City Council, housing, Mayor Wilson, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Wants to Expand Housing Faster; Councilmember Rivera Wants to Audit Human Services

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson is a renter on Capitol Hill, giving her a unique perspective that differentiates her from any previous mayor, and she plans to keep renting through her term. On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we discussed how Wilson’s personal experience renting in Seattle (and struggling to afford escalating rent) may have impacted her decision to go “bigger, taller, and faster” on what’s left of the city’s comprehensive plan update.

In Wilson’s tree-lined neighborhood, single-family houses and apartment buildings mingle effortlessly with newer townhouses and condos, all within a short walk of multiple bus routes and a light rail station. In other words, this mayor has actually experienced the benefits of renting in a neighborhood with lots of trees, walkable amenities, and frequent transit, making her less susceptible to NIMBY arguments that apartments destroy neighborhood “character” or make neighborhoods unlivable.

As Sandeep pointed out, public opinion in Seattle has moved consistently in a YIMBY (yes in my backyard) direction for at least the past decade. That’s good news for Seattle’s renter majority—brand-new housing, though not affordable in itself, takes pressure off Seattle’s acute housing shortage—and bad news for NIMBYs who want Seattle to stay the same as it was when they bought their houses for $23,000 in the ’70s.

We also discussed Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s still-vague proposal to “audit Human Services Department contracts.” Sandeep and David think it seems like a pretty good idea in light of an audit at the county’s equivalent department that found widespread problems among “high-risk” contracts—why not “look under the rock” and see what’s there? “From my side, we’d want to make that a campaign issue,” Sandeep said—perhaps previewing what Rivera’s reelection campaign will look like?

 

I countered that as with the Equitable Development initiative, Rivera seems to be fixating on contracts in one specific area (the DCHS contracts were largely first-time contracts with small Black- and brown-led nonprofits) rather than considering which type of contracts across all city departments are worth scrutinizing for waste, fraud, and abuse. (I also noted that the smaller contractors targeted in the DCHS audit do not generally contract with the city.) Sandeep said these kinds of contracts came out of the “peak woke period” after COVID and so should be subject to greater scrutiny.

As I reported, auditing $300 million in human services contracts is far more complex than the kinds of audits Seattle’s auditor typically does, and would tie up resources for years at a small office with just five audit staff. Just as a factual matter, I’ll stand by what I said on the podcast: No matter how much we agree that it would be great for all public contracts to face close scrutiny (no one supports waste, abuse, or fraud), given that the city will never have the resources to audit every contract, the city has to make choices. If that choice is always to audit human services providers and never audit police spending, for instance, that’s an expression of priorities, not an objective assessment of what kind of city spending merits extra scrutiny.

City Council, Density, homelessness, King County, legislature

This Week on PubliCola: April 4, 2026

Wilson and Zahilay Push Forward on Housing Rivera Wants to Audit HSD, and More.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, March 30

Ron Davis, Running for the State House on an Urbanist Platform, Says North Seattle Is Ready for a Change

Ron Davis, who ran for City Council in 2023 and narrowly lost to Maritza Rivera, is hoping his North Seattle neighbors will get behind his explicitly urbanist agenda in his attempt to unseat longtime 46th District state Rep. Gerry Pollet and his slow-growth agenda.

Tuesday, March 31

Hannah Sabio-Howell Says It’s Time to Replace Longtime Legislator Jamie Pedersen

Just south of the 46th, renter and labor activist Hannah Sabio-Howell is making the case that 20-year incumbent Sen. Jamie Pedersen is no longer serving the progressive 43rd District well. Sabio-Howell argues that Pedersen is out of touch with Seattle’s renter majority, and favors compromise too much at a time that demands urgent action on affordability.

Wednesday, April 1

County Executive Floats Countywide Housing Levy, 500 New Housing Units or Shelter Beds by Mid-2027

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay announced a new plan to add 500 units of “shelter and housing” in the next 500 days, or by mid-August 2027, and will convene a work group to discuss a potential countywide housing levy. Some of the new shelter or housing could be on county-owned land, similar to the strategy Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is using to cut down on the cost of new tiny house villages in Seattle.

Thursday, April 2

Mayor Wilson Says She’ll Accelerate Comprehensive Plan and “Go Bigger” on Density

The mayor announced this week she wants to accelerate the remaining phases of Seattle’s comprehensive plan update by one year, add more density within a “reasonable walk” of transit stops, and restore and expand the proposed neighborhood centers—nodes of density inside traditional single-family areas. We spoke with Wilson about her vision to update her predecessor’s anemic proposal.

Friday, April 3

Councilmember Wants “Audit of Human Services Contracts.” That’s a Big Ask.

City Councilmember Maritza Rivera wants the City Auditor to do an audit of all Human Services Department contracts, she announced this week, in light of a damning King County audit that found evidence of waste, misuse of funds, and potential fraud. But “audit the human services contracts” is a big request for the city’s small audit office, and Rivera doesn’t have council support lined up.

Afternoon Fizz:

Rivera Plays Grinch to Library Supporters, Saka Holds Committee Hostage for Extended NBA Rally

After a parade of library supporters told Rivera’s select committee on the library levy the city should go beyond Wilson’s $410 million levy proposal, she said she would not be supporting a single amendment to the plan. “It would be fiscally irresponsible to increase the proposal given the city’s other needs,” she said.

And Rob Saka turned his transportation and Seattle Center committee into a 90-minute rally for bringing an NBA team to Seattle, asking hard-quitting questions like “what color do you want the team uniforms to be” and “how excited are you for the Sonics.”

Coming next week: The city council will have a full day of meetings to discuss the latest updates to the city’s Comprehensive Plan on Monday. The pro-housing Complete Communities Coalition is having a rally at City Hall to support more apartments in Seattle (RSVP here); Tree Action Seattle is urging the anti-housing homeowner contingent to show up too, telling their supporters that “street trees are not a solution”—only private lawns are.

 

City Council, Taxes

Rivera Plays Grinch to Library Supporters, Saka Holds Committee Hostage for Extended NBA Rally

1. Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera played Grinch to library supporters earlier this week, saying she will not support any amendments that raise the price of a $410 million library levy proposed by Mayor Katie Wilson last month. After a parade of library supporters told Rivera’s select committee on the library levy that they support increasing funds for operations and maintenance but the city could do more, Rivera said it
“would be fiscally irresponsible to increase the proposal given the city’s other needs.”

“It is unfortunate,” she continued, “that this is the city’s financial reality, and I take no joy in bringing this up, but this is where we are now,” given growing uncertainty about the national economy and the fact that the city is approaching a state-imposed cap on property taxes. Under state law, local levies can’t exceed $3.60 per $1,000 of property value. Seattle and King County are both approaching the cap, which can only go up if the state legislature decides to increase it.

Wilson’s proposal represents about a 47 percent increase over the 2019 levy, adjusted for inflation; the council’s amendments, which include funding for maintenance at the beautiful but hard-used downtown library, a seismic retrofit at the Columbia Branch library, built in 1915, and cooling systems, would push the total closer to half a billion dollars. (Dan Strauss declined to provide a price tag for his three amendments).

Rivera acknowledged that some amendments will probably make it through over her objections. She wanted to make it clear that she supports libraries, she added, lest she become a victim of online “cancel culture.”

2. Council chambers were turned into an NBA booster clubhouse for about 90 minutes on Thursday morning, as Councilmember Rob Saka gathered a group of Sonics supporters to effuse about how excited they are to “bring back our Sonics” in an extended pep rally that took up 90 minutes of Saka’s transportation and Seattle Center committee.

Saka, who made up his own “informal” committee title and added “sports” to its name, did come prepared with a list of questions for the panel, which included Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt, prominent Republican (and former NBA player) Spencer Hawes, Save Our Sonics founder Brian Robinson, and a rep from Climate Pledge Arena. A sampling:

“What excites you the most about the prospect welcoming our Sonics back home?”

“What are the strongest indicators today that Seattle is an undeniable NBA market?”

“Where do grassroots efforts like Seattle NBA fans have the most influence and impact?”

” What makes Seattle uniquely prepared and positioned to become the sixth city to have a team in all six leagues?”

“What story about Seattle basketball is resonating most right now?”

“What’s your preferred color for a new NBA franchise in Seattle?”

And this one, just for council members: “What will the headline read the day the Sonics finally do return?”

No word on whether Saka had a basketball hidden behind the dais.

City Council, human services

Councilmember Wants “Audit of Human Services Contracts.” That’s a Big Ask.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Maritza Rivera wants the City Auditor to do an audit of all Human Services Department contracts, she announced this week, in light of a damning King County audit that found evidence of waste, misuse of funds, and potential fraud in a 36-contract sample of King County Department of Community and Human Services contracts for youth services.

Rivera, one of several councilmembers whose 2023 campaigns included a generalized demand for the city to “audit the budget” (an overbroad campaign demand that, of course, never happened) said in a press release that “in light of the issues at the County, we would be remiss if we did not conduct our own due diligence.”

Many of the contracts the county’s auditor reviewed were with new organizations with little or no prior government contracting experience, landing them in the “high risk” group that made up about half the contracts DCHS signed with providers between 2019 and 2024. The audit found that DCHS “had not prioritized resources for financial stewardship” of these contracts and failed to catch instances of noncompliance, waste, and fraud.

Rivera’s office did not respond to detailed questions sent Thursday morning, including why she believes HSD contracts are more likely to be problematic than other city contracts (such as those at the Department of Transportation or SPD) and whether she planned to limit the scope of any future audit to city contracts with specific groups identified in the county’s audit. HSD has more than $300 million in contracts; the bulk of that is funding for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which has its own separate contracting process.

Typically, the city auditor’s office, which currently has five audit staff, does limited audits of programs and initiatives, not far-reaching audits of entire city departments. Recent audits have looked at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections’ final building inspection process, Comcast’s compliance with the city’s Cable Customer Bill of Rights, and the city’s approach to maintaining and cleaning restrooms in parks.

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The city’s acting auditor, Arushi Thakorlal, said her office is currently “at capacity” through the fall, but said they’ll work with Rivera to figure out the scope of a general HSD contract audit if it moves forward. (The auditor is appointed by the council but functions independently).

The previous auditor, David Jones, established a method for prioritizing audits that Thakorlal said she’s continuing to follow: First, any audits that are required by law, such as annual reviews of non-police surveillance technology, have to be performed no matter what. Then, the office prioritizes audit requests from the council president and the head of the committee overseeing the subject of the proposed audit, in that order. Rivera is neither the council president nor the head of the council’s human services committee.

“If multiple council members support something, it moves toward the top of the list,” Thakorlal said. “Right now, I haven’t heard from other council members about this.” Thakorlal said she encouraged Rivera to work Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who heads the human services committee. Rinck told PubliCola she asked Rivera “for clarification on her request for an audit and shared what I understood about current contracting and auditing processes.”

Most of HSD’s contracts are reimbursable fee-for-service contracts: Contractors get paid after they spend money and submit invoices to the city. Most of the DCHS contractors in the King County audit, in contrast, received fixed monthly payments from the county and were supposed to reconcile what they spent the county by submitting detailed expense reports after the fact.

A spokeswoman for HSD, Caitlin Moran, said the department’s standard contract monitoring provides “improved levels of accountability and oversight” and said the department “routinely undergoes external audits by our federal and state funders as part of their standard fiscal oversight”; in 2025, a state audit requested by former city councilmember Sara Nelson looked at two years of contracts in HSD’s Community Safety division and did not identify any concerns, Moran said.

HSD’s internal controls, “as well as ongoing staff training and continuous improvement efforts to both our procurement and contracting processes, enable HSD to responsibly contract with community organizations who are critical partners in helping the City of Seattle build a strong social safety net that connects our most vulnerable residents to resources and services during times of need,” Moran said.

 

Density

Mayor Wilson Says She’ll Accelerate Comprehensive Plan and “Go Bigger” on Density
Why is “no rezone proposed” always the biggest area?

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson wants to accelerate the remaining phases of Seattle’s comprehensive plan update by one year, add more density within a “reasonable walk” of transit stops, and revisit the neighborhood centers—nodes of density inside traditional single-family areas that already have major transit stops or commercial areas—to restore the nine centers her predecessor Bruce Harrell removed from the plan and potentially add more.

On Thursday, Wilson announced that the city’s Office of Community Planning and Development (OPCD) is starting an environmental review process that will wrap up next year, with final land use and zoning legislation around June 2o27.

Wilson previewed the announcement at a Housing Development Consortium fundraising event earlier this week. “As a renter, I think this is very exciting,” she said. “You don’t have to live right along a busy, noisy, dirty street.”

In an interview Thursday morning, Wilson said her plan would compress Phases 3 and 4 of the update (adding neighborhood centers and increasing density near transit and in regional centers, respectively) into a single phase, reducing the timeline by a year while slightly delaying neighborhood centers so that everything can get done at once. On Thursday, Wilson announced that she’ll launch an environmental review process hoping to wrap up environmental review and have final legislation ready to go by June 2027.

“Basically, we inherited this comp plan process, and … we were looking at ways we can really accelerate and go bigger,” Wilson said.

Currently, the city council’s comprehensive plan committee is considering upzones in the neighborhood centers and urban centers—denser areas within neighborhoods that were previously known as “urban villages”—and within a half-block of certain frequent transit routes. Land use and comp plan committee chair Eddie Lin did not immediately respond to an interview request on Thursday.

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Wilson’s plan is to go beyond those limits in a revamped Phase 3, adding back and potentially expanding nine neighborhood centers that the council placed on a “docketing amendment” last year, while also considering new ones the city hasn’t studies yet. The city’s original plan contemplated nearly 50 neighborhood centers, a number that was eventually scaled back to 30 after the council heard complaints from homeowners in areas like Magnolia, Maple Leaf, and Laurelhurst.

“I’m open to new neighborhood centers,” Wilson said. “I certainly want to go back and consider the ones the previous administration cut out, and if there are additional ones that weren’t considered but made sense, I’m happy to consider that too. We’re going to do an efficient but hopefully effective stakeholder process to decide what we want the scope to be, but in general, my bias is to go big.”

Wilson also called the city’s current plan to allow new housing within just a half-block of rail and frequent transit stops “pretty darn stingy.” As a renter in Capitol Hill, she said, she lives within a ten-minute walk of light rail and much closer to several frequent bus routes, so her “instinct” is to change the requirement to allow more housing within “a reasonable walk”—somewhere between a couple of blocks and half a mile. “How long do you walk to get to a bus stop? That’s more than half a block,” she said.

Legislation passed last year, House Bill 1491, imposes new density requirements near transit and restricts parking mandates, which force developers to build parking even in dense areas where fewer people own cars. With a compressed timeline to finish the comp plan, the city should be able to “comply or exceed compliance with state law” before the 2029 deadline, Wilson said.

homelessness, housing, King County

County Executive Floats Countywide Housing Levy, 500 New Housing Units or Shelter Beds by Mid-2027

By Erica C. Barnett

In an announcement that echoed Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to add 500 new shelter units by this summer, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said Tuesday that he’s launching a new plan to add 500 units of “shelter and housing” in the next 500 days, or by mid-August 2027, and will convene a work group to discuss a potential countywide housing levy. Some of the new shelter or housing could be on county-owned land, similar to the strategy Wilson is using to cut down on the cost of new tiny house villages in Seattle.

Other elements of the “Breaking the Cycle” plan include improving performance metrics, reducing regulatory barriers, and better data collection and distribution.

“We want to know where are people falling through the cracks, where are services not connecting, and which programs are actually helping people stabilize,” Zahilay said at a press event Tuesday morning. “And then we’re going to use that information to make better decisions about how we invest public dollars by shifting resources to more programs that are delivering results.”

The overall plan, which Zahilay is calling “Breaking the Cycle,” consists largely of work groups that will report on ways to improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of existing county programs. Three months into his term, Zahilay is laying out a process, not presenting a finalized policy agenda or proposing legislation.

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But the two marquee elements of Zahilay’s announcement—the 500-bed commitment and the potential housing levy—do raise questions whose answers will determine the success of his plan. Will housing units (and shelter beds) that are already in the pipeline count toward the 500-unit goal, as the Urbanist suggested? How many will be housing, and how many will be shelter? Both these issues came up when former mayor Bruce Harrell promised to add 2,000 “units” of shelter or housing over four years, declaring victory even when the city ended up with less shelter overall, and claiming credit for projects that were begun under his predecessor’s turn. Zahilay’s proposal is, pointedly, for “net” new beds or units, so presumably he’s eager to avoid a “mission accomplished”-style Pyrrhic victory.

During an onstage conversation with Wilson and Housing Development Consortium director Patience Malaba at the HDC’s annual fundraising luncheon on Tuesday, Zahilay noted that the county has to rely on two main revenue sources: Sales and property taxes. (In 2024, Zahilay—then a King County Councilmember—proposed spending $1 billion of the county’s debt capacity on bonds to pay for workforce housing; that plan has not come to fruition).

“We do have to take a hard look at weighing those tradeoffs” between higher taxes and more housing, Zahilay said. “Of course, we need more revenue to fund critical services, especially to our most vulnerable neighbors—and we need to be careful about what kind of impact that has on cost of living.”