Eddie Lin is running for Seattle City Council in District 2 and emphasizing the issue of housing affordability and the need to increase the pace of homebuilding. In a conversation with The Urbanist, Lin laid out his plans and how he will pitch them to D2 voters.
For example, denser housing doesn’t just increase housing opportunities, it also makes room for trees and green space as the city grows, he pointed out.
“We have a robust economy; we’re going to continue to grow,” Lin told The Urbanist. “We’re going to have political refugees. We’re going to have climate refugees coming here. And so, yeah, we need to think big and to plan big. And that means density, and density is how we get the combination of trees plus housing plus livable neighborhoods. We can’t have a suburban lifestyle continue as we grow as a city. And I know that it’s hard to for us. It’s hard for any city to grow as very rapidly as we have, without real growing pains.”
Normally the D2 council seat would not be up this year or appear alongside the mayoral race, but Tammy Morales’ early resignation has created an opening that must be filled in the upcoming general election. The city council appointed Mark Solomon to fill the seat as a temporary replacement until election results are certified in November. Though the runner-up D2 candidate in 2019, Solomon has pledged to be a caretaker lawmaker and not run for election.
Also running for the seat is Adonis Ducksworth, a Seattle Department of Transportation staffer on loan to the Harrell Administration as an advisor, who like Lin applied for the temporary appointment. Apparently, perennial candidate Tanya Woo recently filed, too, hoping the third time is the charm, after losing a D2 bid in 2023 and a citywide bid in 2024. The winner will serve for two years before facing reelection with the rest of Seattle’s district-based councilmembers in 2027.
For Lin, part of the inspiration to run was pushing Seattle to avoid the fate of the San Francisco Bay Area, where housing and affordability issues spiraled out of control. He experienced first-hand the high housing costs and displacement pressure long brewing in the Bay.
“We had our first kid down in Oakland, and were trying to buy a house,” Lin said. “This was like 2000 — very good for teachers salary and a secondary salary, and the housing boom down there… kind of saw that for the future of Seattle down in the Bay Area — the growing income wealth disparity and basically, kind of found ourselves economically pushed out from the Bay Area and came back to Seattle for law school.”
Zoning and growth planning
The Seattle Comprehensive Plan presents an opportunity to increase housing options and diversity, which Lin acknowledged, saying Seattle needs to distribute growth equitably throughout the city. Wealthier parts of the city have not been asked to absorb as much housing as D2, he said.
“I think we need to go bigger and for D2 in particular, I mean, if you look at the comp plan map, where the density is, there’s a ton in District 2, in terms of upzones,” Lin said. “I would really like to see those upzones in other parts of the city. One of the best anti-displacement things is for other parts of the city to have their fair share and prosperity of growth.”
Count Lin among the advocates for cities being cities, not suburbs.
“We can’t have huge parts of the city just continue to be more suburban in nature,” Lin said. “That’s just going to push folks down to South Seattle, and that’s just going to exacerbate the economic displacement of South Seattle.”
Permit applications have nosedived in Seattle, which points toward a slowdown in housing production. Even as construction continues to hum along for now, the housing pipeline is looking increasingly dry looking forward. And Lin pointed out this problem could have far-reaching consequences.
“We need to get housing development started again, and that will help with jobs, that will help with tax revenues,” Lin said. “Whenever there’s housing development, they pay sales tax. Often there’s [real estate] excise tax. So I think that that’s critical is to keep housing production going.”
After finishing law school in Seattle, Lin worked in real estate law in private practice before eventually got a job at the Seattle City Attorney’s office. For the last six years, he’s supported the City’s Office of Housing work, partnering with nonprofit homebuilders.
Lin expressed support for the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program, Seattle’s version of inclusionary zoning, and lamented that it hadn’t been put into place before most of the Amazon building boom took place.
Overall, Lin portrayed himself as a champion for taxing the rich and easing the tax burden on the working class, saying he would defend JumpStart revenue from being pilfered or cut. The revenue source has turned into a bit of a piggybank for mayoral priorities in recent budget cycles.
“We can’t shore [our budget] up by taxing our lowest income, our fixed income seniors, our minimum wage workers,” Lin said. “We need to lean in things like capital gains tax and protecting our Jumpstart tax, because there probably will be financial impacts from the feds. We might see a recession as well.”
Social housing
Having seen how challenging it is in the affordable housing sector also gave Lin pause when it came to Seattle’s recently approved social housing measure, Proposition 1A. Lin said he voted for Prop 1B.
“So 50 million, you know, no other sort of affordable housing developer gets 50 million year after year,” Lin said. “And so that’s what I do. Want to make sure it’s well spent. Voters have strongly approved it. I will strongly support it. But I did have concerns about this sort of ramping up too quick, and are they going to be able to? I just don’t want there to be some sort of stumbling where then that sort of has some sort of backlash on affordable housing generally, or progressive revenues generally… because again, I know how hard it is to ramp up. I know how hard it is to develop these and they are a new city model. And so that was my concern.”
Lin seemed aware his Prop 1B support might be greeted with some chagrin by social housing advocates who fought hard to pass their measure. However, Lin stressed he would support their work and respect the will of voters in a follow-up email after our interview.
“I couldn’t be more passionate about ensuring the Social Housing Developer and the House our Neighbors team are successful and the clear message delivered by voters,” Lin said. “And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to bring my experience and skills to support their work through strong support and collaboration at council.”
Transportation
Lin emphasized the need to move away from car dependence and improve transit, both in terms of safety and service. He expressed frustration that the Rainier Valley has at-grade transit while most neighborhoods have grade-separated transit. For Southeast Seattle, this has meant MLK Way has long been a hotspot for collisions involving trains — with Sound Transit boardmembers finally now pushing hard for safety upgrades.
“As a growing city, our streets are not going to get any bigger,” Lin said. “So we got to look at these alternative methods, whether it’s light rail, bus, biking, walking. I mean, this also gets back to the planning and why we need these walkable in more dense neighborhoods, because we just rely on cars. So it’s going to be a tough transition long-term to go from our car-oriented culture. And thankfully, we’ve made a lot of progress, and we’re one of the better cities, but we still have just so much to go.”
Lin seemed hesitant to get behind pedestrianizing Lake Washington Boulevard, but overall backed efforts to pedestrianize more areas of the city, with Pike Place recently earning the mayor’s vow of support.
“I would just love to see more parts of the city pedestrianized,” Lin said. “I really think it can reinvigorate the area. As we reimagine downtown, or reimagine our city, we really need to do this. I’m not a planner myself, but I would love to see like that this is part of that sort of long-term planning. How do we think big about our city? And, are there ways that we can really create these pedestrian experiences?”
Safety
Backing a balanced approach to public safety, Lin said safety interventions are necessary to reduce crime and substance use disorder.
“I do think we have an obligation to intervene,” Lin said. “I think the question is, what does that intervention look that intervention look like? And I think intervention does not look like just throwing people in a cold jail cell with no medical support, right? That’s, that’s brutal and unusual punishment, but it’s also not leaving them on the street where they’re they’re also at severe risk of dying from overdoses, as well as the elements and safety issues, right.”
Lin wants to expand use of drug diversion courts and reduce use of the SCORE jail in Des Moines, which has garnered criticism for the high number of inmate deaths. While pushing for more diversion and civilian crisis response, he wasn’t shy about saying police recruitment was part of his vision, too.
“I do believe we need more police,” Lin said. “We’re very short-staffed on police compared to other cities our size. And so when people call 911 because of a public safety issue, we need police to be able to respond. We do need the other responses, social workers, healthcare workers, to be able to respond to things that don’t need a police officer with a gun.”
Among his proposed upstream solutions is a renewed push to expand tiny home villages and homeless shelters.
“In terms of public safety, it’s probably our homeless that are suffering the most,” Lin said. “So, that’s where, again, you get back to housing supply on that part. But I do think we need a lot more shelter, emergency shelter, transitional shelter or tiny homes. Would really love to work more with our faith communities.”
Expanding tiny house villages is an idea that has long been floated, with former Mayor Jenny Durkan making it a centerpiece of her homeless plan in her 2017 run and former Councilmember Andrew Lewis pushing her administration to follow through. Nonetheless, expansion has been tortuously slow. Meanwhile, the Compassion Seattle initiative campaign, which Mayor Bruce Harrell said he would enact as mayor, promised 2,000 additional units of housing for homeless people in one year, but he also fell short.
“What you can accomplish in two years is also just changing the the dialogue,” Lin said. “It’s not just going to be me. It’s gonna be working with community and laying the groundwork. A lot of this is going to be long term, but it would be about getting the community tapped in. And perhaps, for me, I think that as a lawyer and understanding how government works, I really want to bring that information and knowledge to the community, a strong bench of folks who are ready to have this information and lead.”
For more on Eddie Lin’s campaign, check out his website.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.
