With incumbent Jenny Durkan set to stand aside, the 2021 race for Mayor of Seattle is wide open. CHS will be talking with candidates as they arise and join the race. Our first 2021 “Mayor of Capitol Hill” conversation happens to be with someone who could actually claim that title — Capitol Hill resident Andrew Grant Houston.

Andrew Grant Houston moved from Austin, Texas, to Seattle shortly after the 2016 election as an architect to focus on building housing in a city in dire need of more affordable apartments.

Since then, he has been laid off twice, started his own firm that was crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic, and covered city government on Twitter to make a living before getting a job as an interim policy manager in Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s office.

Now he’s running for mayor.

Houston, a 31-year-old Capitol Hill renter, has been frustrated by what he sees as constant delays by Mayor Jenny Durkan on needed action on everything from the West Seattle Bridge to implementing safe-injection sites to appointments to city boards that can hold up the legislative process. He says that a mayoral campaign isn’t necessarily a good next step, but the “necessary next step.”

“We are denying resources to communities that need it most and so that will end with me,” Houston told CHS Friday evening. Much of this urgency is driven by climate anxiety that weighs especially heavy on young people, Houston said.

Houston — known as “Ace the Architect” on Twitter — has been involved with the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council and is a board member of Futurewise, a local nonprofit focused on land use policy. As a person who is queer, Latinx, and Black, Houston says he aims to put himself into predominantly white spaces to give a perspective that can otherwise go unrepresented.

And as an architect, he believes he would bring a fresh perspective to City Hall, likening his role as a project manager to the conductor of an orchestra. He thinks this might make him the right person to tackle climate change locally, to shun what he described as the drawn-out and compromise-heavy “Seattle process” and be able to “do over 20 years of decarbonization or pollution reduction in nine years.”

As someone who has sat through hours-long design review meetings on major housing developments that can slow down much-needed construction, Houston says his career in architecture also gives him a unique look at the housing crisis, specifically.

“Outside of the room that we are meeting in, there are people without a home,” he said. “The longer that we delay housing that means we deny housing for those people. And in a city that is growing and has such gross inequity between those with the most and those with the least that only grows with each and every day. We must change the systems that we have currently because this system is not working.”

“My drive comes from that.”

With Mayor Durkan choosing not to run for re-election, only two other candidates, William Kopatich and SEED Seattle’s Lance Randall, have so far filed to run for mayor, according to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Houston has four more months working in Mosqueda’s office. In that time, he plans to engage in discussions with community organizations in the early stages of the campaign. While he lists his top three legislative priorities as funding 2,500 new tiny homes, a corporate income tax to fund permanent supportive housing, and fully restoring bus service to pre-pandemic times, Seattleites can submit their own policy proposals on his website.

“Specifically creating a more pedestrian-friendly urban environment with the understanding that we allow more people to live in cities,” said Houston, who noted that he might be the first Seattle mayor that doesn’t know how to drive since the advent of cars.

Houston said that, if elected, he plans to continue renting on Capitol Hill and simply taking the light rail to work everyday, which he thinks would make him a more approachable member of the community than past mayors.

He wants to “step into City Hall and have that door open for me and leave that door open for other people to follow behind; that I make the city more accessible than it already is, so that any individual… is able to access to the full benefits all of the resources and support that they should have as Seattleites.”

Eventually, Houston wants your vote. It’s a long path to the summer primary — and even longer for the general election in November. But right now the upstart, first-time candidate needs your Democracy Vouchers. The 2021 race will be the first time the city’s voucher program — hoped to empower a greater diversity of candidates to keep up in expensive campaigns — will be extended to include the city council races and the run for the mayor’s office. Houston’s campaign is launching with a plea for voters to step up and begin their support for the candidate now. For Houston, and others sure to jump into the race soon, the 2021 race has started.

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