A unique housing
project provides hope for those trying to find a permanent place to call home.
These cottages are clustered around courtyards to help foster community.
The holidays are a tough time for those who struggle with their mental health.
Now a new program offers a simple way to help.
We're not always going to have a magic wand,
but we will always have an open ear.
And happy anniversary to us.
After 20 years, we look back at how Seattle Channel started
and what we've accomplished.
These stories and more next on City Stream.
Hello, I'm Dennis Bounds
and welcome to CityStream from the Seattle Channel.
We are here in the basement of City Hall to mark an important milestone
at Seattle's award winning government access TV station.
Much more on that just ahead.
If you visited Magnuson Park, you know, it's a cherished spot
known for its beaches, sports fields, p-patch and the city's largest dog park.
And soon, some people will also call the park home.
Producers David Albright and Enrique Cerna explain.
This site just off Northeast 65th Street is well on its way
to becoming a cluster of cottage homes.
Reserved for people exiting homelessness.
So the Sandpoint Cottage Community is a cluster
of 22 cottages around a couple of courtyards.
We have a commons building that is basically a medium sized home
that has a large kitchen and large living space for people to gather.
Dining area.
These cottages are clustered around courtyards
to help foster community in this very beautiful park like setting.
But the whole idea is
to have your front porch, be able to sit out on your front porch
and say hi to your neighbors.
We developed the idea a few years ago and I put money in the state
budget to actually get it going and pay for the construction.
The idea was to provide low cost cottage housing with full utilities.
This is a big step up from tiny home villages.
I strongly support tiny homes, but there's no utilities.
Cottage communities are a rare housing type in Seattle.
And besides a few historic examples that were built before
zoning laws were created in 1923,
very few of them exist.
(Calm music)
But architect Karen DeLucas specializes in these unique homes.
Having trained under Ross Chapin, the architect
who literally wrote the book on what he calls pocket neighborhoods.
15 years of doing this type of cottage development gave me
the experience needed to to work on this project,
because it's not just about the cottages, it's about how you design for community.
What's really exciting about the cottage community, especially for people
experiencing homelessness, is that they will have kind of shared resources.
They'll be able to meet people
that have have similar experiences and kind of grow together.
You know the design of the cottage was very intentional with the pitched roof.
It's a very sheltering gable, almost iconic form.
And that was the one thing that everybody recognizes as a home.
To tell the story of how this cottage community came to be,
we have to go back to 1970,
when Naval Air Station Sandpoint was decommissioned
and much of its land transferred to the city of Seattle.
Most of the land was used to create Magnuson Park,
but 18 acres were set aside for affordable housing.
The biggest project on the site was completed in 2017. When Building Nine,
the barracks, were converted into 148 affordable apartments.
In 2019, the Low Income Housing Institute, or LIHI,
was chosen as the developer for the site where the cottages now sit.
LIHI brought in Karen DeLucas and together
they took their design proposals to the surrounding community.
The community said, This is a really nice design.
This fits into the community.
So as a result of that, we then got their support
from the community to then go to the City Council.
The City Council approved the project.
LIHI secured funding from a number of sources,
including the Washington State Department of Commerce.
The project then moved on to the construction phase,
using an innovative construction technique
that helped speed the project along and also keep costs down.
The cottages were all constructed offsite
in modular units. The living room and bathroom and kitchen modular,
the roof modular, and the bedroom modular.
Having these as modular allowed us to be kind of ahead of the game,
once foundations were poured and set and all the site work was done.
So after many years of work and much collaboration between city, state, private
and nonprofit partners. These 22 cottages
will welcome residents in early 2023.
Christina Comer is the program manager at LIHI
who will help oversee the process of getting residents into their new homes.
It's very exciting to bring someone into a space
that they have not had access to before.
Just alone, having shelter and electricity
and a place to put your items gives people so much space to do other things
that they want to do and need to do.
It kind of takes a village to run a village.
It takes a village to support and care for a family,
and so it would be nice to be able to have the space to do that here.
This cottage village, we hope, is a model
for other cottage villages to be built across the state.
And so this particular one is focused on formerly homeless people,
but across the state where there is more available vacant land.
We need to promote this as a way of providing starter homes
for first time homebuyers, student housing, farmworker housing.
These are the kinds of homes that can be a home for for all people.
Well I must say, this is it's been a dream project for me.
You know, this is something that is unique in Seattle.
I wish that we were building more cottage developments.
We should be looking at kind of the smaller footprint.
There's a big step going from a tent
to a tiny house, and then there's even a bigger step
from going to the tiny houses to this cottage development.
But what's something that's similar between the tiny house villages
and the cottages, is again, this sense of community,
not just giving them a home, but giving them that community.
The cottages are intended to be permanent homes for the residents.
And LIHI is working with two job training organizations,
the Seattle Conservation Corps and Fair Start to refer the candidates
who will soon call this unique community home.
( Drum beat)
Next on CityStream, the holiday season can heighten our anxiety.
But a new program makes it easy to find help.
Now that the holiday season is here, it can be a time of great joy for some.
Stressful for others.
Discussing mental health is never easy, but a new program
makes it simpler to find help.
Brian Callanan has more on the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
- Where are they located?
Carter Geers knows when people need help.
- Do they know about the resources in their area?
He coaches call takers
who are talking to people in the midst of a mental health crisis.
It's something he understands because like many of us,
he's had that experience too.
(emotional piano music)
- I have struggled with suicidal ideation in the past,
and I've been in situations where I just I felt hopeless.
( sound of typing)
- The history of detoxes.
The calls are not easy to handle.
- We get people coming in that are going through the worst of the worst.
- Things, saying like killing yourself today.
But now Carter and dozens of other specialists,
plus those calling in crisis, have some newfound support.
- Crisis Connections, this is Holly.
Crisis Connections is one of three agencies across Washington state
now answering calls in 250 languages as part of the Nationwide
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launched in July of this year.
(uplifting music)
Nine, eight, eight is a free, confidential line,
you can call or text for you or for a friend. A replacement
for local or national suicide hotlines and other help lines.
And our state has helped
answer the call by providing some much needed funding for the program.
I worked on a number of suicide prevention bills, and this one.
This one will make the greatest difference to save lives.
With the 2021 passage of House Bill 1477.
Lawmakers imposed a tax on phone and Internet lines
to start building out an integrated mental health crisis system,
a system that Rochelle Williams wants to make as inclusive as possible.
You know, two ears. One heart.
Natives helping Natives.
Williams and enrolled member of the Ehattesaht First Nation
and also a Tulalip tribal descendant is the tribal program manager
at Volunteers of America, Western Washington in Everett,
which serves as another of our state's 988 call centers.
- Let me get you in the right place.
Hold on.
Press 4 after you call 988
and you'll be connected to the Native and Strong Crisis Lifeline.
Our country's first helpline made for and run by native and indigenous people.
- I know that there is a lot of mistrust in our communities.
I know that a lot of native people are not trusting of a lot of different systems.
We also believe sometimes that tribal programs fail quite often.
The reason for this, I think, is because we're missing that cultural connection.
We're missing being connected to our own people.
A team of 16 native people will run Native and Strong
to try to respond to a sobering statistic.
American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest rate
of suicide of any ethnicity in the U.S..
What we're hoping is to save a lot of lives, even with all of this work.
If we saved one, if somebody called in
that saved their life, that's that we want.
- what insurance do you...
988 Program administrators also want to push back on some misinformation.
They are not.
Geo locating your phone when you call in.
We do not have the ability to trace,
nor are we interested in tracing anyone's call.
Michelle McDaniel is CEO of Crisis Connections
and says only when someone calls 988 with an urgent, life
threatening emergency, an overdose of pills for example,
would an active rescue protocol go into effect.
In that situation, if possible, a 988 operator
would be authorized to track a caller's number through caller ID.
- And then we would contact 911 and say, Hey, here's the situation.
We're on a call with someone who reached out to us.
They have taken pills.
We're worried about them.
(ambulance siren)
Emergency responders would handle things from there.
But Williams says active rescues occur
with only 0.08% of the calls that come into 988.
Most people are able to simply talk out their issues with a call specialist.
80% of the calls that we receive on 988 are resolved
at that crisis line level.
But that leaves 20% of cases not resolved.
And that's what Michele Roberts is working to change.
Long term, our goal is to build out the rest of the crisis support system.
Roberts Is the assistant secretary for prevention and Community Health
at the Washington State Department of Health and says,
beyond 24/7 call centers, people in crisis need two main things.
Someone to come and somewhere to go.
Someone to come would mean a non-police response team for people
in crisis and somewhere to go would be a walk in mental health
receiving facility to replace overburdened emergency rooms.
- If you have a crisis and you call 988.,
you can get a next day appointment with a counselor if you need one to get support in person.
That part of the system is set to launch in January of 2023
as mental health care needs continue to grow around our state.
(emotional piano music)
Mental health crises are hard to explain and hard to respond to.
But with a new, inclusive 988 system and more resources
coming to our state, the hope is to erase any stigma around
seeking out help and to make those crises a lot easier to bear.
- We're going to keep building
and improving what we're doing so that we can continue to support people.
We're not always going to
have a magic wand, but we will always have an open ear.
No mental health crisis is too large or too small.
If you need to make that call, simply dial 988.
As auto manufacturers around the world race to create electric vehicles.
Did you know Seattle City Life delved into the use of EVs back in the 1960s?
Photo Archivist Julie Irick from the Seattle Municipal Archives
takes a look.
(emotionally positive music)
As national concern began to develop about fossil fuels, pollution,
and other environmental issues,
Seattle City Light began some early experimentation with electric vehicles.
Unveiled by Seafair Queen Linda Andrews
on February 7th, 1968,
City Light introduced the Electruc which was an experimental electric
powered utility truck.
It was powered by two 1500 pound lead acid batteries
and used a special recharger which was attached to the vehicle.
The Electruc was used effectively at Newhalem, and the batteries kept the truck
operating the entire workday and charged at night.
On an experimental trip between Newhalem and Gorge Dam,
the truck pulled a full trailer without difficulty
and reached an uphill speed of 18 miles per hour.
The average fuel requirement was 1.3 kilowatt hours per mile.
A sign painted on the truck, read,
your bright new future is all electric.
Research and development continued into the 1970s.
City Light photos from 1973 show a prototype electric car
made from a modified AMC Gremlin as it's plugged into an electro park,
a parking meter equipped with an electric charging outlet.
The lighting department's May 1973 newsletter says of the Electro Park,
it's a new concept that could alter the function of the parking meter
and pave the way for future use of short range nonpolluting,
electric powered automobiles on Seattle streets.
One big drawback to the electric automobile
is that it needs to be recharged frequently.
Electro Park would ease the problem in part by providing electric outlets
on each parking meter. For $0.25 per hour.
A motorist could park and charge their electric vehicle.
Then in 1976, City Light developed
an experimental electric mobility system called the RT1,
which could travel up
to 75 miles on one charge of its eight six volt batteries.
The four passenger car was only seven feet long and five feet wide and took up one
fifth the parking space of a typical car from that period.
The RT1 was conceptualized as part of a downtown restricted transportation zone
from which most internal combustion vehicles would be barred.
City light envisioned this zone full of electric cars like the RT1
as a step toward eliminating transportation pollution
in the urban core.
We know from the 1976 annual report that the prototype was delivered.
However, what became of the experiment remains unknown.
(drum beat)
Next on CityStream.
The spotlight shines on the Seattle Channel,
as we celebrate an important anniversary.
CityStream returns
from the Seattle Channel, where we are celebrating our 20th anniversary.
Years ago, this was first known as Seattle Municipal Cable TV 28.
It was later renamed TV SEA.
Then in 2002, Seattle Channel was born.
Since then, our programming choices
grew, as did our online and social media presence.
Now, Seattle Channel is recognized
as one of the nation's finest government access TV stations.
Producers Randy Eng and Addy Pratt have more.
(upbeat music)
In the beginning, the Seattle Channel
was known as Seattle Municipal Cable TV 28.
Run by the Seattle Public Library,
its placement in the cable menu
made it hard to find.
- People kind of think of you
as this government channel
in the twenty’s
and just skip
right over you.
In theory, when you're not grouped right next
to the commercial stations,
you probably don't
get as many viewers as people are
channel surfing.
Channel 28 was not ideal,
but it's what we got
and it was kind of hard to negotiate
a change.
Hard to find and hard to watch,
as the programming at the time was
a little dry.
Can you hear me now? Yeah.
Okay.
Basically, it was uh, meetings.
Just about all meetings.
Just covering a meeting
was almost
felt like punishment for some people.
The Council would come to order.
There was a guy named Peter Watson
and he would go up
to the council meetings
and record them all by himself
and play them back on a very boring
municipal cable channel.
Just very rudimentary programming
about anything .
I mean, it was just so basic
that there wasn't much information
going out.
A lot of people like to recycle.
We're going to be doing
a main flushing here.
I guess that’s about it then...
Hard to find, hard to watch and well,
a hard place to work.
Located in the municipal building,
the equipment was outdated
and the facilities lacking.
The basement
in the municipal building was...
...a dungeon like basement.
I think we had ten feet of space
and maybe 20 lengthwise.
We would go upstairs to the lobby
and just pick up a couple
like fake plants
and just put them behind the chairs.
I mean, we were dealing with this
rudimentary studio.
Truly a basement.
You didn't really feel great
about where you were
and what you're doing.
A shift came in 1997
and it started with a name change.
Seattle Municipal Cable
Channel 28 became TV SEA.
I think I picked TV SEA
I thought that was really clever.
As in TV S-E-A, for Seattle.
And nobody can figure that out.
You're seeing the City of Seattle.
We're on the sea,
at least on the sound and and sea TV.
But people obviously thought
it was a maritime channel.
All kidding
aside, TV SEA’s programming was no joke.
Is that fair criticism?
No, I don't think it's fair criticism
Because?
It showed more content,
more meetings
and much more
locally produced programming.
I think the bread
and butter of it was meetings
and then we started to expand like
what else can we do
that would be interesting to viewers?
This is the story of the first
black woman elevator inspector.
Most of the Denny party
relocated to the eastern
shores of Elliott Bay
the following spring. For History Link,
I’m Walt Crowley with special
thanks to TV SEA.
To the mayor and the City Council’s credit,
I feel like they left me alone.
In addition to the meetings,
we could do pretty much anything else
that had some kind of
tangential relationship
to the city's mandates.
The only time they got upset,
I think, was really during the WTO riots.
My first day...
(crowd chanting)
So I started at
TV SEA on November 30th, 1999,
the riots broke out that day.
I was like,
Can you get your camera and document
the WTO riots? It's like, What?
“This is what democracy looks like...”
I'm getting tear gassed.
That's my first day on the job
and it's like: Ralph, welcome to TV SEA.
We came back to the station
and we aired all the footage that we took
as if it were a meeting
because we thought it was so momentous.
Not editorializing it.
Just uh,
here's what we saw today.
“The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching...”
The riots gave the world
its first real chance to watch TV SEA.
The next one came about a year later.
The American Diabetes Association
I was switching the cameras
for the city council meeting
and it was like, hey,
it looks like the cameras
are shaking up there
and the council members
are diving under the table.
At that point was like, what is this?
And it turns out to be the
Nisqually earthquake.
I didn't even think it was an earthquake.
I thought they were just
doing some blasting
for the new municipal building.
And we had city council members
saying, “This meetings adjourned!”
Meetings adjourned.
Are you adjourning the meeting, Heidi?
Yes, it's adjourned.
Peters adjourned it.
Peter’s adjourned the meeting.”
Thank you.
Ralph had the good idea
of duplicating the footage
and taking it to all the stations,
and it aired all across the world.
Despite the attention, city leadership
thought the channel was underutilized
and wanted even more citizen engagement,
especially from an untapped Internet
audience.
Mayor Paul Schell and Council member Jim
Compton formed a commission,
and six months
later, the next mayor, Greg
Nickels, made an announcement.
This fall, we're going to combine
television and Web
programming and launch an
MSNBC style service.
You're watching the Seattle Channel.
That service became the Seattle Channel,
which included a revamped website.
Once we got the site up and operating
and there were videos out
that people could access
and like a million page views a month.
Okay, we're on to something here.
As soon as things were available online,
you know, the streaming piece of it...
that is where people
really started to tap in
and see the stuff that we were doing.
That stuff
became the foundation of Seattle Channel’s
programming.
Shows like City of Go-Go,
which would eventually become ArtZone.
There's a lot of things
that matter in this city,
and certainly
one of them is art and culture.
And the Seattle Channel
has never wavered in that support.
City Inside Out launched that same year.
- Welcome to City Inside Out your place for news...
We had politicians
who kept wanting to be on our program.
The claim now is it's
too many rubber stampers.
I don't think that's true.
The monorail authority is a public
body has to be responsible
to the larger public.
The best thing for a politician
is to be in a debate and nail it.
And so our program
ended up being the kind of forum
that you could go on.
And if you were good at
that, hit a home run.
Hello, I'm Mike James.
Welcome to CityStream.
This is our first program,
so let's take a moment
to talk about what we are.
CityStream made its debut in 2003.
We've got the city, you've got the arts.
You have feature stories.
It's Tasha and Joey, the incredible
tree climbing dogs.
Lighter, newsy kind of things.
And Book Lust took off in 2004.
They were trying to do more arts
on the channel.
And I thought, oh,
my gosh!
Seattle's a town of readers.
And so doing something
that was connected to the library
just seemed like a natural thing.
It's difficult to write.
Oh, yes.
She wasn't just your
ordinary librarian.
She had her own action figure doll.
These are old shows.
I did.
You probably don't even have tapes
anymore, do you?
This little engine that could, you know,
still in the basement of City Hall.
But it's impressive what the channel did
early on, what the channel still does.
That was our backdrop.
I’m proud of that backdrop.
Over the years,
Seattle Channel
became a window into government
and a voice
for the region, ready for whatever
the future may bring.
My hairstyle has changed.
My skin has changed.
I've aged.
It's the most amazing gift
that I have been given. I'm a lucky cat.
We all thought we were building
something.
I did the best work of my career,
actually, at the Seattle Channel
because we were given sufficient
time to do it.
You know,
we had the support to do our best work.
I loved it.
I love I love the work.
And and I'm glad
that I only flourished more.
It was just exciting to start in
on some new things
and work together to to build something
we were all proud of.
It was a great thing to lift
what had been seen
as something
that people would never pay attention
to and lift it up
into the public consciousness
and make it a useful tool for citizens.
Happy 20th Anniversary Seattle Channel.
That wraps up this episode of CityStream.
If you'd like to watch more of our impressive programing, visit our website.
Seattle Channel.org and click on features shows.
I'm Dennis Bounds.
Thank you for watching now and for the last 20 years.