Annual Reports

Councilmember Andrew Lewis' 2021 Annual Report

Below are some of the projects from my second year, including my office's efforts on Homelessness & Housing, our work on Traffic Safety & Infrastructure , priorities for Culture & Community , and addressing the Climate Crisis .

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Issue Problem Solution Testimonial

It Takes a Village

Homelessness & Housing

2021 started with approximately 2,061 long-term shelter spaces in Seattle, a decline of nearly 300 from the beginning of 2020. And while those critical spaces provided essential support to people lucky enough to receive one of those placements, an estimated 3,738 people started 2021 with nowhere to live but the street. 2021 saw 2.5x more demand for shelter space than supply, a sobering statistic summarized in a report released by my committee.

The best response to chronic homelessness is permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH merges single-room occupancy (SRO) style apartment units with on-site services to address health challenges many people exiting chronic homelessness face, such as substance dependency and behavioral mental health conditions. An alliance of small business owners and service providers known as Third Door Coalition have put forward a bold plan to scale PSH, and as mentioned below the City made great strides toward achieving those goals in 2021.

However, the acquisition and construction of PSH takes a significant amount of time. And while I sponsored and passed legislation to speed the process up, it will still take years and billions of dollars to sufficiently scale the housing we need. In the meantime, people need a place to stay with dignity and security. There are three broad choices of waiting room for PSH: enhanced shelter, jail, and tent encampments. Tiny houses are by far the most effective, affordable, and compassionate of those three choices.

Tiny house villages are an excellent enhanced shelter strategy to give people a place to stay that is not an encampment. They combine on-site services similar to PSH with a personal private living space and communal hygiene and dining facilities. In 2021, my office launched an initiative called “It Takes a Village” to build more tiny house villages with urgency, resulting in the new villages of Friendship Heights and Rosie’s Village, as well as doubling the size of Interbay’s Safe Harbor Village. The opening of these new units in November and December of 2021 allowed the City to offer shelter to people living in the encampments at Ballard Commons and Bitter Lake, restoring those spaces for recreational use.

The Council appropriated funding sufficient for three additional villages, or an equivalent form of enhanced shelter, to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) which will hopefully lead to further expanded capacity in the first half of 2022. My office is also working on potential public-private partnerships to add additional villages with philanthropic support. The fastest and most proven way to give people a desirable alternative to living in encampments, and by extension restore parks to uses other than shelter, is to expand tiny houses.

"The "It Takes a Village" initiative gives all of us an opportunity to do our part and be part of the solution. Our family and neighborhood’s act of love produced a home for a person who needed one. The tiny home we built in our driveway and donated to Interbay's Safe Harbor Village will shelter our neighbors for years to come. Together, we can overcome the humanitarian challenge of homelessness.

- Nancy and Tim Washburn, Magnolia Residents

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Permanent Supportive Housing Legislation

Homelessness & Housing

Permanent supportive housing (PSH), the combination of single-room occupancy housing units with onsite services for addiction and mental health, is the best practice for responding to homelessness. But, unfortunately, PSH is expensive and time consuming to build. Per the Third Door Coalition, the average cost per-unit of PSH was $331,953 as of May of 2020, and development red tape can delay projects for years. The City must do everything in its power to drive down costs and speed up construction of this critical resource.

In 2021, I passed legislation codifying a series of reforms proposed by the Third Door Coalition, an alliance of small business owners and service providers, to drive down the cost of PSH and expedite the construction timeline. The new code section exempts PSH from design review, eliminates a requirement for on-site bike storage, and waives burdensome development hurdles. These reforms are expected, per Third Door Coalition, to speed up construction by several months per-project as well as reduce the cost per-unit from $331,953 to $284,200. An overall savings per-unit of $47,753.

The first priority of the government when tackling a public policy problem needs to be identifying how existing resources can be better deployed. This legislation guarantees no money is being left on the table in our effort to scale PSH.

In the wake of divisive fights around homelessness, Third Door Coalition came together to unite unlikely allies around our common interest to scale permanent supportive housing. Fundamental to that goal is cutting the red tape that inflates the cost and drags out construction times. This new ordinance centers those goals and brings us closer to scaling PSH.

- Matt Galvin, Board Member, Third Door Coalition

The scale of our homelessness crisis requires our leaders to be both efficient and maximize the resources we dedicate to this effort. This new legislation streamlining permitting for PSH helps Seattle avoid construction delays and make construction more affordable so funding can go further. By bringing diverse coalitions of business, labor, and community together, we can overcome our greatest civic challenges.

- Rachel Smith, President and CEO, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

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JustCARE Homelessness Response Team

Homelessness & Housing

As places defined by congregate work, shopping, and public events, downtowns across the world have suffered tremendously during COVID. Our Downtown neighborhood is no exception. As offices closed throughout 2020 so did congregate shelters. Hundreds of people experiencing homelessness were evicted from shelter spaces with nowhere else to go. And through a series of sweeps and searches for services many inevitably ended up in Downtown or Pioneer Square.

At the beginning of 2021, Downtown and Pioneer Square were defined by large sprawling encampments posing a hazard to their occupants as well as neighboring businesses and residents. Removing these encampments proved to be futile, since residents merely moved down the street and set up in a new location. A new response was called for to combine outreach with supportive shelter placements and respond to the high needs of people living in encampments.

JustCARE was created in the spring of 2020 through a partnership between LEAD, REACH, ACRS, and Chief Seattle Club to respond to the unprecedented impact COVID was having on the homelessness shelter system. Initially only funded by King County, JustCARE zeroed in on the Pioneer Square and Chinatown-International District to respond to the expanding crisis of large encampments. Programmatically, JustCARE combines experienced and trained outreach workers with hotel-based shelters with onsite wrap-around services for mental health and substance addiction. This model of outreach and shelter has an extremely high rate of acceptance from people experiencing homelessness.

Given the scale of the crisis, it was clear City support would be necessary to achieve real results. In the spring of 2021, I introduced legislation to divert a portion of our federal relief funds to JustCARE to expand their area of coverage to Downtown and increase the program’s shelter capacity. This expanded partnership led to a series of significant improvements in the Downtown and Pioneer Square neighborhoods by conducting outreach at 3 rd Avenue, the Pergola, 2 nd Avenue Extension, City Hall Park, and many other locations. Without a doubt, these encampments would have continued to sit unaddressed but-for the innovative and active response of JustCARE.

As of this writing, JustCARE’s funding is scheduled to expire in June of 2022. We cannot let this happen. The coalition that has helped shape JustCARE includes service providers, business owners, and labor leaders. They have confronted challenges skeptics told them were insurmountable and confounded those expectations. Protecting and expanding JustCARE is a big priority for 2022. You can learn more about JustCARE in this evaluation from the University of Washington.

"The need to continue providing shelter and services for people camping on 3rd Avenue is essential. With assistance from the City Councilmember Lewis, DSA and the Mayor’s office, the JustCARE team efforts were critical to helping get people off the streets. Without this coordinated problem solving approach, we would not have been able to reopen Triple Door and Wild Ginger. We endorse the model of engaging both small businesses and service providers to continue."

- Rick Yoder, Owner, Wild Ginger and Triple Door

"Since the beginning of the pandemic, few programs were rising to the occasion to compassionately and effectively mitigate the impact encampments were having both on individuals living on the street and the surrounding community. JustCARE came forward to make sure everyone had a safe, dignified place to live, and the concerns of business owners and employees could be addressed. By centering our common interests we can come together to ensure our response works for all members of the Pioneer Square community. "

- Lisa Dixon Howard, Executive Director, Alliance for Pioneer Square

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Creating Culturally Appropriate Housing

Homelessness & Housing

The first people to live in the region we call home, Native American and Alaska Natives, make up only 1% of the population of Seattle after centuries of colonization and systemic racism. However, that history of oppression has led Indigenous Americans to make up 15% of Seattle’s homeless population.

The Chief Seattle Club works to serve the thousands of urban Natives impacted by homelessness every night, in culturally appropriate ways that serve their needs. After five years of fundraising, Chief Seattle Club is ready to open its ?ál?al building in Pioneer Square. ?ál?al is a Lushootseed word meaning “Home”, and the building’s 80 units will be the first culturally appropriate housing for homeless American Indians and Alaska Natives in modern Seattle history. However, a funding gap of $1.7 million in the middle of 2021 put Chief Seattle Club’s ability to operationalize this vital resource at risk.

My office scoured the City budget for “underspend” - operating money that had been appropriated for other spending but went unspent because of various delays. We worked to redirect these savings in the mid-year supplemental budget so ?ál?al could finish on-time and at full strength. ?ál?al is now open and offering housing, case management, job training, and education in a culturally attuned way to the Native peoples most likely to be impacted by homelessness.

We’re grateful for the just-in-time support we received as we wrapped up construction of ?al?al, a ground-breaking housing development for nearly 100 of our relatives. The $1.7 million from the Seattle City Council brought our construction campaign to a close and allowed us to transform the space into a first-in-the-region culturally-responsive housing development for our chronically homeless relatives.

– Derrick Belgarde, Executive Director, Chief Seattle Club

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Florentia Street Designation

Traffic Safety & Infrastructure

As Seattle has grown many of our inter-neighborhood arterials have taken on a larger concentration of bikers and pedestrians. The result has been a significant increase in car-related fatalities. There are many policies we need to pursue to reach “Vision Zero”, the goal of zero traffic fatalities by 2030, and one of them is reducing speed limits. Slower traffic has many benefits for neighborhood residents, including a correlation with a reduction in traffic-related injuries and fatalities.

Neighbors living on and near North Queen Anne’s Florentia Street have been voicing strong concerns about unsafe traffic conditions for years. A large vibrant neighborhood has grown up around Florentia, making its designation as an arterial problematic. Large segments of the roughly half-mile arterial have incomplete or non-existent sidewalks, and traffic collisions are common as vehicles merge from the numerous neighborhood side-streets.

The first step to improve traffic safety on Florentia is to change its designation from an arterial to a neighborhood street. Nearby 3rd Avenue West and Nickerson Street are better situated to handle large volumes of vehicles around the neighborhoods currently served by Florentia. Its total length of less than half a mile does not serve as a critical lynchpin of regional mobility. By changing designation, we can turn Florentia into a street centering the quality of life of the people who live there.

Changing an arterial designation is a long and cumbersome process, but in 2021 my office took it on. Arterials recognized as such in the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) require a Comp Plan amendment, a process that takes many months. It starts in the spring when proposed changes are “docketed” for environmental review and departmental feedback. This feedback is then incorporated into a full package of Comp Plan changes sent for the Seattle Planning Commission’s final review. Finally, the Council votes to confirm the amendment.

In 2021, my office docketed the amendment and received support from executive departments for the change to go forward. Currently, Florentia’s official designation is expected to change in March of 2022. However, while the law will change, the design of Florentia will not change overnight. My office will fight in 2022 to bring improvements to Florentia, like speed humps, to make sure the new law and the street’s design are in alignment.

"As someone who lives a block away from Florentia, I look forward to having a neighborhood street centering pedestrian safety. After years of organizing Florentia will finally be a place designed around livability for our residents."

- Brittney Bush-Bollay, Former Sierra Club President, Cascade Chapter

"For years, neighbors on Florentia have organized to create a street centering the livability and safety of the community. By removing Florentia's designation as an arterial, we are one step closer to creating a place where we can walk and roll with confidence."

- Mark Ostrow, Board Member, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways

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Dedicated New Funding for Vision Zero

Traffic Safety & Infrastructure

2021 was a deadly year for vehicle collision deaths. As the Seattle Times recently reported, 31 people were killed in car crashes in 2021, including 19 pedestrians. Seattle is dedicated to reaching zero traffic deaths by 2030 through our initiative ‘Vision Zero’, but funding to achieve those goals has been insufficient to make meaningful progress.

Working with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, my office developed an amendment to fund the largest on-going increase in Vision Zero since the Move Seattle Levy in 2015. Vision Zero improves street design and enhances pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure in areas determined by data to pose the most significant risk of collisions. These changes can be as modest as changing road paint schemes to signal vehicles to slow down or as big as grade-separated infrastructure for people walking and rolling.

Engineering of public thoroughfares can be an expensive endeavor, and throughout COVID many important Vision Zero projects have been put on hold. By providing an annual on-going appropriation of $1.2 million, SDOT will have a reliable ongoing stream of funding to make progress on Vision Zero projects. Moreover, since the source is Commercial Parking Tax (CPT) SDOT has the flexibility to propose bonding the stream to build larger and more resource intensive projects.

We still have more to do to realize our Vision Zero goal. My hope is to build on this progress in the 2022 budget so all of our neighbors can safely walk and roll through their neighborhoods in safety.

Tragically, 2021 was the deadliest year in over a decade for people walking, biking, taking transit, and driving to where they need to go in Seattle. The program in charge of keeping people safe on our streets, Vision Zero, has been historically underfunded. But thanks to the leadership of Councilmember Lewis, this program will receive increased permanent funding that will save lives.

- Gordon Padelford, Executive Director, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways

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Increased Funding for Bridge Maintenance and Repair

Traffic Safety & Infrastructure

In 2020, an audit found Seattle significantly underinvests in dedicating resources to repair and replace our bridges. A problem that has been made all the more acute by the overall precarious state of our bridge infrastructure, with 65% rated in ‘fair’ condition and 6% rated ‘poor’. As a city dominated by waterways, hills, and ravines, bridges are essential infrastructure for all modes of transportation. We have to rise to the occasion and fix this maintenance backlog.

Working closely with Councilmembers Herbold and Pedersen, the Council moved forward a joint proposal to approve $100 million in general obligation bonds to shore-up transportation infrastructure, including bridges. In District 7, this includes $5.5. million in infrastructure upgrades to the Magnolia Bridge, $7.3 million in repairs and replacement parts for the 2nd Avenue Extension Bridge, and $5.6 million to replace waterproofing and extensively repair the northern approach to the Ballard Bridge on 15th Avenue West.

Additionally, my office brought forward a successful amendment dedicating an ongoing additional appropriation of $1.2 million for infrastructure maintenance, including bridges. This flexible resource can be mixed and matched with other SDOT funds to make sure critical maintenance needs no longer go unaddressed.

With new federal resources on the way from the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and a possible transportation package in the next session of the legislature, we are poised to make significant progress in 2022 on necessary public infrastructure investments. This bonding package and new dedicated revenue stream are our first-step toward realizing those goals.

Bridges connect Seattle’s communities. District 7 contains the Magnolia Bridge. Its elaborate steel bracing, necessitated by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, is a daily reminder that Seattle has neglected its essential bridges for far too long. These bonds secured by Councilmembers Lewis, Pedersen, and Herbold are a good first-step towards addressing the needs of our bridges with urgency.

- Janis Traven, Trustee, Magnolia Community Council Board of Trustees

This bold proposal provides crucial resources to help Seattle build back better. The revenue from these bonds will create family wage jobs and will help make sure we have the needed infrastructure to keep Seattle connected and moving.

- Monty Anderson, Executive Secretary, Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council

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Entheogenic Substance Resolution

Culture & Community

The United States is having a national conversation around the appropriate legal and regulatory policy for entheogens, a category that includes substances like psilocybin and ayahuasca. At present, these substances remain illegal under state and federal law despite significant scientific evidence of their benefits. Recent medical research has shown entheogens to have promising impacts in the treatment of addiction, depression, PTSD, and other mental health disorders. Laws criminalizing the possession of these substances have posed a significant challenge to making physician supervised therapies more accessible.

Cities and states have been passing laws designed to allow greater access for therapeutic use and research of entheogens. Most dramatically, Oregon passed a statewide ballot measure creating a legal framework for entheogen-based treatments to be prescribed by physicians. Several jurisdictions have passed legislation de-prioritizing enforcement of anti-entheogen laws, including Denver Colorado, Oakland California, and Washington DC, among other cities.

Over the summer and early fall I worked with Decriminalize Nature Seattle (now known as the Psychedelic Medicine Association of Washington) to follow in the footsteps of other cities and pass a resolution making enforcement of anti-entheogen laws the lowest enforcement priority of the Seattle Police Department. The resolution passed unanimously, making Seattle the first city in Washington to support an entheogens policy based in science and public health.

In 2022, my office will work to further codify these changes in an ordinance. It is also my hope the Washington State Legislature will take up this issue in the coming session.

All across America, jurisdictions are recognizing the therapeutic potential of these substances which have long been irrationally criminalized with no scientific justification. This first official action of any government in Washington State to de-emphasize punitive policies and instead support wellness, treatment and research is a major step forward to broadening access to alternative medicines that are effective and safe.

- Tatiana Quintana and Kody Zalewski, Co-Directors, Decriminalize Nature Seattle

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Battery Portal Site Activation

Culture & Community

When the viaduct came down significant new space was unlocked for the public benefit. That has been most dramatically realized at the site of the old Battery Tunnel entrance, an area now known as the Battery Site. With the tunnel and surrounding area filled in and planted with grass, the Battery Site currently presents as a large fenced off grassy slope in the middle of the Belltown neighborhood. No firm plan has been developed for the city-owned site, and prospective long term uses like siting a school, park, or community center are being reviewed, though a decision is not expected for years. In the meantime, the public must be able to enjoy this site via an interim use.

Working closely with the Belltown Community Council, the Downtown Seattle Association, SDOT, and the Seattle Office of the Waterfront, my office put together a proposal to build a community deck at the Battery Site to serve as an interim use. Building a platform over a portion of the site from the 1st Avenue side of the site allows the site itself to remain secure while also offering great views of the city and Mount Rainier. Partnership with the Downtown Seattle Association will create a robust series of programming to make sure the space is a fun and dynamic community hub.

Public assets cannot remain inactive while we wait for the Seattle process to determine their long-term use. My office will continue to work with community members to make sure public land is put to an interim public use for the benefit of the whole city.

Not since the 1883 creation of Denny Park has such a valuable parcel of land become available for public use. Activation of Battery Portal is an exciting first step to develop a healthy green space for the people of our city.

- Jonathan Kiehnau, Board of Trustees, Uplift Northwest

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Climate Amendments to Energy Code

Climate Crisis

Global climate change is the greatest challenge facing human civilization. In the middle of a pandemic, and a state of emergency on homelessness, the acuity of the climate change threat can feel remote. However, as an unprecedented June heatwave reminded us, the climate crisis is real, it is here, and we are running out of time.

While transportation-related emissions make up the largest single portion of Seattle’s carbon footprint, heating buildings is a significant source at approximately 23%. And about 74% of that is from the burning of natural gas. Reaching our climate goal requires taking action on all sources of CO2 emission, and in 2021 we made significant strides toward those goals with big changes to our energy code.

In February of 2021, the Council passed extensive updates to the energy code requiring electric heat pumps and a transition away from natural gas heating systems. This legislation applied only to residential and hotel construction. At the time, I brought an amendment to further extend these energy requirements to new commercial construction. I withdrew the amendment to work with stakeholders on implementation issues unique to commercial construction, and promised to introduce a new bill before the end of the year closing this loophole. By the fall, I was able to sponsor that legislation to expand these energy code changes to new commercial construction.

Together, these two bills from 2021 guarantee that the overwhelming majority of new buildings in Seattle will not be heated with fossil fuels. While we must continue to work to transition existing buildings away from fossil fuel heating, and strive to tackle other sources of CO2 related to buildings like materials and insulation, this is a big step forward to reach our climate goals.

Climate change is the greatest challenge facing our generation, and every city needs to do its part to reduce global emissions. Changing our energy codes to transition away from fossil fuels is a critical step to reduce our carbon footprint.

- Brittney Bush Bollay, Former Sierra Club President, Cascade Chapter

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Councilmember Andrew Lewis' 2020 Annual Report

Below are some of the projects from my first year, including my office's Response to the COVID-19 Emergency, our work on Passing Critical Legislation, and our priorities we Delivered in the Budget.

Issue Problem Solution Testimonial

Hazard Pay for App-Based Delivery Workers

Responding to the COVID-19 Emergency

Demand for app-based food delivery platforms skyrocketed during 2020 due to the frequent suspension of in-person dining, social distancing guidelines, and stay at home orders. Drivers for app-based delivery platforms like Postmates, Uber Eats, and Grubhub experienced an increased workload, increased expenses to frequently clean their vehicles and acquire personal protective equipment, and exposure to contracting COVID-19 when picking up and dropping off deliveries. All for a job that can pay as little as $4.20 an hour.

App-based delivery workers are providing an essential service during the pandemic. They deserve to be compensated fairly for their labor and the hazard they expose themselves to on a daily basis. In response to this need, Councilmember Herbold and I sponsored CB 119799 in the spring to provide much needed hazard pay. The policy mandated an additional $2.50 per-delivery to be in effect until the end of the pandemic. This much needed pay compensates workers for personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies, as well as fair consideration for the hard work these drivers do on a daily basis.

Impact

This ordinance is the first of its kind in the United States and has resulted in thousands of dollars of additional pay for drivers. In September, the Seattle Office of Labor Standards announced a $361,950 settlement with Doordash and Postmates for violations of the ordinance with the entire settlement going directly to the drivers for their labor. To date, companies are complying with the ordinance and it is being strictly enforced. I am proud to have sponsored this legislation and I hope other cities follow Seattle’s lead.

"The coronavirus pandemic has been a boom for Instacart, DoorDash and the rest of these companies, but the people who do the work are seeing low pay, high risk, and few safety protections. Thank you to Councilmember Lewis and the Seattle City Council for making these multi-billion-dollar apps pay up by passing the first hazard pay law for any worker in the country during 2020. It’s about time essential delivery workers got hazard pay for their essential work during this crisis."

- Rachel Lauter, Executive Director of Working Washington and Fair Work Center.

"I have two young children, a five-year-old and a 7-month-old. It’s very difficult to care for my family on the income from gig work — before the crisis, even on a good week, I couldn't even bring in $600. Some of the companies I work for, like Grubhub, haven't even sent over any PPE. Gig workers need hazard pay because we are on the front lines. Especially here in Seattle, our risk of exposure is incredibly high,"

- Vita Haygood, a worker for Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart.

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Suspending ‘Personal Guarantees’ from Commercial Leases

Responding to the COVID-19 Emergency

The pandemic has been devastating for small businesses, especially small restaurants, all over Seattle. Throughout the spring I heard from many small business owners that commercial landlords were inflexibly refusing to allow rent payment plans, and in some cases threatened to invoke a personal guarantee clause. For those who are unfamiliar, a personal guarantee clause is a provision in a lease making someone personally responsible to cover rent if their business is unable to. This can devastatingly result in people losing their home and savings in addition to their business.

That is why I joined with the Washington Restaurant Alliance to sponsor CB 119829 under the City’s emergency powers and suspend personal guarantees for the pendency of the pandemic. Based on a similar policy passed in New York City, This ordinance gives small business owners the ability to walk away from their lease and avoid the personal guarantee clause being invoked. As a result, small business owners can gain new leverage to compel commercial landlords to renegotiate lease terms or enter payment plans. I am proud to stand with the small business owners of District 7 and provide this essential tool to level the playing field and provide peace of mind. Check out this great write-up by Gabe Guarente in Seattle Eater to learn more.

In a year of incredible stress for restaurants battered by the pandemic, suspending enforcement of the personal guarantee for commercial leases helped reduce the stress an owner could lose personal assets as a result of the businesses’ inability to pay its bills due to the loss of revenue from the pandemic. While many landlords were flexible and worked with restaurants on terms, this legislation provides an important tool in those limited situations where landlords are inflexible.

- Linda Di Lello Morton, Seattle Restaurant Alliance President.

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Puget Sound Labor Agency (PSLA) Relocation

Responding to the COVID-19 Emergency

Since 1974, the Puget Sound Labor Agency (PSLA) food bank has served Belltown and surrounding neighborhoods. Over 400 District 7 residents currently receive some level of food assistance from PSLA every week, and to date PSLA has served more than 53,000 community members. Tragically, PSLA is going to be displaced in early 2021 by the relocation of the Labor Temple, where it is currently housed.

We need to come together to keep this vital lifeline in District 7. That is why I introduced a statement of legislative intent into the 2021 budget requesting that the Department of Finance and Administrative Services find a suitable City-owned site near PSLA’s current location so they can continue their good work. Throughout 2021 I will work closely with PSLA, community leaders, and City officials to find PSLA a new home.

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Loitering Ordinances Repeal

Passing Critical Legislation

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder 2020 saw a national reckoning on the deep inequities in our criminal legal system. After decades of American policy emphasizing overcriminalization and mass incarceration a new national movement is demanding public health investments, the alleviation of poverty, and addressing deep racial bias in law enforcement.

Seattle is no exception to problematic crimes on the books. That is why Councilmembers Pedersen, Morales and I introduced CB 119808 to repeal the prostitution loitering ordinance, and Councilmember Morales and I introduced CB 119807 to repeal the drug traffic loitering ordinance. To be clear, these repeals did not legalize prostitution or drug trafficking. Those are separate criminal codes in State law that are still in force. Rather, these loitering ordinances criminalized the act of looking like you might be engaged in prostitution or drug traffic loitering. For example, standing on a corner wearing revealing clothing could be enough probable cause for prostitution loitering, while wearing a hoody could be enough for drug traffic loitering. As you can imagine, the broadness of those laws easily led to pretextual stops by police and significant racially disproportionate enforcement.

"These laws were used to unjustly exclude young people and people of color from public spaces just because of the way they looked. Repealing them shows we are committed to building a new City based on community and social justice."

-Dominique Davis, Executive Director of Community Passageways

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Updating Emergency Enforcement Provisions

Passing Critical Legislation

The Seattle City Council moved quickly to provide relief for workers and protections for small businesses and renters. Temporary regulations on evictions, caps on delivery fees for restaurant owners, and hazard pay for gig economy workers just to name a few. However, these rules are only as good as our ability to enforce them. When a small business owner still being charged excessive delivery fees contacted my office for help I consulted the Municipal Code enforcement provisions. I was shocked by how outdated and unhelpful it was.

At the beginning of the pandemic the only possible sanction for violating an emergency order was a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and/or a $500 fine. There was no provision for assessing a civil infraction or a private right of action for a business owner to sue to a vendor for violating an order. An app-based delivery service continuing to charge pass through fees in excess of an emergency order cannot be jailed for failing to comply with the policy, nor is a $500 fine sufficient deterrence for a corporate actor to think twice about violating a City order. The Code had to be updated to be effective.

This summer I introduced and passed CB 119869, adding a private right of action and making the violation of an emergency order a civil infraction in addition to a criminal violation. Under this new ordinance small businesses can band together or sue separately if vendors violate an emergency order to their detriment. The City can also assess fines under the civil infraction per-violation to hold big companies accountable. This ordinance marks the first update to our emergency power enforcement section since the 1970s. I hope it will ensure security and protection for our small business owners and residents in times of civil emergency for years to come.

Rights for small businesses are only as good as their enforcement. This legislation put forward by Councilmember Lewis will make sure there are consequences when large corporations try to take advantage of the little guy.

- Rick McLaughlin, owner, Big Time Brewery

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Streamlining and Expediting Permanent Supportive Housing

Passing Critical Legislation

No issue looms larger in Seattle than the horribly inadequate supply of housing for our neighbors experiencing homeless. It is a disgraceful scar of shame that in one of the world’s wealthiest cities thousands of residents are forced to seek shelter in tents and RVs, doorways of businesses, and under bridges. It does not have to be that way. There is nothing inevitable about chronic homelessness and nothing inherently unsolvable about providing all our neighbors a place to live.

Throughout 2020 I worked closely with a coalition of small business owners and service providers called the Third Door Coalition to scale the best practice response to chronic homelessness, permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH is the merging of housing units with onsite services, including treatment for substance addiction and mental health. 97% of residents placed in PSH maintain housing and do not return to a state of chronic homelessness. Scaling PSH is how Bergen County New Jersey, Salt Lake City Utah, and Helsinki Finland have significantly reduced chronic homelessness.

While PSH is one-third the cost of jail, and a whole year of PSH costs the same as three days in a hospital, it is still expensive. It costs $331,953 per-unit to build PSH, and while a lot of that cost is attributable to the materials and labor necessary for the build, a lot of it is due to regulations and red tape firmly within the City’s ability to waive. Homelessness is an emergency. We need to do everything in our power to expedite and expand PSH.

In December of 2020 I introduced CB 119975 to waive several significant cost drivers for PSH, including design review, unnecessary on-site bike storage, and broad administrative powers for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) to grant waivers and modifications, among other reforms. Together, Third Door Coalition estimates these changes could lower per-unit costs of PSH from $331,953 to $284,200, a savings of $47,753. Since PSH is almost entirely financed with taxpayer money this bill will allow us to stretch public resources to greater social benefit.

CB 119975 was heard in the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments in December of 2020, and it is my hope the bill will reach final passage in the first quarter of 2021. I look forward to following-up on this critical legislation to significantly scale PSH throughout 2021 to meet the homelessness emergency.

CM Lewis has led a very inclusive and efficient process putting together important legislation that will meaningfully reduce time and cost impacts during the development of Permanent Supportive Housing. We appreciated that CM Lewis developed the details of this legislation by listening to and incorporating experiential knowledge from the organizations doing this work, including Plymouth Housing and other service providers along with the Third Door Coalition. We’re thankful to CM Lewis for taking this step to ensure that more housing can be brought online quickly and efficiently to meet the needs of the many individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in our community.

– Paul Lambros, Chief Executive Officer, Plymouth Housing

I have appreciated the thoughtful and accessible approach Councilmember Lewis takes to governing. His data-driven focus on finding a solution to chronic homelessness in our region, coupled with his sense of urgency to immediately stand up additional shelter options for people living in encampments, are the qualities we need to end the crisis of people living unsheltered in our city.

- Matt Galvin, owner of Pagliacci Pizza and Macrina Bakery and co-founder of Third Door Coalition

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A New System for Homelessness Outreach

Passing Critical Legislation

November 2, 2020 marked five years since a state of emergency on homelessness was declared by then Mayor Ed Murray. While only housing, transitional shelter, and services can truly provide people a safe place to stay and end homelessness, outreach is the first critical step. For the last several years that outreach came from the controversial Navigation Team, an integrated unit of outreach workers and police officers housed within the Human Services Department (HSD). In 2020 the City Council and the Mayor collaboratively created a successor entity called the Homelessness Outreach and Provider Ecosystem, or the HOPE Team.

The Navigation Team was not a law enforcement unit. Their mission was to provide outreach to unsanctioned encampments and conduct removals of encampments under certain circumstances. Given their outreach role the presence of police in the unit was controversial from the beginning. A 2017 report from the Seattle City Auditor cited studies indicating high prevalence of distrust between homeless individuals and outreach workers in jurisdictions using officers for outreach, and local outreach providers frequently criticized the practice as hampering their efforts.

To incorporate recommendations from outreach providers and the Auditor, the Council and Mayor agreed to consolidate non-profit provider outreach and City resources in one combined team. Under this arrangement, City employees themselves would no longer conduct outreach. Rather, contracted outreach providers, already the majority of all outreach, will be the primary on-the-ground point of contact, while City employees in HSD will coordinate the delivery of essential City services, like garbage pickup, mental health and addiction treatment, and access to shelter.

Originally called the Unsheltered Outreach and Response Team, this new approach to outreach was created by my bill CB 119942 which passed with only Councilmember Kshama Sawant dissenting. Several weeks later this team was renewed for 2021 with additional resources and renamed the HOPE Team in budget legislation put forward by my colleague Councilmember Morales. The HOPE Team will lead with engagement and sync together the expertise of outreach workers and City resources. This new outreach strategy will be critical as we go into another challenging year to grapple with the state of emergency on homelessness.

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Performance Auditing

Passing Critical Legislation

One of the biggest responsibilities the Seattle City Council has is oversight of executive departments, and one of our strongest tools to effectuate that oversight is performance auditing. Performance audits compare our current programs to national best practices, evaluate performance metrics, and confirm outcomes; be they positive or negative. Put simply, auditing helps us determine whether the government is working or not, and whether taxpayer money is being wasted or not. Before I was a candidate I wrote an editorial about how our auditing systems could be improved, and one of my first acts on the Council was convening a committee of experts to come up with recommendations to do just that.

The very first piece of legislation I prime sponsored, Resolution 31941, created the Committee on Performance Auditing to provide a set of recommendations to beef up our performance auditing practices. The Working Group is composed of former auditors, academics, and community leaders with a deadline to submit recommendations in time for the Council’s 2021 budget deliberations. You can learn more about the committee here.

Legislating is not just about creating important new policies and programs. It also entails follow-up and oversight to make sure relief gets to the people who need it on time and on budget. My hope is that in next year’s annual report we will be able to report the creation of a municipal auditing system that is second to none.

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Saving the Night Mayor

Delivering in the Budget

From the Crocodile to the Showbox District 7 has some of Seattle’s most iconic nightlife venues. A city does not become a music capital overnight, but that status can ebb away if live performance venues and nightlife businesses are not supported. In 2012, Amsterdam created a city official colloquially referred to as the nachtburgemeester, Dutch for “night mayor,” to serve as a resource and point-of-contact for nightlife businesses. In 2015 Seattle followed Amsterdam’s lead, creating our own night mayor, the “nightlife business advocate.”

The nightlife business advocate, commonly referred to as the night mayor, helps Seattle’s nightlife institutions comply with municipal codes, secure permits, and troubleshoot with state regulators to maintain compliance. The position was cut in the initial budget putting the recovery of an industry that was the first to close, and will be the last to reopen, at risk.

With the strong support of the Washington Nightlife Music Association, my office proposed an amendment to restore the position and support our nightlife businesses. I am very proud that the amendment passed and this critical service will be maintained for these valuable cultural spaces. You can read more about the proposal in this article by Publicola’s Josh Feit.

The Washington Nightlife and Music Association (WANMA) thanks Councilmember Lewis for his quick action to save the Nightlife Business Advocate (the “Night Mayor”) position for the 2021 budget. When Seattle’s Nightlife community learned that the proposed budget cut the sector’s much-needed Night Mayor position, WANMA contacted CM Lewis to raise the alarm. The Night Mayor assists over 100 venues with business and policy issues and has over 250 Nightlife stakeholders. These businesses employ thousands of people who are anxiously waiting to return to the work they love. Our sector has tremendous pressure under normal circumstances and has been devastated by the pandemic. CM Lewis immediately recognized that our sector’s long-term recovery plan needed to include the Night Mayor. In conversation with CM Lewis’s office, WANMA provided historical context for the position and testimony from venue owners and workers, and CM Lewis’s office explained the budget process while he filed a request to restore the position in the budget and worked to get Council co-sponsors. Working together, we were successful in restoring the Night Mayor position for 2021. We are so grateful for CM Lewis’s support for our Nightlife sector.

- Shannon Welles, the Washington Nightlife Music Association

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Nurse for Fire Department Dispatch

Delivering in the Budget

The Seattle Fire Department (SFD) responded to 91,716 calls for service in 2019, 62% for basic life support. SFD medic units respond to an average of 7.4 aid calls a day, sometimes for very minor injuries or complaints not requiring an emergency response. When 911 is called the brave firefighters of SFD have to respond and render aid. For efficient deployment of resources, and firefighter wellness, we owe our firefighters the commitment to not dispatch them unless absolutely necessary.

During my mom’s career as a nurse she served for a time as a telephonic consulting nurse, allowing patients to call in with complaints for over the phone diagnosis and care recommendations. This critical service can help resolve calls for assistance without the dispatch of firefighters to the scene.

My office sponsored a budget amendment to fund a consulting nurse for the SFD Dispatch. Firefighter dispatchers will have the option to forward a call to a dedicated consulting nurse. This program will help prioritize emergency response resources for higher severity calls while potentially reducing the total calls for service aid units need to respond to in a given day. I am proud to stand with our firefighters and look forward to getting this new service online in 2021.

Our job is to make sure we send the right person to respond to emergencies. Sometimes, that right person is a professional nurse providing critical services over the phone. Implementing this service strategy in Seattle has the potential to save countless service hours, get people the help they need, and build a stronger Fire Department

- Chief Harold Scoggins, Seattle Fire Department

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Thomas Street

Delivering in the Budget

2020 saw many critical infrastructure projects put on the shelf, or cut entirely, due to the COVID induced recession and resulting severe budget constraints. One project on the cutting block was the Thomas Street redesign, a critical east-west bike and pedestrian corridor connecting South Lake Union, the Seattle Center Campus, and Uptown

This critical investment will stitch together some of Seattle’s most vibrant neighborhoods, support vibrant space for festivals, and serve as a pedestrian thoroughfare for hockey fans to visit a newly renovated Climate Pledge Arena. I cannot wait to use this new public amenity as a District 7 resident.

Uptown Alliance identified the Thomas Street Redesign project as our top transportation priority in 2020 as COVID-19 budget impacts threatened to derail the project. Councilmember Lewis quickly stepped in to provide critical budget support. As a result planning continues full steam ahead to provide a regionally important pedestrian and bicycle link to Seattle Center, particularly as the Center and especially the Climate Pledge Arena begin to open up later this year. THANK YOU ANDREW!!

- Rick Hooper, Uptown Alliance

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Home and Hope

Delivering in the Budget

Affordable housing and easy access to early learning centers are two of the biggest problems facing Seattle. The Home and Hope initiative convened by Enterprise Community Partners seeks to tackle both problems at the same time by developing affordable housing and early learning on underutilized public land. By building coalitions between the City, non-profits, and state and regional governments we can create the kind of multi use community spaces essential for a vibrant city. One need look no further than Plaza Roberto Maestas in Beacon Hill where 112 affordable housing units, 25,000 square feet of commercial space, and an early learning center all exist co-located. This project was made possible by the convening power of Home and Hope.

To keep this essential program going, I sponsored a budget amendment restoring City support for Home and Hope. Our small annual investment in this critical collaborative program has led to the acquisition of dozens of public sites for housing. In June of 2020 I voted along with my colleagues to acquire the old UW laundry building in the Rainier Valley, a site which was identified through the Home and Hope initiative.

Impact

This site alone will eventually host 450 affordable housing units. By working together and identifying growth opportunities from public lands we can build a more equitable future in Seattle.

Andrew Lewis is an invaluable leader who’s taking real action on the homelessness and affordable housing crisis in Seattle. His steadfast work to secure support for the Home & Hope program led to new revenue sources for affordable housing, created innovative solutions to utilize public properties, and catalyzed the expansion of Tiny Home Villages. Andrew Lewis is the partner Seattle needs in the fight to combat homelessness and expand affordable housing for all.

- Representative Frank Chopp (D-43)

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Clean City Initiative

Delivering in the Budget

Everybody deserves to live in a clean city, and maintaining public cleanliness is a fundamental service of municipal government. During COVID additional strain has been put on the City’s trash removal services and garbage has accumulated in a lot of our public spaces.

That is why I sponsored a budget amendment for a large supplemental investment of $2.38 million to clean up our parks and public spaces. Dubbed the Clean Cities Initiative, this investment will support supplemental litter removal for our neighborhoods, grants to business improvement districts to supplement their clean city programs, an expansion of our purple bag program to extend trash removal services to homeless encampments, and additional service hours for park cleaning crews.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted Pioneer Square in ways we never imagined. Basic city services like cleaning and trash pickup have become a challenge throughout the city. Through the Clean Cities Initiative, Councilmember Lewis has demonstrated his commitment to partner with the neighborhoods to address this challenge. This program will help meet the critical needs of our district and ensure Pioneer Square is welcoming to all.

- Alliance for Pioneer Square Executive Director Lisa Dixon Howard

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Vehicle License Fee and Bridges

Delivering in the Budget

One of Seattle’s biggest infrastructure challenges is the deteriorating state of our bridges. 2020 made this problem all the more real by the incredibly disruptive failure of the West Seattle Bridge, a warning sign of things to come if we do not act boldly. An audit requested by my colleague Councilmember Pedersen found we should be investing $34 million a year on bridge maintenance, way more than the $6.6 million a year Seattle currently invests. 5 of the City’s bridges are in “poor” condition according to the audit, including District 7’s Magnolia Bridge, while 50 are in the intermediate category of “fair” condition. The fair condition bridges of today are the poor condition bridges of tomorrow unless we act boldly to maintain them. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and as the West Seattle Bridge saga has shown we will have to pay for these failures eventually.

I proudly joined with my colleagues Councilmembers Pedersen and Herbold to co-sponsor CB 119951. This proposal will raise $3.6 million for transportation projects in 2021, and $7.2 million for every year thereafter by assessing a new $20 increase in vehicle tabs. While Councilmembers Pedersen, Herbold, Juarez, and I voted to commit all of this money to bridge maintenance, the Council majority voted instead to first hold a stakeholder process to report back in the first quarter of 2021 with recommendations. I strongly believe this revenue source should be invested in maintaining our critical bridges, and look forward to advocating that path forward when this issue is revisited in 2021.

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Funding for the YouthCare Shelter

Delivering in the Budget

One of the countless organizations doing remarkable work during the COVID crisis is YouthCare, a service provider focused on ending youth homelessness. When the pandemic hit, YouthCare pivoted their shelter system to a 24/7 model to make sure young people were not forced onto the street and put at higher risk of contracting the virus. These facilities include the University District Youth Center, ROOTS Young Adult Shelter, the Orion Center, and YouthCare’s South Seattle Shelter.

While funding had been secured to allow these facilities to remain open 24/7 in 2020, the length of the pandemic emergency required more support to keep them going for 2021. To keep this vital service going I sponsored a budget amendment providing the funding which my colleagues unanimously passed.

Impact

Failure to bridge the gap would have led to 70 young adults living on the streets, likely in unsanctioned encampments. You can learn more about YouthCare and the great work they are doing at this link.

We are deeply grateful for Councilmember Lewis's leadership and commitment to young people experiencing homelessness. When YouthCare recently faced a situation that would have created a gap in services for youth experiencing homeless during the pandemic, Councilmember Lewis and his staff sprang into action, immediately working with us to find a solution and keep young people safe. We appreciate his steadfast dedication and responsiveness to the needs of his community.

- YouthCare Executive Director Melinda Giovengo

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Councilmember Andrew Lewis' 2020 Annual Report

Below are some of the projects from my first year, including my office's Response to the COVID-19 Emergency, our work on Passing Critical Legislation, and our priorities we Delivered in the Budget.

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This site alone will eventually host 450 affordable housing units. By working together and identifying growth opportunities from public lands we can build a more equitable future in Seattle.

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