Forum: District 36 state rep candidates share views on homelessness, criminal justice and education

About the candidates

Manson has a law degree with an emphasis in poverty and inequality law from Seattle University. He is currently an administrative law judge in Washington and “sees how state laws and budgets affect the most vulnerable people in Washington State on a daily basis,” according to his website.

To learn more, visit votejeffmanson.com or email info@votejeffmanson.com.

Julia Reed

Reed is a lifelong Democrat who served in the Obama administration at the State Department and in the Political Military Affairs Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget. After returning to Seattle in 2017, she worked in the mayor’s office as a senior policy adviser. In 2020, she left city government to join social impact consulting firm Kinetic West. To learn more about Reed, visit votejuliareed.com or email Julia@votejuliareed.com.

With ballots for the Nov. 8 general election mailed to voters, Julia Reed and Jeff Manson, the candidates running for the open District 36 state representative position 1 seat, spoke with locals about housing, police and social services at a candidate forum Oct. 19 hosted by the Queen Anne and Magnolia community councils.

Reed and Manson are vying for the seat currently filled by Rep. Noel Frame, who opted to run for state Sen. Reuven Carlyle’s seat after he announced he would not seek reelection. Frame is running against Sara Martin in the general election on Nov. 8.

State Rep. Liz Berry is running unopposed for District 36 position 2.

At the candidate forum, Manson and Reed answered a number of questions, some which they both answered and some just directed to them.

Q: You have now spent the last several months meeting individuals from all walks of life and hearing their concerns and ideas. Based on any of the feedback you have received, have you changed or revised any of your positions?

Reed: She said after speaking with people in the 36th District, she has not changed or revised her positions, but has “doubled down” on some things she’s focused on. She has heard many concerns about rising housing costs and reducing homelessness and the connection between homelessness and lack of affordable housing. She said she has also heard a lot about climate change, which was especially relevant given the poor air quality caused by smoke from wildfires in the state.

“As the only person in the race who has worked on wildfire smoke preparedness at the city level, I think that’s experience I can really bring. People really want to see more investments in our public education and especially our responding to the message that I am focused on and the work I’m hoping to do around building our workforce around creating more pathways to apprenticeships to better-paying jobs and to workforce opportunities for young people and adults in our state.”  

Manson: He said he has been campaigning since February and has knocked on more than 18,000 doors. Like Reed, he said he has not changed or revised any opinions. He said one of the things that has been “revelatory” to him is hearing people’s concerns about public safety. He said he and his wife work downtown and live in Greenwood and share many of the same concerns. Hearing stories from people who have experienced break-ins or felt uncomfortable walking down the street or have been assaulted makes it that much more real to him.

He said it is a “complicated issue to solve,” and the Legislature is more removed on the decision-making at the city level, “but really hearing that has opened my eyes to sort of the discomfort and concern about where Seattle is, versus was a few years ago, and what direction we’re heading in.”

He said the state is one of the primary funders of both services and enforcement and low-income housing through the Housing Trust Fund and mental health services and more.

“And I think the state has not been meeting its duty to fund a lot of those areas, and I think the pandemic has really shown that under-investment in recent decades,” Manson said.

Q. for Manson: On your website you say that you support “smart-density” to address housing affordability issues. What does this mean, and is this an area that the state can and should legislate?

Manson: Housing and density is an area where his view is “nuanced” and doesn’t think “absolutist responses” are the appropriate policy response.

“I think we all see the housing affordability problem. You know, prices are going up. People are moving out of our city or onto our streets as a result. I do believe that one of the main reasons we have an affordability problem is housing supply. People are moving here faster than we are building. So just with supply and demand, the price is going up. So, I do believe we need more housing units. I don’t think we need to say ban single-family home zoning statewide. I don’t believe that’s an appropriate policy response, but I do think we need more density. I think we get the most bang for our buck in high-capacity transit corridors. We have a real opportunity with the armory, the land that’s there, once the National Guard moves out, to build a lot of housing right next to a light rail stop. I do think that leaving it to the cities has not worked, so I do think it is appropriate for the state to step in to help increase density in the state.”

He said while Seattle has done a lot to add density, many other medium-sized cities have not, and Seattle is in a regional housing market.

“So, I do think it’s appropriate for the state to step in. I don’t think the state is in the best position to be mandating changes parcel by parcel, but whether it’s amending the growth management act or in some other way setting density minimums or maximums of types of zoning, I do think would be appropriate.”

Q. for Reed: Inclusionary zoning is a priority of yours. Please give us some specifics of the role Olympia and the state can and should play with regard to zoning, an area that has traditionally been handled locally?

Reed: She said one of the reasons she got into this race was from being a teacher’s child who grew up in Seattle. She knows that if her family were trying to move to the city today, they would not be able to afford to live here.

“I know because I live it every day with people my age, people in my generation, how much the lack of housing affordability is choking our state,” she said, adding companies are choosing not to move here, children can’t live by their parents and elders can’t retire in place. “And a lot of that is because of exclusionary zoning practices that have been tied to systemic racism and ways to keep people out of communities, and I really want to think about creating a state where we’re bringing people into communities.”

Reed said she doesn’t think cities need “ugly, horrible communities with massive high rises on every block,” but they do need more zoning.

She said the state is facing a “really large emergency crisis scale situation” that is choking our city and state.

“For me, inclusionary zoning means the ability to create more types of housing in our neighborhoods and in our city,” she said.

Reed said that means children should be able to live by their parents, elders can choose to divide their parcels into multi-unit lots and have more family members living there, and the state should allow all types of housing that once were common.

Q: Washington’s tax code is one of most regressive in the state. What’s a realistic tax reform proposal, and how would you go about garnering support from your constituents here?

Reed: Reed said she ultimately would like to see a progressive state income tax that means that working families are not paying the bill for schools, hospitals and parks while the ultra-rich are paying nothing toward community spaces … but that is going to take a constitutional amendment. She said some things the state can do now is increasing the estate tax on large estates, while lowering it on smaller estates so more working families can pass on intergenerational wealth.

“I don’t think that waiting for our parents or our grandparents to die is a really great social housing program, but I want to ensure that people can pass on what they worked really hard to earn and that we’re also ensuring that the ultra-wealthy aren’t hoarding resources that our state really needs and are really needed to make everything we want to do in this state thrive.

Manson: Manson said he agrees Washington has the most regressive tax structure, with lower-income residents bearing the burden of funding government. He said he was in favor of a capital gains tax and is cautiously optimistic that it will be upheld in the courts. If so, he believes it could be expanded beyond just the top families in the state. He also supports a progressive income tax and a wealth tax.

“We have the resources to fund the things that we say that we want, we just need to make sure that our tax structure is utilizing those resources, and it’s not about demonizing any particular individual or demonizing someone who’s become successful. It’s just that people should be paying their fair share if people are driving the same roads or their company is benefiting from our education system and the other investments that we’re making as a state, people should be giving back in that process.”

Q. COVID, which is expected to surge this winter, along with the impacts of long COVID, is unfortunately here to stay. What will you do to address this continuing public health challenge and longer-term challenges of disability?

Manson: Manson said people have to recognize that COVID is here to stay.

“It’s here. It’s endemic, and we need to make sure that we are managing it so that we can continue with our lives while doing so in a healthy way,” he said.

He said he is disappointed how few people have gotten the recent bivalent booster, whether that was a failure of messaging or if the state just isn’t approaching it correctly. The state needs to make sure if it has vaccines or other treatments or less-invasive ways to avoid infections, and it needs to follow where science directs.

He said he has been a disability community advocate for a long time, working with people with disabilities and public assistance, so he thinks what long COVID looks like and how that affects people is something the state still needs to figure out.

“But we need to make sure that our government services, including our education system and our places of employment are accommodating people who are affected by disabilities whether it’s COVID-related or something else,” he said.

Reed: Responding to long-term COVID is going to be a massive public health challenge. She said many of the solutions that she really wants to see the state implement to address wildfire smoke also apply to other public health challenges like long-term COVID.

She said she wants the state to use some of its cap and invest funding to create grant programs for cities to build infrastructure that’s resilient against climate change that includes high levels of filtration in buildings, especially schools.

“So many of our students are going to school this week in terrible conditions, and those same kind of air-filtration (systems) that would protect them against wildfire smoke can also protect them against COVID-19 and make our public spaces safer so we can continue to use our grocery stores, our art spaces, our schools, our community centers, even during times of public health emergency because the resiliency against that public-heath need is built into the building and into the infrastructure,” she said.

Q. for Reed only: With regard to crime and safety, you have suggested that the state invest and scale preventative solutions, such as the work of community passageways and Choose 180. What would this entail?

She said, in respect of crime and safety, everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities and homes. Business owners should not have to deal with the demoralizing effects of rocks through their windows or other challenges, she said.

“I think what we see in our streets every day is that our current approaches to public safety aren’t working,” she said. “Cycling people in and out of jail, pushing people into the next neighborhood, relying on solutions that sound good but have no data behind them that they’re really effective isn’t working. It’s not keeping us safer, and we’re experiencing that every day.”

She said things like the YMCA’s “Alive and Free” program, which works with young people transitioning out of gangs are proven programs in the local area that actually reduce crime at the root, and while government should respond to crime, she said the state can be most effective in trying to prevent crime by supporting these programs that have proven successful.

“I don’t want to run around and implement policy that just sounds good or looks good on a press release,” she said. “I want to be invested in programs that work and scale them.”

Q. for Manson only: What are your thoughts on community-based rehabilitation programs, and should funding these be a priority?

Manson said he does believe that the state should be funding them, and that cities need a carrot-and-stick approach to a functioning criminal justice system. He said he believes in the last couple of decades, government’s approach to criminal justice became far too “draconian,” especially in respect to the war on drugs and treating drug abuse as a criminal issue instead of a public health issue. Now the focus is changing to rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration, which he supports.

“Now if somebody commits a violent, heinous crime, we’ve got prison for that, and I’m not suggesting that we change the result for some of these traditional violent crimes, but for somebody who is addicted and has a low-level offense, I do believe getting at some of these root causes and getting into restorative justice is the right approach,” Manson said.

The problem, he said, is a lack of resources for some of those programs, such as drug court.

Q: What role should the state play in dealing with substance abuse, and do you see this as a policy priority?

Manson said he believes substance abuse is a public health problem and not a criminal problem and supports a “harm-reduction approach.”

“Mental health, behavioral health, addiction support, this is an area that is primarily funded by the state, and the city and the county often will make decisions about what organizations get which grants that the state is the primary funder, and it’s become more and more of an issue, especially with cheaper hard drugs on the street,” he said. “We’re all seeing the problems around substance abuse here in Seattle.”

He said the state has a big part to play, and funding is a big part of that. Housing is another problem, adding it is difficult for people to solve their addiction problems without suitable housing.

Reed said it should be a priority, but another thing the state could do in addition to funding treatment facilities is to look at ways that regulations get in the way or prevent common sense responses. For example, under state law, firefighters are only allowed to take people suffering from a mental health crisis to an emergency room, where they too often get “warehoused and become huge burdens on the hospital and workers there and aren’t able to leave sometimes for many months,” Reed said, adding she supports being able to take people to behavioral health treatment centers once they are built. The state, however, needs to address regulations to make sure they don’t get in the way of doing things that make sense and invest in these programs because it is a responsibility to care for the most-vulnerable residents. She also thinks the state should do everything that it can to ensure that guns are being taken off the streets and people in mental health crisis don’t have access to firearms.

Q: What further gun safety or other measures can the state Legislature take to prevent mass shootings in Washington state?

Reed said she think this is an important challenge for the Legislature to take on, referencing last week’s shooting and death of a business owner in the Central District, which is one of many.

“I know I’m running to represent the 36th, but as a Black person living in the city, I can’t help but be struck by the differing levels of responses to this gun violence where it occurs,” Reed said. “I think, as a state, we need to be doing more to be taking weapons of war off of our streets. We have to be investing more in our communities in education in healthcare programs, including mental wellness programs and belonging programs that prevent people from becoming so disconnected that they think their only answer is to pick up a gun.”

Manson said he agreed with Reed’s comments, adding things appear to be getting worse post-COVID.

“We’re at the point now where gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and young adults in Washington state, kills more people than cars every year and there’s a lot we can do,” Manson said, adding the state can ban assault weapons. “We should do that Day 1 in January when the Legislature reconvenes.”

He also suggested rolling back immunity for the gun industry and adopting a “full licensing scheme” for guns. Manson said cities should also have the ability to impose stricter regulations than the state on such matters, which it currently can’t do.

“You know, Seattle may have different needs than Yelm or Yakima,” Manson said.

Q.: What steps will you take to strengthen our public schools?

Manson said he didn’t agree with the state Supreme Court that the state met its obligation for funding education a few years ago, and that he doesn’t think the state should be “patting ourselves on the back” for meeting a constitutional minimum. He said Washington is still well below adequate funding. He also said the state has an issue with how schools are funded when parents aren’t sending children back to school for whatever reason.

“We’re really setting ourselves up for a downward spiral where enrollment drops, funding drops even more and some more people pull their kids out of school,” Manson said.

Reed said one of the things she’s proudest of is that she is a “teacher’s kid.” Her dad was a teacher in Seattle for many years, and her mother an occupational therapist and special education administrator in Shoreline and Edmonds.

She said one of the issues schools are facing is children not wanting to go back to school post-COVID and dropping out of the system.

“And that’s really concerning because we need 70 percent of our high school graduates to be earning a post-secondary credential by the time we hit 2035, and we are at less than half right now, so we don’t have a lot of time to waste if we’re having people drop out of the system,” she said. “We’re just not going to have the skilled talent to meet our needs and people aren’t going to be able to get the jobs of the future and the jobs that are going to enable them to thrive here.”

One of her top campaign focuses, based on her work building youth apprenticeship and work-based learning programs across the state, is increasing investments in the career and technical education and work-based learning programs. She said one of the things she hears a lot from students is they want to work on problems that are real, and it is hard for them to understand why they have to learn certain things when they have just gone through massive trauma together.

“Macbeth can feel very distant from the lives that they’re leading,” Reed said. “They want to work on real problems. They want to be learning real skills that they feel like are going to equip them well for a future that can feel quite chaotic to people.”

The community councils will host another forum for the candidates running for King County prosecutor, Leesa Manion and Jim Ferrell, from 6 to 7 p.m. today via Zoom. Those interested have until 4 p.m. to register to attend at signup.com/go/CYUDnAQ.

Residents who missed the forum between Reed and Manson can watch it on YouTube. Search “36th Dist Candidates Forum 2022 10 20.”