This week, we announced nearly $10 million in community investments through the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI), which has focused on addressing the challenges of displacements by investing in BIPOC led community organizations focused on affordable housing and community spaces for our City’s residents and non-profits. As the City focuses on building back better and more equitably, EDI awards have become a significant piece of our recovery efforts, and is a central component of the City’s effort to support Seattle’s existing residents, businesses and organizations in high displacement risk neighborhoods. All 46 EDI partner organizations who have received nearly $50 million in EDI funding to date are led by and serve people of color.
We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially devastating for our Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. Across neighborhoods in Seattle, we are supporting investments for new affordable housing, spaces for young people and seniors to gather, and affordable spaces for non-profits. The following community-based organizations will receive awards for major capital projects:
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Central Area Senior Center
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Chief Seattle Club Northgate
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Delridge Neighborhood Development Association
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Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association
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FAME Housing Association
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Khmer Community of Seattle/King County
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Nurturing Roots
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Somali Health Board
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Youth Achievement Center
Additionally, the following organizations were selected for capacity-building awards of $75,000 to help support the development of additional anti-displacement efforts: AiPACE, Black and Tan Hall, Cham Refugees Community, Community-Owned Resource Development, Eritrean Community in Seattle & Vicinity, Estelita’s Library, Hip Hop is Green, Seattle Indian Services Commission, Stem Path Innovation Network, and Wa Na Wari.
Mayor Durkan visited preschoolers at the Refugee Women’s Alliance Lake City Early Learning Center to celebrate the first week of preschool and welcome members of the largest class of Seattle Preschool Program preschoolers yet! The Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning and the Seattle Preschool Program offers high-quality, affordable preschool to children across the City of Seattle, and is one of the best in the country. Applications for the 2021 - 2022 school year now available.
This week, Mayor Durkan with Councilmember Debora Juarez attended the opening of the Kraken Community Iceplex in Northgate. Doors are officially open to the public for the Opening Celebration, starting this weekend.
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan issued the following statement in support of President Biden’s new actions to increase vaccinations, protect workers from COVID-19, and curb the spread of the Delta variant:
“I commend President Biden’s new efforts to increase vaccinations and keep our communities safe from the worst effects of the COVID-19 virus. Vaccines are saving lives, so this is a commonsense decision informed by clear science. In Seattle, we have led the way with the lowest cases, hospitalizations, and deaths of every major city, and we have one of the highest vaccinations rates. We are proud to support this work by joining major public sector and private employers across our country in implementing a vaccine requirement, which public health experts agree will keep workers and communities safe, prevent the spread of the Delta variant, and ensure our hospital systems do not become overwhelmed.
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Mayor Jenny A. Durkan today announced partnerships with Intentionalist, Belltown United, and the South Lake Union Chamber to support downtown small businesses as part of Welcome Back Weeks. These efforts will involve 283 downtown businesses, approximately 95 percent of which are owned by women, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+ people. To complement July Welcome Back Weeks, these efforts focus on Belltown, the downtown core, and South Lake Union.
The Office of Labor Standards (OLS) announces the availability of $3 million dollars in funding to expand outreach, education, and technical assistance to Seattle workers about the City’s labor standards. OLS will award two-year contracts totaling $1.5 million dollars per year for 2022 and 2023 to fund local community organizations. The 24-month contracting period begins in January 2022.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the current Community Outreach and Education Fund (COEF) has supported community-based organizations to educate more than 10,000 workers and provide technical assistance, including intake and complaint resolution services, and deepen partnerships between community organizations and OLS. The 2022-2023 funding cycle will likewise support groups that work with low wage working communities with the highest rates of workplace violations, including BIPOC workers and immigrant and refugee workers.
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Do you have a great idea to support the local economy and promote racial equity in your neighborhood? Apply to the Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund!
Projects can be community-based solutions to address the negative impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic had on neighborhoods and their local economies. Some projects and activities can include:
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Public and commercial space activations, such as, outdoor seating, retail/vendor markets, public art and music, community events and commercial space popups
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Digital equity projects, such as neighborhood digital marketplaces
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Communications infrastructure, such as websites, social media, and contact databases to promote community news and resources, and share stories of local businesses and events
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Physical Improvements, such as lighting, sidewalk cleaning, murals, façade
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Community safety projects, such as business block watches, community organizing
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Outreach to support businesses and residents, build partnerships and shared vision, and
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Other economic recovery projects specific to neighborhood needs
Bright lights, big fun. Our #WelcomeBackSeattle September series starts today, 9/10 at the historic Paramount Theatre with a FREE immersive light and sound experience from Borealis Seattle. Vaccination + masks required for entry. You can RSVP here: www.seattle.gov/covidrecovery
We invite all veterans and members of the public to join the Seattle Fire and Police departments virtually on Sept. 11 to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, and honor all who lost their lives and as a result of that tragic day. Live stream will begin at 11 a.m.
A new data dashboard from Public Health—Seattle and King County gives us concrete answers about breakthrough case, hospitalization, and death rates.
If you’re not in the business of obsessively following Public Health Twitter on the eve of a holiday weekend, you may have missed a very welcome development on Friday.
That day, Public Health—Seattle and King County unveiled a critical and, until then, absent tool for assessing risk amid the Delta stage of the coronavirus pandemic. In doing so, it cleared up a ton of uncertainty about who is actually getting sick with the more contagious form of the virus.
On a new data dashboard, the authority displays some telling stats. Over the past 30 days, and adjusting for age, unvaccinated people are seven times more likely to test positive for Covid-19 than those who have received their shots. They are 49 times more likely during that span to be hospitalized with the illness, and 32 times more likely to die of it.
While we’ve long known that vaccines are effective in preventing severe bouts of the disease, there’s been more than a little trepidation that, in our highly vaxxed area, cases have remained high for weeks. King County recently added an outdoor mask mandate for outdoor gatherings with 500 or more people. It had already reinstated an indoor mask mandate.
But the public health authority’s data plainly shows that vaccinated people are far more protected against Covid-19 than those who’ve rejected or cannot receive the shots. Though King County’s calculations rightly weight for age, even a raw proportion (a feature on the dashboard) shows that vaccinated people have never made up more than 40 percent of weekly cases here, let alone hospitalizations or deaths.
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