Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson tops Harrell in poll, pushes housing to solve homelessness

Katie Wilson is among eight candidates vying for the position of Seattle mayor, with a May poll from the Northwest Progressive Institute showing her pulling slightly ahead of incumbent Bruce Harrell.

Wilson believes affordable housing is a solution for solving homelessness, citing a book that views homelessness as a housing issue.

“Where people are coming from is they’re losing their housing,” Wilson said. “Their landlord is coming and saying, ‘You want to renew your lease? Well, that’s going to be $500 a month.’ And they’re looking at it, and they’re saying, ‘I can’t afford that.’ And they’re looking around at the housing market, and they’re saying, ‘There’s nowhere I can go.’ And so, then they’re on a friend’s couch for a while, and then the friend is like, ‘You can’t stay here anymore.’ And then they’re in shelter, and then they’re on the street.”

Katie Wilson’s approach to public safety

When asked if Wilson saw a connection between homelessness and public safety, Wilson answered, “Absolutely.”

“I think we’ve seen a real failure to meaningfully address the homelessness crisis,” she added.

Wilson said that by taking out tents, people are now sleeping in doorways of businesses and then behaving aggressively toward customers.

“So, you’re actually making our public safety problems worse by not meaningfully addressing homelessness,” she said.

When approaching crime hotspots such as Aurora and Little Saigon, Wilson believes the solution is multifaceted.

“It’s going to require the right combination of police response and civilian response and the right coordination,” Wilson shared.

She also believes Harrell’s “Stay Out of Area of Prostitution” (SOAP) and “Stay Out of Drug Areas” (SODA) laws are “performative.”

“It’s tempting to say, ‘We’re cracking down, we’re doing something.’ Those laws have not meaningfully been enforced yet, and that’s really because they’re not very useful. The data on how these laws work in practice shows that people still go into these zones that they’ve been banished from for all kinds of reasons,” Wilson said.

She also advocated for engaging with specific individuals who are causing issues.

Why Katie Wilson believes she can beat Bruce Harrell

KIRO host John Curley asked Wilson why she believes she could beat Harrell. Wilson pointed to a special-election vote on social housing, approved by voters but opposed by Harrell, arguing it showed a disconnect between the mayor and the public.

“His face was plastered all over the mailers, and Seattle voters just said, ‘No.’ They said, ‘We have an affordability crisis,'” Wilson remarked. “We want to do something about it, and we don’t care what the mayor says.’ And that just taught me how out of touch he is with the struggles that ordinary people are facing — he doesn’t feel the cost-of-living crisis. And so that really showed me that there was an opening there.”

Wilson also believes Washington Governor Bob Ferguson’s rent control bill, which limits landlords to an annual rent increase of 7% plus the rate of inflation up to a maximum of 10% is “very, very weak.”

“If you’re renting an apartment for $2,000 a month, a 10% increase, and that’s about what the cap is this year, is $200 a month. That is a large rent increase. So, it’s really not demanding very much of landlords,” she said.

“Will government get bigger or smaller if you’re elected?” Curley asked.

“The honest answer to that is, I don’t know, because some of it depends on what happens to the economy and to cuts that Trump might be making that affect Seattle. So even if I want to make it bigger, it might get smaller,” Wilson responded.

Listen to the full conversation below.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.