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-Hi. My name's Melissa Hall.
I live in Fremont with my wife and daughter,
and I'm a candidate for District 6
on the Seattle City Council.
I've always wanted to make cities
better environments for people.
During undergraduate,
I studied geography,
and after that, I went on to law school,
where I focused on land-use
and state and local government law.
I've worked to stop the sewers
under Birmingham, Alabama, from leaking.
I've been part of Florida's
emergency management team.
And I've traveled to small towns of Virginia
to enforce floodplain
development standards.
Most of my career has been
in state and local government
because that's where government
has the most direct impact
on people's lives.
I'm running because I believe in Seattle,
the place where my wife and I moved
because here, it felt safe enough
for us to have a child together.
But we can't be that sanctuary for others
if people can't afford to live here.
We need to build more housing
and more affordable housing
to be sure everyone has a stable,
safe place to call home.
We're going to need to do
more housing with less land
and make our neighborhoods
and urban centers more dense.
When we build dense enough,
a big city becomes a group of small towns
that all happen to be next to each other.
To get there, we have to ramp up density,
transportation, and services together.
Cities are also places where people move,
so our transit and roadways
need to account for the needs
of all of the users.
We need efficient information services,
so I support
municipal broadband Internet.
We're also people who want to find a way
to care for all of our neighbors.
I support policies and programs
that respect the autonomy
and agency of our neighbors
who are experiencing homelessness
and prioritize harm reduction.
We also need eviction reform
and more support
for pre-eviction diversion programs
so that people with housing have
a better chance of keeping it.
Most importantly,
it's my belief that cities that
care for their residents best
are cities that plan with,
not for, their citizens.
As a commissioner,
I will not pass any legislation
that affects marginalized communities
without the direct feedback
of those communities.
Thank you.