Mayoral Challenger Calls for Rent Control, More Aggressive Affordable Housing Demands on Developer

[TexasTowelie]

Mayoral Challenger Calls for Rent Control, ‘More Aggressive’ Affordable Housing Demands on Developers

Anti-racist organizer and mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver has made Seattle’s affordable housing famine a central issue of her campaign. In a Town Hall panel last year, the attorney and activist criticized Mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) plan for creating ‘affordable’ housing that is only affordable to people earning more than $40,000 a year.

During that forum, Oliver criticized HALA in part for keeping Seattle’s longtime strategy of concentrating density into urban villages and mostly leaving single family zoning alone. “Not only does a discussion with single family zoning need to happen, about how those areas need to change,” Oliver said, “but there’s actually not been a lot of push on those areas to change, because their pushback was ‘We don’t want those people here, they will make our neighborhoods less viable.’”

Now, Oliver is running for mayor against Murray as a candidate for the Seattle People’s Party. Her campaign website blames the status quo for the city’s affordable housing crisis, calling that crisis “what happens when bigotry and racism go unchecked and unchallenged; when politics and politicians work for their own interests and the interests of corporations; when progressive speak is not met with progressive action; when the people are silenced in the name of an outdated political process and democracy becomes nothing more than a meaningless slogan.”

In the spirit of demanding more than slogans, we asked Oliver what specific policy prescriptions she has for addressing the affordable housing shortage. In a written statement, Oliver articulated two specific policy changes she would seek as mayor to address the affordable housing crisis: rent control and demanding more affordable housing production from developers.

Read more: http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/mayoral-challenger-calls-for-rent-control-more-aggressive-affordable-housing-demands-on-developers/