There are six people running to be the next mayor of Tacoma. On Aug. 5, voters will decide which candidates will advance to the general election.
A former city council member, elected at the age of 25, Ibsen now works as the managing broker and owner of a real estate team at Windermere. A born and raised Tacoman, he got into politics after college as a volunteer Elected Supervisor with the Pierce County Conservation District. His campaign for mayor has been endorsed by the Pierce County Central Labor Council, Tacoma Education Association, Washington Conservation Action, State Senator Yasmin Trudeau, among others.
Carlos is a veteran of the United States Army and graduate of Harvard University. Now, he works as a banker. He first moved to Tacoma when he was stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and moved back after graduating from college.
Hines is a city council member for Tacoma’s District One, a role he has served in since 2019. During his time on council, Hines has, at times, served as deputy mayor, and now is Chair of the Government Performance and Finance Committee. He is also a member of the Infrastructure, Planning and Sustainability Committee. Hines grew up in Tacoma and graduated from the University of Puget Sound. He works for Tacoma Public Schools as an instructional facilitator. He has been endorsed by a number of his fellow council members, the International Longshoremen Local 23, the Tacoma Pierce County Association of Realtors, among others.
Haverly is running his second campaign for mayor, after the previous election went to incumbent Mayor Victoria Woodards. Harvey is a lifelong Tacoma resident who has worked for Tacoma Public Schools, in construction and started a television production company. Haverly lists a number of personal endorsements on his campaign website.
Tom Ginn
Another born and raised Tacoman, Ginn does not have an active campaign website. In an interview with the Citizen Tacoma podcast, Ginn spoke about his experiences working as an actor as well as working on military contracts.
Stevens first moved to Tacoma for college as a student of the University of Washington Tacoma, and then she never left. Stevens’ career has closely circled Tacoma politics; she served as the youngest president of the Downtown Merchants Association, worked for a city councilmember and the Pierce County auditor, and is a certified public records officer. Stevens is the chair of the 27th legislative district democrats, and has been endorsed by the Pierce County Young Democrats, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington and Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer Marty Campbell, among others.
Ahead of the August primary election, Tacomans had a chance to hear from five of those mayoral candidates. Community groups including Tacoma For All, Common Good Tacoma, the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367 held a forum for candidates running to be the city’s next mayor. All candidates except Tom Ginn participated in the forum.
During the forum, Michael Williams, vice president of the Tacoma Education Association, asked questions about socioeconomic issues in the city and stances on certain policies.
Below is a selection of the questions and portions of the candidates’ answers.
Q: What plans do you have for decriminalizing homelessness and creating sustainable solutions that address the root causes that you've identified?
Whitney Stevens:“ We need to define the problem better and what is the problem we are trying to solve because right now, the city and the county, no jurisdiction in Pierce County, is currently tracking the number of people who die on our streets … That's unacceptable, because to me, a great measure of whether or not our response to homelessness is being effective would be reducing the number of people who die on our street.”
Anders Ibsen: “ The central problem with what we have locally, given the national challenge, is that we have a system that's based around managing a problem versus solving it. Everything from a greater regional coordination, actually getting our service providers to talk with each other, share data and actually embed lived experience … We fundamentally have to have a shift in how we run these services for solutions rather than just management.”
John Hines: “ I've been a big supporter of Home in Tacoma, investing in permanently affordable housing here in the community. The millions of dollars we spend on projects across the city with [Tacoma Housing Authority], Low Income Housing Institute, that is how we actually bend the curve and make sure less people end up homeless in the first place … How do we decriminalize homelessness? I think we lean closer more on our community court system … Simply allowing people to stay on the streets and not helping them and not intervening in a direct way beyond what we're already doing is not gonna help more people transition into housing and shelter.”
Steve Haverly: “ A hands off stance to homelessness is not going to fix it. We need to get to the root problem of what each person may be experiencing. It may be the worst stretch of their life, and we need to listen to them. It doesn't do a lot of good to have a lot of meetings with people who are not being affected. We need to have meetings with the people who are experiencing these issues and get to the root problem of whatever it may be, whether it's substance abuse or not, or unemployment. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, piling up boulders to make it uncomfortable for someone to sleep, we need to take some of the vacant buildings that are owned by the county and the city, and open them up to shelter.”
Jesus Carlos: “ I think the city, up until this point, has done a fairly good job in looking at initiatives to push forward to address the homelessness problem. I don't think that there's been good follow through in those initiatives. We need to be able to find what's actually working and invest in what is working to institutionalize those services so that there is follow through within the community and those things people can rely on in a community … In the long run, it really is a lack of economic development in the city.”
Q: What will you do to protect and expand tenant protections rather than roll them back?
Stevens: “I think that the only criticisms that I have of the tenant bill is that I've heard stories… and I would like to do deeper investigation into very small landlords, folks like myself who had a duplex and I lived in one half and they [rented] one unit. Because what I heard is that the ability for tenants to avoid paying rent for extended period of time has essentially driven those folks out … With Home in Tacoma, we want more [accessory dwelling units], we want more small individual landlords. We need to make sure that the system in place is allowing that type of housing to exist. That being said, the other biggest criticism I have with this bill is the lack of meaningful enforcement and navigation of the bill and compliance. And as the city, we need to do a better job of actually doing that and dedicating a funding stream to fund the enforcement.”
Ibsen: “ In reviewing measure one, I think there definitely are areas for improvement. One area that I would actually really like to look at expanding is the role for licensing. So many landlords just don't have business licenses for their rentals … We have what's called provisional licensing in Tacoma, which is basically a slum-lord license. If you've been found guilty of building code violations past a certain point, the city will be all in your business. You get charged a higher fee and there's an actual proactive monitoring of your behavior as a landlord. Keep your nose clean for a few years, we could better integrate that with some of these other regulations.”
Hines: “ As many of you know, I was not a big proponent of the tenants’ right bill going forward and spoke very clearly about my concerns about it blocking potential people out of the housing market, potentially pushing some of our naturally occurring affordable housing out of the rental market and being sold … One of the concerns that I have heard repeatedly, just to bring it up, is that the non-profit housing providers that we have in our city, so Low Income Housing Institute, Tacoma Housing Authority, has some real concerns, potential impacts of unpaid rents on their ability to maintain their facilities and provide decent housing for folks,”
Haverly: “ For me it's, it's about boundaries. It's about setting limitations for landlords, making sure that they keep that at their end of the bargain and the people have to do the same thing the tenants do. I don't think it's a place of government to teach everyone how to be good people and to be a good landlord and to be a good tenant … I don't think Home in Tacoma is the way to get there, but we need to drive rents down so people can afford to live in a clean, safe environment. And I think my goals as mayor and running for mayor is to bring down affordable housing so that we create better places for people.”
Carlos: “ If we have the strongest tenant rights in the state of Washington, and there is still a problem with slum lords in this city that is not a legislative problem, it's an enforcement problem … It's holding people accountable that are really taking advantage of a disenfranchised community and we need to find them and we need to get the bad actors out.”
Q: What do you see as the role of the government in developing affordable housing and in particular public social housing? What would you propose for progressive revenue to help fund such programs?
Stevens: “ We need to have social housing, we need to be looking at community land trusts. We need to be thinking outside of the box, because we have been doing the same thing over and over again for decades, rewriting different versions of the same plan to handle homelessness or to create affordable housing. And we are continuing to fall behind.”
Ibsen: “ I'm a very big fan of social housing … As a city, what we can and should do besides moving the conversation forward is all of the above approach, with a forceful emphasis on how can we have more non-modified options along with more [accessory dwelling units], more duplexes, more ownership opportunities.”
Hines: “ The private market is not good at delivering true affordable housing, it just won't do it … I'm all for looking at other models, social housing, different models that we can think about to help generate that housing because the only way we're gonna get the truly affordable housing is that. I would also just like to add something we are missing that I think we need to come back to is how do we preserve current affordable housing? How do we take some of the housing that already exists out of the marketplace and into public ownership? So one thing I would like to see us do as a city is take some of our housing trust fund dollars and start buying current buildings, buying properties so that we can own them and control the cost of rent as much as possible.”
Haverly: “ I've long since been an opponent of Home in Tacoma as a means for providing more affordable housing. We have enough derelict and vacant land in Tacoma. That's where we need to focus our intentions, because that will truly drive the cost of construction down, not buying someone's house for $500,000, leveling it and making a sixplex with only two affordable units … We need to redirect our resources from developers' needs, need to start charging impact fees. Anytime that you build an apartment building, you have to increase the size of the infrastructure. And that doesn't get paid by the developers, it's paid by you.”
Carlos: “ Tacoma is in a really precarious situation because we're in commuting distance from Seattle, Bellevue, and so no matter what we do here, the cost of housing is going to go up 'cause it's always going to be cheaper than any of those places and people that want to work in those places. The only way out of the position that we have in the City of Tacoma is economic development. People need to be able to work and live and create an affordable wage in the city that they are in, so that we can actually keep up with these cities that are surrounding us in commuting distance. And through that we will actually see ourselves out of the situation.”
Q: Do you support the workers' bill of rights, which gathered over 10,000 signatures in the city? Do you support letting voters decide without the city putting out a counter measure, to decide on whether or not they want this workers’ bill of rights?
Stevens: “ I signed it to send it to the voters. I spent over five years working as an elections administrator, and I believe very firmly that one of the things that is most vital to a productive and healthy society is the ability for people to speak their minds through the ballot box. So, that is my reason for signing it. And I actually sat in an interview with the Chamber of Commerce and told them that. So, I am advocating and walking that walk. No, I do not support the city weighing in on this measure.”
Ibsen: “ I'm broadly supportive of it. In fact, during my tenure on city council, I actually pushed for the $15 an hour minimum wage increase, along with a paid, sick and safe leave ordinance. That became the basis for state law, both of them. So, these are issues very near and dear to my heart … So insofar as we shouldn't let the perfect be bevy of the good, I also think that people just need clear decision making.”
Hines: “ Higher wages, predictable schedules, safe workplace are all principles I agree with. I actually sat down with some of the people who were initially bringing forth the Workers’ Bill of Rights way back in July. At the time, I was very clear about specific concerns I had about what was in the text and potential unintended consequences. So I will say at this point in time, I cannot support the workers' bill of rights as written because there are some issues with the text as written, but I think will cause real issues for not only some of the business in our community … To be really honest with you all, do I support the city putting an alternate on the ballot? City's currently considering it … My inclination is not to put an alternative on the ballot. I don't think that's appropriate, but at the end of the day, the people do expect the council if they have concerns about something to provide an alternative.”
Haverly: “ No, I don't think that it should be amended, the people have spoken. I understand the small print items that cause concern. Maybe down the road those should be addressed, but I don't think that we should change it.”
Carlos: “ I don't think it should be amended, I believe that this is what people want. If they want to keep it, I'm not in support. And the reason is, because look around at the small businesses in Tacoma, it's not a thriving industry. People are not able to support what they already have, their capital costs of keeping their doors open is really hard to do in this city. And to constrain them even more with having to pay their employees more is just going to either reduce labor or not have them have the ability to keep their doors open.”
