Mayor Ed Murray listens to audience questions and concerns during the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Night Out at the Museum of History & Industry. Several audience members held signs calling to action and listing issues facing residents. Photo by Genesee Martin

Mayor Ed Murray listens to audience questions and concerns during the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Night Out at the Museum of History & Industry. Several audience members held signs calling to action and listing issues facing residents. Photo by Genesee Martin

Mayor Ed Murray hosted Livability Night Out last week at the Museum of History & Industry, starting a conversation with residents, businesses, developers and city department heads concerning the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) for the city.

More than 200 people attended the event, with city staff and department directors answering questions about the massive initiative that is expected to start making changes this year.

HALA addresses housing affordability, as well as the city’s livability, including education, civil rights, arts and culture and public space. Ten department directors spoke during the event, outlining with how their departments see the issue of livability and what they would contribute to the program.

Murray said April 19 that his office has sent legislation to the Seattle City Council for approval as part of the initiative that would expand fair housing protections to renters with certain types of income, such as subsidies or alternative sources, including veterans’ benefits, disability and child support. It also prohibits landlords from evicting or refusing applicants because of alternative income sources.

In addition, the City Council adopted legislation last year creating a Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) Program that would require developers to pay fees or include affordable housing for commercial projects. A second portion concerning residential projects is expected to be adopted this spring with MHA implementation slated for final approval by October.

The mayor said when he was a teenager living in the city, jobs and people had moved away, prompting school closures.

“Now, jobs are moving back into the city, and we don’t have enough schools,” he said. “For the first time in a century, we are growing faster than our suburbs. So we have a big challenge.”

‘Not where, but how we live’

Murray also talked about the massive effort to engage stakeholders, residents, neighborhoods and developers, starting in 2014 with citywide community outreach. He said city officials held town halls, attended public community and neighborhood council meetings and hosted teleconference town halls.

Of the people who attended the telephone town halls, 70 percent had never attended a public meeting.

“So we researched different methods to involve everybody in the city in a conversation,” Murray said. “Tonight, we get a chance to spend time with the department heads and people who work in departments.”

Each department head gave a brief description of what their department considers livability and spoke about the need for major changes due to the massive number of people moving to the area monthly. Seattle is projected to grow by more than 100,000 by 2020.

Randy Engstrom, director of the Office of Arts & Culture, reported the old King Street Station, which is slated for renovation, will become the new, long-term home for the department. He also said his department would be able to apply history, lifestyles, creativity and culture to public spaces and communities.

“Livability is not just about where we live but about how we live,” he said.

“Maybe you’re one of the 45,000-plus households in Seattle that spend more than half their income on housing,” said Seattle Office of Housing director Steve Walker. “Even with our historic minimum-wage increase, two people working full-time cannot afford the average for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle.”

HALA includes 65 recommendations for affordable and sustainable housing, as well as increasing the livability of the city. MHA is only one measure being put in place to try to stop people from being priced out of Seattle.

The initiative started with Murray convening a committee of 28 members to negotiate among residents, stakeholders and developers on issues facing city administration and residents from skyrocketing demand for housing.

The agenda’s recommendations include renewing and increasing the housing levy, maximizing surplus and underutilized property for affordable housing and creating a new housing-preservation property-tax exemption. It also includes strengthening tenant-protection laws and modifying building and construction codes.

The city’s design-review program, including the Early Design Guidance Review Board, is also slated for changes after developers and neighborhoods complained of time constraints and delays in construction, which critics say add costs and decrease affordability. There is no word yet on what those changes will look like.

Public criticism

Several attendees at the meeting held signs calling for an end to homelessness and more action from city officials. One woman held a sign that read, “Don’t turn my neighborhood into a scene from ‘Up,’” referring to the scene in which an old man’s modest home is surrounded by skyscrapers.

One man said he expected more courage from officials in addressing the housing crisis in the city. Murray responded that he feels HALA is an unprecedented undertaking and takes a lot of courage to implement.

“We have 5,000 homeless people on the streets; we have 50,000 people who are significantly housing-burdened in this city. And I see…10,000 affordable units,” the man said in addressing the HALA recommendations. “I mean it’s a half-measure.”

He added when a half-measure is introduced, it means the mayor lacked the moral authority to define the problem and introduce broad decisions to fix the issue.

“So I would encourage you not to bow to the whims of the people who don’t want to make room for the rest of us,” he said.

Another woman demanded to know about a zoning proposal to allow primary and secondary structures on private property that are often rented out as income. Murray said he has withdrawn the proposal, then clarified his statement when she challenged it.

“We are in the process of both putting in place a taxing mechanism for [rental properties], as well as limiting the number of days people can have them and the number that can be in any part of any neighborhood,” Murray said. “We will lose the affordability crisis if we have blocks and blocks of Airbnbs.”

That same woman responded that people are buying homes in her neighborhood to make money by renting them out and that her neighbors would soon move away. Murray said the city currently does not have regulations in place for this but is in the process of creating them.

For more information, visit seattleforeveryone.org.

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