(Image: electefrain.com)
Efrain Hudnell has solved Seattle’s housing crisis with a tiny condo above 12th and Madison but he knows his path to home ownership isn’t available to everybody.
And it costs him plenty.
“The VA has a home buying loan service where you don’t have to put money down,” Hudnell said. “It’s a great program and lowers the barrier to entry for home buying for a lot of veterans, myself included. But I’m still, for this like studio condo, 600 square feet — I’m still paying half of my income.”
With programs like the boost the former Army intelligence officer got from the Department of Veterans Affairs a rarity, Hudnell said he sees housing affordability “as probably the most imminent existent threat to the city.”
The current King County Deputy Prosecutor is now making the cause of housing affordability the center of his campaign, joining the race for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council.
“If we do not create enough housing, if we do not have enough affordable housing for the workforce, we will begin that population decline and we will enter that death spiral that we’ve seen in cities that have gone boom to bust in a way that only American cities do,” Hudnell says.
With the prosecutor’s office since 2020 and active with the 43rd District Democrats group, Hudnell is seeking to bring a new voice on housing-focused progressive policy to the race that has now stretched out to seven candidates to fill the seat being left vacant by incumbent Kshama Sawant’s decision to leave office at the end of this year.
ELECTION 2023
- ‘Workers Strike Back’ — Sawant making ‘Important Announcement Regarding Her Council Office’ — UPDATE: She’s out
- With her heart on First Hill, Hudson joins race for District 3 with a neighborhood approach to urbanist policy
- With ‘cannabis justice,’ hunger advocacy, and three generations in the Central District, Hollingsworth enters race for District 3 — UPDATE
- As D3 candidate field crowds, Ashiofu hopes unique perspectives on housing, health, and transit will change the race
- The race for District 3 had to have a Democracy Voucher candidate — Ry Armstrong just might be it
- What the District 3 candidates have to say ✅ about the vote on I-135 and creating a social housing developer at Seattle City Hall
His military background, he quips, has prepared him for Seattle City Hall.
“In terms of navigating bureaucracy, there is no bureaucracy like the Department of Defense. So, I think I’m pretty good there in terms of navigating the personalities and collaborating where necessary and taking the stand where necessary.”
But is he ready for the battle of a campaign for the Seattle City Council?
Set to announce his candidacy and start his stretch to qualify for the Democracy Voucher program this week at a small event with friends and supporters, Hudnell is bringing forward policy priorities out of the gate including a vacancy tax on vacant or unused commercial property, programs to make it easier and more profitable to develop infill projects on underused land in the city like parking lots, and a strategy of surgical upzoning.
“The idea is to upzone in places where there’s access to transportation, upzone in places where there’s access to public spaces, upzone in places where there’s access to things like hospitals, upzone in places that we’re least likely to displace marginalized communities.”
Meanwhile, he says his work with the prosecutor’s office handling cases in the Regional Mental Health Court will inform a better approach to crafting public safety legislation for District 3 and the city.
“I ended up coming to the prosecutor’s office because I realized I’m a systems thinker,” he said. “If we were to have the just results that we demand as the city, as a progressive district, we need prosecutors to buy into that as well.”
Hudnell says, if elected, he would work to transform Seattle’s municipal court and its focus on low-level misdemeanor cases to “a therapeutic/rehabilitative court model.”
“The idea,” he says, “is there is an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. And if we address that issue, we probably are not going to see them again in a criminal court or criminal prosecution context.”
He now joins a race with fellow progressives as D3 voters must sort out their priorities on the issues they see in their neighborhoods and their city. Hudnell will be up against candidates like Alex Hudson (CHS), Transportation Choices Coalition executive director, and cannabis entrepreneur and third generation Central District resident Joy Hollingsworth (CHS), with longer track records and a head start.
It is a race with big potential.
“As we figure out housing affordability, create density within our neighborhoods, create more walkable spaces, create a climate resilient town that’s vibrant and equitable, I see a city that’s connected to a regional on the rise through high speed rail, a city with a lid over I-5, reconnecting downtown to our district,” Hudnell says. “I’ve lived in quite a few places. I’ve never seen a city as much potential as Seattle.”
Learn more at electefrain.com.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 🖤
