The election is coming! Our Questions for the Candidates

Seattle City Council elections are upon us, and some 45 candidates are running for seven district seats. Seattle Fair Growth has been asked how we can influence these elections. Our response is to circulate a set of questions that reflect our concern for balanced growth and a livable Seattle.

We urge you to attend some of the upcoming candidate forums, whether in person or by Zoom, and to contribute one or more questions when you have the opportunity. Several of our questions are meant to inform candidates about problems with existing programs, including the MHA, the MFTE and the new tree ordinance. We purposely didn’t oversimplify them to the point of generalizations.

We’re asking you to circulate these questions to your neighborhood council or community group. Please share them now. The first candidate forum that we know of is for District 5, Monday. June 5th at Haller Lake United Methodist Church, 7 p.m. Many others are scheduled. Many candidates are requesting Democracy Vouchers. You may wish to call or email them or meet them for coffee when they are most appreciative of your inputs.

With four of nine seats wide open, we have an opportunity to shape a more thoughtful City Council. Democracy is a participatory event!
​
Sarajane Siegfriedt
for Seattle Fair Growth
[email protected]

---

Seattle Fair Growth Questions for City Council Candidates 2023

1. How will you support the Seattle Social Housing Development Authority, initiative I-135 that voters passed, in its startup phase?
2. Planners tell us you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Would you support requiring the city to produce an inventory of all rental housing, to include low-income affordable housing?
3. The Middle Housing Act provides density in formerly single-family zones statewide, but it doesn’t actually require any affordability. Do you support transit-oriented development which requires affordable housing, more than half of the needed growth? (The Middle Housing Act defines affordable to renters whose households have less than 60% of Area Median Income.) Would you support legislation requiring 20% low-income units in areas that have frequent transit service?
4. The City’s Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) will sunset in 2024. It allows developers to pay no property taxes for 12 or more years on the residential portion of their projects in exchange for providing 20% of their units at somewhat affordable rents, about 80% or 85% of Area Median Income, or about $70,000 in income for an individual. Meanwhile, the City is missing out on millions of dollars of income ($170 million in 2022) that could be invested directly in low-income housing guaranteed for 50 years. Would you sponsor legislation to eliminate the MFTE and instead dedicate comparable property tax funds to low-income housing for those who need it the most?
5. The Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) hasn’t delivered affordable housing in all parts of the City as promised. Because developers can pay a relatively low fee instead of including affordable units in their projects, 88% are buying their way out of including the units in their projects. This means they get built somewhere else, on cheaper land, four years later. Will you sponsor legislation to amend the MHA to eliminate the buy-out fees and require large multifamily housing projects to include a percentage of low-income units at 60% of Area Median Income?
6. In a built-up city, a large percentage of new housing displaces older, affordable housing, both single-family homes and apartments. Yet the city has no plan to help those displaced families to remain in their neighborhoods with their communities of support. Would you support requiring anti-displacement plans before demolitions and upzoning?
7. On May 23rd, the City Council passed a tree ordinance that allows developers to build out most of a lot while paying into a new tree replacement fund instead of preserving or restoring our tree canopy that lost 255 acres in the previous five years. What steps would you take to preserve our existing tree canopy on private land and address heat islands in Seattle?
8. How and when should residents be involved in planning and development questions? How could the City improve its outreach to address specific neighborhood concerns?
9.  Would you support restoring the role for Neighborhood Councils?
10.  Do you think we should return to “Towards a Sustainable Seattle” instead of a growth-oriented approach to planning Seattle’s future?