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A Look at Mayor Durkan’s State of the City Address

She makes a strong case for her accomplishments—but how much can she really claim?

By Erica C. Barnett February 20, 2019

A view of the Seattle skyline with mountains behind.
A view of the Seattle skyline with mountains behind.

Last year, when she delivered her first State of the City speech after just three months in office, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan called herself “the Impatient Mayor,” and laid out a laundry list of goals for her first year in office. On the list: free college for all high school graduates; “bust[ing] through gridlock” by improving access to transit and making roads and sidewalks safer for cyclists and pedestrians; increasing infrastructure for electric cars and promoting green buildings; and doubling the number of people the city moves from homelessness into permanent housing.

This year, Durkan hit on similar themes: climate; affordability; transit access; affordable housing. And she made her best case that the city has made progress on all those fronts during her first year in office.

In the past year, Durkan said, the city has passed the Seattle Promise program to give high school graduates two years of free tuition at a Seattle community college; offered free ORCA transit passes to thousands of high school students; committed $710 million “with our partners” to build thousands of units of new affordable housing;  made “the largest shelter increase in our city’s history,” and passed a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which guarantees new minimum wages and rest breaks to Seattle domestic workers. Durkan also said the city had “helped more than 7,400 households move out of homelessness and into permanent housing” in the past year.

How much of these accomplishments is due to Durkan’s direct work or intervention is debatable, of course. The city council was already working to expand the free ORCA and Seattle Promise programs when Durkan came into office. The $710 million figure is over the last two years and includes public investments (such as the city’s Housing Levy, in 2016) and almost $550 million from non-city sources. The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights was spearheaded by council member Teresa Mosqueda, and passed unanimously before heading to the mayor’s desk.

And, although Durkan did achieve her goal of creating 500 new shelter spaces, the majority of these are basic shelter (mats on floors in places like Harborview Hall, a new nighttime-only Salvation Army shelter on First Hill) or spots in authorized encampments and “tiny house villages” where people live in small garden-shed-like structures with heating and doors that lock. Enhanced, low-barrier shelter—shelters that provide services, give people a place to be during the day, and allow residents to stay with their partners and pets—have a much higher success rate than other models at getting people into permanent housing. Last year, for example, the city’s Human Services Department reported that 21 percent of people entering enhanced shelter exited shelter into permanent housing; for basic shelter, that number was 4 percent.

Durkan’s claim to have moved “more than 7,400 households… out of homelessness” also demands scrutiny. The mayor’s office confirms that that number includes not only people who went from homelessness into housing (the city created 360 new affordable housing units last year, Durkan said in her speech) but those who were at risk of homelessness and managed to stay housed. Durkan’s office has not yet responded to a request for a more detailed breakdown of the 7,400 figure.

State of the City speeches are rarely the vehicle for mayors to announce major new initiatives, and Durkan kept her list of new proposals modest: requiring all new buildings that have off-street parking, including new duplexes and single-family houses, to include charging infrastructure for electric vehicles; a new $1,000 scholarship to help income-eligible participants in the Seattle Promise program pay for non-tuition college expenses; providing free transit passes to about 1,500 low income Seattle Housing Authority tenants; expanding Ride2, King County Metro’s on-demand van program in West Seattle, to serve commuters in South Seattle. And she said she would issue an “executive order to refocus our work on strategies to prevent displacement and gentrification,” with additional details coming today (February 20).

Watch the full State of the City:

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