Seattle City Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda spoke to politicians and labor leaders in New York City on Monday.

They explained that Seattle's housing and homelessness problems have been an incredible challenge since Amazon started to balloon here in 2012.

"Most of us were oblivious to what was happening," Mosqueda said.

She told the room Seattle wasn't able to keep with the demand on housing because "we didn't respond fast enough." Amazon says it added 45,000-thousand direct jobs in Seattle since 2010, and that led to an additional 53,000 new, indirect jobs in the city, which the company says added billions of dollars to the city's economy.

Mosqueda says that growth was not mitigated by the company or by Seattle's elected officials. "We didn't make sure that there was adequate zoning, [or] that we included requirements that would recuperate some of the taxes", she said. Her advice to New York lawmakers: "you have the opportunity now to recuperate those taxes, you have the opportunity now to build in protections."

Mosqueda and Herbold also touched on how Amazon worked to defeat Seattle's short-lived business tax, more commonly known as the head tax. They told the group of New York lawmakers, including state Senator Michael Gianaris, that New York has the leverage to stand up to Amazon that Seattle didn't.