‘Taller, denser, faster’: Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announces plan to supercharge city’s housing growth

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is doing everything in her power to speed up housing development in the city.

Wilson told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio she recently announced a new housing initiative to boost the city’s growth plan.

“We’re calling it taller, denser, faster,” she said. “And so basically, we’re kind of supercharging the next couple of phases of our comp plan to basically propose allowing more multi-family building near frequent transit, and more growth centers around the city where you can build higher buildings.”

Wilson explained the plan is an effort to allow the private market to increase the city’s stock of market-rate housing. She acknowledged the project won’t automatically make housing affordable, but it will help in the long term. At the same time, Wilson said the city’s social housing developer is getting started, fueled by revenue from a tax on large corporations.

“Projected revenues were $50 million; they came in at $115 million from last year. So we’re expecting that social housing developer to begin to acquire and operate housing this year, which is really exciting, and that will be this mixed-income, publicly owned, permanently affordable housing,” she said.

Wilson’s office is also working to protect renters from hidden junk fees. With a major focus on affordable living, the mayor said she sees housing as a human right.

“We as a society, as human beings in society, we decide what we want to be our rights,” she said. “I mean, we could have a really barbaric society where we just all kill each other, and then safety is not a right. So human rights are something that we kind of establish, and they’re a mark of how civilized we are. And so I think when we say housing is a human right, that is an indication of where we want to go as a society. We want people to be able to count on that basic security of having a roof over their head.”

Wilson says society has an obligation to build housing, provide food for all

Wilson said she believes society has an obligation to build enough housing and grow enough food to provide a dignified living for everyone. She added that Seattle should not have to compromise a sizeable minimum wage for affordable housing.

“You could also ask me, ‘Well, it’d be more affordable to live in the city if employers didn’t have to pay a minimum wage.’ Well, that’s true, but that’s not a trade-off that I think we should be willing to make,” she said.

When asked if she’s made more friends or enemies, Wilson erred on the side of more friends but pointed to her decision surrounding CCTV cameras.

“I made some decisions around our CCTV camera, kind of surveillance system, which maybe pleased no one, but certainly didn’t please some people on my side of things. But in general, I’ve been making a lot of effort to reach out to people who didn’t support me during the campaign, and to really build those relationships,” she responded.

Wilson reiterated that pleasing both sides of the political spectrum isn’t easy, but that they all share a common goal of making Seattle a better place.

“What I’m trying to establish with everyone — both people who are really part of my more progressive left wing base, but also in the business community, people who didn’t support me — is that we all want Seattle to be a great place,” she said. “We all want it to be a great place to live, a great place to work, a great place to raise a family, a place that’s affordable.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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