If the city can't even issue a press release in a couple of days' time, what's to make anyone think it can get a whole new tenant assistance program up and running in the few days that it's promising?
That's what housing advocate John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition is asking days after being told by city personnel that a press release would be coming "any day" on a new program the city is starting to disburse moving money to low- and moderate-income tenants whose apartments are being converted to condos.
The good news is that the city's Human Services Department is now trying to start the program. Earlier this month, Fox discovered that the mayor had frozen $350,000 in funds that the Seattle City Council allocated last year to create the program, which was intended to provide tenants up to $1,500 over and above the $500 in moving assistance that the law requires a developer pay a tenant who is forced to move by a condo conversion.
The mayor froze the funds after HSD learned that it would get $600,000 less from the federal government this year than it anticipated -- leading Fox and others to cry foul. Since then, says Tim Burgess, chair of the City Council's Public Safety and Human Services Committee, the council has gotten the mayor to release $25,000 for the four dozen tenants that Fox estimates are currently facing a condo conversion. More money can be released in March, Burgess says, if it's needed -- with the mayor and council both hoping that the Legislature will pass a bill shortly authorizing cities to make condo converters pay tenants more in moving money.
"I think this amount is more than sufficient to provide the assistance for this batch of people," says Burgess, "so I think the situation has been resolved."
It would be if there were a way to get the money. But that has to wait for the wheels at the Human Services Department to turn.