Rivera Moves to Defund Affordable Housing, Healthcare and Childcare for Marginalized Communities
Same Song Different Verse
A little bit quieter
On Friday afternoon, right before the three day weekend, which is the equivalent of the dark of night in terms of news coverage, Maritza Rivera moved to defund a bunch of projects aimed toward providing affordable housing, healthcare and other services for children and youth in underrepresented communities.
. . . and a whole lot worse
Her budget maneuver, if passed, will almost certainly kill the funding for an array of capital projects supporting basic services for marginalized members of our community.
It is set for review today.
Immediate Action Needed. Click here to email the council to stop this.
Details of Maritza’s Mendacious Gambit
Rivera aims to cut spending on affordable housing at the Africatown Community Land Trust, the Central Area Youth Association, East African Community Services, Seattle Indian Services Commission, Duwamish Valley Affordable Housing, Casa Latina (for Latino Seniors), the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, and the Nehemiah Initiative, a partnership with churches to redevelop their lands for affordable housing.
Her next target is healthcare. She would cut Seattle’s investment in a facility by the Somali Health Board of Rainier Valley, which is a multigenerational health hub (that will also include senior housing), a birth Center for the Rainier Valley Midwives, who work on maternal health and birth outcomes for women of color (who have much higher maternal and infant mortality in the US), and a new flagship clinic for Tubman Health Care Rainier Valley, part of a system of clinics focused on communities of color and other marginalized groups.
Finally, kids and youth are on the chopping block. Whether the Africatown Youth Achievement Center, which provides emergency overnight housing, permanent affordable housing, and associated wraparound supportive services for Black and brown youth, the Cham Refugee center, which provides programs for youth (and seniors and the disabled), and the Kwanza Prep Academy Tayari Learning Center’s new childcare center–she seems happy to smother funding for all of these programs and sweep her actions under the rug.
Example from Africatown Community Land Trust
Where will the council land on this?
I’m not sanguine. This Council has shown us who it is with its actions. It has voted for red tape for affordable housing, passed a deal that makes it much harder to hold police officers accountable in the future when they violently step out of line, even though our department has a depressingly bad reputation for bad behavior.
It is gearing up to cut minimum wage for delivery workers with a bill admittedly written by the corporate lobby, and in fact the corporate lobby is open about the fact that it owns this council, a council that plans huge budget cuts to basic services.
This is to say nothing of individuals’ actions–whether Sara Nelson’s conflict of interests and opposition to an easy fix to get more people to vote, Tanya Woo accidentally admitting what many of these conservatives obviously believe–that basic Democratic party policy like remotely progressive taxes are a bad idea–or Cathy Moore making fiery and false claims about her colleague, and calling for the arrest of relatively benign—if annoying—protestors.
Will they go the next step and show open hostility to marginalized communities of color? Or will someone on the council (other than Tammy Morales, who will obviously oppose this) actually put a stop to this madness?
Please email your council member immediately.