Tag: Andrew Grant Houston

Elections

PubliCola Questions: Andrew Grant Houston
Photo via agh4sea.com

As PubliCola prepares to endorse candidates in the August 3 mayoral and council primary elections, we reached out to the leading candidates for mayor and City Council Position 9 with questions about homelessness, housing, police accountability, and economic recovery.

Their answers to these questions, which we’ll be sharing over the next several days, will help inform our endorsements, coming out next week. Endorsements will be based on each candidate’s record of action, public statements, interviews with PubliCola and other media outlets, and responses at the many candidate forums that have taken place over the summer.

First up: Newcomer Andrew Grant Houston, an architect, housing advocate, and impressive fundraiser whose future-oriented platform would bring transformative change. Houston wants to increase the minimum wage to $23 an hour, build 2,500 tiny homes for people living unsheltered, use neighborhood planning to develop Barcelona-style “car-light” superblocks, and cut the Seattle Police Department’s budget in half, redirecting the $138 million in savings to other purposes.

Here’s what Houston, who is currently outpacing longtime council members Bruce Harrell and Lorena González on both overall fundraising and number of contributors, had to say in response to the eight questions PubliCola posed to every mayoral candidate.

PubliCola: Assuming Charter Amendment 29 becomes law in Seattle, what city programs would you cut or deprioritize in order to dedicate 12 percent of the city’s general-fund budget to human services, and how would you go about adding 2,000 new shelter or housing spots by the end of next year?

Andrew Grant Houston: The money to fulfill the 12% will come from SPD, though based on interpretation of the current budget, that would only be a reallocation of 1% of the General Fund. I already have a plan for 2,500 tiny homes, recognizing that in Seattle there are close to 3,300 unsheltered individuals by an undercount. These homes plus CM Lewis’ “It Takes a Village” plan should be enough to ensure that, at the very least, we make sure everyone is inside by the end of next year.

Local elected officials and candidates have often emphasized the need to revitalize downtown Seattle as the primary focus of post-COVID recovery. What is one specific action you would take in Seattle’s non-downtown neighborhoods to promote economic recovery and neighborhood vitality?

We need economic recovery no matter where people live or where a business is located. The answer is ultimately short and long-term action that gives people financial stability when it comes to wages, rent, childcare, and housing affordability/availability in our city. We must do what is just and effective to continue financial protections for individuals.

“I remain the only candidate for Mayor with a plan to expand public restrooms, recognizing that when people have places to go (whether housed or unhoused) as well as specific places to dispose of sharps and trash, we reduce the number of biohazards in our public realm.”

That said, we can promote economic and neighborhood vitality by improving the public realm and making it such that people want to spend time on our streets frequenting local businesses. This is what my “Retake the Right of Way” policy proposal is all about: when we replace space for cars with space for bikes, walking/rolling, and even street cafes, people want to spend more time in our neighborhood centers. Plenty of data and studies show that protected bike lanes actually increase the amount of customers a business sees, so let’s do everything we can to encourage sustainability—environmentally and economically.

There is general consensus around the need to replace some functions of the police department with non-policing alternatives, such as civilian crisis responders. What gaps in Seattle’s non-police public safety network can be filled on the shortest timeline, and which are the most pressing priorities?

I would normally start with the transfer of Parking Enforcement to SDOT, however that is already happening and being worked on by Council. The next step, then, is to expand the Public Safety Coordinator from a singular position in South Park to creating no less than seven in each council district. This is a version of public safety that has seen success and is enjoyed by the residents of the neighborhood, so let’s expand this visible network of resources to other parts of Seattle. Continue reading “PubliCola Questions: Andrew Grant Houston” →

Elections, Health, homelessness, legislature, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz, Taxes

City Says It’s Too Risky to Turn On Drinking Fountains, First-Time Candidate Sees Fundraising Surge, Capital Gains Tax Passes
Freeway Park water fountains. Photo by Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Seattle Public Utilities confirmed that the city has only turned on 10 public water fountains downtown (and is working to repair a handful of others in the area), leaving the rest of the city’s public drinking fountains out of service during a pandemic that has greatly reduced access to clean drinking water for people experiencing homelessness.

According to a joint response to questions provided by the Parks Department and SPU, King County Public Health only asked the city to turn on its downtown fountains and “did not recommend turning on the rest of the city’s drinking fountains. Currently they are providing additional guidance about the rest of the city’s drinking fountains, and we will continue to follow their guidance.”

A spokesperson for King County Public Health said that in fact, the health department did ask the city to turn on drinking fountains citywide in response to an outbreak of shigella in late 2020 (which we covered here.) However, the spokesperson said, “When we talked to SPU and SPR about turning on the drinking fountains, they expressed concerns as to how many drinking fountains were fully functioning and the logistics involved in providing routine maintenance and cleaning.”

“Therefore,” the spokesperson said, “we recommended they use a phased approach to turning on the drinking fountains, starting with the drinking fountains in downtown Seattle.

“We’ve seen success in the downtown drinking fountains having been turned on and are now exploring with SPU/SPR having them turn on drinking fountains in additional parts of the city.”

The CDC guidelines the city provided do not appear to contain any recommendation that cities turn off public drinking fountains if they can’t clean them after each use. Instead, they note that there is no evidence COVID-19 can spread through drinking water and suggest cleaning frequently touched surfaces such as drinking fountains once a day.

Public Health director Patty Hayes told the Seattle/King County Board of Health earlier this month that providing access to potable water was one of the health department’s “top priorities,” along with providing access to soap and running water for people to wash their hands, water bottles, and other items. Thirst leads people with no other options to drink water from unsanitary sources, which leads to outbreaks of communicable diseases.

The Community Advisory Group of Seattle/King County Healthcare for the Homeless has been beating the drum about drinking water since the beginning of the pandemic, when they noted in a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan that “[w]ithout access to clean drinking water, many of our unhoused population are drinking non-potable water which can lead to other public health crises such as the proliferation of Hepatitis A and giardia.” Since then, those concerns have been borne out over and over again.

Asked why the city hasn’t turned on its public drinking fountains outside downtown, Parks and SPU wrote, “SPU and SPR have been following the CDC guidance for drinking fountains safety during the pandemic that recommends cleaning them between uses, and turning them off if this is not possible.”

The CDC guidelines at the link the city provided do not appear to contain any recommendation that cities turn off public drinking fountains if they can’t clean them after each use. Instead, they note that there is no evidence COVID-19 can spread through drinking water and suggest cleaning frequently touched surfaces such as drinking fountains once a day.

The only reference the CDC guidelines make to shutting down drinking fountains comes in a section about large public events. That section says that event planners should “[c]lean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces within the venue at least daily or between uses as much as possible—for example, door handles, sink handles, drinking fountains, grab bars, hand railings, and cash registers.” If drinking fountains, “cannot be adequately cleaned and disinfected during an event,” the guidance continues, event planners should “consider closing” them.

2. Andrew Grant Houston, a first-time candidate who wants to defund the Seattle Police Department, build 2,500 “tiny houses” for people experiencing homelessness, and institute rent control, is currently in second place in the mayoral fundraising race, after a $129,050 contribution drop last week brought the campaign’s total fundraising to $266,758, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission. The vast majority of that—$214,050, according to the city—came in the form of democracy vouchers, a form of public campaign finance in which voters receive $100 to spend on the candidate or candidates of their choice.

Financial momentum like that is unusual for a little-known candidate without connections to the city’s political establishment; it’s also exactly what the democracy voucher program was designed to promote. PubliCola asked Houston why he thought so many people were giving to his campaign. Houston told us he credits his consultant, Prism West, and a strategic plan that places the campaign on track to max out its primary-election vouchers by the end of this week. Under the city’s election law, mayoral candidates can redeem a total of $800,000 in democracy vouchers—half in the primary, half in the general.

Houston said he wasn’t surprised by the haul. “I knew it was going to happen at some point,” he said. “I am someone who is focused on not just hiring the best people, but also really being committed to understanding how we meet our goals.”

That strategy, Houston continued, has included a lot of (masked, socially distant) in-person canvassing, with a focus on several key issues. Police defunding, for example, is a polarizing issue but one that Houston says galvanizes people to give. “Being very clear about defunding the police to invest in community really resonates with people—either you’re for it or against it, and people who are in the affirmative [tend to give],” he said.

According to the PDC, Chief Seattle Club director Colleen Echohawk is the only mayoral candidate who has raised more than Houston; her latest total, according to the PDC, is $297,072.

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3. Senators passed the the state’s first-ever capital gains tax (SB 5096) on Sunday, the last day of the session, after rejecting the bill the previous Thursday. The bill would impose a 7 percent tax on capital gains above $250,000, subject to some exemptions, raising more than $400 million in its first year. The bill passed on the same narrow margin as the initial vote in March, 25-24.

Before the state can begin collecting the tax, it will have to face a near-certain legal challenge from business groups. (Republicans have said they will not file the lawsuit themselves but expect an outside organization to do so._ While Republicans want the tax stopped, they fear that if the state supreme court rules that the capital gains tax is constitutional, it will open the door for a state income tax.

City Council, Elections, homelessness, labor, legislature, Morning Fizz, Taxes

Weekend Fizz: Capital Gains Tax Moves Forward, Council Staffers Unionize, and Echohawk Challenged on Initiative Support

1. The Senate Democrats weren’t ready to sign off on the version of the historic capital gains tax legislation (SB 5096) that House Democrats passed earlier this week. So the bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. June Robinson (D-38, Everett) and Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle) met with House Finance Committee Chair Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle) and House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan (D-47, Covington) to hammer out a compromise version.

On Friday evening, Democrats sent the revised version to the Senate. Both of the House’s referendum protections remain intact in this new version: The Democrats preserved language that says the tax is “necessary” for the government to function and dedicated the first $500 million in revenues from the tax to fund the Education Legacy Trust Account, which locks in the “necessity” clause (under the state constitution, education is the “paramount duty” of the state). Any excess revenue from the tax will be dedicated to an account that funds public school construction.

The new tax is expected to bring in about $445 million during the 2021-23 biennium, $981 million in the 2023-25 biennium, and $1.06 billion between 2025 and 2027.

The bill now includes a new tax deduction for people who donate to charity—a GOP idea that had not made it into any version of the bill until now.

After the meeting, Pedersen told PubliCola his Democratic colleagues added the deduction to get enough votes to pass the bill, saying, “Now it looks like we will be able to get it through both chambers.”

2. After more than a year of negotiations, the Seattle City Council’s central staff—a group of about 30 legal, economic, and policy wonks who draft and analyze legislation for the council—have joined the city’s PROTEC17 union.

Among other guarantees, their new contract increases their pay retroactively for 2019, 2020, and 2021 by 4 percent, 3.6 percent, and 2.9 percent, respectively, and bumps up the minimum maximum pay for their positions by the same percentage. Going forward, the minimum pay for a central staffer will be $42.20 an hour, or $87,776, and salaries will max out at $157,060.

3. Last week, mayoral candidate Andrew Grant Houston subtly tweaked one of his competitors, Chief Seattle Club director Colleen Echohawk, for supporting a proposed charter amendment on homelessness sponsored by a group started by former council member Tim Burgess, Compassion Seattle.

“A few people have asked, so we wanted to clarify that, no, Ace has never been formally or informally involved with the organization Compassion Seattle. We cannot speak for other candidates,” Houston tweeted. In response, a Houston supporter pointed out that the Echohawk campaign had apparently taken down a blog post supporting the initiative.

Asked why they took down the blog post, an Echohawk campaign spokesperson responded that the statement featured in the blog post is “all over social media and we’re hosting it on our Adobe Document cloud.” (True.) “So yes, the answer is we had it up on the blog, but took it down because we decided as a campaign to focus communications on social media as it is much more accessible and more people engage with the campaigns social accounts.”

The Chief Seattle Club works to shelter and house homeless Native people in Seattle. Echohawk’s campaign tweeted and did a Facebook post linking the full statement on April 3.

Density, Development, Elections, gentrification, housing, land use, Maybe Metropolis, neighborhoods, Opinion, Urbanism, zoning

Maybe Metropolis: What’s a YIMBY to Do?

by Josh Feit

It’s mayoral election season. And once again, Seattle’s intransigent ideological factions are seeking the candidate who most aligns with their agenda. As candidates vie to consolidate support, this makes for entertaining political contortions.

On the candidate side in recent races, this has been embarrassing (Tim Burgess trying to be cool by setting up headquarters on Capitol Hill in 2013); disingenuous (Mike McGinn assuring people he wasn’t going to fight the tunnel in 2009); or awkward (Cary Moon trying to woo Nikkita Oliver supporters in 2017.)

On the voter side, things can be even rougher. For example, who the heck is a YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) voter supposed to support when Seattle’s dominant factions—KUOW yuppies turned Make-Seattle-Great-Again stalwarts, KEXP Gen-Xers turned provincial populists,  and “Seattle is Dying” KOMO voters—frame the debate.

I wrote a YIMBY manifesto last week (short version: Build multi-family housing in single family zones, support small business in every neighborhood, preserve cultural spaces citywide, and establish civic services across Seattle, all overlaid with an accessible, seamless transit and pedestrian network.)

But since urbanist Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda isn’t running for mayor, things are a bit tricky for upzone-infill-Green Metropolis nerds like me, who want a departure from the same old “downtown” vs. “neighborhood” mayoral campaign season script. (And p.s., the Seattle Times vs. Stranger divide isn’t much of a guide anymore; their standoff lost meaning when both publications went for testosterone socialist Jon Grant over Mosqueda in 2017’s citywide council contest.)

Race is going to be a major factor in 2021, which you’d think would help the YIMBY cause. After all, YIMBYs have put exclusive single-family zoning on notice; allowing more affordable multi-family housing in single-family zones is the number one YIMBY agenda item, if not obsession.

But nope. Both the KEXP and KUOW factions (which include Millennials too, by the way) think developers are akin to Trumpists (um, aren’t the anti-development voters the ones with the keep-people-out pathology?) That contradiction aside, thanks to widespread anti-developer sentiment, the pro-housing position that’s central to the Yes-in-My-Back-Yard voter will undoubtedly get suffocated by easy anti-gentrification soundbites.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this: Gentrification is happening now, in the current context of Seattle’s protected single-family zone paradigm, not in some imagined bogeyman context where developers supposedly have access to the majority of Seattle’s neighborhoods. The NIMBY fear-mongering argument reminds me of Trump showing video of riots that happened during Trump’s presidency and saying: “This is Joe Biden’s America!”

Since the contours of Seattle politics make it hard for candidates to run on the pro-neighborhood-housing, pro-neighborhood-business, pro-transit, pro-rights-of-way (plural), pro-nightlife, and pro-harm reduction agenda, what’s a YIMBY to do?

If there’s one thing establishment and populist candidates always agree on, it’s that allowing development in single family zones is inimical to Seattle’s character. This is your moment YIMBY. Step in and step up for a pro-housing agenda.

Well, there’s conceptual apartment buildings architect Andrew Grant Houston, aka “Ace the Architect,” a young, Black and Latino, queer, 100% YIMBY candidate, who has stunned everyone with his early fundraising ($60K raised, according the most recent Seattle Ethics and Elections reports).

Some of Seattle’s most visible bright lights, big city advocates have contributed (at least nominally) to Houston’s campaign, including: former mayoral candidate Moon, Futurewise executive director Alex Brennan, Share the Cities activist Laura Bernstein, Urbanist blog writers Ryan Packer and Doug Trumm, Seattle disabilities/transit advocate Anna Zivarts, and Mosqueda herself, though Mosqueda donated much more to council colleague and mayoral candidate Lorena González. (Houston is currently Mosqueda’s interim policy manager at City Hall.)

Houston, whose campaign website vision page says Seattle should operate on a 24/7 basis (I agree!) and that personal vehicles should no longer exist in Seattle by 2030 (I want to agree?), is on the board of a revamped Futurewise, the environmental nonprofit that’s leading the cause of urban density in the state legislature right now.

Gentrification is happening now, in the current context of Seattle’s protected single-family zone paradigm, not in some imagined bogeyman context where developers supposedly have access to the majority of Seattle’s neighborhoods.

There is also recently announced candidate Jessyn Farrell, a former progressive state rep from North Seattle who used to head up Transportation Choices Coalition, the premier pro-transit advocacy non-profit in the state. She currently works for Nick Hanauer’s left-progressive think tank, Civic Ventures (which, full disclosure, is a contributor to this site). As a legislator in Olympia, from 2013 to 2017, Farrell was vice chair of the House Transportation Committee and led the 2015 legislative fight for Sound Transit 3’s authorizing legislation.

For Farrell, an urban planning progressive, transit goes hand in hand with housing. She was instrumental in adding amendments that A) tied the authorizing legislation to a commitment from Sound Transit to contribute $20 million to an affordable housing fund and B) helped activate the agency’s transit-oriented  development policy; the TOD legislation has helped create, or put into the housing pipeline, 1,500 affordable units near transit stations to date.

Continue reading “Maybe Metropolis: What’s a YIMBY to Do?” →