(Image: Jessyn for Mayor)
When Jessyn Farrell first ran for mayor in 2017, Seattle was facing many of the core issues it struggles with today: homelessness and housing affordability, public safety and policing.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these problems since Farrell, a former state lawmaker and public transit champion, finished a distant fourth in the mayoral primary four years ago. With that in mind, Farrell is making another run for the office.
“People are really suffering in so many different ways, whether it is economic hardship, racial injustice, isolation, the challenges of remote learning,” Farrell told CHS Thursday afternoon, citing her own experience as a parent. “Times are really, really hard and city leadership has really lacked the creativity and the scale around responding to these multiple crises.”
She breaks all of this down to two questions: “Is this going to be a city that people want and can afford to live in?”
Farrell, 47, represented the U-District and North Seattle in the state House from 2013 until 2017, when she resigned to focus on her first mayoral run. In high school, she was voted most likely to become a politician and went on to graduate from the University of Washington and Boston College Law School.
She was the executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, leading charges to fund an expanded light rail system. Since her previous run, she’s worked at Civic Ventures, the think tank headed by progressive taxation advocate Nick Hanauer.
Jenny Durkan’s announcement that she will not seek reelection after finishing her first — and only — term this year has led to a surge of candidates making moves to win the office.
The primary is still five months away and more than a dozen candidates have already filed to run for mayor, according to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, including Chief Seattle Club executive director Colleen Echohawk, who would be the city’s first Native mayor, city council president Lorena González, former council president Bruce Harrell, and Capitol Hill architect Andrew Grant Houston.
SEED Seattle’s interim director Lance Randall also announced his candidacy last year.
Another factor helping to power the 2021 race is the Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program which, for the first time, has been extended to include mayoral candidates. Farrell said Thursday that she is participating in the “innovative policy to keep big money out of our politics.”
In trying to delineate herself among the other candidates vying for the job, Farrell not only separated her opponents between progressive and moderate, but between insider and relative outsider, tacitly calling out González and Harrell, the early frontrunners in the race.
“There is a real hunger for problem solving and someone who has a track record of problem solving and I think that I fit that bill,” she said. “If you’re happy with the status quo, there are candidates who are currently and have been before in city government, then those are your candidates. I think though that most people are not satisfied with how things are going.”
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Farrell says her top priorities as mayor would be addressing affordability crises in housing and childcare. For example, she wants to institute free universal childcare from birth to five-years-old to give Seattle “the best childcare in the country.”
She also said the government should be playing a much larger role to get people housed, whether it be through robust regional investments, scaling up community land trusts, publicly-owned social housing, city-backed financing for backyard cottages, or renter stability measures like encouraging longer leases.
More immediately, the city needs a lot more permanent supportive housing, tiny house villages, and to partner with the federal government to increase hotel options as a form of stable shelter, Farrell says.
“We just have to be very honest that we are going to have to make significant interim investments as well as significant permanent investments in housing,” she said, adding that Seattle needs to work on a regional basis on homelessness. “We can’t solve these problems alone and we really have to take a leadership role in doing so.”
Farrell said that parks need to be accessible for people of all ages and abilities, but that sweeping homeless encampments at parks without anywhere for individuals to go doesn’t work.
This is an issue currently playing out at 19th Ave’s Miller Playfield, where an encampment has sprouted in recent months. With a return to school on the horizon, some want the playfield cleared and for the people living there to be given shelter, but officials note they are in a bind with such little shelter availability.
“Sweeps don’t work,” Farrell said. “People don’t have a viable alternative and it’s inhumane to take someone’s tent when that’s all they have.”
So how would the city fund housing alternatives in a Farrell administration? She decried the state’s “complete backwards” tax system, adding that the city needs to be realistic about the scale of the problem.
“Developing funding plans that have a variety of streams that include sources from Seattle and it may very well include new taxing sources to get in front of this crisis,” Farrell said.
On policing, she highlighted work the Seattle Police Department does in domestic violence investigations and enforcing extreme risk protection orders that keep guns out of the hands of potentially harmful individuals, but argued that officers are not always the best responders to some crises.
She skirted a specific question on the battle over police funding, but argued the city needs to scale up alternatives like the fire department’s Health One program that helps people in need of medical care, mental health care, or social services.
“Every single person in our community, regardless of their race, should be able to go about their day-to-day activities and not fear harm from the police,” Farrell said. “For too many particularly Black and Brown people, interactions with the police can lead to harm or death and that has to change and we need to really focus on that with a great deal of urgency.”
Those answers might sound the same as those other candidates Farrell paints as city insiders. But her entry into the race presents a new option to Seattle voters who like the answers but want a new voice in City Hall’s highest office.
You can learn more at jessynformayor.com.
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No
Farrell says “sweeps don’t work.” OK, but she needs to offer a short-term solution to the invasion of our parks by homeless people, otherwise there will be no change. How about putting up some large, FEMA-style tents on unused public property (with services) somewhere in the city, then giving the homeless a choice: Either you move out of our parks and into this facility, or your camp will be swept.
I totally agree. The choice shouldn’t be that if you don’t want to live in a designated site then you can do whatever you feel like wherever you feel like and as an added bonus no laws apply to you.
Agree 100%. Any politician who says “sweeps don’t work” has no chance in this election. Even progressive voters like myself have become fed up with the crazy number of tent cities that take away our public parks and make residents feel unsafe. The candidate who pledges to do something about this is the candidate who will win. One can have sympathy for the homeless while simultaneously believing that our public parks should remain free, open, and safe. Your suggested solution is a good one.
I agree with RWK, CH Res, and Chris. Move these folks out. The temp sol’n RWK mentions about the tents is great, until something more permanent can be built. Would gladly pay more in taxes for this to get done. But we need to tap the money of wealthy to really have funds to work with.
Sounds like Nicklesville but with tents…
Several large empty aircraft hangers at Magnuson (and presumably some social services already onsite)
God forbid we provide ***actual housing*** for them! The contempt and dehumanization in these comments is sickening.
Is it my job to fund someone else’s home. Yes or no. I have enough trouble funding my own.
Honest question: how do you think “actual housing” will be treated when you see how tents and RVs and vehicles are treated? Do you actually think that people with massive addictions and mental health issues are able to take care of the “actual housing” provided to them? Then what? What is your solution?
At least there’s no mention of funding storytelling as a solution to high crime areas.
Her call to keep big money out of politics seems a little rich (so to speak) given who she works for (Hanauer).
Totally agree. I seem to recall that one of the criticism’s of the Durkan administration was the influence of outside consulting firms in her administration. Seems like electing Farrell would be giving Nick Hanauer an outsized influence in the shaping of city policy. I’m tired of all these outside groups using Seattle as some petri dish for their latest social engineering experiments.
“outside groups” — FYI, Hanauer lives in Seattle, and has for at least 20 years, I think. He’s very active in local philanthropy.
What does his philanthropy have to do with anything? The issue is influence. Do you want to give Nick Hanauer and Civic Ventures the ability to drive city policy and use Seattle as a test bed for some of their social policy ideas. I for one am tired of being the tip of the spear and focusing so much on being a beacon of light for the rest of the world while the city crumbles around us. Nick can go find another city to use to entertain himself. By the way he lives in Shoreline so the policies he advocates for, like the Seattle income tax, don’t impact him personally.
Nope.
Colleen Echohawk for me. The other candidates are awful to me.
Just want to point out for this thread that Colleen Echohawk also says sweeps don’t work.
For those that are tired of the status quo, do not vote for someone that echos the same BS homelessness talking points as the City Council and fails to acknowledge the reality of the unmanaged drug addiction and mental health crisis that has caused so much suffering and dystopia in our parks, green belts and business districts. Vote for Bruce Harrell.
I was thinking that myself….
wasn’t Harrell a do-nothing City Council member? we’re having that problem with Dan Strauss in District 6. not recommended.
Will he being back the sweeps? If so, I am in. I am totally fine with delegating some area for them to live in, but they need to get the fuck out of the park.
What a bunch of meaningless fluff: “The city that we in our hearts know we can be”? “variety of streams [of taxation]”?
Vacillating on the issues in favor of “dreaming big” and “problem solving,” in order to not offend anyone through a vague and meaningless platform is **precisely** what keeps the ‘status quo’ from changing. She won’t sweep the camps, but she also won’t build real housing; she acknowledges that we need new taxes, but won’t say who gets taxed. Sounds awfully like the status quo to me.
I wonder if someone is going to run as an actual conservative. I don’t think they’d win, but it’s probably time for that.
Every time I look at the conservative candidates out of frustration… annnnd they’re even more insane. So I give up.
The problem with that is our “conservatives” around here are insane Loren Culp types. Qanon Conspiracy people.
We get Progressives or we get Moderate Democrats, that’s it.
One of the downsides of the non-partisan label and mass primary nature of our city elections. You mostly get the extreme voices as that’s what’s needed to get recognized.
Say what you will about having real party primaries but at least there you don’t get inexperienced or marginal characters with their hands on the levers of power. There’s no way sawant gets elected to the council if there was a dem primary and a repub primary to pick a candidate.
What a bunch of mealy-mouthed drivel. I see zero in the description of her platform here that would bring any meaningful change to the city.
I disagree with every word that comes out of Nikita Oliver’s mouth, but at least she stands for *something*.
You do realize that Ms. Oliver is running for City Council, not Mayor, right? And “standing for something” is of little use if it’s nothing more than a wish-list of dreams with no responsible way to fund them. My two cents.
“Sweeps don’t work,” Farrell said. “People don’t have a viable alternative and it’s inhumane to take someone’s tent when that’s all they have.”
Does the City of Seattle have a legal obligation to fund and/or find home accommodations to those that choose to live here yet cannot afford to. Yes or no. If yes, then Farrell would make sense as a candidate, she’s well-versed in newer housing theory and would disrupt the status quo.
If no, she likely will enable city parks to become full time un-homed campsites, funded by the city, open and available to all that want to use them.
They already are full-time campsites. Along with that comes fires, dealers, needles, overdoses, gunshots, package thefts and home intrusions.
I’m 100% out of any sympathy at this point. If somebody can find homes for them, great, otherwise junk their shit as a deterrent and throw them the fuck out of Seattle.