The city council president stood at a podium in Seattle, defending a plan that would use millions in taxpayer money to fund food programs specifically for Black children. Just eleven days earlier, three people had been killed in a gang-related shootout at the Bite of Seattle food festival. Four more were wounded. The city was still reeling, and the interim police chief had barely settled into his first week on the job.
Council president Joy Hollingsworth had walked with community members through Capitol Hill, past the sites of recent shootings—twenty-five of them in the last three years. She said the work to prevent violence had begun with the new interim chief. “I know Chief Sales cares deeply about this community,” she said. “We have great conversations regarding what the strategy is.
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But there were no updates on the search for a third suspect in the Bite of Seattle shooting. And the mayor’s office had not briefed the council on finding a permanent police chief. Hollingsworth stood by her earlier words criticizing the mayor’s decision to ask former police chief Shawn Barnes to resign just days after the shooting, calling it “irresponsible” and “a tad bit reckless. ” Still, she said her goal now was to find a strong candidate to lead the department.
The problem, some noted, was that the same council president seemed to think hunger was one of the main driving forces behind Seattle’s violence. In a recent city council meeting, she made her position clear. “Caleb put out a video about 51% of Black children not reading at their grade level,” she said. “The average household income of a Black family is $55,000.
And half of the murder victims in Seattle, gun violence victims, are Black males. They only account for 4% of the population. ”
She argued that food insecurity was a root cause. “I know that food can really heal communities,” she said.
“That’s why I go so hard for this. ”
But the city’s problems went deeper than empty stomachs. Seattle’s business climate had collapsed. Revenue was dropping, the budget was short, and businesses were fleeing.
Housing construction had nearly ground to a halt. In 2017, cranes dominated the skyline. Now, there were almost none. Managing director Ray Conell, behind many notable apartment high-rises in Seattle, said the problem wasn’t experience—it was investor interest.
“They’re worried,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty. They’re not openly opening their wallets like they used to. ”
Developers faced the MHA fee, the mandatory housing affordability charge, which could range from a few thousand dollars for a small project to tens of millions.
The energy code was stricter. Permits were more expensive. “The cost to build housing is extremely expensive,” Conell said. In the last two years, there had been almost no new residential activity in Seattle.
Meanwhile, rents kept rising, because supply wasn’t expanding fast enough to meet demand. The council president was pushing back on the mayor’s plan to provide free school lunches for all children, wanting instead to redirect the money toward after-school and weekend food programs serving Black children. She called it her “Black budget”—a formal allocation of taxpayer funds designated by race. But that approach had already drawn questions.
Washington state’s other race-based programs, including the Covenant Home Ownership Program, were already under federal scrutiny. The connection she drew between hunger and violence seemed like a stretch to many. The shootout at the Bite of Seattle happened at a food festival, where food was everywhere. Gangs weren’t shooting each other over sandwiches.
More obvious drivers of violence sat right in front of them: lack of jobs, lack of affordable housing, a shrinking tax base, and a city that had made it nearly impossible to build. The council president remained passionate. She pointed to underrepresented neighborhoods and said the city had not funded them enough. “Particularly for this,” she said.
“I know that food can really heal communities. ”
But the numbers told a different story. Half the city’s gun violence victims were Black males who made up just 4% of the population. The average Black family income was $55,000.
Fifty-one percent of Black children weren’t reading at grade level. Those were serious problems. But were they really caused by hunger? Seattle’s leaders had spent years creating a business environment no one wanted to invest in.
They had made it so expensive to build housing that developers had left. Now the city was facing the consequences—shrinking revenue, rising rents, and communities struggling to stay afloat. The question now was whether the council president’s food programs would make a real difference, or whether the city was simply feeding people while the real problems kept growing.
