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The King County Metro 8 bus is among Seattle’s most popular routes, yet it’s also one of the most delayed. Serving as an essential east-west link, it connects neighborhoods like Lower Queen Anne/Uptown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, and the Central District. Every day, over 5,000 individuals rely on it for commuting, running errands, and various other journeys. However, these trips are becoming more and more delayed. TAKE ACTION NOW

During weekday peak hours, eastbound Route 8 buses are often delayed by more than 30 minutes by the time they reach Capitol Hill. This transforms a scheduled 17-minute journey into almost 50 minutes. Given that these buses are usually at full capacity, thousands of passengers face extended wait times both for the bus to arrive and for their trips to conclude in both directions. This consistent delay has even earned the route a nickname: the “L8”.

We can fix this! It’s clear that the majority of delay on this route occurs on Denny Way in SLU, as car drivers funnel onto the I-5. Regular riders of the 8 know that they can typically walk faster than the bus until just after Fairview Ave, where a short stretch of bus lane provides some relief. This bus lane clearly works — let’s expand it!

We urge the Seattle Department of Transportation and King County Metro to prolong the eastbound bus lanes throughout Denny Way. A simple addition of red paint from 1st Ave to Fairview could ensure smoother transit for thousands of passengers and dozens of drivers/buses along this vital route. Importantly, the anticipated improvements in reliability and speed from these extended lanes could encourage many to switch from cars to the more efficient Route 8.

You can help! Email the city and King County officials to make this happen!

Earlier this year, TRU asked renters who recently received notice of a rent increase to fill out a short survey. This week, we’re publishing a report on the results! Here’s a summary of what we found, and you can read or download the full report here.

• New notice laws passed in Seattle and in other King County jurisdictions over the past few years appear to be working as intended to give many renters more time to adjust to a rent increase or find new housing.
• Seattle’s new Economic Displacement Relocation Assistance law may be causing many landlords to keep rent increases under 10 percent (wow!).
• Non-compliance is high. The landlords of about 1 in 3 survey respondents appeared to be breaking at least one law related to rent increases. More work is needed to ensure that renters and landlords are aware of these laws, and to improve compliance by landlords.

Monday night, we delivered a coalition letter and a petition signed by hundreds of Burien residents, workers, and community leaders to the Burien City Council, urging them to raise the minimum wage to match neighboring cities like SeaTac, Tukwila, and Seattle. The public comment period was packed with testimony about why passing this legislation is urgent. Here’s what Olivia had to say:

“I’m 19 and I’ve lived in Burien for about ten years. I graduated from a local high school and I’m currently a fast food employee. I’m lucky enough that I’m able to stay with my mom and help out when I can but currently I can only pay a quarter of the $2,000 we pay for rent. I help with groceries and gas, and even with two sources of income we’re having trouble trying to make ends meet. We make too little to go on trips or visit family, but we make too much to apply for certain financial aids for college. I’m having to look for work outside of Burien just so I can help out more in my household. Please see the need that Burien workers are sharing with you and raise the wage!”

Supporters shared stories about how hard it is to miss your children’s school functions because you have to work multiple jobs to pay the bills. About how low wages force families to move, impacting their kids’ well-being and education. About how raising the minimum wage will level the playing field for employers who want to do the right thing.

Let’s make Burien the fourth city in King County to raise the wage! Now we’re waiting for the council to put this topic on the agenda & direct staff to start drawing up legislation — stay tuned for next steps, sign and share our petition with anyone you know who lives or works in Burien!

It’s time to celebrate our first big victories of 2023! Yesterday, Seattle took a major leap toward reining in the punitive fees that more and more renters, especially those with corporate landlords, are facing in this housing market:

With a 7-2 vote, the city council passed legislation that bans Notice Delivery Fees. These arbitrary charges, often as much as $50 or $75, are tacked on whenever a landlord pins a notice to a tenant’s door. Read more about the problem of rental “junk fees” here.

And…. Drumroll… after plenty of contentious debate, Seattle joined the South King County cities of Auburn and Burien and capped late fees at $10 per month, one of the strongest standards in the nation!

But there’s more. Last week in SeaTac, after months of deliberation, with much testimony & pressure from renters and community members, the SeaTac City Council took a final vote on new protections for renters! Here’s what they passed:

• 120 days notice for rent increases greater than 3%
• 180 days notice for rent increases greater than 10%
• Move in fees are limited to the equivalent of one month’s rent, payable in installments
• Late fees are limited to 2 percent of the monthly rent
• Limits around requiring social security numbers
• Renters on a fixed income can adjust the rent due date
• Stronger protections from eviction without just cause
• Rent cannot be increased on uninhabitable rental units

These new protections for SeaTac renters will go into effect in mid-May.

THANK YOU to everyone who helped to make these victories possible! TRU and the Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition are proud to have championed this legislation in Seattle and SeaTac. Join us as we continue the fight for stronger renter protections and stable, affordable housing across King County!

It’s been a big year for TRU! Here’s some of what we accomplished.

We raised Tukwila’s minimum wage to $19 an hour!

Late last year, we began laying foundations for a workers’ rights campaign in south King County. We surveyed nearly a hundred workers at and around Tukwila’s Westfield Southcenter Mall, one of the largest retail shopping centers in Washington state. Through conversations with workers, local immigrant-owned businesses, and organizations rooted in Tukwila’s diverse communities, we decided to take on an ambitious campaign to raise Tukwila’s minimum wage to match the higher minimum wages in neighboring SeaTac and Seattle.

We built a broad community-labor coalition and mobilized our members and volunteers for a citywide door knocking operation, talking with Tukwila residents about their struggles and the need for higher wages, and gathering thousands of petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot. We did it! Tukwila voters passed our measure in a landslide, with over 82% voting yes. Tukwila’s minimum wage will rise to about $19 an hour in July 2023, more than a 30% raise from the 2022 statewide minimum wage of $14.49. Our measure also includes an “access to hours” policy that requires employers to offer available hours to existing part-time employees before new hiring, to prevent corporations from cutting workers’ hours to avoid having to provide benefits.

We’re now discussing how to continue organizing with Tukwila workers and residents next year to ensure the new law is enforced and to fight for further gains, and how to spread the movement to other cities across King County.

Organizing with renters for stronger tenant protections in King County

This year, TRU continued working with allies in the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition, which we helped to build in 2021. We organized with renters and fought for stronger tenant protections in cities across King County. This work is especially timely as median rents skyrocketed this year, in many cities rising 20-30% since before the pandemic. By door knocking at apartment buildings and mobilizing renters and allies to put pressure on elected officials, we’ve won crucial protections in five cities this year. Our work in the city of Kenmore was covered in The Seattle Times earlier this year. We plan to continue this vital work in more King County cities, including SeaTac and Tukwila, in 2023.

Continuing the Fight for Progressive Revenue

Washington state has long had the most regressive tax system in the country. After dramatic tax battles with Amazon and Seattle’s corporate class going back to 2017, in 2020 TRU played an instrumental role in winning a big business tax (“JumpStart Seattle”) targeting the tech sector, which raised over $250 million in its first year— revenue that helped Seattle weather the COVID-19 crash, is now funding affordable housing and other community priorities, and will be key to sustaining basic services during the coming economic downturn and budget crisis. Last year we won a commitment from the city council to continue making our tax system more just, and this year the city laid foundations for a new Progressive Revenue Task Force!  TRU has a seat on this workgroup, which convened this fall and will continue its work through spring of 2023.

Sustaining Our Unsheltered Neighbors

The pandemic has been brutal for people experiencing homelessness. This year, TRU’s camp outreach project has turned tens of thousands of dollars into food, propane, batteries, water and other basic necessities for our neighbors surviving outside. This project is powered by TRU members’ volunteer labor, cooking meals and visiting camps every weekend, and funded entirely by individual donations from TRU members and supporters.

House Our Neighbors Coalition & Initiative 135 for Social Housing 

TRU is part of the House Our Neighbors coalition, which collected signatures this year for a Seattle Social Housing initiative and qualified for the ballot! Next February, Seattle voters will decide whether to create a Public Development Authority to build affordable mixed-income housing on the model of Vienna and other cities worldwide with large non-market public housing sectors.

Organizing for a Solidarity Budget

TRU is a proud member of the Seattle Solidarity Budget coalition, which grew out of the 2020 uprisings in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. This year the coalition’s priorities included fighting for living wages for human services workers, opposing police-based responses to the homelessness crisis, transportation investments to end deaths and injuries due to vehicle traffic, massively increasing the pace of affordable housing construction, and fully funding Seattle’s Green New Deal.

Defeating an Amazon warehouse near the Mt. Baker Transit Center 

Last year, we learned that Amazon was scoping sites in Seattle for new warehouses, including two sites near a light rail and bus station in the historically Black and Asian neighborhood of Mt. Baker. As Consumer Reports recently showed, Amazon opens warehouses in low-income and Black, brown and immigrant communities, with disastrous effects on their health and safety. We helped to build and support a coalition opposing these plans. In July, when news broke of a planned rally, Amazon announced that it no longer intends to build warehouses in South Seattle! Now the coalition is pushing to get those sites dedicated to neighborhood-supported uses such as affordable housing to prevent Amazon from changing its mind in the future.

Let’s get out there and knock some doors! Sign up to volunteer.