Tag: drug criminalization

Courts, Drugs

Drug Prosecutions Quadrupled In Final Months of City Attorney Ann Davison’s Term
City Councilmember Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison in 2024; both will leave office at the end of this year.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison has accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling drug prosecutions from an average of 4 a week between mid-June and mid-September to 16.4 a week between mid-September and December 15.

The city attorney also prosecuted more people for public drug use, increasing prosecutions from virtually none between June and September (an average of 0.5 a day) to 3.5 a day between mid-September and December 15, a seven-fold increase.

The Seattle Municipal Court compiled the numbers for violations of the city’s recently passed drug laws, which made it a misdemeanor to possess any amount of an illegal drug in public, at PubliCola’s request.

The city council passed the law, which empowered the city attorney to prosecute people for drug possession and use for the first time in the city’s history, in 2023. The following year, they passed a companion bill that reinstated special “Stay Out of Drug Area” banishment zones for people accused of violating the new drug laws, a tactic dating back to the early 1990s that the city had long abandoned as ineffective.

Earlier this year, Davison replaced Community Court, which she unilaterally ended in 2023, with a “drug prosecution alternative” that allows people arrested under the new drug laws to have their charges dismissed if they do an assessment to confirm their addiction and don’t get arrested again.

A spokesman for Davison’s office, Tim Robinson, said the spike in filings is “simply a matter of an increase in referrals” by the Seattle Police Department—when police arrest more people for misdemeanor drug violations, they file more charges.

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“When our review and filing unit reviews the referrals, they determine if there are sufficient legal grounds to move the case forward,” Robinson said. “This includes whether or not the alleged conduct violates a specific law and if the evidence supports the elements of the alleged offense. An individual involved in a case is referred to the Drug Prosecution Alternative whenever possible.”

However, the decision to file charges is discretionary, not automatic; the entire premise of the LEAD program, which diverts people involved in the criminal justice system away from prosecution, is that services are more effective than jail.

Incoming city attorney Erika Evans, who defeated Davision by a margin of 34 points in November, said diversion to treatment and services, not prosecution, “should be the default response for people dealing with substance use disorder.”

“Traditional prosecution should only be considered after meaningful attempts at diversion and support have not been successful,” Evans said. “When diversion alone is not working, I believe a community court model for people dealing with substance use disorder can provide accountability for progress while still keeping treatment and services at the center.”

As PubliCola has reported, the overwhelming majority of people arrested for violating Seattle’s drug laws end up cycling through the system without actually getting any kind of treatment.

“I am skeptical of any drug alternative program that relies primarily on increased charging rather than meaningful diversion,” Evans said. “When I take office, I look forward to working closely with the courts, the mayor, DPD, and our office to transform the current model into one that follows the law’s legislative intent, uses public dollars responsibly, and actually helps people get out of this cycle, not deeper into it.”

Courts, Drugs, housing, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Banishment Orders and Housing Bans
City attorney Ann Davison announced her Stay Out of Drug Area legislation at City Hall last year.

By Erica C. Barnett

Municipal Court judges have only issued one Stay Out of Drug Area order so far, raising questions about why City Attorney Ann Davison, and the City Council, was so eager to pass legislation reinstating SODA zones downtown. Under a law passed last year, judges can order people who are merely accused of violating local drug laws—like the 2023 law making outdoor drug use a misdemeanor—to stay out of certain areas, including much of downtown.

On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, I argued that the minimal use of SODA orders so far is more evidence that the current city attorney and city council are ill-equipped to address the problems they’ve said they want to solve, including visible drug use and addiction. After performative promises to crack down on drug users as part of a carrot-and-stick approach to addiction, city officials are discovering that “cleaning up” areas like 12th and Jackson isn’t as easy as they think, especially when most people arrested for misdemeanors, like public drug use and possession, are released from jail almost immediately and end up right back where they came from.

But even if the city attorney started seeking banishment orders in every drug case, and even if local judges decided to grant them, the police chief, who answers to Mayor Bruce Harrell, would have to decide to redirect officer time and resources to monitoring the boundaries of the downtown SODA district to make sure no one with a banishment order is caught inside it. And even if all that happens and the city starts arresting people for SODA violations left and right, there are limits to how long the downtown jail will hold people for misdemeanors, including gross misdemeanors like violating a SODA order.

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The biggest problem is that the city did not fund drug treatment, or even detox, for the population of outdoor drug users who are ready to make a change, so our approach to drug use remains almost entirely punitive: Stop being addicted or go to jail. At least, that’s my take. Sandeep said the policy is sound, but needs more enforcement.

We also talked about a proposal to allow some affordable housing in an industrially zoned area directly south of Seattle’s two stadiums, where hotels and bland office buildings area already allowed.

And we discussed another kind of banishment area the council adopted last year as part of a law that bans “prostitution loitering” by people caught trying to pay undercover cops for sex.

As I noted on the show, the loitering laws overwhelmingly target men of color, including immigrants; although city employees aren’t supposed to disclose a detained person’s immigration status to ICE, the federal enforcement agency has been known to use publicly available jail dockets to identify undocumented immigrants and target them for deportation, which could make Seattle complicit in Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

 

Addiction, City Council, Drugs, King County

County Says They Have “No Intention” of Turning Sobering Center into a Secure Facility for Drug Law Violators
The Yesler Building, site of the county’s sobering center since 2019 (photo via King County)

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this month, City Councilmember Maritza Rivera proposed a budget amendment directing the city’s Human Services Department to analyze “the appropriateness and feasibility” of using King County’s sobering center, which provides people a place to recover from the acute impacts of alcohol and drug intoxication, “to address individuals arrested under Seattle’s drug possession laws, including an evaluation of the need and feasibility for such a facility to be secure.” The amendment is now in the council’s “consent package” of amendments slated to pass without further discussion.

But King County says it has no interest in converting the sobering center into a secure facility for people arrested for public drug use and possession, and says neither Rivera nor Council President Sara Nelson, who supports Rivera’s amendment, has reached out to the county to discuss their idea.

“The City of Seattle has not spoken to us about these budget requests, and the County has no intention of changing the model to what the Councilmembers describe,” King County Department of Community and Human Services director Kelly Rider told PubliCola. “The intended purpose of this facility is to serve people living unsheltered to sleep off acute alcohol or drug intoxication or opiate overdose and connect them to treatment, housing assistance, and other supports.” 

During a recent council discussion, Rivera said the sobering center was a facility the county “had [operated] pre-COVID, actually, and had not reopened. I know that they’re looking to r- establish and reopen it.” In fact, the county’s sobering center has been open continually in various locations, mostly the Yesler Building in Pioneer Square, since before the pandemic, and has been operating out of the Yesler Building since 2022.

However (as a more recent staff description of Rivera’s amendment acknowledged) it has faced challenges finding a permanent location. In 2022, a plan to move the sobering center to an existing Salvation Army shelter in SoDo was thwarted by anti-shelter efforts led by, among others, Chinatown/International District activist Tanya Woo—who subsequently ran for city council, lost, got appointed, and then lost again.

Rivera said the sobering center could be a place where people who use drugs in public “can sober up, and then we can offer services and they can consent and then go get the treatment that they that they really need.”

The sobering center, which is operated by Pioneer Human Services, currently offers case management and can direct people to treatment and other services, but it does not compel people to “go get treatment” and most people who leave the facility do so by walking out the door. Its primary purpose is to relieve downtown emergency service providers by giving people under the influence of substances a safe, dry place to go that isn’t the hospital or jail. Sobering centers have been around, and serving this specific, limited purpose since the 1970s.

The county is still looking for a building to permanently house the sobering center, allowing the county to double its current capacity from 30 to 60 people a night.

City Council, Courts, Drugs, Health, Police

Six Months In, Seattle’s New Drug Law Has Had Little Direct Impact on Public Drug Use or Diversion
After police cracked down on people hanging out and using drugs at the corner of 12th and Jackson, they moved a block away. Photo: Andrew Engelson

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to include additional quotes from Lisa Daugaard, the director of Purpose Dignity Action, which runs the city’s largest diversion program, LEAD.

By Andrew Engelson

In the six months since Seattle enacted a controversial law making public drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor, City Attorney Ann Davison’s office has filed charges against 17 people for violations of the law, which criminalizes the use or possession of drugs other than cannabis. That’s a tiny percentage of about 300 arrests police have made since the new law went into effect in October.

And while advocates for diversion—a strategythat involves enrolling people in services  in lieu of charges—say the low charging rate is a good thing, the city’s main diversion program is perpetually underfunded and has had to shift strategies to take on so many new clients from arrests.

SPD has been arresting hundreds of people under the new law, though the number of monthly arrests has recently been on a steady decline.According to Seattle Police Department data, arrests spiked during a highly-publicized series of stings in October and peaked in January. The number of monthly misdemeanor drug arrests has dropped significantly since then, with just 20 arrests in March and six in the first 11 days of April. 

City Council President Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison touted the new law as a way to reduce public use of fentanyl and meth. But so far, it doesn’t seem to have made more than superficial changes to the level of drug use in two of the most visible hot spots in the city: Third Avenue downtown, and 12th and Jackson in the International District. According to SPD data, about two-thirds of arrests under the law were in SPD beats that encompass those two areas of the city.

Of the 17 people the city attorney’s office has charged, about half failed to appear for court hearings–a strong indicator that they were living without shelter. People who are homeless or struggle with mental illness often have trouble making court appearances, and this can result in a reinforcing cycle of interaction with the criminal justice system and lack of shelter. 

Davison’s office has motioned to remove municipal judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing eight of the 17 drug cases. Since March, Davison has directed city attorneys to challenge judge Vaddadi from hearing any criminal cases, charging that the judge, a former public defender, has a “regular pattern of biased rulings.”

Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid told PubliCola he’s seen about a dozen cases in his court related to the new drug law. “Anecdotally, from my own courtroom, I can tell you that I have a zero percent appearance rate so far for people charged under the new drug statute,” he said. 

According to municipal court records, the average time between an arrest under the new drug law and when the city attorney files charges is about 70 days; more than half of the people charged under the new law waited 90 days or more for Davison’s office to file charges. This is in sharp contrast to Davison’s promise, in 2022, to decide whether to file charges in all criminal cases within five business days after her office receives a referral from the police department.

“If charges aren’t filed right away, then it is very difficult to find a homeless person and get them to come to court,” Shadid said. “My suspicion is that the vast majority of people charged with [possession or public use] are homeless and that’s why we’re seeing such a low appearance rate in court.”

In about half the arrests under the new drug law, police referred drug users to the LEAD diversion program, which connects people with case management, harm reduction, and other services. 

Lisa Daugaard, the director of Purpose Dignity Action, which runs LEAD, says she welcomes the emphasis on diversion. “It’s completely appropriate for the city attorney to defer filing while LEAD case managers are working with people to complete diversion intake, and that’s what the ordinance calls for,” Daugaard said. “No one should criticize prosecutors for actively encouraging pre-filing diversion efforts, when those are demonstrated to be the most effective response to severe substance use disorder.”

However, taking on post-arrest referrals has required LEAD to stop taking referrals from other sources—effectively shifting its referral strategy away from community-based referrals, which don’t require an arrest, to post-arrest referrals for people caught violating the new law. Although LEAD has received more funding from state and federal sources in the meantime, that funding is not related to the new law and the city itself did not increase LEAD funding as part of its shift to arrest-based diversion. Over the past several years, LEAD (which used to stand for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) has moved toward community referrals, which don’t require people to choose diversion while in handcuffs.

The increase in SPD interactions put a strain on LEAD’s limited resources. To address this, during the recent legislative session, the supplemental budget included a $2.5 million boost to Seattle and King county’s LEAD program, in budget line items sponsored by Rep. Darya Farivar and Sen. Rebecca Saldaña. Combined with another $3.5 million in one-time funds, that’s enough to enable LEAD to do some community referrals, in addition to referrals resulting from arrests, this year. However, Daugaard said, the PDA is “reluctant to overextend on community referrals until there is a more sustainable plan for scaling beyond this year.”

“We are one of numerous community-based case management providers,” Daugaard said. “So it’s a collective response but it needs to have a stable, sustained funding stream. It’s an approach that almost everyone knows is the right approach. But you can’t go year to year, constantly on the verge of cutting it off.”

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Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said the time it takes to review a case and file charges “is dependent on many factors, one of which is waiting for toxicology lab results.” The State Patrol’s toxicology lab has been plagued with delays (usually associated with DUI cases) but opened a new center last year to address the backlog.

Robinson said the city attorney’s office has a backlog of about 800 cases for all criminal cases awaiting a decision to file, including drug use, theft, DUI, domestic violence, and other misdemeanors. He said the city attorney’s office is currently reviewing whether to charge in 81 cases and 14 cases are awaiting toxicology reports. 

In the 17 cases the city attorney has charged, arrest reports show that they almost universally involve suspected fentanyl or meth use, and include descriptions such as one in an officer’s report that mentions “lighters, foil, and pipes, tubular objects that they were holding near the foil.”

Currently, no one arrested under the drug law is being booked into jail. King County’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention still has in place a pandemic-era moratorium on booking most people accused of non-violent misdemeanors. Robinson said that while those arrested aren’t able to be booked, “They may be booked into jail if they have also committed a companion crime (e.g. burglary while possessing drugs, etc.).”

According to data on SPD’s arrest dashboard, arrests (which include charge-by-officer, a process in which cases are sent directly to the city attorney’s office) for violations of the law peaked in December at 86, and declined to 20 in March.  Continue reading “Six Months In, Seattle’s New Drug Law Has Had Little Direct Impact on Public Drug Use or Diversion” →

Drugs, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Police, public safety, Uncategorized

Mayor’s Public Safety Plan May Not Include New Legislation, but Existing “Civility Laws” Leave Plenty of Room for Enforcement
Tents on Third Avenue near City Hall get a near-daily rapid response from the city and pop up again just as quickly.

By Erica C. Barnett

During a briefing on the city’s Downtown Activation Plan last week, Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, Seattle Center Director Marshall Foster, and other city officials touted improvements to the waterfront (like a forthcoming Molly Moon’s ice cream shop at the “habitat beach” next to the new eight-lane waterfront highway in Pioneer Square) and progress on filling storefronts downtown with permanent businesses through the city’s post-pandemic Seattle Restored program.

Burgess also praised the Seattle Police Department for arresting nearly 200 people on drug misdemeanor charges in the last three months, then diverting most of them to LEAD (Let Everyone Advance With Dignity), the city’s pre-booking diversion program.

What Burgess didn’t mention were the details of a new citywide public safety plan the mayor’s office will be rolling out sometime near the end of this month, the details of which have been the source of intense speculation over the past several weeks. After the DAP briefing, Burgess told PubliCola that the plan will not include new legislation, but will be more of a “framework … setting a tone of what the mayor expects for public safety” from the police department, fire department, and new unarmed response teams.

For those concerned about a new crackdown on low-level crimes, the lack of new legislation may be cold comfort; laws currently on the books, but not generally enforced, include a “parks exclusion” ordinance that allows the city to ban people from parks for violating park rules; a law against urinating in public; and a ban on sitting or lying down on a sidewalk, “or upon a blanket, chair, stool, or any other object placed upon a public sidewalk,” in commercial areas between 7 am and 9 pm.

In his experience in the city, Burgess (a former police officer and city council member) said, “there has not been a mayor who has been as directive in what he wants to see in terms of public safety.” The forthcoming plan, he added, will “be very comprehensive, it will be specific in some areas, and it will be basically the mayor sharing his vision for what he expects our public safetuy departments” to do.

For those concerned about a new crackdown on low-level crimes, the lack of new legislation may be cold comfort; laws currently on the books, but not generally enforced, include a “parks exclusion” ordinance that allows the city to ban people from parks for violating park rules; a law against urinating in public; and a ban on sitting or lying down on a sidewalk, “or upon a blanket, chair, stool, or any other object placed upon a public sidewalk,” in commercial areas between 7 am and 9 pm. If Harrell’s new public safety plan includes directives to enforce existing laws like these, it would represent a significant escalation of SPD’s enforcement of low-level “civility” crimes.

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Last year, Burgess was reportedly behind efforts to enforce the existing disorderly conduct law—which is most commonly used to eject people from buses for disruptive behavior—within 25 feet of bus stops on Third Avenue, which would have empowered police to arrest people for everything from using drugs to smoking to playing amplified music at any location along the entire bus-only corridor.

A reporter asked Burgess during last week’s briefing if the city planned to revive efforts to crack down on low-level offenses on Third Ave. as part of the Downtown Activation Plan. He responded, “No,” but quickly added, “just to be real clear, it is a crime to do certain things in a bus stop or on a bus. And the police will use that [law], I imagine, at certain times, but there’s no focused effort in that regard.”

In the 1990s and early 2000s, then-city attorney Mark Sidran oversaw an era of aggressive enforcement of the city’s “civility” laws, which overwhelmingly targeted homeless people. (The Teen Dance Ordinance, Four-Foot Rule at strip clubs, and poster ban—yes, poster ban—targeted everyone else.) Does Team Harrell (and Burgess) plan to turn back the clock to the 1990s (or even the 2010s, when Burgess—as city council member—sponsored an “aggressive panhandling” law)? The new plan, once it’s released, will help answer that question.

City Council, Crime, Density, Drugs, homelessness, housing, Mayor Harrell, Renters, State of Washington, zoning

Nine PubliCola Predictions for 2024

PubliCola columnist Josh Feit and PubliCola’s hoary original publisher (and Seattle Nice contrarian) Sandeep Kaushik are joining Erica here to kick off the year with some soothsaying.  Specifically tailored for PubliCola’s policy obsessed readership, these aren’t prognostications about 2024’s headlining concerns (like the threat of Trump II), but rather, as you’ve come to expect from the most in-depth local news site in Seattle, this is deep political wayfinding for the year in local politics ahead —The Editors

Sandeep Kaushik:

1. The Real Change, House Our Neighbors crowd announced just before Christmas they will put a measure on the Seattle ballot in 2024 to establish a permanent funding source for I-135, the social housing measure they passed in February. I will take the bait and predict that funding measure will fail.

I say this because I have yet to see any evidence House Our Neighbors has an actual, serious, and detailed proposal (you know, one that includes actual, vetted numbers) to build such mixed-income public housing in a way that is going to be operationally viable and fiscally self-sustaining (which was part of the original promise)—much less one that’s better than the well-established existing model for building affordable housing.

It’s one thing to ask voters to support a gauzily intersectional dream of a new, supposedly self-sustaining form of socialistic self-governing housing when there’s no price tag attached (57 percent of Seattle voters supported I-135), quite another when they’re asking for an endless stream of money before any proof of concept. It also doesn’t help that in developing I-135, its backers spent infinitely more time and thought on calibrating the mix of marginalized identities that are represented on the governing board than on an actual plan showing how this sort of housing would pencil.

Maybe House Our Neighbors will prove me wrong, and come forward in January with a viable proposal rather than just a leap-of-faith money ask. It’s quite possible that famously generous, progressively-inclined Seattle voters will pass the funding even if they don’t. And if that happens, maybe they’ll actually deliver on their dreams and promises. If so, fantastic! I would love to be proven wrong, and would be thrilled to see a new, viable, fiscally defensible model of public housing take root in Seattle. But I’m not holding my breath, and I going to predict that if they don’t have a real plan, Seattle voters won’t hand them a blank check.

2. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) will die a whimpering death in 2024. It pains me to make this prediction. In theory, a regional approach to homelessness policy makes enormous sense. In practice, though, the promise of regionalizing our homelessness response has—at least so far–face planted.

When KCRHA’s CEO, the charismatic and energetic Mark Dones, came on board in April 2021, and when KCRHA’s signature Partnership for Zero initiative to end visible homeless downtown was announced in February 2022, I was one of the cheerleaders for this promising new model.

But it was all downhill from there.

It soon became apparent that KCRHA had deep problems that seriously curtailed its effectiveness. To begin with, suburban buy-in to the idea of handing off and consolidating homelessness efforts in the KCRHA was nominal at best. Moreover, KCRHA had no independent funding source, and instead relied on pass-through funding from the city and King County, and that funding model quickly became fraught when some of the policies Dones advocated (no sweeps, opposition to tiny homes) ran counter to what some of their funders wanted.

The region’s key agency for dealing with its most serious problem will remain largely rudderless for more than a year, as staff and talent continue to decamp for greener pastures.

The governing structure of KCRHA, with multiple boards and committees, turned out to be an unwieldy mess, and the powers that be made things much worse by ingraining some of the most chuckleheaded aspects of cultural progressivism—for example, the fixation on centering “lived experience” as opposed to, say, prioritizing actual experience running large organizations implementing complex policies—into that governance, leading to several high profile, avoidable scandals. Internal, back office operations were chaotic, and staff turnover high, leading to further credibility-sapping problems.

It all came to a head when Dones announced their resignation in May, and then when KCRHA admitted failure and threw in the towel on Partnership for Zero in September. A huge amount now rests on the search for a new CEO for the organization, and word on the street is there isn’t likely to be a hire for that critical position until the second half of 2024, if it even turns out that anyone with the requisite experience and skill sets wants the job. That means the region’s key agency for dealing with its most serious problem will remain largely rudderless for more than a year, as staff and talent continue to decamp for greener pastures.

Under that sort of slow death spiral circumstances, writing off KCRHA as a misfire—perhaps triggered by the CEO search producing underwhelming candidates—might be best option. Of course, pulling the plug would be a spectacular embarrassment, so maybe the powers that be will allow to KCRHA to limp along in some sort of awful twilight state for at least another year. But I’m going to go out on a limb and bet the end is in sight.

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3. The 2024 governor’s race will be the closest since Jay Inslee won his first term in 2012 by narrowly besting Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, 51-48. First, Washington State voters are in a pretty sour mood, and Inslee, now exiting after his third term, has middling-to-underwhelming approval ratings. There was even a recent poll showing (relatively) moderate Republican Dave Reichert nipping presumed Democratic frontrunner Bob Ferguson in a head-to-head matchup.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s likely Reichert will actually win, given that he’s strongly anti-choice, but if he gets through the August primary —not at all a sure thing, since he faces a semi-serious challenger on the MAGA right in Semi Bird, and moderate Democrat Mark Mullet is also making a play to consolidate a cross-party middle coalition to leapfrog Reichert in the primary—he could (at least conceivably) make a race of it, particularly if Ferguson veers too far left. Anyway, if it is Reichert in the general, this is a race Democrats can’t take for granted the way they have the last couple of gubernatorial races, even if (as is also likely) Trump is the Republican presidential nominee this November.

Josh Feit:

1. Last year at this time, I predicted that after booting single-family-zone preservationist Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, North Seattle) from his powerful position as chair of the local government committee earlier that month, the new wave of young Democrats in the state legislature would finally be able to pass some Yes-in-My-Backyard legislation.

Here’s me on December 22, 2022 writing about Rep. Jessica Bateman’s (D-22, Olympia) plan to authorize fourplexes in residential areas anywhere detached single-family homes were allowed: “With much better odds of passing their bills intact out of [new chair] Rep. Strom Peterson’s (D-21, Everett) committee than under Pollet’s provincialism, pro-housing legislators could bring some necessary state governance to Seattle’s failed local policies.”

Bam, they passed it. I was actually a little surprised. Bateman’s legislation made it legal in places like density-phobic Seattle to build four units per lot in residential zones, six units per lot within a quarter-mile walking distance of a major transit stop; and six units per lot in residential zones if at least two units are affordable housing.

Unfortunately, that’s way too progressive for Seattle. So, here’s my prediction for 2024 as the city updates the document that governs local zoning policy, its Comprehensive Plan: The newly elected slow-growth city council (I’m thinking of Joy Hollingsworth, Bob Kettle, and Rob Saka joining incumbent anti-growther Sara Nelson, along with Mayor Harrell himself) will use the Comp Plan update as an opportunity for undermining urbanism. First, they will come up with rules to minimize lot coverage, require setbacks, and establish height limits, along with levying hefty affordable housing fees that will keep housing developers from building any apartments in Seattle’s touchy neighborhood residential zones.

There’s also a provision that anxious city lobbyists statewide forced into Bateman’s bill that allowed local governments to limit the upzones to 75 percent of single-family areas.  I can see Seattle’s anti-housing faction using that “neighborhood character” card to stall density in hand-picked neighborhoods as well.

2. Speaking of pro-housing bills going awry: Watch for an attempt by state legislators to re-do last year’s stalled Transit-Oriented Development bill—legislation that would upzone land around light rail stations and bus lines—to disappoint pro-housing urbanists this year.

With the original senate TOD champion, Sen. Marko Liias (D-21, Everett), deciding not to sponsor the bill this year—I’m guessing he was frustrated by the overemphasis on inclusionary zoning (mandatory affordable housing quotas) that House Democrats tried to work into the bill last year—anti-developer lefties like Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle) are now in control of the legislation. Count on minimal upzones near transit (say five stories as opposed to eight) and steep affordability requirements that will chill development.

TL;DR: The very thing the lefties say they want, lots of housing, won’t get built.

3. I’m going to be vague about this one, but here’s what I will say: Even though Mayor Bruce Harrell got the conservative council he wanted, look for new D-3 council member Joy Hollingsworth—who appears to share Harrell’s brand of homily populist politics (even more so than the others)—to begin clashing with him behind the scenes. By year’s end, her frustrations with Harrell will be evident at City Hall.

Erica C. Barnett: 

1. The pundit class (looking at you, Sandeep) may have convinced voters that a local law governing minor drug offenses, like using drugs in public, was the most critical issue in the 2023 election, when moderate candidates denounced lefties who opposed it. But 2024 will prove that the impact of the drug law will be minimal.

As we’ve reported, the city’s new law does not actually criminalize low-level drug offenses; the state legislature did that already, when it passed the so-called “Blake fix” earlier this year. Instead, it empowers City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute people for using or possessing drugs in public; without the new law, only the King County Prosecutor’s Office could do so, and they have historically shown little interest in spending scarce county resources on these relatively minor offenses.

While Davison has reportedly been eager to prosecute drug users, the jail isn’t booking people on misdemeanor drug charges alone, making it hard for Seattle’s Republican city attorney to pursue this law-and-order approach to addiction. Meanwhile, as we predicted, putting drug offenders on the “diversion” track—which was supposed to appease progressives— has just meant that other people who would have received help through the city’s main diversion program, LEAD, are being displaced by people who get arrested first.

Seattle always rolls out supposedly transformative (but, in this case, totally unfunded) new initiatives with a big burst of energy, only to let them fizzle—remember “Operation New Day”?

It’s notable, too, that the city has done exactly one big, flashy event to show off its new authority to arrest people for using drugs in public, then send them immediately to LEAD, with no public follow-ups since October. The mainstream press dutifully reported on the event, noting that it resulted in ten people going to jail on outstanding felony warrants (my question: Given that SPD could have located, interrogated, and arrested this group for their serious offenses at any point, why didn’t they?) and 13 entering diversion.

The biggest reason you haven’t seen a spate of similar headlines about drug arrests leading to diversion since that initial push is that the city didn’t provide any additional funding for diversion; as we’ve reported, LEAD—which is no longer accepting community referrals, just referrals from arrests—will run out of money to accept new clients by May. A secondary reason is that Seattle always rolls out supposedly transformative (but, in this case, totally unfunded) new initiatives with a big burst of energy, only to let them fizzle—remember “Operation New Day”? We don’t either.

2. One area where the new council may throw its weight around is by reversing outgoing council members’ renter protection laws, including the $10 maximum late fee, 180-day notice for rent increases, bans on winter and school-year evictions, and the “first-in-time” law that requires landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant. As I reported this week, small landlords complained about the first-in-time law more than any other renter protection. The law, sponsored by outgoing Councilmember Lisa Herbold, was intended to help reduce the potential for landlords to discriminate against prospective tenants based on factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Although most of the city’s renter protections passed before his term, Harrell opposed the $10 maximum late fee, allowing it to pass into law without his signature earlier this year.

3. We may be entering a newly cozy era of mayor-council relations (with Harrell’s picks triumphing in nearly every 2023 council race), but camaraderie alone won’t solve the structural problems facing the city: Fentanyl addiction, a city budget deficit of nearly $220 million, the city’s inability to hire police despite generous financial incentives and a homelessness crisis for which Seattle is on the hook, at least financially.

The candidates who won this year talked a lot about resetting the culture at City Hall, finding fat in the budget and cutting it, letting police know they’re valued and trusted, and using a carrot (diversion) and stick (arrest and jail) approach to the addiction crisis. But the problems these platitudes purport to address are structural, and don’t respond readily to legislation: Every dollar of “waste” in the budget has a constituency (want to cut back on permitting times? Good luck doing that and instituting a hiring freeze) and many of the issues councilmembers brought up during their campaigns are structural and even nationwide, like police hiring. It’s one thing to denounce people for supporting proposals to reduce police funding three years ago, and quite another to solve a nationwide lack of interest among young people in becoming cops.