Nicole Vallestero Soper, Director of Affordability
with the Mayor's Office: My name is Nicole
Vallestero Soper. I'm the Director of
Affordability with the Mayor's Office.
And without further ado, I'd like to introduce you
to the Mayor of Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson.
Katie Wilson: Hi, thank you, Nicole.
Thank you all for joining us today.
It is my great pleasure to be here to talk about housing.
I want to give a special thank you to Estela Ortega, El Centro
de la Raza, and all of the residents here at Four
Amigos for providing us with space today.
I also want to remind everyone that nap time for the kids at
Jose Marti Child Development Center starts at noon, so
we will have to be very quiet as we exit here today.
Nap time's important, I know this.
Four Amigos is one of the many jewels across our city that
shows what is possible when we listen to communities.
Here we have easy access to transit, childcare,
and small businesses, all while offering families
homes that they can grow in.
It's an example of what we can build when communities lead
and how we respond with city investments.
And it is a reminder of the principled community organizing
of Bernie Whitebear, Bob Santos, Roberto Maestas,
and Larry Gossett.
The gang of four, or four amigos, fought relentlessly
for a vision of Seattle where indigenous, black, and brown
people and working people of all races could live with dignity.
I'm humbled to announce today's executive order to help
us produce the affordable, abundant housing our city
needs in a space that bears their collective name.
When housing costs climb, working-class Seattleites
feel it first and hardest.
Rising rents stretch working families to the breaking
point and push our most vulnerable neighbors toward
homelessness. To keep building this city, your city, and
to respond to our growing needs, we need abundant housing
of all kinds.
Affordable and abundant housing helps
residents stay in the city they call home and also
allows us to welcome new neighbors who continue
to move here for opportunity, safety and community.
We want families to put down roots so that parents, children
and chosen families can build a multi-generational city
that honors our diverse cultures and carries our histories
forward. And we want housing
opportunities across every neighborhood in our
city so the size of your paycheck doesn't determine
your zip code, your access to healthy air or the safety of
your streets.
That means more market rate housing to keep
pace with our city's growth.
It means affordable housing that people working every kind of
job can afford, with homes large enough for every kind of family.
And it means housing for our retirees and for those who
can no longer or are unable to work.
It means social housing that provides
a stable, affordable, mixed-income place to live as
a household's income changes.
And it means supportive housing, paired with services, so we can
get people the care they need.
And it means shelter that moves people off the streets
and toward permanent homes.
We need all of it.
Many forces are putting pressure on housing
production right now.
Interest rates, supply chain challenges, inflation-driven
cost increases, federal policies and
disinvestment all play a role.
We can't control every one of these forces, but we must take
action wherever we can, because housing that people can afford
is critical to a healthy city.
So today, I'm issuing an executive order to help us build
a city where the people who lay our building
foundations, who own our neighborhood businesses,
who teach our children, and who serve our coffee
can afford to live here and grow here.
First, we are taking more aggressive and coordinated
action to make permitting faster and clearer.
That begins with looking closely at our own regulatory
and permitting processes.
Building on work begun during the previous administration
and championed by advocates, developers, council
members, and city staff, We are launching a new
residential permitting interdepartmental team
to make permit timelines shorter and more
predictable across the city.
As the developers gathered here today know too well,
delayed permitting, utility hookups, and street use permits
can cost a single project hundreds of thousands of
dollars per month of delay.
By streamlining permitting, we can help make more projects
pencil across the city.
Second, I am proposing funding for an affordable housing ombuds
in the 2027-2028 budget, a request made by numerous
affordable housing developers to help
low-income housing providers and especially community-led
developers save time in navigating our city agencies.
The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections
will support this position, and Seattle City Light, the Seattle
Department of Transportation, the Seattle Fire Department,
and the Seattle Public Utilities will each name a point of
contact to quickly resolve permitting issues.
The policies we set, the way we review proposals,
and the efficiency of our approvals and inspections,
All of these shape how quickly and effectively
new housing can move from concept to construction.
So these two actions emphasize city departments
working together instead of in silos to make sure that
we build housing faster without unnecessary delays.
Development delays lead to increased costs from
permitting to construction to getting people in those
homes and it's a cost that we can no longer afford.
Third, we are establishing a housing production
task force that brings together labor, affordable
housing providers, community organizations, and
market rate developers.
This group will find shared solutions to speed
up housing production, support community-led
development, strengthen our affordable housing
infrastructure, and prevent displacement for
households with low incomes and black, indigenous,
and communities of color.
Supported through the Seattle's Office of Planning and
Community Development, the task force will tackle many
key issues: strategies to grow housing for
households below 50% of the area median income and
larger family-sized homes, reforms to our mandatory
housing affordability program, the future of
design review, preserving and expanding permanent
supportive housing in a challenging federal landscape,
expanding affordable homeownership, strengthening
our anti-displacement strategies, and
stabilizing and preserving the affordable housing
we already have.
This task force will provide
a status update with initial recommendations by February of
2027 so that we can take action on items next year, and final
recommendations by September of 2027.
This work moves forward alongside many efforts that are
already underway across our city departments, including
our comprehensive plan, zoning, the equitable
development initiative, our displacement data
and mapping tools, office to residential
conversions, and new state laws that advance
middle housing and transit-oriented development.
And we will build on our partnerships with King County
and statewide efforts like the Washington Accelerator for
Residential Production.
This agenda is ambitious because the need across
our neighborhoods is real.
But Seattle has the skills, the partnerships,
and the determination to meet this moment.
So I want to thank all of you, our community
organizations, our housing providers, our labor partners,
city staff, and residents for showing up, for
collaborating, and for believing in what we can build together.
I also want to acknowledge all the partners standing here
with me today who are going to be helping to
drive this work.
Their leadership and their commitment are
essential to delivering the housing that Seattle
families need.
I also want to thank the City Council for their
shared commitment to accelerating permitting
times and ensuring that we have abundant housing of all kinds.
with that councilmember Lin will be sharing his
perspective next after all of our housing production
task force co-chairs have spoken I will return to
answer some questions
Thank you, Mayor.
We'll keep this brief so that
we can make sure we are respecting the nap time.
Super excited to be here and to see so many familiar faces
and just the deep expertise and experience and knowledge
that we're going to be working together as part of this housing
production task force.
Also just super excited about the executive order on how to
address and expedite permitting timelines.
You know, my background was as a city attorney working with
the Office of Housing and funding affordable housing like
this wonderful project here.
And just seeing how those delays and timelines were really
adding just significant costs.
So significant costs that, you know, those were city
dollars and just seeing those continue to rise.
And, you know, if that was true for our affordable
housing partners, it was clear that that was also true
for everyone else along all of our housing producers.
And so we know that it's essential not just for those
searching for a safe and affordable place to live,
but also for our businesses, for city government trying
to attract and make sure that our workers can live in the
community where they serve.
So super excited to get to work to make sure that we
are breaking down barriers across city departments.
You know, it's understandable why we have different
city departments focused on their core mission.
You know, we have utilities focused on making sure we
have reliable, you know, electricity or, you know,
Seattle Public Utilities or SDOT focused on transportation.
But we also need them to be focused on housing as well.
That has to be part of that mission as well,
to make sure that we are working in lockstep together.
And so super excited about the executive order, super
excited to get to work.
Thank you all.
I'd like to introduce Carter Nelson from CREDA next.
Thank you, Nicole.
Good morning.
I'm Carter Nelson here on behalf of the Commercial Real
Estate Development Association.
And I just want to start by saying I'm honored
to be co-chairing this group and be part of
the important work ahead of us.
Our members are the workforce of architects,
engineers, contractors, and developers who help deliver
much of the multifamily housing Seattle needs.
Our members want to be part
of the solution by building more housing and creating
more options for people who want to live in the city.
We appreciate Mayor Wilson and her team's
leadership in convening this group.
Bringing together community leaders, nonprofits,
housing advocates, and industry professionals
is exactly the kind of collaboration we need to
approach a challenge as complex as housing
affordability. We're grateful to have a seat at the table
and look forward to working with this group to
identify the key barriers that make housing more
difficult to build.
We're We're excited to help advance
practical solutions that make it easier to deliver housing for
current and future Seattleites.
Let's get to work.
And as well, Joel Ing, principal from Edge Developers.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Joel Ing.
I am a principal at Edge Developers here in Seattle,
and we focus on affordable housing and community
projects throughout the city, mostly in South Seattle.
So, number one, thank you, Estela, for hosting us here.
This feels like home.
I was born and raised just in the next
neighborhood in Mount Baker.
So I too am very honored to be selected as one of
the co-chairs, and I look forward to working with the
dedicated community members and improving the review and
funding requirements that will increase affordable and
market rate housing in our city.
Following up on the efforts 10 years ago of the
Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Task
Force to increase housing production, also known as HALA,
now is the time to refine many of those strategies while
developing new initiatives.
The housing shortage continues to worsen in our city, as
we all know, and the region, so the opportunity to improve
many development requirements that prevent and challenge
this housing production is both welcomed and needed.
As a native Seattleite, I have seen both the development and
displacement of residents in many of our neighborhoods,
including one we are in today, So I recognize the ongoing
need for housing that matches the community needs.
I'm dedicated to continue developing housing and related
community spaces in our city, and I'm confident the
task force efforts will improve development timing,
required funding, design and construction requirements,
and overall project success.
This is an opportunity to reduce the regulatory barriers that
slow good projects down and make sure long-time residents
who grew up in the community can afford to stay.
Thanks.
And our fourth co-chair, Tiffany Kelly-Gray, Director of
Strategic Initiatives from Byrd Barr Place, was not able to
be here today, but is very excited about being our fourth
co-chair. But instead, I'd like to
introduce somebody you all know well, Patience Malaba,
Executive Director of HDC, who's here to speak
about the housing ombuds.
Thank you.
So I want to begin by thanking Mayor Wilson for your leadership
in rolling out this work today and for acknowledging what
is fundamentally important.
Everyone deserves a safe, healthy place to call home.
And today, for too many people in Seattle,
that is hard to find.
Many low-income families are making impossible choices.
Workers are commuting further from the communities they serve.
Seniors are wondering if they can afford to
stay in the neighborhoods that they call home.
We need to build more affordable homes.
We need to build more housing.
And I want to thank Joel for stepping up.
I want to thank Carter for stepping up to lead
this work of bringing all of us together towards solutions.
I also want to underscore what's really important today in the
mayor rolling out the changes on permitting and the ombudsperson
role that is being funded with this executive order.
But we know at HDC across our membership we've dedicated years
of work so it's great to be hosted here by you Estela
in this room and seeing this project come to life because you
are the ones leading this community development work and
within the removing barriers for affordable housing
work group, I see Brian Lloyd is in the room,
I know Becky Bicknell is somewhere here.
Folks have worked together to identify the barriers
that are complexly interconnected
in the permitting process.
The duplicative reviews, the departments working in silos,
and sometimes going back for another additional
requirement for projects.
All of that expanding timeline for projects and adding cost.
And for affordable housing, when we cause any unduly delays,
we are also complicating the funding process and the ability
for us to bring homes online.
And so to have this new dedicated role that's
going to ensure that we have cross-departmental
coordination supporting particularly community
development, this is fundamentally important.
And I want to talk a little bit about
community-based developers.
Community-based developers are working in direct connection
with our communities.
They understand the complex needs and it
should not be the business of government
to make that work harder.
It's a commitment to address an urgent need
for affordable housing, and with this investment
we're making it possible for us to bring homes online.
And that's the commitment that we collectively have as HDC.
We've also worked at the state level to implement House Bill
2418, which is another part of legislation that's being
implemented with the investment in a dedicated permitting official
today. So we're looking forward to the work ahead.
We are ready to get to work collectively.
I'm gonna close by underscoring this
and challenging all of us.
In order to address the housing crisis, we need
an increase in supply in affordable housing where
the market is not going to serve households.
At the At the same time, we need a
healthy private market sector that's going to produce housing
at different market points.
It's challenging to get the solutions right, but
it is a responsibility that we collectively
It is a responsibility that we hold for the next generations
to be sure that Seattle can remain a city
where everyone, no matter their income,
no matter their race, has a place to call home,
has a place to thrive, and a place to belong.
Let's get to work.
Thank you.
- Okay, thank you all.
I'm gonna take some Q&A.
- Mayor, how does forming a task force
with recommendations that are due in September of 2027
to actually build housing right now?
- So as mentioned, we're taking two immediate actions.
And so one of those is the interdepartmental team
on permitting, which is gonna better coordinate
our city departments to shorten permit timelines
and then proposing funding in the budget for next year
for the affordable housing ombuds
that can help our developers navigate those processes.
So those are two immediate actions that we're taking.
This task force is going to be providing
rolling recommendations.
So as mentioned, there will be initial recommendations
provided in February of 2027 that we will be able
to act on next year.
I also want to emphasize that this is not instead
of, this is in addition to the many other housing
related processes and activities that our
departments are already doing.
Also just want to emphasize that we have not
waited until this point to take action on housing
affordability. The City Council just unanimously passed
our ordinance banning rental junk fees which
will improve stability and affordability for renters
and we're also working on a larger scoping for
the next phase of the comprehensive plan so that we
have more options for increasing housing production
across our city.
So this is additive and we are not
waiting for September 2027 to take action.
And with respect to the housing
community it's the first time that we've seen you in
a couple of weeks to have a chance to ask you questions
about other things.
There's been a recall filed against you that you know
has moved forward.
This is your chance to respond
to that recall.
How do you respond to the allegations
in that recall effort?
So that is a legal process
that will be playing out.
I'm focused on leading the city and on making it an
affordable place for people to live and that's the work that
we're here to discuss today.
Just a follow up on that.
Are you planning to be at the hearing?
The date has now been set.
Do you plan to be there?
I personally will not be there.
I will be represented by council.
As far as affordable housing is concerned, there's a bit
of a red herring, particularly when it comes to
renters, where there's programs for low income families to
get into housing, yet at the same time their rents
are increased yearly.
Is there any remedy to maintain for low income families that
their rents are not pushing them out regardless of the
efforts of affordability or the term affordability?
Is there a remedy for that?
- Yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of things
that we need to do to improve housing stability
for low-income renters once they get into housing.
Part of that is making sure that we have
a robust affordable housing sector
that includes our kind of affordable housing
that we've developed for a long time,
also our new social housing developer, right?
These are non-market housing solutions
where we actually are able to make sure
that rents are not just going up year after year.
That's part of the solution.
Rental assistance is another big part and that's
something that you know the city has provided
funds to community-based organizations to help
low-income families when they're
facing hardship to make sure that they're not evicted
due to non-payment of rent and that's a high
priority for me as we move into this budget cycle
to make sure that the city is funding rental assistance.
I think also a lot of our renter protections can
can be helpful in this respect as well.
And also we need partnership at
the state level, right?
There was recently a rent stabilization law
passed, which at least limits rent increases to,
I believe it's 7% plus inflation.
So that's still like a pretty big rent
increase, but it provides a little bit of stability
for renters.
Mayor, I have a question for you
as well.
I believe it was last week I talked with a
woman. She lived in the Central District about 74
years in the same house.
She's worried about losing that house.
She's not a renter, so this is two-pronged.
She supports a recall of you at this point.
She says she does.
What is your message to her about homeownership and how
you're working to help her?
And then what is your message to people who are right
now supporting a recall?
So I think there are a lot of actions that we're going to need
to consider to better support lower income homeowners,
people on fixed incomes.
One of the big ones, I mean, property taxes can
really be a burden for lower income homeowners.
We have homeowners who are lower income seniors,
right, often qualify for lower property taxes,
but a lot of people don't know about that.
So one thing that the city can do and does, but can probably
do more of, is partnering with our community-based
organizations to make sure that every single homeowner
who is eligible for that discount knows about it and
is able to get it.
There's also a lot of work to be
done at the state level on property tax reform so
that we're actually hopefully able to get to a more
progressive property tax structure that doesn't burden
lower and middle-income homeowners as much.
So those are a couple actions.
There are more that I think that our task force can work on,
but definitely an issue.
- We've got time for two more, so over here.
- As Patience mentioned, we have such a great diversity
of developers in the city working on this problem.
There's traditional big A affordable developers,
many of whom get funding from Office of Housing,
but there's also a lot of privately funded developers,
including those that get funding from corporate partners
like Amazon.
In your vision of affordable housing and in the ombuds budget
and the interdepartmental thing that you're announcing, would
that apply to the entire range of affordable developers
or just to the Office of Housing cohort?
That's a good question that I don't know the answer to.
Does anyone here who's been involved in the weeds know
what we're thinking on that?
Go ahead.
So as it relates to the residential permitting IDT,
that is for all development, all developers, and so that's
to streamline all of the systems that relate to slowing down
permitting. As it relates to the housing ombuds, we're looking
at more of the smaller community driven developers.
So think about non-profit developers that
are doing this for the first time or maybe the second time.
And so really starting there with that resource where the
highest need is and then seeing where the capacity
of that individual is.
And I think if we discover that that's
a really successful intervention,
we can think about how to make that available to more
developers.
I'm sure village would welcome the streamlined
permitting, but they're also worried about the cost
that is associated with that.
What about utilities or MHATs, anything else
that would add a cost?
Anything updates on as far as that goes,
if that faster permit can also be a cheaper amount of cost
Yeah, I think that's something that the task force
will be able to discuss.
Yeah. All right, one more.
And Mayor, again, with all due respect to people in
the room, we haven't seen you in a couple weeks.
We have to ask these questions.
Again, there's an active investigation of
the Bite of Seattle murders.
There's still not been a person arrested for that.
There's been public polling to suggest that
in the wake of that, people would like to have a
closed circuit television camera system expanded that I know
that you've opposed in the past.
75% of the public says they want these things.
The cameras that were on outside the Cowgirls
Inc. that were on during the World Cup were turned
off and there was an unsolved shooting there as well.
Does all of this now change your perspective on that issue
given those shootings and given the public polling
suggesting that people want to have those cameras
So we're continuing to follow the course that I laid out
earlier this year, which is that as we speak, there is an audit
being conducted of privacy, data security, storage sharing
practices for our CCTV system.
We expect the results of that audit to be coming
out, I believe, around the end of September.
So that will be a decision point where we can share those
results publicly and make a decision about whether
to move forward with the expansion of the CCTV cameras.
Thanks everybody.
It's been signed.
- Oh, whoo!
- I just did it.