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Engage with Puget Sound Sage: March 2023 Newsletter

originally published on Mar. 23, 2023

Go North/South, not 4th Avenue!

Puget Sound Sage stands with over 300 non-profit organizations, community leaders, elders, and small businesses that demand that Sound Transit move its proposed new Chinatown International District (CID) station on the West Seattle Ballard Link Extension just north and/or south of the neighborhood.

Addressing some of the most frequently asked questions about Sound Transit’s North and South light rail alternatives:

“Doesn’t most of the CID community want 4th Ave?” No community is a monolith, and ours is no exception. More than 300 residents, workers, small businesses, organizations, and long time leaders have signed onto our letter supporting the North South alternative. Our vision and values are for a CID where everyone in our community has access to housing, transit, and real safety, not just property owners, housed residents, and those aligned with capital and commerce. Many of those who support 4th also support sweeps, increased policing and criminalization, and the gentrification of the CID.

“Why would 4th Ave cause displacement but North and South would not?” Construction along 4th Ave is projected to be a decade or more due to additional risks of building on liquefaction prone soil. 4th Ave is also a main arterial road with high capacity, meaning many more cars would need to be diverted with not many places to go except through the CID. It is also a main thoroughfare for Metro, and buses would have to be rerouted through the core of our neighborhood. In addition to the construction duration and traffic rerouting concerns, there is no opportunity for equitable transit oriented development. This is one very important avenue we have to ensure affordable housing is built in our neighborhood. We do not believe that the threats the 4th Ave hub poses can be addressed through mitigation. Whereas, supporting the North South options project a shorter construction duration by nearly half the time and have traffic rerouting and construction hauling paths that lessen disruption to the CID core.

“What are the traffic impacts on 4th Ave?” Per Sound Transit studies, at peak hour, 2,300 vehicles are expected to pass through 4th Ave. 50% is expected to be diverted. This is 1,150 vehicles each hour. Sound Transit modeling indicates the CID neighborhood can absorb up to 160-180 diverted vehicles per hour in the historic CID core. Where will the remaining 970 vehicles per hour be diverted? This means the neighborhood will experience gridlock every weekday during peak hours for 9 to 11 years and this doesn’t even consider game and event days.

Another significant concern is disruption to bus service with traffic congestion, rerouting and bus service disruption during the 6-year partial closure of 4th Ave and the 4 years of a full closure of 4th and Jackson during which no buses will be able to move through there at all and will be rerouted to 5th Ave. These transit delays will not only impact CID residents but service to the Rainier Valley as well, as cited in the racial equity toolkit. BIPOC workers and seniors in the CID who use metro as their predominant mode of transportation will be significantly impacted.

“What about the Midtown Station?” The North CID would serve Midtown. It would be connected to the Rapid Ride G. It would also provide Midtown connectivity to all three lines of transit. There were major issues with the previous Midtown proposal, it was a deep station and only connected to the Ballard to Tacoma line – Midtown riders would’ve had to make a transfer. The North station is also in closer proximity to Harborview.

Opinion Pieces co-written with Chinatown-International District Community Leaders

The 4th Ave Station Is a Train Wreck for the CID and Seattle Must Avoid It

With the north and south option, our families and communities can savor a sense of belonging, knowing that preservation of our histories was intentional, and not merely an afterthought. Read more.

Opinion: Sound Transit must recommend north and south CID light rail options

Sound Transit cannot let our treasured Chinatown International District become collateral damage for yet another regional infrastructure project, when there is a better alternative. But that’s just what will happen if 4th Ave and Jackson is torn up for a decade – or more – to build a new CID station on the Ballard to West Seattle light rail extension. Read more.

COMMENTARY: Destroying the CID is not a justifiable when there is a better alternative

10 years of construction will likely result in permanent displacement of businesses, residents, and community spaces. We don’t want to be like the many Chinatowns across the U.S. that have disappeared over the last 50 years because of racism, redevelopment, and infrastructure projects. Read more.

Two light-rail station options would better serve, protect Chinatown International District

We refuse the notion that it is justifiable or acceptable for the CID to be collateral damage yet again for an infrastructure project that mostly benefits other communities — especially when there is a better alternative. Read more.

Program Updates

Quick 30-second action to support I-135 Social Housing today

Submit a letter in support of a budget proviso to get Social Housing off the ground!

Help secure a budget proviso proposed by Representative Frank Chopp and Senators Joe Nguyen and Rebecca Saldaña. The proposed ~$900,000 will help cover start-up costs for the Seattle Social Housing Developer.

House Our Neighbors has created a template letter that can be sent to all 18 state legislators that represent Seattle. Please take 30 seconds to send a letter now! Send a letter today.

Applications for the next Community Leadership Institute Fellowship (King and Pierce County) are now open!

Open to all applicants in King and Pierce Counties or can attend in person in Seattle, WA

Our Community Leadership Institute (CLI) is a fellowship program that resources, trains, and places emerging leaders from communities of color and low-income communities to serve on strategic municipal boards and commissions.

Launched in 2015, the six-month fellowship trains emerging leaders in issues such as housing, land use, transit, climate, and economic development. Graduates learn the nuts and bolts of local government processes, such as municipal budgeting, parliamentary procedures, and lawmaking, as well as advocacy, storytelling, and communication skills.

After graduation, the fellows apply for and are placed on strategic boards, commissions, and task forces at the city and county level. Through participation, CLI alums have the opportunity to move forward a racial equity agenda at a government level by asking critical questions about who benefits and who is burdened by policy decisions and offering solutions that integrate community participation and perspectives as part of the decision-making process. Read more and apply here.

Attend an online Information Session to learn more about the fellowship:

Tuesday April 11, 5pm-6pm (RSVP here)
Thursday April 27, 5pm-6pm (RSVP here)

In the News

What Seattle’s Green New Deal reveals about creating inclusive, regenerative, just communities. The green revolution will not be won by presidential proclamation or congressional decree. It will be won city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, day by day.

Washington holds first carbon auction, determining price of $48.50 per ton. Puget Sound Sage, argued that cap-and-trade policies are a poor way to measure the human cost of climate change. Worse, that they’re ultimately a boon for corporations, creating a new financial product to resell and allowing polluters to continue polluting.

What It Really Costs When Walmart Comes to Town. An analysis conducted by Puget Sound Sage in 2012 asserts that each new Walmart store decreases the local community’s economic output over 20 years by an estimated $13 million.

Advocates call for shutdown of King County jail after mounting death toll in facility. “We are here because last April, one of those deaths was Michael Rowland,” Aretha Basu, Sage’s Political Director, said. “Sixty-three years old, he was Black, disabled, unhoused and killed within half an hour of arriving at the jail.”

Placement of future CID light rail station sparks heated debate, strains relations. “We have been working with, in coalition and in partnership, with our transit orgs and we want to see them make good on their promise that they would center communities of color in decision making, prioritize affordable housing and maximize opportunity for equitable transit oriented development opportunity,” Shimizu said. “And right now we’re seeing a lot of those transit orgs fall back on their promise to be accountable to communities of color, and we’re really disappointed.”

Debate over proposed CID light rail station heats up. “We believe that the Fourth Avenue option is just too risky, and that it would be a disaster for the Chinatown International District,” said Christina Shimizu, executive director for Puget Sound Sage and a member of the CID Coalition. “Ten years of construction would be a disaster for the Chinatown International District, and we know that disasters are perfect opportunities for gentrification.”

Councilmember Morales Declares Support for North & South CID Station Placement alongside Neighborhood Leaders. “Comprehensive planning must take into account many factors including opportunities for equitable transit-oriented development and affordable housing, cultural and historical preservation, the economic precarity of proposed station locations, and racial equity.”

Engage with Puget Sound Sage: January 2023 Newsletter

originally published on Jan. 26, 2023

Happy New Year to dear friends and community of Puget Sound Sage and Sage Leaders.

As we begin a year of continued focus on advancing a living economy in our region, we have some important news to share. Puget Sound Sage has always been a place where shared leadership is a core value: as a practice of building consensus in community, a way to share power in coalition, and as a natural way of working and being for our predominately Black, People of Color and queer staff.

It is with a heavy heart that we share the departure of our Co-Executive Director of Policy and Programs, Fernando Mejia Ledesma, who has helped contribute to our understanding of shared leadership, the power of grassroots organizing and equitable policy impacts at local and statewide levels. Our board and Executive Director, Christina Shimizu, will work with staff and in community to continue our focus on building a stronger and more just region where Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) workers, families and communities thrive and live in sustainable relationship with our land.

We are grateful for Fernando’s time with Sage and ask that you please join us in wishing him well in future endeavors.

Program Updates

There’s a special election in Seattle – don’t forget to Vote YES on I-135 by February 14th!

I-135 is an opportunity for Seattle to expand our housing solutions in way that builds permanently-affordable, multi-use, community-led, and publicly-owned housing developments that would serve our BIPOC communities. Social housing in Seattle will bring more stable housing options for renters in ways that align with our shared principles for Community Stewardship of Land.

Ballots should be arriving in mailboxes this week, and must be sent in by February 14th – make sure you and your friends and family don’t miss it!

You can read more about the ballot initiative here, and, if you’re a Seattle resident, please sign this pledge card saying you commit to voting YES on the initiative in this Feb 14th ballot.

Celebrating our wins from last year’s City budget season

Puget Sound Sage would like to thank the Solidarity Budget coalition, Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board, our community partners, and every single person who took action during last year’s budget season to lift up equitable development and climate resilient investments for frontline communities.

In addition to increasing funding for community-controlled development through the Equitable Development Initiative, we also got critical parts of the Green New Deal funded, including:

$3.5M for a Climate Resilience Hub study
$2M for Indigenous-led sustainability projects
$455,000 for a Climate Resilience Hub in South Beacon Hill
fully protected bike lanes in South Seattle
$1.2M for the Environmental Justice Fund

While we fought for so much more, we also know that this is just the beginning. We are disappointed in the Mayor and City Council’s failure to demonstrate their full commitment to Black Liberation through moving away from harmful systems of policing and punishment and their failure to honor their promises on investing in community. In the next budget season, we are ready to hold Seattle City Council accountable to their commitments and protect JumpStart investments (funding that is dedicated for uplifting BIPOC communities and creating affordable housing) from getting reallocated elsewhere.

We hope you join us in continuing to build a city we can all thrive in.

Follow the Solidarity Budget coalition on Facebook to receive updates on future actions!

photo by Solidarity Budget

In the News

How to create community out of a bunch of buildings: The Ripple Effect

From KUOW: “I also found a group called Puget Sound Sage, that’s trying help people use their voice to build up communities.

“Displacement as a human condition – it puts people in constant distress and constant survival mode. And it’s hard to dream and imagine,” said Ab Juaner, the group’s program manager for equitable development.

Juaner said people know what their communities need. What they lack are resources. Puget Sound Sage tries to bring those together. “We’re looking to really figure out what it would take for communities to control development in their neighborhoods.”

In practice, that means helping groups of people at risk of displacement purchase land, and then letting them democratically decide what to build on that land. “Because we want to see them imagine themselves living and working and thriving in place, and it needs to start now,” Juaner said.”

Read more

Staff Updates

We are pleased to introduce three new staff members who joined Sage this month – JM Wong, Alisa Lee and Francis Abugbilla!

JM Wong (they/them) is Puget Sound Sage’s Organizing Director

JM is a community and workplace organizer originally from Malaysia/Singapore and many cities in between. They have found home on Coast Salish lands, Seattle, and has since been active in many grassroots campaigns organizing against state and workplace violence. They are excited to join Sage to support ongoing efforts to organize alongside grassroots Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities for climate, land and worker justice, and to be part of a dynamic team organizing at the intersections of racial and gender justice, queer liberation and class struggle.

What are you most excited about your time at Puget Sound Sage? “I am excited to be part of a dynamic network of BIPOC folks that are organizing for our own communities’ self determination and power, and push back against the forces of disaster gentrification and at the ruling class’ attempts to create the world after their own image. I’m also excited to learn with and from the brilliance of our working class communities in all the various arenas of struggle.”

What are your favorite foods? “I live my best life enjoying a hearty filling of roast duck meat from Tong Kiang in Chinatown International District, juicy burgers from Lil’ Woodys (Fig on a Pig) and affordable fresh sashimi from Maruta Shoten in Georgetown.”

What matters to you? “I ground my work in the world with the people and creatures that I love. I am grateful to have a sweet community, family and partner, people who remind me of the power of love, humility, and necessity for courage and determination to fight for the well-being of our elders, our children, the animals that nurture us, and the earth. I thank them for investing in my life journey and aim to pay it forward with folks in my communities.”

Alisa Lee (she/her) is Sage’s Electoral Programs Manager

Alisa’s work will support leadership development and candidate trainings as she works to uplift community representation in government. She brings many years of experience to this role from being a campaign and program manager as well as an organizer.

Before coming to Puget Sound Sage Alisa worked at Asian and Pacific Islanders for Civic Empowerment, (APACE) and has also been involved with the Washington Voting Justice Coalition. She has a background in campaign management and has experience facilitating and building out candidate trainings, as well as organizing in-language voter outreach programs.

What are you passionate about? “As cheesy as it may sound, I genuinely want to make the world a better place. I believe that work can be done through both large projects and small every day actions. I spent a few years after college working as legal assistant on criminal defense cases and it really opened my eyes to the injustices that are still a part of our society. It’s important to me to work to address these things in the hopes that we will leave behind a better world for future generations.”

What are you most excited to work on this year? “I am really excited to assist with candidate trainings and leadership development! Running for office is a lot of work and I want to help make it a more accessible process by breaking down important steps candidates can take to pace themselves and plan for success . There’s things you can do as early as two years before you run that can increase your chances of success. It’s not knowledge that’s well known and sharing this information is key if you want to make politics a process that’s opened to everyone.”

What are your hobbies outside of work? “In my free time I enjoy getting creative with different mediums like resin, acrylic and watercolor. I am part of a BIPOC centered market in Tacoma that vends outside during the summer. It’s a really lovely way to meet community members and add some more beauty to the world.”

Francis Abugbilla (he/him) is Sage’s Community Leadership Institute Program Manager

Francis’ work will involve managing the Community Leadership Institute Program in order to build the capacity of leaders, deepen democracy, and economically empower marginalized communities in Washington State. He has many years of experience in community organizing, human rights advocacy, and teaching across continents.

Prior to this position, Francis worked as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator for the University of Washington Sustainability Office and the Campus Sustainability Fund and served on the University of Washington Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies’ Diversity Committee where he made significant contributions to diversity and equity initiatives.

What was your first impression of Sage? “I was invited to the CLI fellows’ graduation ceremony in 2019 and listening to the transformative impact that the program had on the lives of the fellows, I saw myself being of the Sage team and contributing to this important work in advancing social justice and equitable development.”

What are you most excited for during your time with Sage? “It is a great opportunity to be part of an amazing team of change-driven individuals who are committed to undoing systemic structures that have excluded the voices of many people in the decision-making processes in Washington State and beyond. I am truly excited to lead the program planning and execution, program strategy, and the expansion of the CLI program across the state.”

What might someone be surprised to know about you? “I was born and raised in a rural farming community in Ghana, that to this day, does not have access to electricity. In 2018 and 2019, I received a grant, fundraised, and provided solar electricity to the community basic schools. Children in Ghana start school at the age of six, but I started after age eleven because I had to take care of the family cattle and eventually becoming the first in my family and third in the community to obtain a college degree. My experience has taught me to be a voice for the voiceless and an agent of positive change in society.”

Community Corner

Revitalizing Civic Engagement through Collaborative Governance: Collaborative governance—or “co-governance”—offers an opportunity to create new forms of civic power. This report offers lessons from across local, city, state, and federal policymaking and highlights effective models of co-governance from community leaders and those in government.

Community Land Trusts Build Climate-Resilient Affordable Housing “Storms are nature’s way of causing gentrification,” so one couple bought property damaged by Hurricane Irma and placed it in a public trust.

How WA’s legislature is addressing the housing crisis in 2023. Lawmakers aim to tackle housing costs from all angles, including construction, subsidized housing, homeless services, zoning and renter protections.

Seattle Deserves a New Kind of Housing

by Kaileah Baldwin, Puget Sound Sage

Seattle needs more, and more varied, solutions to address our ever-growing housing and homelessness crisis — and I-135 gives us another tool in the toolbox. Our current solutions are insufficient and we’re seeing it across our city. The number of unhoused people in Seattle continues to be on the rise since homelessness was declared a state of emergency in 2015, and shows signs of getting worse in the economic aftermath of COVID-19. In 2021, 47% of Seattle renters paid 30% or more of their income toward housing, the point at which many housing advocates consider a household to be rent-burdened. In 2022, King County saw 13,000 people unhoused in a single night. I-135 presents a new solution to address Seattle’s crises of displacement and homelessness.

House Our Neighbors, the coalition behind I-135, is a multiracial group with Black queer leadership that consists of housing advocates with lived experience of homelessness. This coalition boldly believes in the vision of publicly owned, permanently affordable, cross-class, renter-run housing. The coalition worked with folks who have actually had to navigate our current options for low-income and transitional housing to develop this new solution of social housing. I-135’s vision for social housing offers truly affordable rent that is accessible to poor and working class communities, permanently removes land from the speculative market, and prioritizes people and planet over profit.

Because the initiative was designed by and for folks who’ve experienced homelessness, it will genuinely serve all the people who make up Seattle’s poor and working majority, including our most marginalized. Residents with no income or very little income will be eligible, with many barriers removed, including rental references or cosigners. People in the process of reentering housing will be free to grow their income and stability, without fear of being evicted for earning beyond poverty wages. These developments will be designed in the style of cross-class community hubs, and built to the highest green standards by union labor, ensuring everyone will benefit.

At Puget Sound Sage, we’re most concerned with our region’s BIPOC and immigrant and refugee communities who continue to face displacement due to gentrification. One of the key strategies to keep poor and BIPOC communities thriving in place is through the principles of Community Stewardship of Land (CSL). At their highest standard, CSL strategies keep marginalized communities together where they’ve been able to develop roots, with multiuse cultural hubs for housing and gathering, and in ways that keep those places governed by that community.

I-135’s vision for Social Housing offers a CSL-aligned path toward permanent community-controlled housing for Seattleites most at risk of displacement and homelessness. I-135’s social housing model will create housing meant both for people most at risk of being houseless or displaced and those who make this city run: our teachers and nurses, our neighbors and elders, our baristas and bookstore clerks. And these are the same people who would govern the social housing public developer — tenants having say over their own housing and amenities, not having to constantly live in fear of being pushed out through unmeetable rent hikes or landlord bullying.

Social housing does not aim to replace current options for low-income and affordable housing, but rather to add a new option that offers a chance for authentic housing solidarity in Seattle. This type of social housing — housing that holds our city’s most marginalized unhoused neighbors at its core, while also serving the city’s poor and working majority — is a unique opportunity for solidarity across our varying types of marginalization. I-135’s social housing is for all of us: for folks transitioning out of homelessness, for BIPOC families at risk of displacement, for low-wage and service workers who deserve to live in the city they work, and for middle-income workers who know the value of cross-class solidarity. Seattle deserves a chance to see where this kind of solidarity can take us.

Photo by Sunny studio/Shutterstock.com1

Originally published in the South Seattle Emerald

Since she can remember, Siobhana has always sought for community.

The daughter of a Scotch Irish blue-collar worker from Chicago and a Guyanese immigrant, Siobhana McEwen grew up in a small rural town in western Nebraska where not many neighbors looked like her. Being far away from extended family, she embraced and relied upon members of her chosen family.

Siobhana recalls being fortunate enough to live very close to the Pine Ridge Reservation and a small state college where her dad taught. The school had a robust international program that connected students from every corner of the globe. “Even though I didn’t grow up with my mom, I grew up in a home where there was somebody from Ethiopia next to somebody from the Oglala Lakota Nation, next to somebody from Nebraska, all sitting around my kitchen table for supper or coming over for coffee in the afternoon.”

Siobhana came of age hearing stories about growing up in different parts of the world, taking in contrasting details, but more often than not, hearing very similar experiences.

Yet Siobhana still felt a sense of alienation, being half-white and growing up without her Guyanese mother. “To be frank, I didn’t really see myself as a person of color until I was halfway through my graduate program.” That was same time she joined Sage’s Community Leadership Institute – a six-month program that trains emerging leaders of color to sit on municipal boards and commissions – with the recommendation from her classmate Eric Opoku Agyemang, who heads the leadership program.

Launched in 2015, Sage’s Community Leadership Institute (CLI) was founded on the idea that we need more than just a seat at the table – we want to build the bench so leaders of color can sit side by side.

While the CLI curriculum focuses on building technical knowledge on the nuts and bolts of local government processes such as municipal budgeting, parliamentary procedures, lawmaking, and progressive policies affecting housing, transit, and climate justice; at its core is a peer cohort model that allows emerging leaders the opportunity to share deeply about challenges and build lasting relationships along the way.

From the start, Siobhana was surprised with how comfortable she felt being part of her cohort. “It might sound simplistic to say that the biggest thing that surprised me was how comfortable I felt. Why does that even matter, right? But the fact is when you’re a person of color, sometimes you stay silent. You don’t grow into who you really can be in these systems because those spaces don’t want you and they silence you.”

*Siobhana (bottom left), with the Vancouver CLI fellows, Sage staff and SWEC members.*

“To be with a group where you can really show up with your authentic self and that is met with warmth and compassion, it gives you the courage and confidence to bring that outside of that space, into spaces of dominant culture. It fills your bucket in a way that says, ‘I can do this.’”

The Community Leadership Institute changed Siobhana’s trajectory in her MSW program, from wanting to be a clinician to working in policy for systemic change. Had she not gone through the Institute, she says she never would’ve realized her potential to work on policy and engage in community organizing as a way to create change. “CLI changed my life. Had I not done the program, I probably would still be banging my head against the wall as a clinician, working within systems that really don’t serve people.”

Siobhana now works as the Equity and Advocacy Director for Council for the Homeless, and serves as the Chair of the Southwest Washington Equity Coalition (SWEC) based in Vancouver, WA. Siobhana moved to Vancouver in 2019 to start a family and immediately felt the energy around the community to move the needle and organize. “We don’t want to live in a place where hate and discrimination are just accepted.”

Siobhana considers it the power of connections between folks of color when she and Eric met again two years later, this time to pitch a partnership between SWEC and Sage to expand the Community Leadership Institute to Vancouver. This September, after months of planning together, we jointly launched the Vancouver Community Leadership Institute, expanding for the first time outside of King County.

“I think it’s a general misconception that the federal government makes all the decisions. But when we talk about things like zoning, where we’re building homes, who gets to live in a community, how much we fund libraries and school districts – that all gets determined at the local level and has a much more direct impact on our lives.”

The need for our work is clear. We’ve received dozens of calls from local, regional, and even state officials requesting CLI graduates, and we’re rapidly trying to raise the resources needed to meet the demand.

Will you invest in the power of transformative community leadership by giving to Puget Sound Sage today? Give today and your donation will be matched dollar for dollar up to $50,000 through the end of the year thanks to the Solutions Project.

Your year-end gift ensures we have the funding necessary to build critical leadership infrastructure and creates supportive spaces for emerging leaders of color to come together to connect, learn, cultivate courageous leadership, and be ready to govern and lead.

Will lifting single family zoning really repair the harm of racial exclusion?

Our recommendations for One Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan

Puget Sound Sage, along with dozens of BIPOC-led community organizations across the city and county, have developed a long-term vision for our communities to thrive in place, which we call Community Stewardship of Land (CSL). Within a CSL framework, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities permanently own or control land for long-term, collective self-determination primarily through land trusts, cooperatives, and other non-profit models.

We believe CSL is the only antidote to unending cycles of displacement for BIPOC communities. Only with our homes and neighborhoods protected from real estate speculation can we withstand the global forces that have dispossessed our communities’ homes for hundreds of years. The more land we take off the real estate market and into collective ownership, the more stable our communities will be, now and far into the future.

For Racial Justice, Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan should center Community Stewardship of Land

The City of Seattle has the power to create meaningful regulations through its Comprehensive Plan, like zoning, labor standards and environmental protection, for the health and welfare of its residents.

We believe that the Comprehensive Plan can and should help even the playing field between community-driven public development and land speculation. The plan should prioritize policy that centers BIPOC communities and public or non-profit developers as the preferred entities to control and develop land for community-driven projects, especially in areas at high risk of development.

Lifting single family zoning is not the magic bullet some may imagine

Reimagining single-family neighborhoods unveils deep-seated property and homeownership interests like nothing else. Public debate so far in Seattle shows a willingness by many to upzone, driven in part by a desire to undo racial segregation, but the Comprehensive Plan must dive deeper into racial equity outcomes to find a more comprehensive solution.

The case has been well made by many others to get rid of single-family zoning, such as: 1) we need more land to accommodate the people who are already here or will move here in the next 25 years; 2) we must increase density to take advantage of Seattle’s transit rich urban corridors and nodes to fight climate change; and 3) single family zoning was a tool of systemic racism, resulting in segregation and multi-generational loss of wealth for BIPOC people, and must be rejected.

But will lifting single family zoning really accomplish these things? To address number one, we need to upzone significantly. Looking at the experience of Minneapolis, it is unclear that single family property owners will rush to sell or convert their homes for triplexes and townhomes, even in a hot real estate market. Number two: to take advantage of Seattle’s rich transit service (relative to the suburbs), we need all the new people moving here with high incomes to give up their cars (or at least greatly reduce their use) – but it is unclear that is happening either. And finally, to repair the harm done to BIPOC communities over the last 100 years, it is unclear that a wave of new construction in single family zone areas will increase affordability or accrue benefits to BIPOC households.

Relaxing single-family zoning is not the cure-all and, by itself, may actually exacerbate existing racial inequity and disparity. We acknowledge and agree that racialized zoning got us into this mess, and that single-family zoning continues to be a problem, but getting rid of it alone does not undo the damage:

In no way does it restore the loss of multi-generational wealth to BIPOC communities specifically named in racial covenants.
In no way does it guarantee a right to return to all the families and households pushed out over the last 30 years.
In no way does it guarantee future BIPOC households the opportunity to move into these newly re-zoned areas.
Finally, unless done with explicit centering of their needs, it may not even give BIPOC communities a shot at creating generational community and family wealth in the future.

How to get zoning for racial justice right

We join many other organizations calling for a more racially and economically just future for Seattle. Our contribution is to call for non-market driven development outcomes at a significant scale, e.g., that up to 1/3 of land in high displacement risk areas be owned and stewarded by non-profit or public entities.

To assess this potential, we suggest the following actions:

1. City planners should model potential location outcomes for low-income households, BIPOC communities, immigrants and refugees, queer people, and disabled persons, (all of whom currently face barriers in the real estate market and are at risk of displacement) for each of the alternatives.

It is not enough to project that more housing supply will automatically increase equity. The City must estimate who will live where after the changes to zoning, who will economically reap the rewards, and who is most likely to be displaced. We urge the City to find sophisticated consultants and analysts who know how to develop models that drill down to race, ethnicity, gender, and ability. This data will be critical to making an informed choice.

2. In all analyses of the alternatives, the City should assess what large-scale, community-led development and land ownership would mean for racial equity and environmental benefits.

There is evidence that higher density options will create more available land for development and that could include Community Stewardship of Land. But what happens when we assume stable, low-income BIPOC neighborhoods in both high-risk and low-risk displacement areas, based on widespread community stewardship of land? How would community stewardship of land help public transit use? How does it impact open space, resiliency, and sustainability?

3. The City should assess the impact of preserving all older multi-family buildings and the contribution that it would make to climate resilience, affordability, and racial equity.

The assessment should apply across all alternatives the City chooses to study. Preserving older buildings is the most effective strategy to stabilize communities in the face of gentrification and redevelopment, both residential and commercial. Again, this kind of analysis reduces the wishful thinking that increasing building envelopes creates opportunity for all – instead, it allows us to imagine what equity would look like and provide opportunity for real comparison.

photo by KUOW – Where should Seattle build homes for newcomers?

A place built by community

Ab Juaner, Sage’s Equitable Development Program Manager, on putting down roots in the Graham Street Neighborhood.

Ab Juaner (she/her/they/them) was born in the Philippines but spent most of her adolescence in Los Angeles. There, she started her work as a labor organizer for immigrant care workers, a demographic that most often consisted of Filipino women. While working as an affordable housing policy advocate, Ab wanted to further deepen her understanding on housing and economic development and so moved to New York City to pursue a graduate degree in Urban Planning.

After graduating in 2019, they sought to move to Seattle where their family now resided. “I’ve always imagined that my urban planning practice will be rooted in deep community organizing, and I was looking for that kind of work in Seattle,” Ab says. Around the time when they learned of Puget Sound Sage’s work in South Seattle’s Graham Street neighborhood, Sage was also looking to hire someone to manage that program.

“The job almost felt meant to be – to be able work on the intersections of social issues that are important to me as a queer Pinay immigrant woman, while practicing urban planning, and being with community.”

^{Abdi Yussuf (left), Sage’s Equitable Development Organizer, and Ab (right) holding a Stop Speculating on our Homes banner outside the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development building in Washington, D.C.}

She remembers those first few months on the job as being equally exciting as it is terrifying – not only being new on staff working with communities with deep roots to the neighborhood, but also being new to Seattle overall and settling herself in this new home. “I didn’t know a whole lot yet. I didn’t know the people. I didn’t know their stories. I didn’t know about the Cham community until I met Sarya, and she told me about her community. I also didn’t yet know how I would see myself, see my life, engaging within the Filipino community here in Seattle.”

Ab recalls the pivotal time when they felt truly bonded with the neighborhood.

Four months in Seattle and after years living without a car, she found herself driving a fifteen-passenger van full of Graham Street community leaders to Portland, Oregon to tour the nation’s first Community Investment Trust. “I’ve never driven anywhere south of King County, haven’t driven in a while being car-less for so long, actually. So I felt honored that everyone entrusted me with their lives,” she laughs. “But we shared so many stories on the road and I felt like during that day trip, our relationships with one another deepened in a lot of ways.”

^{Puget Sound Sage staff with our coalitions, the Graham Street Community Action Team (CAT) and the Community Real Estate Stewardship Team (CREST), after touring Plaza 122 in Portland, OR.}

The group toured around Plaza 122 – a 29,000 square-foot commercial retail mall in Southeast Portland with about 30 businesses, where tenants can follow a long-term path to collective ownership of the building by investing $10-$100 per month.

Seeing a real-life example of a community-owned model inspired the group. “A few years later, Seattle is now exploring a Community Investment Trust model. The fact that we got to see it in Portland and be part of that story for Seattle’s future model is pretty incredible.”

Six months into living in Seattle, the pandemic hit.

It was then that Ab got to witness the true power of community resilience, and the strength of the relationships the Graham Street Community Action Team (CAT) built with one another over the past four years.

“There was just so much hopelessness and despair and feelings of insecurity when the pandemic started, and seeing the CAT members become a resource to one another, whether that’s through sharing meal program locations or sharing personal protective equipment. Seeing the connectedness that was developed through the Graham Street work, and having them show up for each other.

We already know that these organizations are frontline workers, that they are the first responders in their communities when danger or crisis happens, so to see them center community, show up as community leaders, be stewards of community resources to just help the neighborhood navigate through such a difficult time, I think that it speaks a lot to that vision of planning around people, around communities, and knowing that they know what they need to survive, to thrive, and to have full lives. I think the Graham Street program is an example of what true community resilience looks like.”

After living in the middle of a crisis and deepening relationships with their new community, Ab now calls South Seattle their home. Living so close to Graham Street, they love sharing the story of their work to loved ones, especially friend groups who are also urban planning nerds.

“I tell them that I’m working with this multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural group of community leaders who are trying to ensure that their communities are not driven out and that they are the ones leading the development of a train station in their neighborhood. To be able to highlight a real-life example of how we can practice planning more thoughtfully, democratizing the process, and really empowering community to lead, that’s always fun for me to share to everyone I know.”

^{Ab is inspired by the Do-It-Yourself Public Realm Activation they’ve seen in their old neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, i.e. street murals and old tires converted into public planters. Ab hopes to encourage the practice of reimagining public spaces to create more shared spaces with communities.}

They say it’s been nice to feel hopeful again lately, after what transpired in the last two years.

“I feel like I’m exiting this brain fog I’ve had since the pandemic started. I’m able to trust my skills, my knowledge, my experiences, and pair these with the gifts and talents of our community collaborators,” Ab says excitedly. She and the CAT members are currently working on the next chapter of Graham Street, an action plan that will make the vision the community had imagined for the neighborhood back in 2018 a reality.

“As a queer immigrant woman in America, imagining an equitable society, creating an inclusive built environment, and feeling emboldened to challenge and change systems of oppression for a feminist future, I just feel fortunate to be doing it here.”