Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s ambitious 1000-bed temporary shelter plan, which, among other elements, proposes accelerating the construction of up to 250-unit “tiny house” villages across all council districts, is still in the early planning stages but is already generating lots of questions from providers and others. 

Including from us.

How will the City handle the management of these super-sized sites? How will they facilitate the transition of residents to permanent housing? And how are they going to handle the inevitable freak out from neighbors when the locations of these villages are announced?

We also discuss the implications of a rising tide of behind-the-scenes complaints from city council members feeling excluded from the planning process and jammed by the mayor’s announcement.

Additionally, the discussion covers:

Erica’s reporting on efforts to ban new I.C.E. detention facilities.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s move to create a new county auditor position and improve spending oversight. This initiative follows recent audits and government accountability reporting by KUOW and others.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

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CARE team head Amy Barden told council this week that the latest police union contract is preventing effective alternative 911 response from her team. We also get into what’s really happening with the allegations facing Derrick Wheeler-Smith, the Director of the Office of Civil Rights; and the controversy around Mayor Katie Wilson’s removal of City Light CEO Dawn Lindell, revealing behind-the-scenes lobbying by organized labor and the possible recalibration of power at City Hall.  

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Following her first State of the City address, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson joins us to discuss the city’s most pressing issues. We explore why she hasn’t yet changed the city’s policies on encampment clearances, how she’s going to deliver on her big promise to add 1000 units of shelter by year’s end, and her answer to impatience from the left for bold progressive actions.

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Correction: During this interview, Erica said the Chamber has supported moving oversight of some parts of the homelessness system to the city's Human Services Department. The Chamber has not taken a position on this issue. 

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Meet Joe Nguyen, a seemingly unusual pick to head the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. A former Bernie Sanders delegate and former progressive state lawmaker who championed policies like the capital gains tax and famously eschewed corporate PAC money, Nguyen is now leading the fiscally conservative Chamber through a period of change as it tries to navigate Seattle's progressive electorate while fostering a thriving business environment.

This is a preview of a members only episode. Sign up to support the podcast and unlock your members only feed at patreon.com/seattlenice. 

Our editor is Quinn Waller. Help Quinn rebuild after a fire

Editor’s note: During this interview, Erica said the Chamber has supported moving oversight of some parts of the homelessness system to the city's Human Services Department. The Chamber has not taken a position on this issue. 

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Following a decisive win last fall for citywide Position 9, City Councilmember Dionne Foster joins us to talk about how she intends to fulfill her campaign promises amid Seattle’s mounting fiscal challenges. 

Councilmember Foster, who chairs the Housing, Arts and Civil Rights Committee, outlines some of her priorities including housing affordability. We also get into her more progressive approach to the homelessness crisis, in which she emphasizs the need for more shelter capacity—such as tiny home villages—over encampment removals. 

Foster also tells us why she has "no intent on working on repeal" of the public drug use and possession law championed by her opponent Sara Nelson, and why she believes city surveillance cameras should be "turned off and come down." 

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Amy Barden, director of the city's Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) department.

Barden has been on the job for just over two years, running the city's 911 operations while also setting up an unarmed team of social workers who respond to emergency calls that don't require police—the CARE Team.

The CARE Team is expanding to 48 members this year, and their size will no longer be capped under the city's contract with the Seattle Police Officers' Guild (SPOG), which has historically resisted reducing the duties that legally have to be performed by police, like directing traffic and responding to 911 calls. 

But the contract also includes new constraints on CARE that limit where the team is allowed to go and when they have to back off and call police. CARE can't help people if there are signs that they've recently used drugs, for instance, and they aren't allowed to go inside most buildings or respond to people inside cars.

We asked Barden about these constraints, along with the requirement that SPD sergeants decide who to send out on crisis calls that come in to 911—police, CARE, or community service officers, civilian SPD staffers who respond to minor issues but lack the mental health and crisis response training of the social workers who make up the CARE team.

We also talked about how CARE has evolved in its first 28 months, what happens when people call 911 for a person in crisis, and Barden's hopes for the team under new mayor Katie Wilson and a more progressive City Council.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

This week, we spoke to former deputy city attorney Scott Lindsay. Voters soundly rejected Lindsay's former boss, Republican Ann Davison, last November, but Lindsay argues that many of her prescriptions for addressing crime and disorder were sound—including "stay out" zones for people accused of using or possessing drugs in public, extra penalties for people who commit misdemeanors like shoplifting over and over, and the elimination of community court, which Lindsay called "a complete disaster and shame and stain on the record of city attorney [Pete] Holmes."

Although the city has arguably been ruled by a moderate-to-conservative supermajority for at least the last four years, Lindsay says they failed to accomplish all their goals, in part, because former mayor Bruce Harrell wouldn't always get with the program. Seattle, Lindsay argues, still has "radically too few police officers," "no consensus about what to do about our most pressing public disorder problems," and neighborhoods that have been "destroyed" by people using and selling drugs in public. 

PubliCola has frequently pushed back on the notion that cracking down on so-called "prolific offenders"—the subject of a report Lindsay wrote for the Downtown Seattle Association in 2019—is a solution to the problems facing neighborhoods like Little Saigon that have faced decades of neglect and disinvestment. Lindsay agreed—and said that isn't the point. 

"More people will die every year of fentanyl and meth overdose than will be successful in getting out of the life and getting into treatment and turning their lives around," Lindsay said.

 "I'm not saying give up, but I'm saying we need to balance our treatment approach with, how do we stop the havoc that these folks create? And one effective way at stopping the havoc that they create is to constantly disrupt. Use legal tools to disrupt their behavior. Convince them that being on the streets at 12th and Jackson smoking fentanyl is going to get you incarcerated. Even if that's for eight or 12 hours that is in effect, can be an effective tool at disrupting the problem behavior and saving neighborhoods. Little Saigon is gone, but others are on the brink."

Listeners will probably have strong feelings about this conversation, which also includes a discussion of Police Chief Shon Barnes, community court, and the "radical abolitionists," in Lindsay's words, at King County's Department of Public Defense, which provides attorneys for indigent defendants.

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Ann Davison's 2025 annual report, referenced in the show, is here.

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We sat down with new Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion founder Lisa Daugaard this week to talk about changes Evans is making to the way the city handles low-level drug cases.

Under Evans' Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, people arrested for simple drug possession or using in public were either jailed and prosecuted or sent to a "drug prosecution alternative" where they have to get an assessment to confirm they have an addiction and stay out of trouble for six month. 

Evans directed her prosecutors to go back to the pre-Davison policy of reviewing people's cases to see if they're eligible for LEAD, the city's pre-filing diversion program. In response to this reasonable directive, Police Chief Shon Barnes told his officers that going forward, officers had to refer every drug case to LEAD—an overstatement that led to a right-wing media freakout when police guild director Mike Solan claimed Mayor Katie Wilson had ordered an end to all drug arrests. 

Evans and Daugaard set the record straight, explaining what LEAD does, who it's for, and how they believe this policy shift will actually help people addicted to fentanyl who use in public—which, they both reminded is, is encoded in the 2023 "Blake fix" law that empowered the city attorney to prosecute minor drug cases in the first place.

"What we're doing is not anything inconsistent with what the law has already recommended for our office to be doing," Evans told us. "But nothing's off the table. If someone is not making meaningful progress with LEAD or in diversion, then we do reserve the right to do traditional prosecution."

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

About Seattle NIce 

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

We have no clue what 2026 holds, but that hasn't stopped us! The annual "Seattle Nice" prognostication episode returns with Publicola Co-Founder Josh Feit to offer hopes and predictions for the city's 2026. The main event: Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s looming tenure. Will she defy her critics and steer a progressive agenda with pragmatic, results-oriented grit? We're all optimistic.  

The discussion also gets into Seattle's biggest flashpoints including the need for greater police accountability, and the role of the CARE Department. We also talk over ideas to tackle density and affordability, including a “sprawl tax” (or “urban pass”). Finally, the conversation shifts to the quiet crises plaguing the city: dimming transparency at city hall, the struggle for a vibrant nighttime economy, and an accountability deficit in the city's public education system. 

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

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On this four-year anniversary episode of Seattle Nice, we dissect two major policy and political battles, starting with the contentious Seattle Police Officer Guild (SPOG) contract. Passed by a narrow and unusual 6-3 City Council vote, the contract gives officers significant raises— a 42% increase overall— without requiring key accountability measures. We also discuss Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s decision to retain Police Chief Sean Barnes, and the Trump administration’s erratic moves on homelessness funding. 

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails [email protected]

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at [email protected]

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.