News

In an online news conference on Tuesday, the City of Seattle’s Office of Housing announced a new round of $55.8 million in affordable rental and owned housing that would create 840 new units, putting the City on track to either approve or start construction on a record $115.8 million worth of new affordable housing in 2020. The funds, which in total will create 1,430 units in projects across the city, include $62.58 million from a 2016 voter-approved housing levy, $5 … Read More

The Seattle City Council’s fall budget process this year will be vastly different in many ways, as this moment demands elected leaders to step up and address a multitude of overlapping crises that are presenting themselves at once: an ongoing public health emergency that is COVID-19, a racial reckoning calling for investments in true community safety and long-term systemic change, a climate crisis made palpable by weeks of choking wildfire smoke, and we’re still in the midst of an affordable … Read More

The Seattle City Council passed a new tax on big businesses Monday that’s expected to fund economic relief and core services during the coronavirus crisis and raise more than $200 million per year for housing, local business assistance and community development in the long term. … Read More

Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda unveiled a proposal to tax large corporations Tuesday, becoming the latest local leader to seek new revenue as City Hall grapples with a longstanding homelessness crisis, an ongoing coronavirus emergency and urgent Black Lives Matter protests. … Read More

Teresa Mosqueda had read about Seattle’s child care crunch — the excruciating wait-lists and the eye-popping costs. Then she became pregnant. “To see it in a report is one thing,” the City Council member said. “To call through a list of providers that the city gave me and hit a dead end and then go to Google and just search ‘child care’ … is a whole other experience.” … Read More

The city of Seattle has much to celebrate. We are experiencing several historic “firsts” in our city. First, we have our first lesbian mayor, Jenny Durkan. We also have three Latina women on the Seattle City Council, M. Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda and Debora Juarez. Juarez is also a member of the Blackfeet Nation and the first Native American on the council. … Read More

Her win will give the council six women and additional diversity. She will become the third Latina councilmember, following Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, re-elected this year to Position 9, and Councilmember Debora Juarez who is both Native-American and Mexican-American. “I think it means that our democracy is beginning to reflect our community more and more,” said Mosqueda. “I think it means we can get a lot done around equal pay, around protections in the work place and making sure more of … Read More

Out of the gate, Mosqueda plans on prioritizing affordable housing, equal pay for women, and affordable child care. She’d like to alleviate the housing crisis by building affordable housing on publicly-owned land. But she says that what she’s most passionate about is using her lived experience as a woman of color with knowledge of public health policy to ensure that low-income residents have access to health care and better living standards. … Read More

Drawing on her lived experience, the newly elected councilmember says she aims to advocate for women and marginalized communities. … Read More

“It’s important that we have a democracy that’s truly representative of its people,” Mosqueda said in an interview Wednesday. “And not just in our corner of the world. There are record numbers of women and people of color running for the first time.” … Read More