpetuated inequities that have existed in Seattle land use patterns since the creation of the city. A focus on equality would allow more homes in all neighborhoods, whereas a focus on equity would allow more homes in areas where historic redlining prohibited people of color from living and neighborhoods that have seen little to no change in zoning since the implementation of the Urban Village strategy in 1994. Does the draft EIS address this and if so, how? 

The 15-Minute City

How does the concept of creating a “15-Minute City” influence where the city will allow commercial or non-residential uses in each neighborhood? How does this inform the minimum number of homes we will allow on every lot in Seattle?

Climate Refugees

In 2023, we’ve seen a massive increase in heat waves across the US and in other countries. Given Seattle’s relatively mild climate, as well as the city’s status as a sanctuary city, how does the potential increase in climate refugees over the next 20 years the plan covers influence the number of proposed housing units across the city?

Trees

What methodology is being used to ensure that the tree canopy across the city is preserved or increased while also taking into account reductions in the buildable area on individual lots that may be necessary to achieve this goal?

The Climate Future of South Park

At the beginning of this year, South Park experienced a king tide, which flooded the neighborhood. Given that climate change will increase instances of this kind of phenomenon, including rising sea levels, does the Comprehensive Plan consider any forms of managed retreat and the impact climate change will have on proposed housing and development capacity in South Park and around the Duwamish floodplain?

 

The questions I’ve outlined above may appear intimidating, but I share them because, just as an informed voter is the best kind of voter, an informed citizen is the best kind of citizen. Seattle must change the way we do business in order to become the city we all wish it was for every resident—a place where everyone can work, live, and play safely and in community together. 

But in order to get there we must first map the difficult road ahead. We must recognize that we are in a tumultuous time but that by working together we make overcoming the major issues our city faces that much easier for all of us. The Draft EIS must be the first plan for how we move forward, toward a Seattle for everyone. And if the city tries to turn away from this path, whether due to fear or a delusional sense of nostalgia, it’s up to us to collectively reject that false future.   

When the draft plan is released, I encourage everyone in Seattle to take just five minutes to make one comment on the plan. That comment can simply say “we need to be more ambitious in how many homes we’re planning for” or “we need to be honest about how many people want to live here.” The amount of good each comment could do for our city would mean a lot less time having to write op-eds like this and a lot more time spent out enjoying all the best aspects of what it means to live here. 

Andrew Grant Houston, also known as Ace the Architect, is the Founder and Head of Design of House Cosmopolitan, an architecture and urban design practice focused on celebrating culture and creating places where people belong. A former candidate for Mayor of Seattle in 2021, he also serves on the board of Futurewise.

Equity, Guest Contributor, Transit

What’s So Scary About Transit Riders? 

By Anna Zivarts

“I have to ride the bus. I have to deal with the scheduling, the condition of the street, getting to and from the bus. Does the schedule work with common arrival times for work, or are you gonna be stuck somewhere an hour before? Is there somewhere you can take shelter in the case of bad weather? All that stuff that if you’re not a regular bus rider, you’re not aware of.”

  • Aileen Kane, Washington nondriver

“Because many on [transit] boards tend to be car drivers, they really haven’t internalized what it means to be a transit rider. Those decisions determine whether you as a transit rider are going to be able to keep a job, going to be able to continue to be a caregiver, going to be able to continue to go to school.”

  • Judy Jones, Washington nondriver

In the spring of 2022, I can remember sitting on a bus, attempting to keep a five-year old entertained while I dialed in to give public comment at a Ben Franklin Transit board meeting. 

That spring, the board at Ben Franklin Transit (which provides transit in the Tri-Cities region) began discussing a plan to cut the sales tax that funds transit. The resulting revenue loss would necessitate cuts to transit service, including the likely elimination of Sunday service. 

In response to this proposal, Disability Rights Washington joined with labor, local advocates and staff from Transportation Choices Coalition to fight back. We reached out to the nondrivers we knew in the region and asked them to share their stories with the media and in public testimony.

Thankfully, after a series of high-stakes meetings, the board voted against the proposed tax cuts and transit service reductions. But that day in April, as I sat on the bus listening to the first of these meetings, I got angrier and angrier. It was very clear that the transit board members proposing the tax cuts and service reductions didn’t rely on transit themselves, nor had many of them ridden a bus in recent memory.

I thought back to how I’d heard many stories like this from the other nondriver advocates I organized with, advocates who for years had been attending transit board meetings and pushing for service that worked better for the people who needed it the most. 

In the fall of 2020, Disability Rights Washington launched the Disability Mobility Initiative to start organizing nondrivers across our state. We started by trying to interview nondrivers from every legislative district about how they get around, the barriers they face, and what they would change to make their communities more accessible. To date, we have 275 stories that are documented in our nondriver storymap, the visible part of our organizing work that eventually led to state-funded research showing that nondrivers make up 30 percent of our state population.

Blind advocate and Kitsap County resident Kris Colcock recalled: “It was suggested that the commissioners of Kitsap Transit take a day and just use the bus system. The immediate response was, ‘Well, we don’t have time to do that.’” 

In these interviews, I kept hearing anecdotes—especially from the older nondrivers who had gotten frustrated and decided to show up at a transit board meeting—about how frustrating it was to discover that transit boards were made up of elected officials who themselves didn’t rely on transit, and in many cases, thought they were too busy or their time was too valuable to use the service they managed.

Vivian Conger, a blind nondriver from Walla Walla, shared that when she attended her local transit board meeting, she was shocked to learn that one of the board members had ridden transit for the first time that very day. Blind advocate and Kitsap County resident Kris Colcock recalled: “It was suggested that the commissioners of Kitsap Transit take a day and just use the bus system. The immediate response was, ‘Well, we don’t have time to do that.’” 

In Washington State, a Public Transit Benefit Area (PTBA) is a governing body established by state code to create and run a transit agency. Current Washington state laws dictate the composition of PTBA boards, which include local elected officials from the area plus a nonvoting labor seat.

After hearing so much frustration from nondriver advocates, and after the experience with the Ben Franklin board, we collaborated with other advocates prior to the 2023 legislative session on a bill that would have added a voting seat for transit riders on these PTBA boards. Unfortunately, although the bill was drafted, opposition from transit agency lobbyists killed it before it was filed.

It’s unclear why having a voice for transit riders is so threatening. Perhaps it’s because labor has also been asking for a voting seat. Last year, they were successful in getting legislation introduced and will be working to get it passed again during the 2024 session. 

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Ensuring bus drivers have a voting seat on transit boards is critically important too, especially considering how much agencies across the state have struggled with staffing. In their 2022 report, “Bus Operators in Crisis” the national transportation think tank TransitCenter notes: “The disconnect in who holds central office and leadership positions (majority white and male) and frontline staff (majority people of color), can impact people’s commitment to the job, their perception of advancement opportunities, and overall frustrations. … Frontline workers, who are demographically more reflective of riders, have particular expertise about day-to-day operations and regularly interact with the public, yet are typically not included in decision-making.” 

There’s a similar divide between the daily experience of transit riders and transit boards. TransitCenter’s 2022 “Who Rules Transit” report notes: “Most transit agency boards in the U.S. operate without much public attention, and many are unrepresentative of the public they serve, composed of people unfamiliar with transit itself or the communities and people transit serves.”

The path to becoming an elected leader and therefore being eligible to serve on a transit board is extremely difficult for most nondrivers. After participating in the Week Without Driving, Councilmember Neal Black from Kirkland reflected, “It’s kind of hard to imagine how someone who didn’t have access to a car could do the job of a city council member. Our expectations are to be in a lot of different places, and a lot of different times. In a suburban city like ours, it’s a challenge to do that without driving, and that means there’s a large segment of our population excluded from serving in this role.” 

At the same time, many transit boards across the state struggle to get engagement and attendance from elected leaders who have many other responsibilities and priorities outside of serving on transit boards as one of their many committee assignments.

Nobody wants transit to succeed more than the people who rely on it day in and day out, which is why we hope that legislation to add a voting seat for transit-dependent community members moves forward in the 2024 session. And we hope that labor also gets a voting seat, because the expertise of bus drivers is too valuable to overlook.

“Most of our board members are not frequent transit riders. We recognize the direct stake that riders have in public transit, and Clallam Transit’s board discussed adding rider representation but decided against it because current Washington State law isn’t clear about whether this would be a properly constituted transit board,” said Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, a Clallam Transit board member and Port Angeles City Councilmember since 2018. “We need clear state statutes that make for better representation on transit boards especially by non-drivers. This is a simple policy that ensures ‘nothing about us without us,’” he added.

Intercity Transit in Thurston County has rewritten its bylaws to include community members in their board as voting members. In fact, they have three voting community representatives, and their current chair is a community representative. Since the seats were added, every time the board composition has come up for a vote, they voted to retain these voting seats. 

Nobody wants transit to succeed more than the people who rely on it day in and day out, which is why we hope that legislation to add a voting seat for transit-dependent community members moves forward in the 2024 session. And we hope that labor also gets a voting seat, because the expertise of bus drivers is too valuable to overlook. 

Of note, not every transit agency in our state is authorized through PTBAs, although many are. King County Metro and Sound Transit both have different board structures. We hope that the change in the PTBA structure is the first step in more universal representation across all transit boards. For example, we are eager to support King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci’s suggestion that Sound Transit’s board should include rider representation.

For people who can grab their keys and drive where they need to go, transportation isn’t a major concern. But for those of use who can’t drive or can’t afford to, transportation access is something we think about for hours a day: As we’re waiting in the rain for a delayed bus, as we’re trying to figure out the schedules to transfer between one county’s system and another, as we’re mapping the least stressful, best lit, and least hilly route to an unfamiliar bus stop.

We care deeply about how transit works because it is such a major part of our every day and can make the difference between getting to do the things that connect us to our communities—things like running errands, seeing a friend, or getting to an appointment. Without functional transit, we can be stuck at home—or, if we’re lucky, reliant on a friend or family member having time to drive us. 

Instead of fighting us, transit agencies should harness this passion, this commitment, and our years of expertise to make transit better. 

Anna Zivarts is a low-vision mom and nondriver who was born with the neurological condition nystagmus. She directs the Disability Mobility Initiative at DIsability Rights Washington and launched the #WeekWithoutDriving challenge. Zivarts serves on the boards of Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, League of American Cyclists, and Commute Seattle. In 2024, her book When Driving Isn’t an Option: Steering Us Away from Car-Dependency will be published by Island Press. 

Guest Contributor, homelessness, housing

Seattle’s Vehicle Impoundment Policy Betrays Contempt, Not Compassion, for Those Living Homeless

By The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett

In January 2023, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority announced that addressing homelessness in King County would cost about $12 billion and require “tens of thousands more units of housing.” Local officials immediately balked. Two earlier plans to address homelessness were unable to address homelessness successfully, so why should the region spend billions more?

But the alternative, especially for people living in vehicles, has been increasingly onerous and cruel.

This past summer, I filed public records requests with the city of Seattle for all vehicle impounds between January to May 2023. I filtered these impounds to include only that were most likely to be vehicles used as residences: RVs, Campers, Detached Trailers, and Buses, and found that 1,441 of these four vehicle types were impounded over just five months.

The four most common impound reasons included, in order of severity, were: Violations of the city rule requiring vehicles to move every 72 hours, improper licensing (such as expired tabs), having a detached trailer, and parking in prohibited areas, such as residential neighborhoods and retail zones.  The list justifying impounds also included another 17 violations, such as: Parking too close to a sidewalk or a stop sign; blocking a trail; determined to be junk; illegal blocking, such parking in front of a hydrant; parking in a loading zone; improper curb orientation; double-parking; and parking in an intersection, all as determined by a parking enforcement or police officer.

When the KCRHA has to use its limited funds, which come largely from Seattle, simply to keep people cast to the streets by impounds alive, that money is wasted and success continues to elude us. People will blame the regional authority, when in fact, it is as much the failure of every city to address their frequently punitive control of the streets.

The city does not offer people shelter prior to any of these impounds, since in every case, their owners are violating some law. Yet in my view, this appears to constitute a violation of Martin v Boise, the Ninth District Court of Appeals ruling that requires cities to offer shelter before they order anyone living in homelessness to move from a public location.

Why are so few people who are swept while unsheltered—and living in a vehicles counts as unsheltered homelessness, according to HUD—not offered shelter? The city may well argue that Martin does not apply to vehicle residents since the ruling says nothing about people living in vehicles. Maybe more compelling is that there is nothing close to an adequate amount of shelter available. And for people living in any vehicle other than a passenger car, leaving their vehicle for a single bed in a shelter—basically all that is ever offered—is nonsensical.

This shortage of shelter spaces also impacts the formal process the city uses for responding to vehicle residents who are asked to move by the Unified Care Team, which carries out the city’s formal Remediations, Relocations, and Removals program. Under this program, staff from the Human Services Department are required to offer shelter to every unhoused person who must move. Vehicle residents who decline shelter and cannot move have their vehicles impounded.

But even if the city offers some kind of shelter in every case—which some city-funded outreach providers dispute—if the people living in a vehicle are: 1) a couple; 2) pet owners; 3) with children; 4) trans; 5) and so on, there often are no appropriate shelters.

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During 12 years of outreach in Seattle to those living in vehicles, I’ve seen that funding is only half the answer to addressing homelessness. Yes, money is needed to provide services and such. Yet elected officials also control the streets and all the public terrain where homeless persons encamp—the other half of the reality of homelessness. By enforcing laws to impound vehicles where people are living, the city is imposing brute force in the form of sweeps, setting back efforts to assist those living homeless to move toward stability.

Elected officials may well balk at the overall cost of addressing homelessness. But the hidden impounds I’ve described have a cost as well. When the KCRHA has to use its limited funds, which come largely from Seattle, simply to keep people cast to the streets by impounds alive, that money is wasted and success continues to elude us. People will blame the regional authority, when in fact, it is as much the failure of every city to address their frequently punitive control of the streets.

In Seattle, there was a better agreement from 2011 to 2020, through the Scofflaw Mitigation program initiated by the Mike McGinn administration. The 2011 Scofflaw Ordinance, which allowed the city to boot and impound vehicles if their owners had four or more unpaid tickets, threatened an enormous escalation of impounds. We in the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness approached the mayor and jointly formulated a partnership with parking Enforcement and the Municipal Court.

The group we formed was, and is, called the Scofflaw Mitigation Team, and for more than 10 years it kept impounds from tickets in the single digits. The current administration ended the program in 2022. Now, 1,441 impounds have occurred in just five months.

The agreement was that parking enforcement would inform us when any vehicle was close to accumulating four tickets, putting it at risk of impound. We would then do outreach to address the tickets and provide whatever the person needed to get their vehicle moving again. The group we formed was, and is, called the Scofflaw Mitigation Team, and for more than 10 years it kept impounds from tickets in the single digits. The current administration ended the program in 2022. Now, 1,441 impounds have occurred in just 5 months, from violations the administration has deemed impound-worthy.

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who during World War II sought to halt the harm in Germany, described the attitude of the nation’s leaders, which also spread among many of the German people, as “a contempt for humanity.” Does this describe some of the attitudes we who are housed have toward those unhoused? Does it describe some of the attitudes of those we’ve elected to govern? Do we have a collective “contempt” for the unhoused?

Key questions for our future include: Can we suspend law enforcement long enough to help the vulnerable? Can’t we do better for our vulnerable neighbors than “sweeps?” Are we half-hearted?

These are questions for jurisdictional leaders and for all of us who vote for them. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has stated it is against sweeps as a tool for addressing homelessness. Why? Because it wastes precious money, and because too many people are dying. But the authority cannot change exacting harm via the law without elected leaders putting unhoused people first, or at a minimum, setting aside “contempt.”

The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett is the director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, in residence at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church.

Elections, Guest Contributor, housing

Help Our Neighbors—Vote Yes on the Seattle Housing Levy!
ʔálʔal, the Chief Seattle Club’s Housing Levy-supported building in Pioneer Square, provides supportive housing, health care, and services to more than 2,700 people a year.

By Derrick Belgarde and Brett D’Antonio

Seattle is in the middle of a housing crisis, and we need to act! Every day, more and more families are struggling to make ends meet or forced to move out of the city. This housing affordability and supply crisis is complicated, but Seattle has a proven tool that will allow us to rise and face it: The Seattle Housing Levy. We must renew the levy this November.

The housing levy has generated affordable housing solutions across the housing continuum since 1986. For almost 40 years, the levy has built more than 12,000 units of affordable housing across the city of Seattle and created 1,000 homeownership opportunities—housing more than 16,000 people overall.

The people who benefit from the housing it provides are nurses, grocery store workers, bus drivers, and other working people this city depends on every single day. More housing means more families can afford to live where their kids go to school; more housing means more opportunities for working people to thrive.

The rental assistance component of the levy will help an estimated 9,000 people. The homeownership component will create 360 affordable homeownership opportunities. And the prevention component will help keep thousands of renters and homeowners from becoming homeless due to eviction or foreclosure.

The levy has made a huge difference in Seattle, including through Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King County. Habitat’s mission is to build a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. It is because of the levy that we can build more homes and support Seattleites like Amber, a Habitat homeowner in our Capitol View community and a cultural worker in Seattle. Before moving into her home in Capitol Hill, she faced rising rents and the possibility of having to leave. Now, she owns her home in Capitol Hill and has stability and peace of mind. The levy lets us make more stories like Amber’s possible.

When renewed, the levy will invest $970 million in creating and preserving at least 3,500 affordable homes and stabilizing 4,500 low-income families and individuals. The rental assistance component of the levy will help an estimated 9,000 people. The homeownership component will create 360 affordable homeownership opportunities. And the prevention component will help keep thousands of renters and homeowners from becoming homeless due to eviction or foreclosure.

Investing in housing is also critical to Seattle’s racial equity goals. In a landmark 2022 report, the state Department of Commerce and state Homeownership Disparities Workgroup found only 49 percent of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) households, and only 31 percent of Black households, own their homes, compared to 68 percent of white households. A history of redlining, land appropriation, racially restrictive covenants, and other discriminatory practices has led to these disparities.

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To help right these historical wrongs, we need to invest in affordable housing of all types. The levy allows us to create new homes for first-time homebuyers as well as working, rent-burdened households that are spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing. Affordable housing projects, such as Chief Seattle Club’s ʔálʔal  in Pioneer Square, which includes 80 units of low-income housing with wraparound services, are concrete examples of rental housing solutions that work.

The Seattle Housing Levy is a commitment to housing our people with the kind of love, compassion, and dedication that will transform lives and begin repairing the traumas of previous generations.

As affordable housing developers and providers, we work to build homes for everyday people, because when you provide a home to someone you change the world. Let’s make the right choice. Choose housing; vote yes on Proposition 1 by November 7.

Derrick Belgarde is the Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club. Brett D’Antonio is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties,

Guest Contributor, homelessness, housing

As the Workers Behind the KCRHA’s Abandoned Partnership for Zero Program, We Were Betrayed. And So Were You.

Editor’s Note: As part of its privately funded Partnership for Zero effort to end visible homelessness in downtown Seattle, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority hired several dozen “systems advocates” with personal experience of homelessness to help to hundreds of people living unsheltered downtown navigate the byzantine homelessness system and access resources and housing. The initial idea was simple: The systems advocates would get to know people living downtown and work to overcome their barriers to housing, rapidly connecting them to either permanent supportive housing or subsidized, private-market apartments and helping them sustain that housing.

The homelessness authority revamped the program several times over its first year, changing the systems’ advocates roles and creating geographic “zones” within downtown in an attempt to address smaller, more manageable areas one at a time. But the authority never came up with a sustainable long-term funding source for the program, assuming—despite warnings from existing service providers and outside experts—that it would be able to rely on a novel use of an existing Medicaid program to pay for ongoing operations.

Last month, the KCRHA shut down the program, laying off dozens of systems advocates, including many who were recently homeless. Some had moved to Seattle from other cities or given up their housing vouchers to take jobs at the agency, and are now facing the possibility of becoming homeless again. This piece is by a group of system advocates who reached out to PubliCola to tell their story.

 

As former Systems Advocates for the recently shuttered Partnership for Zero program, we have been deeply disappointed in and betrayed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as have all of you.

While much has been made of us being hired because of our lived experience of homelessness, the majority of us also had years of direct homeless service and community-building experience and were considered some of the best in our field, which is why we were chosen for this team. We were tasked with building a trauma-informed, holistic approach to deal with one symptom of the systematic economic and social abandonment of Seattle’s poor and working class. All of us signed on to spend five years of our lives building this approach. We left stable jobs and some of us traveled across the country to participate.

From day one, however, our team was undermined by a constant barrage of consultants and bureaucrats, most of whom had spent years failing up the ladder within the Homeless Industrial Complex. Our program was stalled for months at a time by indecisive management more concerned with pleasing politicians than fulfilling our mission.

We were also forced to waste three weeks trying to resolve an “encampment” at Occidental Park, where no people actually camped, because the mayor wanted to put in an ice skating rink; another four months navigating clients who mostly came from outside downtown Seattle from hotels into housing; and the last two months resolving another non-encampment at a dog park in Belltown so the hip restaurants across the street could sell overpriced biscuits and $8 tacos without having to gaze upon the results of decades of bad public policy. These were our assignments, instead of working in the four actual encampments we had repeatedly identified as good candidates for a housing-first approach.

Some of us would not have pursued this job, as this layoff has put several of us in a position to be homeless again ourselves. This action by management has resurfaced feelings of instability in our own lives, and most certainly in the lives of our clients

In addition, it is shameful that the equitable wages that we received for our skilled and challenging work have been cited as part of the reason for the closure of this program. Our original mandate was to do housing navigation and stabilization, which is normally the work of two separate full-time positions; later, the KCRHA expanded our jobs to include outreach as well, even though the authority is already paying longstanding and skilled organizations to perform that work.

At the end of the day, King County and the city of Seattle got a steal, off our backs. We cannot expect to break the cycle of homelessness by supporting anything less than an equitable wage for the people who do this work. That brings us to KCRHA’s labor practices. We were hired as full-time, permanent employees. Our program was never described as a “pilot” in our hiring paperwork, job descriptions, or any of the founding documents. The first time we heard the word “pilot,” or any official word about the precariousness of Partnership for Zero funding, was when KCRHA management decided to discontinue our team.

Some of us would not have pursued this job, as this layoff has put several of us in a position to be homeless again ourselves. This action by management has resurfaced feelings of instability in our own lives, and most certainly in the lives of our clients. KCRHA has also stalled union negotiations for the entirety of our team’s existence and is now pleading poverty in a transparent attempt to avoid paying out our sick and vacation hours, while simultaneously hiring nearly a dozen new administrative and management staff in the last two months.

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The first System Advocates were not hired until June 29, 2022, and the program was not at functional capacity until late October of last year. In the short time we were allowed to work toward our mission, we were able to permanently house hundreds of people. We count this as a great success. Compared to downtowns in other major cities, our work has been some of the best in the country. If even 40 percent of the people we were able to put in rapid rehousing are allowed to economically and socially stabilize, taxpayers will save more than the cost of the program in carceral and medical costs alone, as well as reaping the benefits of a healthier society.

We could’ve done much more if our program was given the chance. But the KCRHA is clearly not living by its founding ideas of creating a homeless response system that centers the needs and voices of the unhoused. Instead, the agency seems intent on becoming yet another bureaucratic barrier to getting people housed. We expected more, and the staff, our unhoused neighbors, and the people of King County deserve better.

Guest Contributor, Transportation

Could You Go a Week Without Driving?
Tanisha Sepúlveda (center) and other Empower Movement members at a walking/rolling event. Also pictured:Disability Rights Washington’s Anna Zivarts and former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. McGinn now serves as the executive director of the pedestrian advocacy organization America Walks, which is coordinating the Week Without Driving challenge.

By Tanisha Sepúlveda

What would you do if you didn’t have your car, and you had to go a Week Without Driving? How would you get to work, go to the doctor, bring home groceries, or visit friends and family? How much would this cost you—in time and in money? For nearly one-third of the US population, these questions are everyday experiences we must navigate.

As a power wheelchair user living in West Seattle, I rely on my wheelchair and public transit when getting to and from places. I am fortunate to live in a city with public transit, although accessing the transit is where it can become difficult. Many sidewalks don’t have curb cuts, or turn into dirt paths, or run into roads without notice. This forces me to backtrack or go onto the road. I have had people yell at me that it’s “not safe,” but they don’t understand if I get thrown off the sidewalk into traffic because there’s a tree root or an uneven piece of sidewalk, it is even less safe for me and oncoming traffic.

Many of our nation’s nondrivers are people of color, immigrants, people in poverty, and people with disabilities. This includes young people, people who have aged out of driving, had their license suspended, or cannot afford the financial burden of owning and operating a vehicle. We live in cities, suburbs, rural areas, and small towns. In all these places, there are gaps and barriers that make it difficult for us to get where we need to go. 

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Many other obstacles exist for those with and without disabilities when trying to access transit. A lack of light and shelter at a bus stop, or along the way, can be unsafe. The risks increase for those who are hard of hearing or low vision. Crosswalks that do not have physical and audible crossing signals to alert the people crossing pose a danger, especially in busy streets. Overgrown hedges from people’s properties blocking access to the sidewalk. Infrequent bus routes and lack of bus stops, especially outside of the city, can limit users from accessing opportunities for education, work, housing, and more. 

I would like to invite and encourage you, along with policymakers, public officials, and transportation leaders, to participate in the 2023 Week Without Driving challenge taking place October 2nd-8th. The challenge is simple: Participants can get around however they want but they cannot drive themselves. This applies to all activities—not just work commutes. 

This isn’t a disability simulation or a test of how easily you can find alternatives. It is far easier to give up your keys if you can afford to live in a walkable area well served by transit or can outsource your driving and delivery needs to other people. Also, having to drive during the challenge does not signify failure. The goal is to consider how someone without that option would have coped, and what choices they might have made. 

We need decision-makers to understand these barriers so they can understand how their decisions impact the public transportation system—and, ultimately, the quality of life for nearly one-third of our population. Participating in the Week Without Driving can be a life-changing event. It teaches participants what it’s like for people who have no choice but to navigate our inadequate transportation system daily. Every day, people with disabilities rely on walking, rolling, public transit, or asking or paying for rides. Understanding how these options work or don’t work for us is a matter of racial, economic, and disability justice.

Tanisha Sepúlveda is an architectural associate for BCRA, and a program coordinator for Empower Movement, a coalition of BIPOC and disabled mobility advocates supported by Disability Rights Washington and Front and Centered. As a power wheelchair user since 2010, Sepúlveda recognizes the lack of accessibility in the built environment and advocates for equitable access to transit and housing, with a focus on sidewalk repair and maintenance.