Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
We sat down with Seattle’s 58th Mayor, Katie Wilson, roughly two months into her new job, after being a longtime progressive organizer.
Wilson is a newcomer to elected office – a significant political shift, and now a key decision maker in one of the fastest growing U.S. cities that boasts nearly 12,000 city employees and nearly 800,000 residents.
Prior to being Mayor, Wilson co-founded the Transit Riders Union, a democratic organization that successfully pushed for expanded transit access, minimum wage increases and renter protections.
“It's amazing now to be in this position where I have this great team in the mayor's office. And to really feel that I'm in a position with that team to do things that really move the needle for people's quality of life. And it's just a different part of the picture, I think than being on the outside as an organizer, And, you know, always pushing and being like, here's the thing that people need. We're just going to push and push and push until we get there. And now, being the mayor, feeling that I have kind of a different set of levers at my disposal to get things done,” Wilson said.
Wilson is leaning into her coalitions and community building as she weighs some critical decisions.
“How important it is to have, people in organizations and movements on the outside that are doing that pushing right? And providing that perspective on what the community needs. And also, creating that public support that really makes hard things possible politically,” Wilson said.
During the campaign one of the biggest criticisms against Wilson was her inexperience running a large organization. Following a narrow victory against incumbent Bruce Harrell, Wilson is being put to the test.
Seattle has a high rate of unsheltered people. Wilson says it’s one of her administration’s top priorities to tackle the complex problem.
During the mayor’s State of the City Address she pledged to bring open 1,000 emergency housing units before the end of the year and 500 before the FIFA World Cup.
“We are moving rapidly to accelerate expansion of shelter and emergency housing. I signed an executive order a few weeks ago to basically get our city departments aligned and moving in that direction. Your question, where are we going to find the money? So we've been, combing through the city budget, looking for places where, we can use funds for basically for their intended purpose, but kind of like shift a little bit to really put everything together in the right way, so that we can, open these new units. We have found some funding in the city, in the city budget for this. We are also going to be working with [City] council to allocate some additional funds. And then we're also working with philanthropic partners to raise money, for kind of the capital side, of actually standing up new units,” Wilson explained.
This interview was conducted on February 24, before Wilson announced three pieces of permanent legislation to construct those 1,000 emergency housing units to fruition that are largely tiny houses.
Preparing in case ICE expands action in Seattle
Story published 3/12/2026
Seattle hasn’t seen a large deployment of ICE agents by the federal government compared to some other sanctuary cities, but the threats remain top of mind for city, county and state officials.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson says her administration has preemptively moved to address outside threats from the Trump administration following the aggressive and deadly ICE immigration surges in Minneapolis and other major cities.
In January, Wilson announced a series of steps and an executive order to address federal immigration activities.
“One of the things that we've done is provide, much clearer guidance around the role of our police department, regarding ICE. And so basically, directing police to, you know, record potentially criminal ICE activity. And I think this is something that's really important when we think about, ‘how are we actually going to hold people responsible for what they're doing in our community?’ We've also invited small businesses, other private institutions to join us in not allowing ICE to stage on their property to make it clear that, you know, this is a private space where ICE cannot come in without a warrant,” Wilson said.
As part of those plans, the Mayor’s office is working to invest $4 million into organizations engaged in immigrant legal defense, community support, and the long-term needs of immigrant communities – money the City Council appropriated late last year under her predecessor.
The mayor acknowledges that the city is limited in what it can do. But, Wilson says the city sent a staffer to Minneapolis at the height of the ICE surge, who returned to Seattle with recommendations.
“I think a big lesson was just the importance of that really consistent collaboration, communication between the city government and, like neighborhood-based organizations, and immigrants rights groups. We're really taking that to heart and, trying to make sure that we're building those relationships now and that also we just have a really clear plan and protocol in place,” she said.
Wilson hopes CARE Team finds stronger roots
Story published 3/11/2026
Seattle’s police alternative crisis team tasked with going to non-emergency calls within the city is struggling to be dispatched to those incidents.
Although the city expanded the Community Assisted Response & Engagement Team or the CARE Team in 2024, the program’s Chief Amy Barden recently said territorialism and bureaucracy are standing in the way of getting CARE workers dispatched to calls.
Established in 2023, the program sprouted following the death of George Floyd and the nationwide protest over police brutality. It’s an effort to address the mental health needs of people during emergency calls that are non-criminal or non-life threatening.
CARE responders are mental health professionals with backgrounds in social work and crisis intervention.
They operate as a dual-dispatch model that works collaboratively with the Seattle Police Department. In some scenarios, it means a police officer assessing a scene for safety first before leaving the case to CARE responders and heading to other higher-priority calls. In other cases, CARE responders can be dispatched directly to a scene without police on site.
The Seattle Times reports the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild contract signed last October was supposed to free CARE staff to go to calls without the assistance of armed cops and remove restrictions on how many responders the city could hire for its expansion.
During our sit down with Mayor Katie Wilson, we asked her what she could do to ease the tension between CARE and the Seattle Police Department and increase the dispatch rate of CARE staff.
“I mean, they're like staffing up. And so I would hope that people are seeing starting to see that already, but it will be, you know, it's going to be a work in progress. It's going to be a work in progress. And I think we're going to just figure out how we can really maximize the use of the CARE Team. And part of that is really, like making sure that our officers understand the circumstances under which, like they should be calling in the CARE Team to take care of a call. So yeah, I would hope that over the course of this year, that's something that people can kind of see around them,” Wilson said.
Housing affordability a top priority
Story published 3/10/2026
Seattle has a massive housing crisis. Wilson made affordable housing a centerpiece of her campaign. A renter herself, she has already taken some action in her first two months in office.
Last month, the Seattle City Council approved the transfer of $115 million dollars toward publicly owned housing for working Seattleites.
Last month, the Mayor’s Office announced the elimination of regulatory barriers to speed up the permitting process to accelerate the production of housing and shelter needs.
“This is one small piece of a large puzzle, right? So we know that our housing crisis has been building for many, many years. It has many causes. The big one is that we have not been building housing to match our growing region. Right. We've had people moving to Seattle, to our region for many, many years. You know, as part of the tech boom and just all of the reasons why people want to live in this city and we have not built housing to match. And so that mismatch has really, helped to drive up rents. Now, that's not the only cause, right? We've also seen decades of federal disinvestment in subsidized housing. And so tackling this crisis really is an all hands on deck kind of thing. Right? So there's not just one thing we can do, but one thing we can do is, make it possible for the private market to build more housing in our great neighborhoods around the city. And so the legislation that you mentioned, speeding up, the, you know, we're using some of those permitting obstacles is, part of that. But that's not going to solve it all by itself. Right? So we're going to have, more chances this year and in the years ahead to make it possible for more housing to be built around the city. And then at the same time, I'm very committed to supporting Seattle's new social housing developer, which just got its first big infusion of revenue from the tax that was passed by voters last year. We're going to be working hard to make sure that they get up and rolling and start to acquire and develop units that will be, you know, permanently affordable, publicly owned, affordable housing,” Wilson said.
