By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle Nice went in-depth with Mayor Katie Wilson this week, in a packed interview about her first six weeks in office. Supporters who have been disappointed by her lack of decisive action on police surveillance cameras will definitely want to tune in, as will those who are interested in how she plans to add 1,000 units of shelter by the end of this year.
This must-listen interview is full of newsworthy moments, including Wilson’s confirmation that the city’s approach to encampments has not changed since last year, when her pro-sweeps predecessor Bruce Harrell was in office.
Wilson recently paused an encampment removal in Ballard so that five people living there could get into housing—an achievement Wilson mentioned in her State of the City speech this week. But that outcome isn’t one the city can easily replicate—a permanent supportive housing provider, DESC, had just opened a new building nearby and had a few vacant spaces, which won’t be the situation during future sweeps. And very little of this type of housing is in the development pipeline.
Wilson acknowledged that it’s “absolutely true that this is not something that we are going to be able to repeat again and again and again, and that is really because of the lack of availability of emergency housing and shelter with services that match people’s needs.” Which, she said, “is precisely why a very, very high priority for my administration is working to open up new emergency housing and shelter, and we have aggressive goals for that this year.
In the meantime, Wilson added, “we’re not going to be able to make earth-shattering changes to the way that the Unified Care Team operates.”
Wilson also confirmed that the city is continuing to use the “encampment scoring system” Harrell implemented shortly after taking office—a fairly inflexible rubric that doesn’t account for conditions at individual encampments, such as whether the people living there are at the top of a wait list for housing.
We also pressed the mayor on her equivocal comments about police surveillance cameras, which police claim are necessary to solve crimes, including homicides. On the campaign trail, Wilson strongly suggested she opposed this kind of always-on police surveillance, and would not support installing new cameras in the two additional neighborhoods where they’ve been approved.
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During our conversation, though, Wilson repeated talking points from the Seattle Police Department about clearance rates and crime, arguing that cameras have helped police solve more crimes than before the cameras were installed.
The cameras, Wilson noted, only cover 1 percent of the city where about 20 percent of crime occurs (a talking point that may be familiar to Seattle Nice listeners, since Sandeep used it to justify the cameras during our conversation with City Councilmember Dionne Foster two weeks ago). Wilson said she still has concerns “around the potential misuse of our CCTV camera cameras and the possibility that that data could get into the wrong hands and be abused to target vulnerable populations,” but she’s weighing that against what she sees as compelling evidence that the cameras help solve crimes and may even prevent racial profiling.
“I think it is fair to say that if we turned off the cameras, it would become more difficult to solve many crimes, including some violent crimes and homicides, and some might not get solved,” Wilson told us.
We also talked about the conflict between funding shelter and funding housing at a time of federal budget cuts and local budget deficits; Wilson’s citywide renter survey; and how she plans to tackle “open-air drug markets” in neighborhoods like Little Saigon.
