housing, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Is Seattle’s Housing Market In Trouble?

By Erica C. Barnett

On the latest episode of Seattle Nice, we talked to Redfin’s chief economist, Daryl Fairweather, about the recent slowdown of Seattle’s housing market and what it means for the future of our economy.

When we talk about a “decline” in the housing market, that refers to a slowdown or reversal of housing price increases because more people are selling than buying—in other words, it’s bad news for people who already own houses that they are trying to sell, but potential good news for those trying to buy or rent here.

That’s an important distinction I tried to keep in focus as we talked about what a “slowdown” means for the city. Renters, who make up more than half of Seattle residents, bear the brunt of an increasingly expensive housing market; although buying a home in Seattle has become much more expensive than renting, anyone who does manage to buy a house has their monthly housing costs more or less locked in place, apart from annual tax increases, while rent generally increases unpredictably every year.

For those who already own houses, it’s true that the equity they gain through monthly mortgage payments only comes to fruition when they sell, which may not make sense if they plan to stay in Seattle, since they would have to buy a new place in the same expensive market. However, longer-term Seattle house owners whose mortgage is, say, $3,000 a month are exponentially better off than renters who would have to pay thousands more for the same house, since rent goes up so much faster than property taxes.

All of which is to say: If the pace of job growth continues to stall, as Fairweather predicts it will, affordability will improve somewhat. But, Fairweather noted, “we’ve already gotten to this place where affordability has gotten so bad that I don’t know if people will really feel like things are getting better for them” even if housing prices decline a bit. For renters, “if you’re going from $2,000 a month rent to $3,000 a month rent, and then I’m telling you, ‘Oh, but next month or next year it’s going to be $2,995, it doesn’t really feel like things are getting meaningfully better,” Fairweather said.

Fairweather also threw some cold water on David’s belief that AI could be a tool to meaningfully lower the cost of housing. Both she and David are more techno-optimistic than I am, but Fairweather noted that most of the factors that have increased the cost of housing development have nothing to do with brainstorming or permit times (two things David and Fairweather said AI might help with) but construction materials and human physical labor, which can’t be digitized.

Sandeep also brought up his “heretical view” that the region should expand its growth boundaries to allow much more housing outside current growth limits, which already allow significant amounts of suburban sprawl. The argument against sprawl isn’t so much an anti-housing argument, in my view; it’s that sprawl is energy-intensive and destroys natural resources (in our region, forests) and farmland while requiring huge investments in infrastructure that contributes to climate change, like the freeways and feeder roads to move people from the suburbs to their jobs in Seattle by car.

In addition, Fairweather said, moving the urban growth boundary outward “results in longer commute times … and if they’re paying for gas on top of their mortgage, then maybe they’re not actually doing any better, or maybe their quality of life isn’t any better” than it would be if they paid for a more expensive house closer to the city.

homelessness, housing, Trump

New Federal Guidelines Put Funding for Permanent Supportive Housing at Risk

By Erica C. Barnett

After a long delay resulting in part from a lawsuit by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for $4 billion in federal funding for homeless shelters and transitional housing. The new guidelines signal a move toward federal funding for temporary transitional housing, street outreach, and faith-based programs that have not previously received federal dollars, and away from permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless people.

The result could be a significant reduction in federal funding for local homelessness programs and a resurgence in funding for transitional housing. Seattle, like many other cities, moved away from transitional housing about a decade ago in favor of permanent housing programs like rapid rehousing—essentially, subsidies for people to rent in the private market—and permanent supportive housing. The annual NOFO is administered by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), acting as the Continuum of Care (CoC) for the Seattle region.

The new guidelines serve as a replacement for a proposal last year that homeless service providers and advocates said would make it virtually impossible for Seattle-area programs to get federal funding, largely because they placed a 30 percent on funding for permanent supportive housing programs, which make up the bulk of federally funded homelessness programs in Seattle and King County.

While the new NOFO no longer includes this cap, it also makes about 40 percent of the package newly competitive, using a points system that awards extra points to programs that promote “self-sufficiency” and include service participation requirements, such as mandatory substance abuse treatment.

Currently, almost all of the federal funding for homelessness programs in the region, around $60 million (of $67 million total), goes toward permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities, including mental illness and addiction, who need intensive case management and other services.

The new NOFO includes pages and pages of bellicose language about “housing first”—the idea that housing is a necessary condition for recovery and self-sufficiency—calling the approach “a profound failure by any measure.” (Conservatives and the Trump Administration have defined “housing first,” inaccurately, as “housing only,” when such programs actually include supportive services designed to address underlying conditions that lead or contribute to homelessness.)

And it specifically calls out Seattle and King County, along with Portland, as areas of the country where overdoses are high and crime related to homelessness is supposedly out of control.

“HUD is restoring the CoC program to its original goals of reducing homelessness and optimizing self-sufficiency by focusing on meaningful outcomes, expanding  competition, prioritizing treatment, economic independence, and emphasizing law and order,” the NOFO says.

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Despite some over-the-top political rhetoric, the new requirements do not include restrictions such as mandatory sobriety. They do require homeless service providers to “attest” that they won’t operate safe drug consumption sites or ” knowingly permit the use or distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control” under a law widely known as the “crack house law.” That law says no one can own or lease a property “for the purpose of” manufacturing or selling illegal drugs, a provision that has not been applied to housing for unsheltered people.

The new application guidelines also open the door for nontraditional providers, including faith-based groups and organizations that do outreach, to get federal funding. The guidelines give extra points for organizations who “cooperate and [do] not interfere or impede with the enforcement of local laws such as public camping and public drug use laws and assist/be willing to assist first responders in their efforts to engage homeless individuals.”

A group of providers, advocates, and elected officials are meeting this afternoon to discuss the possible implications of the new NOFO rules.

Earlier this week, HUD also released the national results of the annual Point in Time Count, traditionally a one-night count of unsheltered people conducted in January. That count found 16,936 people living unsheltered in the King County region. The KCRHA had planned to release its own PIT count, which is based on one-on-one interviews and statistical sampling, last week, but is now delaying the release until later this month.

Elections, Mayor Wilson, Taxes, Transit

Wilson Proposes Doubling Transit Sales Tax to Fund Local Bus Service Expansion

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has proposed doubling a sales tax that funds transit service in Seattle, known as the Seattle Transit Measure, to 0.3 percent, up from the 0.15 percent tax that expires this year. The proposal would raise around $138 million over the next ten years to pay for bus service, service on the city’s two streetcars, and transit passes for low-income riders, among other programs.

The Seattle Transit Measure, originally known as the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, supplements bus service provided by King County Metro by adding service hours in Seattle. The transit measure came out of a failed attempt   2014; in 2020, a proposal to increase the tax from 0.1 percent to 0.15 percent passed with more than 80 percent of the vote.

The extra money would fund 280,000 bus service hours a year on top of Metro’s regular service, Seattle Department of Transportation director Angela Brady said during a press conference on Tuesday. According to SDOT’s most recent annual report on the measure, the tax paid for 143,000 bus hours in 2024. The new funding would also pay for service on the existing streetcars that run between downtown and South Lake Union and Capitol Hill, and would provide free annual transit passes to everyone living in Seattle Housing Authority buildings, a new expansion of the ORCA Lift program for people making up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

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Demonstrating how  much costs have increased, the original, 0.1-percent 2014 transit measure expanded transit access by about 350,000 hours a year.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Wilson pitched her plan to expand transit hours as an urgent matter of affordability.

“When transit is frequent, reliable, and affordable, it does more than move people from one place to another—it gives people freedom,” Wilson said. “Transportation is one of the biggest costs in a household budget, and most of that cost comes from owning a car. Gas, insurance, repairs, parking, monthly payments, and maintenance all add up fast. So when we make our transit system better, we make it possible for more households to live car-free or car-light, and that could put hundreds or thousands of dollars back into a family’s budget. That is real affordability.”

If voters approve Wilson’s proposal, it will bring Seattle residents’ total sales tax burden close to 11 percent. Sales tax is the most regressive form of tax voters regularly pay, meaning that the poorer you are, the greater the percentage of your income you spend on the tax.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between her affordability pitch and the increasingly unaffordable sales tax burden, Wilson said it’s “unfortunate that we don’t have more progressive options for funding our transit system.” But, she said, “when we’re investing in public transit and making it possible for people to live car free or car light, when we’re investing in affordable fares, those are really direct supports that are creating affordability for the people in our communities that need it most.”

Under the state law that authorized the transportation benefit district, the city could also propose a vehicle license fee of up to $60—a tax on drivers that would directly fund the city’s primary alternative to driving. Asked why she didn’t do so, Wilson said she believed a license fee increase might prove too “controversial” to pass.

“I think we’ve seen car tab measures rouse more organized opposition, and I think we wanted to stick with something that we were really confident Seattle voters were going to be able to enthusiastically get on board with.”

A countywide measure to fund transit service with a 0.1 percent sales tax increase and a $60 vehicle license fee failed 55 to 45 percent. Since then, the city has relied on sales taxes alone to pay for additional transit service.

Wilson will have to move her proposal through the city council, starting with Rob Saka’s transportation committee. That committee will get an initial briefing on the proposal on Thursday. So far, Wilson has announced most big-ticket legislation without lining up council support or identifying council sponsors in advance. Saka, who was not present at Wilson’s press conference, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposal, but we’ll update this post if we hear back.

City Council, Courts

Aide to Councilmember Saka Sought Restraining Order Against Constituent

Photo of Councilmember Rob Saka in council chambers

Saka called Police Chief Shon Barnes to ask what to do about a resident who contacted his office repeatedly about a potential park in his backyard.

By Erica C. Barnett

A former chief of staff for City Councilmember Rob Saka, Elaine Ko, attempted to get a restraining order against Saka constituent Bruce Steinberg, after Steinberg called and emailed Ko and others at Saka’s office relentlessly over a conservation easement in his neighborhood.

King County Superior Court Judge Lisa Paglisotti denied Ko’s request last November, saying she believed Steinberg did not know he was calling Ko’s personal number and that his emails and calls about the easement may have been annoying but did not constitute personal harassment.

During her testimony, Ko revealed that Saka called Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes directly on her behalf. According to Ko, Barnes told Saka that “yes, that was over the line when you start getting phone calls on the personal line” and said Ko should contact Southwest Precinct commander Krista Bair, who advised her to call 911 and file a police report about Steinberg’s calls and emails.

Saka, along with a representative of the City Attorney’s Office, was present in court during the hearing in November. He responded to our questions with a statement that did not address our questions about his call to Barnes.

Saka’s predecessor, Lisa Herbold, had to pay a $500 fine after she texted then-police chief Carmen Best with concerns about a trailer that someone had parked near her house in 2020, at the height of protests outside councilmembers’ homes. (Herbold, who believed the trailer was placed there as a stunt, acknowledged violating a rule against using her public position for private benefit). No complaint has been filed about Saka’s phone call, according to Ethics and Elections director Wayne Barnett.

Steinberg told PubliCola he was just trying to get Saka to pay attention to a project located in a wetland in his neighborhood, which straddles the line between Seattle and unincorporated King County. A local church sold King County a conservation easement for about five acres it owns adjacent to Seola Pond, a wetland and county wastewater facility in Roxbury Heights, which the county plans to develop into a neighborhood greenspace.  Steinberg and some of his neighbors worry the project will cause flooding and traffic problems and result in more homeless people living near his house and, he said, eating area ducks.  (I asked him if he was serious about the ducks and he said yes.)

The land is not on City property; emails show that King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks sent Steinberg a detailed explanation of the work that has been happening on the property.

In addition to the emails he sent to Saka’s office, Ko noted in court that Steinberg called her 66 times after she hung up on him and blocked his number. (Ko said she confirmed the additional calls by requesting records from her phone company).  “I was quite upset. I felt harassed. I felt bothered by it all, and I did hang up. There was no point in continuing that call,” she said, according to a recording of the hearing.

In his response, Steinberg presented evidence that showed Ko initially called him from her personal number to set up a walking tour of the area in September, which is how he said he got her number. Ko acknowledged that she may have called Steinberg from her number and agreed that he didn’t threaten or attack her directly. But, she argued, he was so rude and insistent that his behavior constituted harassment. “[The emails] were very harassing, negative, rude, disrespectful emails, and that is the truth,” Ko said in court.

In his statement, Saka said the calls to Ko’s phone and the emails to his office “went far beyond the robust engagement we typically receive from some passionate constituents. This was a unique situation involving targeted harassment, bullying, and intimidation that crossed onto personal devices and deeply impacted an employee’s sense of personal safety and mental health.”

Steinberg he believed all along that he was calling Ko’s work cell phone. “If [she] had come back and said, ‘Bruce, this is my personal line,’ I would have stopped immediately,” Steinberg told PubliCola in an interview. “I’m crazy, but I’m not rude in that way.”

PubliCola reviewed dozens of the emails we received in response to a records request. None are threatening or obscene, although several insult Ko and two men who used to work for Saka by calling them bad at their jobs.  And many are pushy, bordering on manic.

In an email last August, for instance, Steinberg wrote, “I have started calling EVERY phone member of the council members incessantly and will continue to until we get the meeting we are requesting. I work from home and have ALLLL day to call and leave messages and fill up your inbox. This is not a threat or hate or anything else you guys want to spin but I will bury your voice mails on EVERY single phone line I can find until Rob puts his boy pants on and reaches out to the people who pay his salary.”

Steinberg acknowledged calling and emailing city officials and staff, including Ko, incessantly about the easement. (In one of the emails PubliCola obtained, he claimed to have contacted Saka’s office “no less than 1,000 times.”)

“I understand where people might not like my style,” Steinberg said, but he’s spent years bugging elected officials and city and county staffers about flooding and other issues in his neighborhood and hasn’t been satisfied with the results. “Sometimes, to get attention, you have to act like a four-year-old.”

He also copped to openly mocking Ko during the walking tour, “sort of mimicking her and pushing her buttons,” which led to a confrontation between the two and ultimately Ko’s departure from the tour, which itself became another point of contention. But he said he never harassed, stalked, or threatened her personally or spoke to her about anything other than city business—something Ko acknowledged in court.

Saka told PubliCola that Ko’s case was “ultimately dismissed purely on a technicality, not based on the sheer volume and scope of the harassing messages at issue.”

In fact, Judge Paglisotti said Steinberg’s actions were exactly the kind of behavior public servants should expect when their job involves responding to constituents. “It is reasonable to expect that this type of pestering, if you will, or persistence, comes with the territory,” Paglisotti said. “The persistence and the advocacy that the respondent was engaged in was not just to you specifically. It was to the whole [Saka] office.”

Ko, who is in her 70s, retired earlier this year. Saka suggested her decision was related to Steinberg’s pestering. After the hearing, he told us in his statement, “my employee made the difficult decision to retire after many decades of selfless service to our city and community.” In an email to staff published by the West Seattle Blog in February, Ko did not connect the two events, saying her plan had always been to work for Saka’s office for two years andretire. When contacted by phone, Ko declined to comment for this story.

Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Transit

Seattle Nice: How Badly Did Sound Transit Screw Seattle Over?

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, we did a deep dive on the Sound Transit board’s decision last week to indefinitely defer the voter-approved light rail extension to Ballard, a stretch that boasts by far the highest projected ridership of any line in the Sound Transit 3 package voters approved ten years ago.

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss, who represents Ballard, has been beating the drum on this issue for months, arguing it would be irresponsible to renege on such a significant commitment to Seattle voters. The new plan preserves the “spine” to Everett and Tacoma, along with a second light rail tunnel through downtown Seattle, leaving Ballard in limbo unless Sound Transit can come up with cost savings and unless someone, most likely Seattle voters, can provide the funds to build the expansion.

The board adopted a couple of amendments last week that will move planning for a potential Ballard line forward and that commit to looking for ways to make the plan more affordable. But they rejected a proposal from Strauss that would have switched up ST3’s sequencing to build a “starter” line between Westlake and Ballard before adding a second transit tunnel.

Suburban Sound Transit board members said last week that prioritizing Ballard would doom the rest of the system. As a result, Sandeep noted, the suburbs got everything they asked for,  leaving Seattle without any leverage to get additional funds for its projects in the future. Indeed, several board members made that explicit, saying Seattle would need to find its own money if it wants to build to Ballard and complete the West Seattle line in the future; there will be no regional Sound Transit 4, they said.

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One suburban Sound Transit board member and longtime light rail proponent who voted (along with Strauss) against the entire proposal, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, told me last week she thought it was time to take a serious look at Sound Transit’s governance. Currently, the agency is run by an 18-member board of elected officials who represent every “subarea” of the region—an ever-changing cast of characters with no specific transit expertise. This structure, Balducci suggested, has made it difficult to anticipate and forestall cost overruns like the $34.5 billion hole Sound Transit is currently attempting to fill.

David, Sandeep, and I also discussed some of the potential reasons for Sound Transit’s persistent overruns—excessive process, changes in response to neighborhood complaints, and engineering decisions that add millions to even relatively simple projects, like the long-deferred Graham Street Station, which the latest plan at least moves into the “funded” column.

Finally, we had to spend a few minutes on the latest shakeup in Mayor Katie Wilson’s office—the departure of housing and homelessness advisor Jon Grant, who was at the center of the mayor’s plan to add thousands of new tiny house-style shelters around the city. Grant, along with Wilson’s former chief of staff Kate Kreuzer, reportedly clashed with council members and staff while the council was working to pass emergency legislation to expedite Wilson’s shelter proposal.

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: May 30, 2026

Sound Transit stiffs Ballard, Councilmembers Push Police Cameras, Top Wilson Aid Resigns, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, May 25

KCRHA Lays Out Plan to Address Audit Findings, But Says Many Issues Need “Joint Correction” With City and County

In a “corrective action plan” ordered by Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay earlier this month, the region’s homelessness authority laid out a plan to address the findings of a damning forensic audit into the agency’s finances. But the KCRHA cast some of the blame on its funders and warned about the risks of winding down the agency, a path local leaders are seriously considering.

Tuesday, May 26

“There’s a Quick Fix”: Councilmembers Pressure Mayor to Activate Police Cameras for World Cup

The pressure is building on Mayor Wilson to activate the police surveillance cameras that she already approved installing in the stadium district, with two councilmembers claiming this week that the cameras could save lives in a major attack or other incident during next month’sWorld Cup games. Seattle’s transportation department already has cameras in the area.

Wednesday, May 27

Another Shakeup on Team Wilson as Mayor’s Homelessness Advisor, Jon Grant, Steps Down

PubliCola broke the news that Wilson’s chief homelessness policy advisor, Jon Grant, resigned after being asked to step down, effective this coming Monday. Grant is one of two Wilson staffers who have clashed with city council members and staff and reportedly contributed to frayed relations between the two branches of government; the other, Kate Kreuzer, was removed as chief of staff earlier this month but remains on Wilson’s City Hall team.

Thursday, May 28

How We Can Save Ballard Light Rail

In a guest op/ed the day before Sound Transit voted to effectively kill a voter-approved light rail line to Ballard by deferring it indefinitely, Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss made the case for his alternative proposal—a “starter” light rail line from Westlake Station to Ballard that would defer the second downtown rail tunnel.

Friday, May 29

Sound Transit Sacrifices Light Rail to Ballard, Moves Long-Deferred Graham Station Forward, in Latest “Realignment” Plan

As anticipated, the Sound Transit board decided to scrap the voter-approved plan to build light rail to Ballard in order to complete the lower-ridership “spine” between Everett and Tacoma, fulfilling a longstanding commitment to give Pierce and Snohomish County some rail for their tax dollars and building a second tunnel through downtown Seattle. A surface-level station at Graham Street in the Rainier Valley that has been deferred for decades was moved into the “funded” column, making it much more likely that it will finally be built.