Black wealth remains near zero due to centuries of systemic anti-Black racism and is on a trajectory to only worsen. In Seattle, white wealth is nearly 20x more than Black wealth. What specific actions will you take to close the Black-white wealth gap?
How much of the Black-white wealth gap will you close while in office?
Who are you working with in the Black community to close it?
How will you support investing federal funding directly and specifically into the Black community in the next two years?
Answer
The wealth gap between Black and white households is totally unacceptable—the result of hundreds of years of systemic racism embedded into our economy, housing market, and systems of government, further exacerbated by worsening income inequality. While fundamentally changing the drivers of the problem is outside the scope of influence that one local government can deliver, King County can—and has—taken important steps to create equity and opportunity for Black King County residents.
In June 2020, I joined Public Health Director Patty Hayes in declaring racism a public health crisis for this very reason, recognizing the economic and health issues facing Black communities. In doing so, working with a core team of predominantly Black, Brown, and Indigenous employees, I proposed an Anti-Racist Policy Agenda and funded community partners to share expertise, hone the agenda, and ensure we were prioritizing the right actions. Some of the leaders and groups we have worked with defining this effort include Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, Urban Family, United Indians of All Tribes, Choose180, and the Freedom Project.
In May, we passed my seventh COVID supplemental budget, funded through the initial distribution of the federal American Rescue Plan Act, which includes tens of millions of dollars of investment to support this agenda and an equitable, lasting recovery for Black communities. Included is $25.6 million for a BIPOC business and economic resiliency fund, to be allocated through a community-led process and invested in new economic opportunities. Additionally, I supported the creation of a BIPOC economic recovery alliance for Unincorporated King County, and in my latest COVID supplemental budget have proposed investments in the newly-formed Equitable Recovery and Reconciliation Alliance (ERRA). Investing in these community-driven solutions demonstrates my commitment to putting our money where our values are. Millions more will be directed toward building economic equity in the Black community through the second distribution of ARPA funds next year.
Beyond this, I recently announced and issued a Pro-Equity Contracting Executive Order with the distinct purpose of increasing contracting opportunities between minority- and women-owned businesses with King County. I-200 impedes our ability to engage in affirmative action, but we’re taking our own direct action. By doing so, we are working to break down those barriers that have prevented Black and other historically excluded business owners from building and expanding their business, growing their network and regional exposure, and creating generational impact and wealth.
For example, over the next 20 years there will be more than $100 billion dollars in publicly funded design and construction contracts in this region through local infrastructure projects. Through my Executive Order, King County is making a strong commitment to build Black wealth and power through public contracting, and inviting other governments to follow suit. We are taking active, intentional steps to improve contracting, address longstanding systemic barriers, and create a new generation of successful businesses that better reflect our community.
Question
There is a crisis in Black health in this region. In King County: Black babies are more 2x more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies; Black birthing people die 3x more than white birthing people; Black residents die of diabetes at 3x the rate of white residents; Nearly half of all Black adults in King County are food insecure; Black adults are 3x more likely to be living in poverty; Black adults are evicted at 6x the rate of white adults; Black people in King County contracted COVID-19 at 3x the rates of whites; and yet Black community received less than 2% of federal relief funding.
This region boasts some of the most sophisticated, renowned hospitals and medical facilities in the world. The disparities in medical treatment received by Black communities are appalling, with COVID-19 serving as just the most recent flashlight into this dark and disturbing reality. What are your specific plans to invest in Black community health?
In the entire Pacific Northwest (OR, WA, ID, MT, WY) there are zero Black community-owned, federally qualified health clinics. What are your specific plans to support base-building Black community-owned clinics? Specifically, the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom (TCHF), Somali Health Board (SHB), Surge Reproductive Justice (SRJ), African American Health Board and more?
Answer
We know from data and from lived experiences that Black doctors, nurses, and providers are better equipped to serve Black patients and provide appropriate and needed care. To ensure healthy communities, we must create conditions allowing Black residents to receive the accurate diagnoses and culturally-appropriate treatment required to thrive.
During the pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed Black lives and Black livelihoods, I made it a priority for King County to engage directly with Black community organizations who are best able to reach King County's Black residents. While vaccination rates among Black residents of King County trail those of white, Asian, and American Indian residents, they are significantly above the national average because these organizations have worked together with King County Public Health and met specific communities with tailored, appropriate messages and outreach. We must keep it up.
It is disappointing, but sadly not surprising, that there are no Black community-owned, federally qualified health clinics (FQHC) in our region or in the entire Pacific Northwest. As part of our anti-racism work, we are contributing up to $10 million for a new facility that will support community-based behavioral health in this year’s budget, but we must also look to support organizations on the ground specifically providing needed care to Black residents.
King County works with a number of the groups listed above as partners - over time and during our pandemic response. We’ve partnered directly with the Somali Health Board through Best Starts for Kids, seeking to meet the community's needs and ensure that all are supported.
King County sought the counsel and partnership of the African American Health Board, along with the Somali Health Board and others, including the Afro-descendant and Indigenous, Congo, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Pan African Leaders Health Boards, in our COVID advisory groups—critical in collecting comprehensive, disaggregated, representative data; establishing anti-racist health approaches; and distributing vaccines and resources. Surge Reproductive Justice has also been a partner in discussing and allaying vaccine hesitancy in the Black community.
Supporting Black-led public health efforts is both the right and essential thing to do to ensure better health in our community. That will continue to be a priority for King County and King County Public Health under my leadership.
Question
Equity means ownership. Thriving Black communities require control and agency over land. We prioritize Black land acquisition as a foundational pillar to our work. As demand for land grows at an unprecedented pace, the rapid gentrification, active divestment from, and exclusion of Blacks from Seattle and King County is important not merely due to the dismantling of historical Black cultural and societal spaces, but also the socio-economic, health, wealth, and education fallout resulting from Blacks being pushed out of the State’s largest economic and cultural engine. What is your specific short and long-term plan to rectify this region’s abysmal Black land ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black home ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black community land acquisition and restore historically Black cultural and societal spaces?
How much will you invest in the: (A) Keiro project - the first entirely Black community led and centered homelessness consortium with wraparound direct services; (B) Red (Black and Green) Barn Ranch - Black liberated farming and youth healing center; (C) Youth Achievement Center - a holistic co-housing complex that is designed to support homeless students, historically underserved students, system-involved youth?
What mechanisms will you put in place to halt gentrification across the state, specifically to stop corporate and private developers from buying up once affordable property and pricing out Black communities and families?
Answer
Home ownership is critically important for building generational wealth—unfairly and unjustly denied Black families for generations through redlining, lending restrictions, and racist systemic features of government and society that have excluded Black residents from the primary mechanism for achieving financial security over time. While much of our focus has been on housing supply overall, I am committed to redressing this specific injustice and increasing Black access to home ownership, home equity, and wealth creation.
Black Americans are disproportionately more likely to be homeless and experience housing instability. I’ve focused on prevention efforts, including Best Starts for Kids’ Youth and Family Homelessness Prevention Initiative, and rent relief programs to prevent people facing eviction from being pushed onto the street. Gentrification and displacement undermine community and erode social capital. We must confront those forces even as we encourage the creation of more housing and the realization of gain by Black landowners. The loss of community, and the fraying of the social fabric that provides support networks and nurtures opportunity, is tragic and detrimental to success.
I recently met with leaders from King County Equity Now and Africatown Community Land Trust to discuss how our Health Through Housing Initiative could support Black-led, Black-operated supportive housing services in the Central District. My administration’s approach to tackling housing insecurity will prioritize culturally responsive housing and behavioral health supports to address disproportionate representation of BIPOC neighbors experiencing homelessness.
I recently visited Willowcrest in Renton, which has been developed as permanently affordable housing that is also healthy for residents and net carbon neutral. The County has supported this project to build home equity in diverse communities through affordable housing, and through the lens of equity and environmental justice, reducing climate impact and creating connected communities with closely accessible opportunities for all.
We’re excited to support more projects like this that are BIPOC-focused—and, ideally, led—specifically providing housing for Black communities in traditionally Black neighborhoods and spaces. King County provided public land for the development of the Youth Achievement Center, and we will continue supporting similar equity-based projects to build wealth and opportunity for all.
Question
The public education system is anti-Black. It uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates; denies Black students the right to learn about their culture and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude Black peoples' history, contributions, and accomplishments. It pushes Black teachers out of schools in Seattle-King County, and across the country, and spends entirely more money on imprisoning Black youth than on educating and healing them. How will you support pro-Black education?
How will you create and maintain Black community schools?
How will you establish and maintain restorative justice practices in schools to end the school-to-prison pipeline?
What will you do to ensure Black teachers are hired, that current educators receive anti-racist professional development, that schools implement Black studies curricula?
What will you do to ensure the Black community has control of schools that serve Black kids as well as education resources and levy funds that are meant for but rarely make it to Black youth?
Answer
While King County does not supervise public education, I recognize the important role and opportunity we have to shape the direction and outcomes of future learning for our region’s kids. That’s why I originated and led ‘Best Starts for Kids’—the most comprehensive approach to healthy child development in the nation, investing in equitable support for children, youth and young adults, funding free school clinics, and working with 500 community organizations.
This year, through the levy renewal, we’re adding 3000 spots for quality, subsidized child care, which will help give kids, many Black, the foundation and support they need to grow up happy, healthy, safe and thriving—to succeed in school, and in life. Every child deserves the strong foundation, with mentorship and community guidance along the way, needed to reach adulthood healthy and ready to excel.
Through Best Starts for Kids, and through diversion efforts, we are investing millions into community-based organizations serving Black youth, supporting education and restorative justice in schools while specifically fighting the school-to-prison pipeline. For example, our Restorative Community Pathways program will divert 800 youth away from the criminal legal system completely.
Similar to our contracting efforts, schools are hamstrung in their hiring practices by the racist Initiative 200. School staffs, especially in our most diverse schools, are unrepresentative of the student bodies they serve. Representation matters for so many reasons in education—as role models and by providing lived experiences and perspectives on learning styles, culturally appropriate curriculum, and class engagement.
We’ll continue pushing the county’s school boards and our Legislature to take action on these issues. As one of the largest employers in the state, King County is setting an example with resources to support BIPOC employees, and anti-racist employee training and leadership development. School Boards across the county should follow and implement similar efforts. Students should receive racially just and historically accurate education in our public schools, and the Legislature should implement Black curriculum requirements to make sure students receive a full, accurate, and robust view of our country’s history.
Question
Already experiencing COVID-19’s economic fallout, conditions for Seattle’s Black community have worsened. Against that backdrop, KCEN and many others in the Black community mobilized to divest from policing and demanded correlating investment in pro-Black public safety solutions that work for us, for the first time in Seattle's history. This movement was driven by Black community and specifically called and continues to call for a reckoning with anti-Black racism (i.e., not a general “racial” reckoning, or a “BIPOC” movement).
Emboldened by the overwhelming support of thousands and thousands of community members, the Seattle City Council briefly upheld their pledge to divest from a percentage of the Seattle Police Department (SPD)'s bloated annual budget and invest modestly in Black communities. It should not have taken such prolonged, sustained community efforts for this change but we acknowledge the small percentage of divestment as a break from decades of votes to expand violent, anti-Black policing.
The work of reshaping this region into one that values all Black lives—and moves away from funding racist policing and towards resourcing true public safety—is overdue and not for non-Black folks, unaccountable gatekeepers or non-rooted folks to dictate. We advocated strongly for monies from the police budget to be invested directly into the Black community and are unmoved on that stance.
Last year’s accountability charter amendments demonstrate clearly the public’s demands that policing change at the County Level. What are your specific plans to divest from policing to invest in true public safety for Black communities for the first time in history? What are the tangible steps you will take?
What date will you close the Youth Jail in the first year of your term?
What specific steps will you take to shift investments from the criminal punishment system towards human services that are controlled, led and center Black community?
Answer
Last year, voters mandated that the County Executive and Council take a more active role by appointing the sheriff and determining sheriff’s office protocols and practices. Working directly with community, we will hire a new sheriff, demand a more accountable and transparent office, and determine a budget aligned with our shared values.
We’re already taking action to carefully review sheriff’s office budgets and divert and reallocate funds to community priorities. Last year, I acted to divert $4.6 million in revenue from marijuana sales from the sheriff’s office into community programs, including to redress the racist, failed “War on Drugs” by vacating past marijuana convictions and settling fees and fines. I diverted significant funds from King County corrections, including $16 million to fund housing and support for Black trans residents. This will continue as we continue putting community priorities in action.
With regard to youth detention, when I was elected Executive there were, on average at any given time, 90 youth held in detention. Through Zero Youth Detention, with the help of community partners, we’ve created diversion programs and alternatives, and reduced the number of youth detained to under 15 in the first quarter of 2021, and under 10 on many days. This is unmatched, nation-leading work. We would not be here today without the partnership of community leaders and support from voters who have affirmed my determined approach to ending youth incarceration in King County.
We’ve committed to closing the detention section of the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center by 2025—the date demanded by Black Lives Matter Seattle/King County and announced by me last year, and the date we believe to be achievable given the community input we have received and the hard work we’ve put in so far. Those who remain detained are the most tragic and complicated cases, often made more challenging by lack of family support or behavioral health issues. For many of these youth, the programs to prevent detention and provide safe, community-based alternative care simply do not yet exist. We are undeterred from this goal and continue to work with community to develop the next set of needed programs and supports.
We are working to reduce use of the criminal legal system altogether. My administration partnered with criminal legal reform advocates and community to create the groundbreaking LEAD program, since adopted in jurisdictions across the country. Our public health-based gun violence prevention initiative will seek to intervene and defuse violence before it starts.
Finally, through prevention, alternatives and booking restrictions we’ve reduced adult detention from around 1,900 to 1,300—and reduced the number being held for low-level offenses. To close centralized youth detention and the downtown Seattle adult jail we need an all-community effort, including continued success in bringing community-based alternatives to scale. I am committed to continuing that work.
