-Hello.
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Can Seattle revitalize its downtown
with a new plan from Mayor Harrell?
Why is it taking so long
to stand up an alternative 911 response
for calls that don't need a police officer?
And does our Regional Homelessness Authority
need a multi-billion dollar budget?
I'm with Council member Andrew J. Lewis
to get answers to these questions
and the ones you're sending in, top, next on "Council Edition."
-This change of the consent decree
to the successor agreement
signals a continuation of reform, not an end to it.
All that and more, coming up next
on "City Inside Out: Council Edition."
♪♪
And here I am with council member Andrew J. Lewis,
representing the city's seventh district,
from downtown up to Magnolia.
He's also chair of the council's
Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.
Council Member Lewis, thank you very much for being here.
-Great to be here.
-Let me jump in with you, here.
I wanted to get with -- start with your reaction
to an executive order that Mayor Harrell made
just a short while before we recorded the show.
So, Mayor Harrell is talking about
revitalizing downtown Seattle
with an emphasis on fentanyl and synthetic drugs.
Overdose deaths have been rising significantly.
Here's a brief clip from his press conference.
-If you are harming our communities by this activity,
we have to coordinate our efforts
in making sure that harm stops.
And that's dealing with the selling and trafficking
of these deadly drugs.
We have to hold those people accountable.
-Well, the mayor called this a two-pronged approach --
working with law enforcement
to really crack down on drug traffickers,
and also helping people with drug addiction,
and saying the Fire Department
would have a special Overdose Response unit.
I wanted to get your overall take on this plan.
What's it gonna do?
-Yeah, Thanks, Brian.
So, anyone who's been to downtown Seattle recently
knows that there is a very significant
public drug use and public drug trafficking problem
that the downtown core of the city has.
That's not to say it's not prevalent
in other parts of the county,
but it's particularly noticeable in parts of downtown Seattle.
There is no downtown recovery
without focusing on the public safety components
of our plan to deal with the situations in downtown Seattle.
And part of that has to deal with the --
the use and distribution of fentanyl in the city core.
We know that the traditional war on drugs doesn't work,
that it doesn't work to punish somebody for their addiction.
You want to provide immediate evidence-based treatment
and assistance to people who are experiencing addiction,
to help get them off the streets.
Right now, we don't have a system
that can effectively do that.
We can't offer on-demand treatment.
Part of this plan is gonna be introducing
what an audit last year recommended,
which is a regime of contingency management.
So, it's a reward-based,
incentive-based treatment regime.
-Gift cards, et cetera.
I've heard about this. What's this all?
-Sure.
As you go through the treatment regime,
if you are producing results,
producing negative urine analysis, or what have you,
demonstrating that you are maintaining your sobriety,
then, you get incremental escalating rewards
for the -- for your sobriety.
This is a proven therapeutic response
that lots of other jurisdictions use.
It was recommended by an audit last fall.
And this is something Mayor Harrell
is moving forward on, and that my colleague,
Councilmember Nelson, has been a leader on on the council.
It's a very well-recognized and peer-reviewed method
of doing treatment for drug addiction.
-A lot more of a carrot than a stick, I guess,
in this situation.
-Yeah.
So, on that component,
we're gonna really be amping up how we respond,
and have a responsive treatment regime,
to give people the tools they need to succeed.
On the other side, on the enforcement side,
we do need to hold folks who are trafficking
and moving these large quantities
of fentanyl accountable for their actions.
We have lots of people in the downtown core of the city
who are dealing drugs with impunity,
who are enforcing the rules of that black market with violence.
And we need to crack down on that,
not only to help the rejuvenation
of the downtown core,
but also to save the lives of folks
who are overdosing, on a daily basis, on fentanyl.
-Thank you.
And I wanted to jump in, here,
because I just wanted to know what this is going to look like.
I've had a number of questions come in to me about this.
I'm sure they've come to your office, too.
One question went like this --
"What SPD staffing level is needed
to have a permanent precinct on 3rd?"
I guess I'm just trying to figure out
what types of changes -- maybe physical changes,
maybe police presence from the city.
What are we going to see downtown --
Third Avenue or other places downtown, here,
over the next few months?
Because the mayor was saying this is gonna roll out
into May, and June, and beyond.
-Well, you've probably been reading recently
about the Third Avenue project that the mayor's office
and my office have been working together
to scale up resources that are available on Third Avenue.
And that has mostly been revolving around a organization
that is new on the scene called "We Deliver Care,"
which is completely staffed by people with lived experience,
people who who are good at building a rapport
with the cohort of people who have routinely used
Third Avenue to engage in the illicit economy,
or other activities.
And just on my way to City Hall today,
I ran into the We Deliver Care team.
They're very visible.
They're out there every single day,
making connections with people,
giving people off-ramps to get out of the ecosystem on
Third Avenue, that is not good for their long-term success.
And more initiatives like that being in the city core
to provide presence engagement.
If you're not actually talking to people,
and helping them work through their challenges,
and giving them an opportunity to do something different,
we're never gonna make progress on this.
So, those resources are gonna stay there.
We've had a permanent SPD emphasis on Third Avenue
since March of 2022.
There's no plan to take that away.
That's gonna stay there,
and remain there as part of the operation.
But we constantly have to be changing up
what our strategy is, and what our personnel mix is,
to make a long-term, sustained difference.
And I'll say this -- you know,
Third Avenue has a very long way to go.
But year over year, from where we were in 2022,
it's getting a lot better.
But we can't -- we can't...
take our foot off the gas.
The momentum -- We have to keep the momentum going.
We have to stay in there.
We cannot declare victory, and leave.
-Briefly, can I talk about this part of it.
Because I know the Downtown Seattle Association
has said Third Avenue needs a complete redesign.
Maybe it's less of a bus corridor.
Maybe we should be having some more possibilities
for people where it's more comfortable for them to walk,
et cetera.
Any thoughts about that -- long, long term,
what happens with Third Ave?
-Last fall, the council unanimously passed a resolution
endorsing the Third Avenue Vision,
which is a proposal from the Downtown Seattle Association --
actually a proposal from us, now,
since we passed the resolution endorsing it --
to reconfigure the streetscape,
not -- not to remove busses.
-I see.
-We want it to stay a transit street.
But to enhance the pedestrian experience,
maybe make the sidewalks a little bit wider,
to lean in, actually, to the transit identity of the street,
to...
have development agreements for some of the new buildings,
to have big, open atriums,
to really enhance the -- the bus shelter experience
for people who are waiting to -- to catch the bus,
to have a diversity of storefronts,
smaller storefronts and more storefronts,
to have a lower barrier to entry for small businesses,
especially bipoc-owned small businesses.
So, that's more of a transportation
and economic development plan
that we are working on with the Herald administration.
As you heard yesterday, Mayor Harrell alluded that
there will be more announcements,
on a rolling basis, of initiatives
that we're doing downtown.
And my hope is that something significant
around the built environment of Third Avenue
is gonna be one of those announcements.
And we're working in close partnership with Mayor Harrell
to try to bring something like that about.
-Thank you.
I wanted to make sure I pivoted at one point, here,
because I had so many people writing in
about different issues for you, Councilmember Lewis.
One went like this --
dealing with housing and homelessness.
You chair the council's Homelessness Committee.
So, here we go.
"What are your thoughts on what we can do
to support and protect renters
and keep them housed as inflation continues to rise?
Additionally, what room does the legislative branch have
to prevent another year of 900-plus sweeps?"
Thank you very much for that question.
Councilmember Lewis, can we talk about renters, maybe, first,
because I know the council is working on this measure
limiting late fees that renters would have to pay.
Can we start there, and then maybe move to
the homelessness piece?
-Right.
So, the city council, over the past several years,
has passed a large suite of protections and rights
for renters in the city of Seattle.
I'm very proud to have supported
that entire package of legislation.
I know that doesn't make me popular with landlords,
but we are in a situation
where we have a growing number of people in Seattle --
it's a majority renter city -- who are rent-burdened,
who are facing the possibility of eviction.
And we need to make sure that we have more resources
in this up-and-coming housing levy,
which emphasized -- for the first time, really,
we're gonna have more resources in the housing levy
that emphasize short-term diversion payments and payments
to keep people in their homes,
payments to make sure people can access emergency rent support
if they come up short one month because of an emergency expense
they weren't expecting to -- to take.
And that has to be part of our housing levy discussion
as we deliberate, as a council,
to put that package on the ballot.
And for the first time, it's gonna include
a lot more mitigation measures like that,
that are specifically designed around renters.
When it comes to encampment outreach,
and the risk of displacement, the first thing we need to do
is really define the problem.
and the city, actually, until the Herald administration --
I give them a lot of credit for this, last year --
never really tracked displacement.
We never asked the question,
when people would refuse services, why?
Right?
And, you know, when the Herald administration came on board
in early 2022, one of the first things I said was,
"We need to be asking people 'why?'
when they refuse services.
And then, we need to adjust accordingly, to have a strategy
that is responsive
to why people aren't accepting those services."
-Right.
-And what we've learned from that has been very clear.
It's that people who are experiencing homelessness
don't want to go to a congregate shelter.
But they will go to something, like, a tiny-house village
or a hotel, motel.
And we need to be investing in those non-congregate,
enhanced shelter options, to make sure that people
who are currently living in encampments
have a place that they want to go to,
that they will go to.
And if we do that, we are going to
significantly reduce the inequities
in how our current outreach regimes work.
-Okay.
I wanted to make sure I shifted gears
a little bit, with you, and talk about the work
of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
I think this intersects a lot with this idea
of preventing sweeps, and also tiny-house villages,
because we saw this five-year plan to end homelessness
from KCRHA.
It came out earlier this year.
It's not a binding document.
It's more of an aspirational statement, I would say.
But it did call for $8.4 billion in capital costs,
and somewhere between $1.7 and $3.4 billion
in annual operation and maintenance costs.
You're on the governing board of the KCRHA.
What feedback have you been giving to the Authority
about this plan, the money talked about here,
and also what appears to be a reduction
in tiny-house village placements.
-Yeah, well, the first thing that I've been doing, Brian,
is -- is acknowledging that the number
that the Authority put out for the five-year plan
probably is about what the investment regionally needs
to be in order for us to end homelessness,
to make homelessness systemically brief,
and to give us the resources
to immediately move people into housing.
And I appreciate the aspiration and ambition of the Authority,
but it is not a practical plan for our immediate needs, right?
I mean, the situation right now is like a five-alarm fire.
I mean, we have community members
who are living in isolation, in encampments
that are not safe for people to live in,
places where there's a significant nexus
with criminal activity,
where the people most vulnerable
are people who are experiencing homelessness.
And we need a plan, right now,
to get people out of those encampments
into a desirable placement -- like a tiny-house village,
like a hotel, motel -- that we know people will go to
when we can offer them.
People who are experiencing homelessness
want to get out of encampments.
They don't want to stay there.
That's a myth.
They want to go to a place where they're gonna have privacy,
can realize self-actualization.
And that's like a tiny house or a hotel, motel.
It is within our means to build a plan
that can provide that kind of support.
What my feedback to the Authority has been is,
I want to do two things to this plan.
And I'm gonna introduce some resolutions
to the governing board in the coming weeks,
to force a conversation on this,
and hopefully help us move forward.
I alluded to those resolutions in a governing board meeting
a few weeks ago.
But the first one would be,
to your point about the tiny homes,
we need to completely reconfigure
however they came up with that formula.
We need more tiny homes.
People experiencing homelessness are demanding more tiny homes.
And we can mix and match it
with other things, like modular shelters,
pallet shelters is another form of a tiny home, hotels --
hotels, motels.
But a mix of those products
that can scale up to the level of demand that we're facing.
That's the first thing we need to do.
I don't care what their formula is.
My formula is talking to people experiencing homelessness
who are desperate to get something like that
as a placement.
The second one is, sure, we have that number of --
I actually think it was $12 million.
-Yeah, altogether.
Yeah. Add it all up for the year.
-Add it all up, it was $12 million.
One thing we did in the city of Seattle
to help lower that cost, that I'm very proud of, in 2021,
is we passed legislation reducing the cost
of permanent supportive housing
by exempting them from things like design review,
permitting, bicycle parking --
all sorts of red tape that adds up to the cost.
It -- It's gonna reduce the cost
of permanent supportive housing in Seattle
by about 15% per unit, which is significant.
-It's a big deal.
-The Authority should be promulgating
those kinds of policy recommendations
to the constituent cities of King County.
Every city in King County
can pass those kinds of red-tape-slashing proposals.
So, $12 Million can become $10 Million.
I mean, it can -- the cost can go down
through some deregulatory actions, as well.
It doesn't all have to come out and money and new revenue.
Those are the two resolutions
that I'm gonna introduce to the governing board,
to try to really move the needle forward on
how can we practically and effectively move now
to reduce the amount of chronic homelessness in our community?
-Thank you. Looking forward to seeing that.
One last note on homelessness.
I'm gonna open the faucet on street sinks, here,
Councilmember Lewis.
And I wanted to talk about this.
The city set aside $100,000 for about 40 sinks --
more than two years ago -- to help with hygiene
for people who are living on the street.
Right now, we only have five installed.
I know you know this. What's going on with this.
-Right.
Well, you know, I don't actually have
a recent update, unfortunately,
on the whole situation with street sinks.
I think it's an example, candidly --
and I've been very public about this,
about the overly bureaucratic approach that we have as a city,
sometimes, in a state of emergency, even.
I mean, now it's a little bit different.
You know, the COVID emergency has certainly ebbed down.
It's been officially declared over.
-Right.
-But at the time,
it was incredibly disappointing that we were --
I mean, you remember, we were on lockdown.
We had a lot of people experiencing homelessness
who we were demanding to observe certain hygiene
and public health rules,
but not really giving them access
to the resources or facilities
to effectively -- effectively do it.
-And there was hepatitis outbreaks.
I mean, there were some big problems.
-Yeah.
Even before COVID, we had hepatitis A,
which is a -- a fecal transmitted....
-That's right.
-So it connected to hygiene.
Where hepatitis C is typically needle-driven.
-Right, right, right. -By contrast.
-Thank you.
-So, running water is the best thing
for observing those hygiene practices,
not just for hand-washing during COVID,
but also to avoid things like hepatitis A,
which tend to come about from a lack of hygiene.
And as a city, we were completely unable to mitigate
around, candidly, the very simple logistical hurdles
that these very simple sinks made of, like,
PVC pipes and plastic wash basins.
And it's amazing that we're a modern American city,
and we couldn't figure out
how to install a couple of these sinks.
And I don't know what else to say about that
except it was a shame.
And I mean, it's a little different now.
We're not in a state of emergency.
-Right.
-But back then, to be so pedantic and bureaucratic,
when there was a once-in-a-century pandemic,
was very discouraging.
-Fair.
I wanted to talk about something else
that I know is a little disappointing, as well, for you,
and that's public safety, and what the mayor's calling CARE,
the Civilian Assistant --
Civilian Assisted Response and Engagement Department.
This is the alternative to police to help with calls like
well-person checks, where an officer isn't always necessary.
The mayor said last year we'd see some progress on this team
in the early part of 2023, and we just simply have not.
You've championed this issue for so many years.
I know you worked on funding in the last last budget
to work on a pilot program for this.
What's going on with this?
So, I think we're on track.
And the Herald administration
has been a really good partner in this work.
And we -- we now know how it's gonna come about.
And Mayor Harrell alluded to this in the State of the City.
The new department is gonna be
souping up the 911 call center department.
and it's going to be called the CARE Department.
That work is -- is going along.
I mean, obviously, everything is always slower
than what I would like.
But this is hard work, right?
And there's a whole team on the mayor's side
who is working through all of the different hurdles
that relate to bargaining, to implementation,
to hiring a new permanent director of that department,
and a deputy director, to really start
implementing a lot of these initiatives.
And I think we're in a good place.
I think that we are gonna see,
by the end of 2023, something visible,
that's out there in the community,
that is actually doing this response work
for the first time.
And that's gonna be huge, when we finally get that out there.
-Is it contingent on reaching a deal
with the Seattle Police Officers Guild beforehand?
What can you tell me about that piece?
Because there's a lot going on behind the scenes, here, I know.
-The only thing I can really say, here,
is the mayor alluded in his State of the City speech
that there would have to be bargaining
with our traditional public safety partners.
That work is going forward, as I understand it.
-All right.
-But I mean, look, we are --
we are not a right-to-worse state --
or a right-to-work state, as some would call it.
We -- We believe very strongly, in Washington state,
in collective bargaining -- rightly so.
And sometimes that leads to situations
where we have to move slower than we'd like to,
as a government,
even for really critical and important change.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
I wanted to talk about a potential major shift
for the police department --
the end of the federal consent decree it's been under
since 2012 for the unconstitutional use of force.
The city believes it's in compliance.
The Justice Department says so, too,
noting that the SPD has reduced its use of serious force by 60%
over the past several years.
And Chief Adrian Diaz says that's not all.
-We reduced our complaints,
just in the last four years, by almost half.
So, our officers are making sure that they're doing it
in a professional and equitable manner.
That doesn't mean that we're -- we still have complaints.
We still have other things that we need to improve on.
But their work is exceptional.
-Councilmember Lewis, I just wanted to ask, are we there yet?
Do you think the judge is going to agree
that SPD no longer needs to be under a consent decree?
And what does that mean, I guess?
-Yeah, I think prognostications
about what Judge Robart's gonna do --
[ Indistinct talking ]
-Right, Right, right.
-You know, I do think the important part
of this conversation is not necessarily
whether the decree will or will not end.
And the city has a good case,
and we have the concurrence of the DOJ.
-That's big.
-So, we will see how that goes, when we go to Judge Robart.
I think that the question is, how do we continue
to move forward with a culture and spirit of reform?
Because at the end of the consent decree
does not mean the end of the culture and spirit of reform.
There's a subsequent agreement that both the DOJ and the city
are proposing to replace the consent decree,
which will still focus on outstanding areas
that -- that we need to improve on.
Our accountability system is still not where it needs to be.
And that is clear.
There are massive questions raised,
as far as the department's ability to respond to large
demonstrations, that were raised by the events in 2020,
that...
that still need some scrutiny.
-Police using ruses. There's a bunch going on.
-Yeah, yeah, the ruse policy,
which was in the news again recently,
that is being implemented.
So, there's a lot of outstanding work.
I think it's really important to communicate to the community
that...
this change of the consent decree
to the successor agreement
signals a continuation of reform,
not an end to it.
I don't think you'll find anyone in City Hall who is saying,
"Okay, it's done. Victory."
-Right.
You know, like, there's a lot more work to do.
We can be proud of the work we have done,
but there's a lot more work to do.
And I know this was talked about
in a recent Public Safety Committee meeting.
It's just the council continuing
to have more oversight over the SPD?
Or what does that look like, going forward, here?
-Well, I think that a lot of it
is gonna come down to the next contract
between the Seattle Police Officers Guild
and the city of Seattle,
as it relates to these accountability measures.
-Okay.
-And that's gonna be really important.
That's gonna be something the DOJ and Judge Robart,
I'm sure, are still gonna be very interested in monitoring,
and working with us on, under the successor agreement
to the consent decree.
-Okay.
-And a lot of that has to come through the process
with the contract, as we saw,
before my time on the council, when the last contract --
I mean, to give a sense of how long ago it was,
I was not on the council when the last contract was done.
-Right, right, right. -So...
We're gonna have to continue along on that path of that work.
And -- And I look forward to continuing to work with
Mayor Harrell,
who's shown a commitment to continuing to pursue
those same accountability measures.
When he was a council member,
he voted for the accountability ordinance...
-That's right.
-...that had the measures that the DOJ
and Judge Robart have opined that they would like to see.
-Right.
-And we need to keep working towards those goals.
-Thank you.
I would love to throw a couple more e-mails your way,
because we got a lot of great messages.
And thank you so much, people,
for sending in these different e-mails and tweets, here.
Here's one for you --
"What's the council doing to ensure SDOT" --
the Department of Transportation --
"...enacts changes to street design
to prevent tragic and needless pedestrian and bicyclist deaths
and injuries across the city?"
I know you're not on the Transportation Committee,
but this is a huge issue downtown.
Some thoughts about this.
Give you about two minutes, here, if I could.
-Yeah, I think that what the pandemic
really put front and center,
when we were spending a lot more time outside,
and needed more space
so we could distance when we were outside,
especially in those early days of the pandemic,
is we really valued that time, and that slowing down of things,
to see what it was like to use the streets
in a way that would have been common, you know, 115 years ago.
-Right, right, right. Okay. Right.
-And I think that some of our planning now,
around transportation, sort of is a reversion to how we used
and shared our streets in an era before cars.
-Yeah.
-This is an international trend.
People like to be near pedestrianized squares,
pedestrianized plazas, pedestrianized streets.
One place that we might start, as we're looking --
you know, it's never too early to look into the future,
to the Move Seattle Levy,
which we're gonna be considering in 2024.
Maybe there's some resources there
to lean into some of the streets
that were temporarily Stay Healthy streets
during COVID,
that were quasi or completely pedestrianized.
Maybe that's a good list to start with,
to look at how we can take a couple of these,
and make them permanent community spaces,
where pedestrians, where multi-modal transportation
like bikes, or scooters, or what have you,
have more of a priority than cars do,
or where cars are banned entirely.
-Right.
-And I think that there's a way to factor that
into our planning.
And I look forward to that.
-Thank you.
And one more question, if I can squeeze it in, here.
And this, again, has to do with cars and transportation, here.
I'd love to hear from Councilmember Lewis
why we cannot vacate passenger vehicles
from Pike Place market.
Countless examples of this being great for tourists,
but especially locals, elsewhere.
Can we do a two month pilot period to see how it goes?"
You've talked about this issue before.
I can give you about a minute or so.
Can you talk about this issue
of potentially removing passenger cars
from Pike Place Market?
-Yeah, it's something that I think we should continue
to have a conversation with the PDA --
the Public Development Authority at the market -- about.
They're currently engaging in their campus redesign plan.
And part of our arrangement,
when I started talking about this in earnest, in 2022,
with the Public Development Authority at the market, was,
let's have this conversation
as part of that campus master plan.
And we're there now.
So, members of the public can engage,
and certainly any member of the community
who has feelings about the campus master plan
beyond just kind of these conversations
about the uses of Pike Place.
It's really a big opportunity for the market.
For the first time, they're gonna have two front entrances.
They're gonna have an entrance
that's facing the waterfront.
They're gonna have an entrance
that's facing downtown Seattle.
So, there's a lot of opportunity, there.
And one of those opportunities could be exploring
different ways to use Pike Place,
which could include a broader emphasis on pedestrianization.
-And is there going to be a special lane
for people to throw fish across that?
Have you looked into that at all?
I just wanted to ask on that one.
-Well, I would think that that would have to be
an essential component.
-Put a stoplight in for it.
Councilmember Andrew J. Lewis,
thank you very much for joining me, as always.
-Thank you. -All right.
And we will see you next time, on "Council Edition."
♪♪