Friday brings a day of public comment and debate over a roster of 100 proposed amendments as Seattle finalizes a new growth plan hoped to more equitably distribute housing development across the city.
CHS reported here on the proposed plan and Seattle City Council amendments.
Friday’s council proceedings led by District 3 representative and comprehensive plan committee chair Joy Hollingsworth will include two sessions of public comment broken into remote and in-person periods: Continue reading
(Image: Tolliver Temple Memorial C.O.G.I.C)
A Seattle City Council committee will start the final steps for E Fir’s 1929-built Tolliver Temple Church of God to become the Central District’s latest official landmark. The building was first used as a synagogue and later as a Christian church in the predominantly Black neighborhood, reflecting the changing communities in the Central District over the years.
The council’s neighborhoods committee is slated to take up legislation Thursday to finalize the landmarks board’s 2023 decision granting the old church protected status. Continue reading
Embroiled in a heated race for her office as City Hall incumbents face strong progressive challengers headed into November, City Attorney Ann Davison says Seattle’s “Stay Out of Drug Area” banishment zones that she and Mayor Bruce Harrell championed are working and that the Capitol HIll SODA now leads the city in orders restricting defendants from entering the area.
The Capitol Hill SODA currently is subject to 41 individual orders, Davison told the Seattle CIty Council in a public safety briefing (PDF) Tuesday, leading even the busy downtown zone where 26 orders have been issued.
Tuesday, Davison said the bottom line goals of the SODA program she championed are simple — “to disrupt open air drug markets.”
“If we just see less of the activity, they are working,” Davison said. Continue reading
The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve legislation expanding the city’s Real Time Crime Center with new cameras in Pike/Pine and the Central District plus expansion of the Seattle Police Department surveillance system to use select Seattle Department of Transportation traffic cameras in the program.
The council’s public safety committee including District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth has signed off on the “surveillance technology implementation” plan. CHS reported here on final debate about data privacy and how the city says it will handle any potential legal wrangling with outside agencies like ICE.
UPDATE: The council approved the expansions 7-2 with Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dan Strauss opposing the plan over privacy concerns and worries about federal encroachment. Public safety chair Bob Kettle, a former naval intelligence commander, said an amendment approved Tuesday is “aimed at avoiding any cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement.”
The legislation will expand the SPD Real Time Crime Center surveillance camera system to include the Capitol Hill nightlife core around E Pike and Cal Anderson Park and a major swath of the Central District from E Cherry to Jackson police officials say is necessary to prevent gun violence near Garfield High School. Continue reading
You can view the “live” proposed zoning map here
Seattle is ready to finalize a new 20-year growth plan including new “Neighborhood Centers” and “Middle Housing” laws expanding zoning to allow a greater range of housing types in more parts of the city.
The process has played out as Seattle’s twin crises of housing affordability and homelessness have continued to grow. In the meantime, core areas of the city have continued to rise as some of the wealthiest areas in the county, state, and nation.
For all the debate, not much will change. Nearly 70% of new construction expected under the plan would be constrained to “Regional Centers,” the plan’s designation for the city’s most densely populated, high transit areas — Downtown, Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, University District, Northgate, Ballard, and First Hill and Capitol Hill —- or less dense but still highly developed areas like 23rd Ave from Union to Jackson.
A public hearing Friday will include 100 proposed amendments to finalize the plan — and a day of some of the last opportunities for public comment after years of debate.
The amendments on the table Friday for Seattle City Council’s comprehensive plan committee chaired by District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth range from large to small, including proposals that would bolster protections for “bees and trees” across the whole of the plan down to a set of amendments that would make final adjustments on select neighborhood boundaries in the plan. Continue reading
A mural dedicated to Williams was created on 11th Ave (Image: Wooster Collective)
SPD in the summer of 2020
Future Seattle generations may be surprised that 13 years of federal oversight of their city’s police force stemmed from the death of an Indigenous wood carver and not the department’s heavy handed response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
This week, the United States Department of Justice announced it has returned “full control of police practices to the City of Seattle” — Continue reading
(Image: Uber Eats)
You might think Kshama Sawant was mayor the way Seattle political leaders are celebrating the city’s largest settlement ever for its Office of Labor Standards this week.
Sawant is running — for congress.
Mayor Bruce Harrell, in a race against a surprising effective progressive challenger, is running to keep his seat.
“This historic $15 million settlement is a major win for workers and a strong reminder that in Seattle, we hold large companies accountable when they sidestep their responsibilities and shortchange workers,” Mayor Harrell said in the city’s announcement of a $15 million settlement with delivery giant Uber Eats over back pay, interest, liquidated damages and civil penalties) to 16,120 affected workers. The agreement includes $33,680.26 in fines to the City of Seattle. Continue reading
Welcome to I-5 Shores!
A project underway for this year’s Seattle Design Festival is right up CHS’s alley.
The “Name That Neighborhood” project is crowdsourcing the hyperlocal knowledge of Seattleites to define — and name — neighborhood boundaries across the city.
“We are gaining feedback on Seattle City Clerk’s Official Neighborhood Map from Seattleites to see if they agree or disagree with the neighborhood the City has them in,” designer — and onetime mayoral candidate — Andrew Grant Houston tells CHS about the project.
“I think this is particularly poignant given the different neighborhoods the City currently divides Capitol Hill into and could be a way to answer the question: what do we call the area around 15th?” Continue reading
(Image: City of Seattle)
The Harrell administration is calling it the “largest single-year funding commitment to affordable housing in the city’s history” as the Seattle Office of Housing’s 2025 Notice of Funding Availability includes $170 million for the development, preservation, and stabilization of rental housing in the city.
“An affordable home provides stability, security, and the foundation to grow and thrive,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in the press release announcing the opening of the 2025 funding window. “This investment will create additional affordable homes and maintain existing ones, with a focus on providing housing for families with very low incomes and for people exiting shelter into permanent housing.”
For the first time, the city’s NOFA is including opportunities for “stabilization.”
“Production funding creates new, long-term affordable homes. Preservation funding keeps existing properties well-maintained and accessible, and stabilization funding helps financially challenged properties continue serving their communities,” the city says.
The City’s Office of Housing will evaluate candidate projects with “available data, community input, and market conditions” to set funding priorities for NOFA applications. Continue reading
City Fruit with a big load of apples — the organization maintains partnerships with businesses including local cideries for fruit that isn’t fit for markets and donation boxes (Image: City Fruit)
The City of Seattle has announced its latest crop of food equity grants totaling $1.75 million in support across 18 groups dedicated to projects “that increase equitable access and opportunities to grow, learn about, and/or eat healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant foods.”
The grants are funded by Seattle’s Sweetened Beverage Tax of up to $.0175 per ounce on the sale of most soda pop and energy drinks in the city.
Seattle’s Food Equity Fund started in 2021 “in response to recommendations from the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board to increase investments in community work led by those who experience the most food and health inequities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities, immigrants, refugees, low-income individuals, families with young children, youth, and elders.”
The 2025 grants announced this summer include $100,000 to Black Dollar Days Task Force/Clean Greens Farm and Market to provide up to 70 free food boxes this fall and next summer, and $97,207 to City Fruit to strengthen its model for gleaning and redistributing fruit. A full roster of 2025 grants is below. Continue reading
