12/31/2020 Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65 Million to Community Organizations Through the Equitable Development Initiative
https://dailyplanit.seattle.gov/mayor-durkan-announces-5-65-million-to-community-organizations-through-the-equitable-development-initiative/ 1/4
Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65
Million to Community
Organizations Through the
Equitable Development Initiative
November 10, 2020 by Seattle OPCD
EDI organizations have secured more than $105 million in City-funded dollars since 2017
– Mayor signs property transfer to community ownership for Central Area Senior Center,
99-year lease for Fire Station 6
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced nearly $6 million in awards through the Equitable
Development Initiative (EDI), part of the City’s effort to support Seattle’s existing
residents and businesses in high displacement risk neighborhoods. The City awarded $4.4
million to community organizations for site acquisition and major capital projects and
another $1.25 million is intended to provide capacity-building support to existing EDI
partners providing services during the current pandemic and economic crisis. The
awards to organizations led by and serving people of color will be used for organizational
capacity building, property acquisition, and capital expenses. In addition to
the $36 million in EDI funds awarded, these community-based organizations leveraged
that amount to more than $105 million in City-funded dollars since 2017.
“To tackle the challenges of displacement, our City is investing in community-based
organizations who are leading the way to empower
and strengthen underserved communities and create economic vitality. The Economic
Development Initiative has a strong record of creating the newest homes for our City’s
residents, non-profits, and local small businesses through leveraging other city
programs,“ said Mayor Durkan. “One of my most important priorities in this budget was
to transform how the City invests in communities of color by centering the experiences of
Black and Indigenous communities. Even in this difficult year, my budget set aside
historic resources to meet the challenges of this moment and move us toward being the
city we want to be when we come out of this crisis: stronger, more just, and more
equitable.”
The EDI fund, administered by the Office of Planning and Community
Development (OPCD), was created to respond to the needs of marginalized populations,
reduce disparities, and support access to opportunity in healthy, vibrant communities. The
initiative is championed by community organizations concerned about displacement
pressures and historical lack of investment that has occurred in communities of color in
Seattle. Mayor Durkan proposed a sustained funding source for the program in 2019.
“By hosting this important event we honor the priorities of our community members and
the hard work they are doing to create the kinds of neighborhoods they want,”
said Councilmember Tammy Morales, District 2. “In t ...
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12312020 Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65 Million to Community O
1. 12/31/2020 Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65 Million to
Community Organizations Through the Equitable Development
Initiative
https://dailyplanit.seattle.gov/mayor-durkan-announces-5-65-
million-to-community-organizations-through-the-equitable-
development-initiative/ 1/4
Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65
Million to Community
Organizations Through the
Equitable Development Initiative
November 10, 2020 by Seattle OPCD
EDI organizations have secured more than $105 million in City-
funded dollars since 2017
– Mayor signs property transfer to community ownership for
Central Area Senior Center,
99-year lease for Fire Station 6
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced nearly $6 million in awards
through the Equitable
Development Initiative (EDI), part of the City’s effort to
support Seattle’s existing
residents and businesses in high displacement risk
neighborhoods. The City awarded $4.4
million to community organizations for site acquisition and
major capital projects and
another $1.25 million is intended to provide capacity-building
support to existing EDI
partners providing services during the current pandemic and
economic crisis. The
2. awards to organizations led by and serving people of color will
be used for organizational
capacity building, property acquisition, and capital expenses. In
addition to
the $36 million in EDI funds awarded, these community-
based organizations leveraged
that amount to more than $105 million in City-funded dollars
since 2017.
“To tackle the challenges of displacement, our City is investing
in community-based
organizations who are leading the way to empower
and strengthen underserved communities and create economic
vitality. The Economic
Development Initiative has a strong record of creating the
newest homes for our City’s
residents, non-profits, and local small businesses through
leveraging other city
programs,“ said Mayor Durkan. “One of my most important
priorities in this budget was
to transform how the City invests in communities of color by
centering the experiences of
Black and Indigenous communities. Even in this difficult year,
my budget set aside
historic resources to meet the challenges of this moment and
move us toward being the
city we want to be when we come out of this crisis: stronger,
more just, and more
equitable.”
The EDI fund, administered by the Office of Planning and
Community
Development (OPCD), was created to respond to the needs of
marginalized populations,
reduce disparities, and support access to opportunity in healthy,
vibrant communities. The
3. initiative is championed by community organizations concerned
about displacement
pressures and historical lack of investment that has occurred in
communities of color in
Seattle. Mayor Durkan proposed a sustained funding source for
the program in 2019.
“By hosting this important event we honor the priorities of our
community members and
the hard work they are doing to create the kinds of
neighborhoods they want,”
said Councilmember Tammy Morales, District 2. “In this
environment especially, when
Seattle is working on anti-displacement strategies and
responding to the economic impacts
of COVID-19, the nearly $6 million being awarded today will
launch the kind of changes
sought by organizations led by and for Black and Brown
communities in neighborhoods
like mine that are at high risk of displacement. I am proud of all
the recipients today. I am
especially grateful for the work of the Rainier Valley Midwives
providing culturally
relevant, holistic pregnancy care to a community with high
infant mortality rates. Our
community deserves medical care that centers their life
experiences and celebrates their
humanity. I’m excited that the Central Area Senior Center
finally has control of their
building so they can make the facility and grounds
improvements they’ve been planning
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for so long. And I’m especially thrilled that a worn out building
can be repurposed to
make way for the development of the Food Innovation Center,
which will create a
healthy food industry in Rainier Beach, create job opportunities,
and serve as a catalyst in
a neighborhood that needs it most.”
“We are so grateful to receive $1 million from the Equitable
Development Initiative,” said
Tara Lawal of Rainier Valley Midwives. “It is giving us the
momentum to build a
community Birth Center of our dreams. Thank you for believing
in us and supporting our
vision to provide equitable healthcare in South Seattle.”
EDI fosters community leadership and supports organizations to
promote equitable access
to jobs, education and childcare, outdoor space and recreation,
cultural expression, healthy
food, and other community needs and amenities. These
partnerships are designed to
support leadership and build capacity building among the most
historically marginalized
groups in Seattle, sharing in decision-making and power, and
working towards racial
equity outcomes that allows all communities to thrive.
An interim board of community members provided
recommendations to the City on the
funding decisions announced today. The City is seeking
representatives for a new
permanent EDI Advisory Board grounded in
community to provide ongoing guidance
7. for the initiative and provide input on future funding
decisions. Applications are currently
being accepted through Nov. 30, 2020.
“When community members advocated for the creation of EDI,
it was with the intention
of creating collaboration between community-initiated projects
and the City to respond to
historical injustices and increase community-ownership,”
said Ubax Gardheere, EDI
division manager. “The transfer of these properties and EDI
investments are all important
contributions towards creating a more equitable City.”
Along with today’s award announcement, Mayor Durkan signed
her ordinances, approved
unanimously be the Seattle City Council, that transfers City
property to Black-led
community organizations in the Central District. The two
ordinances permanently transfer
the Central Area Senior Center (CASC) to community
ownership and establish a 99-year
lease with Africatown Community Land Trust (ACLT) for Fire
Station 6, an EDI award
recipient. These property transfers build on the September
transfer to Byrd Barr Place,
another Black-led advocacy organization.
“In recent months, the City has proposed and passed the transfer
of Black-led
organizations including Byrd Barr Place, the Central Area
Senior Center, and Fire Station
6 back to community. In recent weeks, the Sound
Transit Board moved forward on transferring ten surplus
properties in Rainier Valley to
the City of Seattle at no cost, for 150 new affordable
8. homes. Our City must make real on
the promise of bold investments in the Black community and
increasing community
ownership of land. These places and organizations will uplift
and support the Black
community for decades to come,” concluded Mayor Durkan.
Fire Station 6 will be the future home of the William Grose
Center for Cultural
Innovation (WGC), where ACLT will provide small business
assistance, skills training and
celebrate Black/African American culture and history in the
Central Area. The City
has committed $1 million from the EDI fund for tenant
improvements to Fire Station 6. As
a valued community partner, Africatown Community Land
Trust has received $15.5 million in city funding, since 2017.
“The proposed lease and reuse of Fire Station 6 as the WGC
would directly carry and
contribute to the EDI Wealth Building strategies and the
accompanying EDI are critical to
showing us a path forward, that our communities have solutions
and that a more equitable
Seattle is possible,” said Wyking Garrett, president and CEO of
Africatown Community
Land Trust.
CASC has served Central Area seniors since 1972, when it was
founded as a nonprofit
volunteer-supported organization. In 1975, the City purchased a
facility in the Central Area
where CASC continues to provide health and wellness,
counseling, transportation, and meal
services.
9. “CASC is ready, and eager to accept the transfer of the property
to the community. The
gentrification of the Central District and the movement of Black
people out of Seattle has
been quite evident within the City limits. However, there
remains a core of institutions
https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=1bc9f8a0-45799aa7-
1bc9d010-867c6b071c6f-ace53f63dc7cbe59&q=1&e=aa8194b8-
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egory%2Faction-areas%2Fgrowing-food-to-develop-healthy-
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mmissionsOpenings/EDI-Advisory-Board-Recruitment-
Announcement10.30.20pt.pdf
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rg%2F
12/31/2020 Mayor Durkan Announces $5.65 Million to
Community Organizations Through the Equitable Development
Initiative
https://dailyplanit.seattle.gov/mayor-durkan-announces-5-65-
million-to-community-organizations-through-the-equitable-
development-initiative/ 3/4
that Black people and those who are now seniors, travel far and
wide to reach. CASC is
one of these locations. It is a place of historical importance,”
10. said Dian Ferguson,
Executive Director of CASC. “We applaud Mayor Durkan for
setting the stage for the
transfer of this property to its rightful 50-year community-based
partner. It advances a
collective mission to move from business as usual to achieving
real outcomes focused on
equity with no strings attached to the seniors of our community
and its African American
founders.”
The following community-based
organizations currently working with EDI on anti-
displacement strategies and economic development
opportunities will
receive awards from the $4.4 million for site acquisition and
major capital projects in
2020:
Africatown Midtown Plaza — $640,000
Africatown will create between 5,000 and 8000 sq ft
of affordable commercial space for
Black-owned businesses in Midtown Plaza. The project also
includes 130 affordable
homes and art that reflects the African-American heritage of the
neighborhood.
Byrd Barr Place — $500,000
Byrd Barr Place has been operating out of the City’s surplus
Fire Station 23. The
City transferred ownership of the property to the organization in
September and
the additional funds will support improvements to the building.
Completion of this project
would renovate the 100+ year old building to meet
11. contemporary ADA and environmental
standards, allowing BBP to expand the services it provides.
Chief Seattle Club — $500,000
The Chief Seattle Club is renovating the Monterey Lofts above
their current facility
and adjacent to the site of their new facility. It is designed to
support the physical, cultural,
and spiritual needs of the American Indian and Alaska Native
community, with
indigenous designs, 80 affordable homes, services, health clinic,
and a café/art gallery
space in Pioneer Square.
Ethiopian Community in Seattle —$750,000
The Ethiopian Community in Seattle is redeveloping its existing
community center to
include 100 affordable homes, childcare, and commercial
space. The awarded funds will
be used to to finance construction expected to break ground
next year.
Multicultural Community Coalition — $842,000
The Multicultural Community Coalition (MCC) will anchor
several community
organizations serving Seattle’s growing immigrant, refugee and
people of color
communities by creating a community-owned and operated co-
working space and an
essential Cultural Innovation Center (CIC). The CIC is
envisioned as a vital heritage and
cultural arts venue which will house year-round, cultural events
and activities as well as
serving as a Creative Economy space in which artists, cultural
12. nonprofits, and creative
small businesses will produce and distribute cultural goods and
services that generate
jobs, revenue, and quality of life.
Rainier Valley Midwives — $1 million
Rainier Valley Midwives has been operating out of a temporary
location in the Rainier
Valley Community Clinic that is becoming untenable due to
escalating rents. The
organization is working to acquire and build a permanent Birth
Center in the Rainier
Valley that will provide wrap-around services before, during,
and after the birth process to
people of color.
Wing Luke Museum — $168,000
The Wing is seeking to preserve the Homestead Home one block
south of the Museum
and to activate and develop its adjacent parking lot. This home
is the most intact
remaining single-family home in the Chinatown-International
District, constructed in
1937 despite the Chinese Exclusion Act and discriminatory
barriers to single family
homes in the neighborhood. On the lot, the Wing intends to
build 60 affordable
apartments above a street-level community gathering space.
The following existing EDI partners will receive new capacity-
building awards of up to
$75,000 in 2020: Black & Tan Hall, Byrd Barr Place, Central
Area Youth Association,
Cham Refugees Communities, Chief Seattle Club, Duwamish
Tribal Services, Duwamish
14. Valley Affordable Housing Coalition, Lake City Collective,
Friends of Little Saigon,
Queer the Land, Rainier Valley Midwives, Rainier Beach
Action Coalition, HomeSight,
United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, Urban Black LLC,
West African Community
Council, and Wing Luke Museum.
Additional awards to new EDI partners will be announced later
this fall, including
organizations that are supporting communities of color and
small businesses responding to
the devastating economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19
global pandemic.
Since November 2016, OPCD and partner departments,
including Office of Economic
Development (OED), Office of Housing (OH), Department of
Neighborhoods (DON), Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS), and
Office for Civil
Rights (OCR), have coordinated the administration of the EDI
Fund.
Projects were evaluated on their ability to positively impact
several equity drivers, that
lead to racial equity outcomes including:
Promoting economic opportunity through education, job
training, and enhancing
community cultural anchors.
Helping marginalized populations, businesses, and community
organizations stay in
their neighborhoods.
Enhancing health outcomes, access to healthy, culturally
relevant food, and
17. recommendations
from a working group revising the policies controlling when
officers can use force. The department rejected 150 other
recommendations
from the group. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
•
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12/31/2020 Chicago Police Reject Recommendations On Use Of
Force | WBEZ Chicago
https://www.wbez.org/amp/stories/cpd-largely-ignores-
community-recommendations-on-when-officers-can-shoot-taze-
or-use-other-force/ae115240-8fbf-4da0-8ced-7… 2/6
Chicago Police patrolling a protest this past summer. On
Wednesday the department announced it would accept five
recommendations from a working group
revising the policies controlling when officers can use force.
The department rejected 150 other recommendations from the
group. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
Criminal Justice
CPD Largely Ignores Community Recommendations On When
Officers Can
Shoot, Taze Or Use Other Force
18. By Patrick Smith
Oct. 14, 8 p.m. CT Updated 9:10 p.m. CT
The Chicago Police Department is accepting five proposed
changes to its use of
force policies, out of a total of 155 changes recommended by a
community
working group that met weekly for months to help update the
department’s rules
on when and how officers can shoot their guns, deploy tasers or
use their batons.
The use of force working group consisted of 34 members,
including activists, civil
rights leaders and politicians. They met for three hours every
week since June. It
was part of an effort by the department to increase community
participation in
policymaking, as required by the court-enforced police reform
plan known as a
consent decree.
Now, members of the working group are calling the entire
process a “sham.”
Working group member Amika Tendaji, who is an organizer
with Black Lives
Matter Chicago, called the department’s adoption of just five
recommendations,
“ridiculous.”
“I am in no way satisfied,” Tendaji said. “The spirit of what the
working group
tried to come up with is that police should have a stronger duty
than the average
Chicagoan to not hurt people, to not shoot people and to not
19. beat people.”
Tendaji said the five recommendations that were accepted do
not “at all” live up
to that spirit.
•
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https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press
_releases/2020/june/WorkingGroupUseOfForce.html
12/31/2020 Chicago Police Reject Recommendations On Use Of
Force | WBEZ Chicago
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The changes accepted by CPD’s “executive steering committee”
which is made up
of the most senior leadership at the Police Department, are
largely technical in
nature, and focus on the language used in the policy, like adding
a definition for
the “sanctity of life,” a term that was already included in the
existing force policy.
The steering committee also agreed to change the word
“subject” to “person” in
the use of force policy.
20. Chicago Police Department Deputy Chief Ernest Cato said these
changes to the
language were important, and would send clear messages to
officers.
“You’re taking the word subject out and you’re making it a
person. We’re now
humanizing that individual, who you’re encountering … so I
think that’s huge,”
Cato, co-chair of the working group, said. “Now, when every
police officer has to
write a report, they’re going to say that person, not … that
subject, but that
person, that human being.”
As an example of the kind of changes that were rejected,
Tendaji said there were
some that focused on not allowing officers to carry weapons in
certain situations
or restricting when officers were allowed to draw their guns.
University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman, also a
member of the
working group, said the department also rejected
recommendations that the city
ban chokeholds, limit when tasers can be used and require that
all force be used
only as a tactic of last resort.
“This working group was formed, and the mayor announced it to
great acclaim, …
and it was a sham from the start,” Futterman said.
Futterman said he had spoken with 25 members of the working
group, and that
21. “sham” was the word most often used to describe the process,
and CPD’s decision
to accept only five technical changes.
“It was designed to use us, to use a group of folks with
credibility with the
community … to allow [the city] to check the community
engagement box,”
Futterman said. “I can’t describe the anger and disenchantment
of the folks who
really put themselves into this.”
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22. Throughout the working group process, Tendaji said, it felt as if
the city was just
going through the motions, and was not actually interested in
changing the
Chicago Police Department.
“The response to the working groups is more of the same,” she
said. “It’s a
determination to brutalize citizens, particularly those fighting
for their humanity,
their dignity and their right to exist.”
Cato said he understands that accepting five proposals may
“appear to be such a
small number.”
“But you got to remember, these are five changes folks from
within our
community came up with,” Cato said. “So let’s not just say five
is a small number.
Five is a very strong number.”
Department officials said some recommendations were rejected
because they
would run afoul of state law or collective bargaining
agreements, or because they
were deemed “not operationally feasible.”
Futterman mocked the idea that CPD made any attempt to
seriously consider the
suggestions of the working group.
“CPD said we’re not going to change a damn thing about how
we instruct our
officers,” Futterman said. “Instead we will do something that
23. doesn’t change
anything.”
One example of a rejected recommendation was the proposal
that CPD prohibit
the use of force against peaceful protestors.
“[Pepper] spray, long range acoustic devices and batons must
not be used against
passively resisting protestors or to disperse crowds at prote sts,”
reads the rejected
proposal.
Police actions at protests have been under a microscope during
the recent months
of unrest, and are the subject of an investigation by the
independent monitor
overseeing the consent decree process.
But department spokesman Luis Agostini said that change was
rejected because it
was already covered in the existing policy.
The department policy says “force used in response to a
person’s lawful exercise
of First Amendment rights (e.g., protected speech, lawful
demonstrations,
observing or filming police activity, or criticizing a Department
member or
conduct) is prohibited.”
“So if the demonstration is a peaceful, lawful expression of
First Amendment
rights, the use of force is prohibited,” Agostini said.
That policy does not address protests that are peaceful but not
24. lawful, like
protesters shutting down a freeway. The proposed change would
have barred
12/31/2020 Chicago Police Reject Recommendations On Use Of
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https://www.wbez.org/amp/stories/cpd-largely-ignores-
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officers from using force to disperse peaceful, but unlawful
demonstrations.
Agostini acknowledged the existing policy would still allow
officers to use pepper
spray or batons in those situations
“CPD would still need options to enforce the law under these
circumstances and
some could rise to a use of force,” Agostini said.
Tendaji said it was “horrific” that CPD would not agree to
protect peaceful
protesters, especially considering the allegations of brutality at
demonstrations
this year.
Of the five suggestions that were accepted, Mike Milstein, the
deputy director of
community policing said it likely won’t be until “early 2021”
that the policies are
officially changed because they still need to go through a
lengthy review process
that includes the parties involved in the consent decree.
25. Patrick Smith is a reporter on WBEZ’s Criminal Justice Desk.
Follow him
@pksmid. Email him at [email protected]
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26. 12/31/2020 How Seattle Is Dismantling a NIMBY Power
Structure – Next City
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How Seattle Is
Dismantling a NIMBY
Power Structure
At a time when rents are soaring and development is
more contentious than ever before, a little-known city
agency is rethinking its role in neighborhood
planning.
STORY BY
Erica C. Barnett
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
Alex Garland
PUBLISHED ON
Apr 3, 2017
For decades, activist homeowners have held virtual veto power
over nearly every decision on Seattle’s
growth and development.
In large and small ways, these homeowners, who tend to be
white, more affluent and older than the
average resident, have shaped neighborhoods in their reflection
27. — building a city that is consistently
rated as one of the nation’s most livable, as well as one of its
most expensive.
Now — in the face of an unprecedented housing crisis and a
dramatic spike in homelessness — that
may be starting to change.
Last July, Mayor Ed Murray and the director of the city’s
Department of Neighborhoods, Kathy Nyland,
announced that Seattle was cutting formal ties with, and funding
for, the 13 volunteer Neighborhood
District Councils that had been the city’s chief sounding boards
on neighborhood planning since the
$43,595 $40,000 GOAL$40,000 GOAL
https://nextcity.org/membership
https://nextcity.org/daily/author/erica-barnett
https://nextcity.org/daily/author/alex-garland
https://nextcity.org/features/view/tent-cities-seattle-housing-
first-transitional-shelter
https://twitter.com/ericacbarnett
12/31/2020 How Seattle Is Dismantling a NIMBY Power
Structure – Next City
https://nextcity.org/features/view/seattle-nimbys-neighborhood-
planning-decisions 2/7
28. Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Director Kathy
Nyland (Credit: The Rose Center for Public Leadership)
1990s. Through this bureaucratic sleight of hand, Murray and
Nyland signaled their intent to seek more
input and feedback from lower-income folks, people of color
and renters — who now make up 54
percent of the city — and away from the white baby boomers
who have long dominated discussions
about Seattle’s future. The message: We appreciate your input,
but we’re going to get a second opinion.
A few months later, the Department of Neighborhoods doubled
down on its commitment to community
engagement, putting out a call for volunteers to serve on a new
16-member Community Involvement
Commission, which will be charged with helping city
departments develop “authentic and thorough”
ways to reach “all” city residents, including underrepresented
communities such as low-income people,
homeless residents and renters. Finally, DON will also oversee
and staff a second new commission, the
Seattle Renters’ Commission, which will advise all city
departments on policies that affect renters and
monitor the enforcement and effectiveness of the city’s renter
protection laws.
29. The shakeup has rattled traditional neighborhood groups, which
have grown accustomed to outsized
influence at City Hall, and invigorated some groups that have
long felt ignored and marginalized by the
city.
The shift toward a more inclusive neighborhoods department,
and neighborhood planning process, is
more than just symbolic; it’s political. The homeowner-
dominated neighborhood councils have typically
argued against land use changes that would allow more density
(in the form of townhouses and
apartment buildings) in and near Seattle’s traditional single-
family neighborhoods, which make up
nearly two-thirds of the city. Including more renters and low -
income people in the mix could dilute, or
even upend, those groups’ agendas.
“Our city has changed dramatically since our district
councils system was created three decades ago, and we
have seen them over time become less and less
representative not only of their neighborhoods but of
Seattle itself,” Murray said last year.
30. His statement echoed a point Nyland made in a memo to
the City Council back in May: “We have heard from
residents active in the system that ‘District Councils work
for us.’ … However, they don’t work for everyone.”
Nyland should know. She came up through the council
system, first getting involved in the Georgetown
Community Council where she questioned the purpose of a
new trash dump in the largely industrial neighborhood
where she lived and owned a boutique called George with
her partner, Holly. She also got involved with the Greater
Duwamish District Council and helped fight
down a proposal that would have turned Georgetown into the
city’s official strip club district. She
eventually became the chair of the citywide Neighborhood
Community Council, and recalls sending
emails “at 1 in the morning in my pajamas sitting in my living
room, because that’s when I had time to
do it.
“We have systems in place that are not easy to navigate,”
Nyland says, and people in established groups
who say that “people are just choosing not to come to the
31. meetings. … What if someone works at night?
What if someone has kids and can’t get a babysitter? What if
someone can’t speak English? What if
someone just didn’t know about the meetings? They’re not
making a choice not to come. They can’t
come!”
REDEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP TO CITY HALL
Mohamud Yusuf came to Seattle as a refugee from Somalia by
way of Nairobi, Kenya, in 1996, when the
Somali community in Seattle was still “very small,” he recalls.
Today, his community is thriving in areas
like southeast Seattle, which is still one of the most affordable
parts of the city, although rising costs are
pushing many immigrants and refugees farther south, outside
Seattle. Yusuf was a writer, activist and
photojournalist in Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s, and 10 years
ago, he started a newspaper called
Runta News; “runta,” in Somali, means “the truth.” Today,
Yusuf also works as a community liaison to
the city, earning $50 an hour to connect community members to
city programs and services.
The changes at City Hall excite Yusuf. “I’ve been involved in
the community since I was here but I’ve
never seen this kind of involvement,” he says. “What we needed
32. was to be included, to be at the table
and have a voice.”
https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/community-
involvement-commission
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/seattle-renters-get-stronger-
voice-at-city-hall
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/seattle-public-outreach-
community-liaisons
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Structure – Next City
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planning-decisions 3/7
Mohamud Yusuf came to Seattle as a refugee from Somalia in
the 1990s and now works as
a community liaison to the city.
Yusuf recounts a recent effort to get the Somali community
involved in a long-range plan for Seattle
Public Utilities, which provides the city’s trash service and
drinking water. Instead of just making
materials available in Somali and other languages upon request,
the city sent outreach workers to meet
with community members where they already were — in
neighborhood community centers, in libraries
and during English-language classes at the local Goodwill —
and talked with them, in their own
33. language, about what forthcoming changes will mean. They
taught the immigrants how the city’s
sanitation system works too, equipping residents with
knowledge they will be able to use next time
there is a question about trash collection or clean water in their
community.
“The people I talked to were so happy to know more about
where the water goes,” Yusuf says. “They
would say, ‘We all know our garbage goes away, but we didn’t
know where it was going. We are drinking
clean water now at home, but we didn’t know who was doing
it.”
Nyland’s reform can be traced back to a 2009 audit of the
district councils that found an obsolete
system that did not reflect the city’s true demographics. “The
system is dominated by the presence of
longtime members whose point of view is overly dominant at
both the district council and city
neighborhood council levels and potentially not representative
of their communities,” the city audit
found. “The district councils in general are not sufficiently
representative of the communities they
nominally represent,” it concluded.
34. The disconnect was even deeper in 2016, when a report by the
neighborhoods department found that
while the population of Seattle was becoming younger, more
diverse and more evenly split between
homeowners and renters, “residents attending district council
meetings tend to be 40 years of age or
older, Caucasian and homeowners.”
“If you’ve ever gone to some of these community meetings,
they’re just deadly dull, and the same 25
people have been there for 100 years,” City Council Member
Sally Bagshaw says.
At a meeting of the Ballard District Council in northwest
Seattle immediately after the announcement,
district council members seemed shell-shocked by the city’s
decision to cut them off. Sitting around a
horseshoe of tables at the area’s branch library in northwest
Seattle, they took turns grousing about the
change. One member argued that the mostly white, mostly
middle-aged council should be considered
diverse, because “this group represents homeowners,
environmental groups, businesses and other
organizations.” “We have people here from every state,” he
added. Another suggested that the city had
made the move in haste, without a plan to replace the councils.
35. “If you’re going to get rid of the current
plan, you need to have a new plan in place before you get rid of
the old one,” he said.
“Right now, we’re just planting seeds. We might not see the
results
for a long time.”
At another recent meeting of the group formerly known as the
Magnolia/Queen Anne District Council,
which represents a wealthy enclave just south of Ballard, one
member asked plaintively, “Why do we
have to encourage certain groups to come? Why can’t it just be
an open forum?”
https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoodcouncil/documents/20090
622_DistrictCouncilPublishedReport.pdf
http://clerk.seattle.gov/~CFs/CF_319764.pdf
12/31/2020 How Seattle Is Dismantling a NIMBY Power
Structure – Next City
https://nextcity.org/features/view/seattle-nimbys-neighborhood-
planning-decisions 4/7
In a sense, traditional neighborhood groups are right to feel
threatened. Nyland’s announcement,
coupled with her department’s new emphasis on outreach to
communities that have rarely had a say in
city decisions, represents a fundamental shift in the very
36. definition of the “neighborhoods” department.
By emphasizing outreach to underserved groups such as renters,
immigrants and refugees, Nyland is
shaking up traditional notions of community engagement and
redefining community as something
based not on geographic proximity, but on personal and cultural
affinity.
“It’s kind of taking off in a way that I can’t keep up with,” says
Sahar Fathi, a member of Nyland’s team.
“We get a lot of emails from people who are like, ‘We want this
to come to our community. We’re
starting to go into places where people have never heard of us,
and they don’t even know what
government services are” — including, she says, “communities
we didn’t even know existed.” In Seattle,
a city of about 650,000, one in five residents were born in
another country; of the 120 languages spoken
there, the city’s liaisons collectively speak at least 65.
Fathi is one of Seattle’s relative newcomers. The Boston-born
Iranian-American moved to the Emerald
City a decade ago, when she was in her early 20s. After a stint
as a legislative aide to City Council
Member Mike O’Brien and an unsuccessful run for the State
House of Representatives, she put her
37. background as a lawyer and immigrant rights advocate to work
as a policy analyst for the city’s Office of
Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. These days, Fathi oversees
DON’s Public Outreach and Engagement
Liaison program, which recruits and pays community members
like Yusuf to serve as links between the
city and marginalized groups. The liaisons’ job duties include
everything from driving people to
resource fairs where they can sign up for city assistance
programs, to facilitating meetings at
community gathering places and interpreting for city staffers, to
engaging people in their first language
in larger community discussions over neighborhood spending,
parks programs, and planning debates.
“Before, the city would say, ‘We have a pedestrian master plan
meeting, and we want people to come
and give us feedback,’” Fathi says. “With all due respect to the
pedestrian master plan, there are a lot of
people who can barely afford to pay rent. So how do we meet
people’s needs first and then build their
capacity” to come to meetings about city policies that affect
their neighborhoods.
GOING BEYOND “A SEAT AT THE TABLE”
Seattle’s modern neighborhood movement dates back to at least
38. the late 1980s, when then-Mayor
Charles Royer appointed neighborhood activist Jim Diers to
head up the new Department of
Neighborhoods and create the 13 neighborhood district councils
and a citywide council made up of
representatives from all the councils. Ever since, the district
councils have enjoyed outsized influence at
City Hall, staking out and defining “neighborhood” positions on
issues and channeling city grant dollars
toward their own pet projects, such as National Night Out
events, neighborhood welcome signs and
security lighting.
For decades, the councils advised the neighborhoods department
on what “the neighborhoods” wanted,
and if that advice happened to coincide precisely with the
interests of the comfortable, white
homeowners who dominated the council, nobody at the city
seemed to mind. The councils frequently
advocated against zoning changes to allow more development in
or near the city’s single-family
neighborhoods, including Murray’s Housing Affordability and
Livability Agenda, which would upzone
much of the city and require developers to build affordable
rental housing. Neighborhood activists have
39. shown up in force at council meetings and community briefings
by city staff to oppose the HALA
recommendations, and one neighborhood group has successfully
sued to block an approved HALA rule
change that would make it easier for homeowners to build
backyard cottages.
In recent years, though, groups that have traditionally been left
out of the process have started
demanding seats at the table, including advocates for transit-
oriented development and immigrants and
refugees, and renters. At a recent City Council briefing on the
new renters’ commission, Erin House, a
renter, told the council, “I see conversations at both City Hall
and in neighborhoods dominated by
homeowners, often at the expense of renters’ best interests. As a
city, we need to find ways to correct
this trend and give renters a seat at the table on conversations
about Seattle’s future.”
https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-
services/outreach-and-engagement
https://data.seattle.gov/Community/City-Of-Seattle-
Neighborhood-Matching-Funds/pr2n-4pn6
https://nextcity.org/features/view/seattle-affordable-housing-
plan-hala-recommendations-high-rent
https://nextcity.org/features/view/baby-boomers-city-living
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planning-decisions 5/7
(Credit: City of Seattle)
Last year’s announcement severing ties with the neighborhood
councils was a first step in that
direction. For the first time since its inception in the late ’80s,
the city’s neighborhoods department
would spend as much time engaging with underrepresented
communities as it did listening to the
concerns of white property owners.
“DON has great programs,” Nyland says, “but the department
has not evolved with the changing
demographics of the city.”
Nyland’s department is small relative to other city agencies, but
it has found ways to connect with
residents without a huge infrastructure. Ice cream giveaways at
summer events. Crowd canvassing at
the West Seattle Farmers Market. Plopping down in a temporary
parklet on the annual (PARK)ing day.
And partnering with organizations like the local Goodwill
training center once a quarter, to offer
41. services and information about opportunities to get involved
with city initiatives. Some of the
department’s efforts have had mixed success. A recent push to
engage people of color and low-income
residents in the HALA planning process fizzled after the city
failed to adequately prepare new
participants and follow up when they stopped showing up. But
others have been effective at getting
new people connected to City Hall.
Nyland notes that many people bemoan the loss of
neighborhood service centers, the “little city halls”
where residents could talk to city staffers face-to-face. Most of
those closed down years ago, the victims
of city budget cuts and a population that increasingly does
business with government online. Today,
Nyland says, what people need more than storefronts is
opportunities to engage with the city on their
own time. That means telephone town halls instead of in-person
presentations by city staffers; online
surveys instead of public comment cards; and Skype calls
instead of nighttime meetings in library
activity rooms and church basements.
“My mantra is, people should be able to participate on their own
42. timeline, from their own location,”
Nyland says. “DON has been in existence for 30 years, and it
has a lot of really important programs, but
I think its mission and its purpose has gotten lost. We haven’t
kept up with change. We haven’t
refreshed. … I mean, I can’t force people to participate, but we
can create opportunities to make it
easier.”
At the most recent Goodwill event, Fathi says, the public
outreach liaisons came in and took over the
second hour of a group of immigrants’ English as a Second
Language class. First, they talked briefly —
in 17 different languages — about the mayor’s upcoming
education summit, which aimed to find
solutions to address racial disparities in Seattle schools. Then,
they signed the residents up for “all the
services the city had to offer” — utility discounts, low-income
transit passes and summer programs for
kids. This may seem superficially unrelated to the kind of
community building and neighborhood
planning that is DON’s primary mission, but Fathi says it isn’t.
“There are a lot of people who can barely
afford to pay rent, so we ask ourselves, how do we meet
people’s needs first and then build that
43. capacity, and we think being a good government neighbor is the
first step.”
But what the next step holds is a question that some critics say
hasn’t yet been substantively answered.
Dustin Washington is an experienced community organizer in
Seattle and the director of the American
Friends Service Committee’s local community justice program.
He used to be a member of a race and
social justice roundtable created by Murray and is no stranger to
City Council. To him, DON’s
community outreach efforts are little more than meaningless lip
service to cover for the mayor’s pro-
gentrification, developer-friendly agenda. “When the mayor and
the City Council want to engage with
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/seattles-community-planning-
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developers — the folks who really hold the power in the city —
they don’t have to create any of these
mechanisms,” Washington says. “You can set up any mechanism
44. that you want, but I don’t think this
mayor is truly interested in engaging with voices that have been
left out of the process.”
In many ways, community activists who question the mayor’s
sincerity and neighborhood activists who
think the mayor is trying to shut them out are coming from the
same place — a profound skepticism
that the city is interested in hearing what they have to say.
Nyland says she understands those
concerns. “Right now, we’re just planting seeds,” she says. “We
might not see the results for a long
time.” Nyland urges skeptics on both sides to be patient and
give her a chance to earn their trust.
Over in Magnolia, at the meeting of the group formerly known
as the Magnolia/Queen Anne District
Council (they’re still searching for a new name), members spent
more than an hour crafting a new
vision statement to reflect their new mission as an organization.
On the second pass, they came up with
this: “This group is a catalyst for enhancing quality of life and
community building by being a forum for
all voices, leading to effective influence on government and in
our communities through innovation,
education and advocacy.” Hardly a full-throated endorsement of
45. Nyland’s agenda, but it’s a start.
Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to note that one in
five Seattle residents are foreign-
born.
This article is part of a Next City series focused on community-
engaged design made possible with the
support of the Surdna Foundation.
Erica C. Barnett is a Seattle-based writer who covers city
politics and policy in Seattle and beyond for various online and
print publications and her blog, The C Is for Crank. She
cofounded PubliCola, a state and local politics blog. Previously,
she was a staff writer and news editor at The Stranger, a
reporter for Seattle Weekly, and news editor at the Austin
Chronicle.
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Alex Garland is a freelance photographer and reporter in the
Seattle metro
area. His focus is society and environment but covers any and
all stories
concerning his adopted home in the Pacific Northwest. If he's
not tracking
