Fair Wages for Artists, Controlled Grocery Pricing, and Affordable Housing Déjà Vu

This is CityCast Seattle. I'm Jane Coo, and here's what Seattle's talking about. Is Seattle going to ban dynamic pricing in grocery stores? And would you like to live in Discovery Park? But first, let's talk about what artists need to make in order to survive in Seattle without being paid exclusively in exposure. I'm Marcus Harrison Green, founder of the South Seattle Emerald and Hinton Publishing and co-host of the podcast in the meanwhile. And I'm filling in for Jane all this week. Back in May, Jane talked to artists Ryan Guzzell about the wealth walk which brought audiences on a walking tour through Mount Baker and Rainer Valley, drawing attention to the fact that in King County, the top 20% of income earners own 19 times more than the bottom 20%. But what does it mean and how did we get here? Now he's back to talk about paying artists a living wage and what that means for small production companies in a one-day theater festival called... artist doing on August 15th. Ryan, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me, Marcus. It's really good to see you. Yeah, always a pleasure to see you, sir. The last time you were on CityCast, Seattle, he took Jane on the Wealth Walk to talk about inequality in King County. Is this a production artist doing in some ways your attempt to address that same problem inside Seattle's arts economy? Yeah, it's sort of been a central focus of mine since moving back here is this idea that, you know, I'm a theater guy, grew up making theater, and didn't really want to think too much about the economics of it, just wanted to do it. But, you know, it's just such a difficult environment for theaters to... to survive in. And in the last 30 years, they've kind of done what all of American business has done, which is respond to that by squeezing the creators, squeezing the workers. So, you know, I founded the feast with this mission of making living wage art. And artists doing is one attempt at finding a new model for that. You know, when we do a full theater production, it costs us, you know, like a third of our annual budget for one show. Oh, wow. And that's, you know, that's just the living wage reality of how it works. So we wanted to find a way to make more work to broaden our audience base and to build community with other kinds of artists while sticking to our living wage mission. So we said, well, what if what we did was support artists who are already making work to show something they've got in development and this like one day only thing? So it's an opportunity for us to. pay them well for their time, help cultivate work that's already kind of blossoming, and to sort of let artists of different styles work together, see each other's work, cross-pollinate. So like this year's festival, a clown named Brad Wren who's doing something about smartphone addiction. It's Jody Cuner or Sheridanus Sinatra, like one of the...

wildest figures in drag, looking at the life cycle of the universe and human beings. So yeah, just watching what happens when we put this, this like Roots music next to this clown, next to this drag, next to Keyes Wiley. It's going to be sound designing and DJing and tying everything together. So basically it's like we're not putting too strong a hand on it. Artists know what they're doing. We just wanted to have some money to do it and to bring audiences together to see what's created. Yeah, I mean, with that being said, as you were listening to artists, you know, I've noticed that most of them work in very different forms. So what happens when you basically tell artists like these, hey, here are the resources. You've got a day. Now go make something. Yeah, I think at its best, what happens is that kind of like live performance serendipity that it's only going to have 100 people there, 120, I think is the cap. So, you know, it's that thing of like, I saw this night that will never happen again. And, you know, I think that art gets more exciting when it like cross-pollinates. Yes. You know, I don't want to sugarcoat it. It might be messy. It might be rough. Some of the work is going to be like, oops, mess that up. Let me try again. But I think that's part of what I actually think people who love going to theater are okay with that because it's part of the thing that, you know, like we can't make the Odyssey. That's going to cost too many millions of dollars to make it all that perfect. Well, you could do, I guess you would use Grock, right, to make it, but anyway, yeah. Don't give me started on that. Okay. Yeah. So it's finding a way to lean into the messy beauty of, like, great artists building what they can build. Yeah, I mean, and just the fact, right, that ultimately, like, sort of live performance art, it's this unique thing. Whereas with you go to movie theater or even, you know, watching Netflix or so forthright, is something that it's, to your point, you know, very polished, has been edited. Like, this is... the only time you're going to see it in this particular form. So, you know, there is that. And it's algorithmic. That's the other thing I like about live performance is like, there's a way that it is, it is not something that can be tailored specifically to you. So it has to be built around the idea of the community. And so it's like a bigger ask, but ideally it has a bigger like social connection. That is something I'm really interested in. I do want to ask because, I mean, you know, artists certainly aren't the only ones who deserve a living wage, but I'll say they certainly deserve one in terms of just the vibrancy and the character, right, that they bring to a city. And so I want to ask you, what does an artist living wage actually mean here in Seattle? What, you know, what would an artist need to be paid for their time to make this work sustainable? It's a really complicated question. Honestly, so our company is launching a thing this year called Theater Artists Thrive, specifically aimed at spending the next couple of years modeling out with all the complications of the way artists make work, what kinds of models would support it. One simple one is like treating artists like employees as opposed to volunteers. So for- Novel concept. Yeah, right. And I don't mean to be clear. Like it's hard for small companies. It's hard for us.

but at least being really thoughtful about like, can we follow the labor laws to start? Can we pay these people at least minimum wage? And then, you know, for us, like the feast pays $8.50 a week, which, you know, you look then, you go, that's not quite a living wage. And I'm like, I'm right there with you, you know. Our goal is eventually for a system where like someone working between the large houses, the medium-sized houses, the small houses, and working whatever the equivalent of a full time is for artists, which like in theater, that's probably 45 weeks a year, given how much work we have to do outside of the theater to make things happen. It's a tough question because it's not going to mean the same thing for everybody. So the starting point for me is paying artists like employees for the work they're doing and finding ways to prioritize their work over other things that are not as central to. the artistic experience, right? Without artists, it doesn't matter what else is going on. So you need the artist to be supported first. What we actually need is for the ecosystem to come together to say, like, how do we really support these people staying in Seattle? Yeah, I mean, to your point, you said, earlier, I mean, you know, small theater companies aren't exactly swimming in money, you know, either, right? I mean, you know, it's not a unique challenge that these theater companies are facing. So I just want to ask you over at Feast, when you all decide we're going to pay artists more, you know, where does that money actually come from? And what do you have to sacrifice elsewhere in order to, you know, fulfill that pledge? I mean, for us, it comes from, spending a lot of our time fundraising. You know, I mean, we are within the model that is individual donors, some foundation and grant support. What we sacrifice, we don't produce as often. We pay more on fewer shows than paying less on more shows. So we produce less than other theaters our size. We pay designers well, but we have small design budgets. There's not a lot of money to buy things. We pay for people instead of things. So what it means is it's like a lot of choosing people who can make it interesting over things that'll make it pretty is like the largest thing that I would say. And then, yeah, it's like a focus on doing the work of fundraising and being realistic about what we're able to accomplish within that smaller, that smaller footprint. Yeah, well, I want to wrap up by asking you this. Some of our listeners who absolutely love Seattle's art scene, but have never really thought about the economics behind it. What should audiences understand about what it actually cost to keep artists in this city? That's a great question. I think what I would say is this. The first thing I would say is, Don't always get the cheapest ticket. If you like an artistic event, support that event. Ask questions about the art that you go to to make sure that it's like thinking about this. Again, I don't pretend we have the perfect solution, but I think too many artistic institutions are sort of like avoiding it altogether.

for a theater of our size to fully pay a living wage to an artist with health insurance with their pension paid for it's for one actor for one week it's like 1600 bucks so just to know that that that most theaters rely about like less than half on the the cost of the ticket and the rest on philanthropy um So what I would say is if you haven't ever thought about the economics, know that the economics are hard, if you're in a place to support, support, and also be curious about how the art you're consuming is getting made, because it is expensive. It's a handmade artifact. You know, theater can't be mass produced. So there are ways to do it, but it requires thoughtfulness on behalf of audiences, but artists and institutions as well. Well, we very much appreciate you sharing that with us, Ryan. The production is artist doing August 15th. Please check it out if you can. That said, speaking of economics and affordability, we will soon be back to talk about the proposed ban on surveillance pricing at grocery stores.

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It's interesting to me that there's been such a reaction from the companies themselves. They've been putting up ads telling you that the city council is going to take away your QFC shoppers card, basically. Oh, no. For you to get discounts on things off the shelf right now. Consider my pearls clutched. Yeah, which would not actually be touched under this legislation, you know. discounts that are available to the general public through a shopper's card would not be impacted. Hannah, can you please walk me through a nightmare scenario? Let's say I'm walking into a grocery store, a bit hungover, to buy a frozen pizza and some Gatorade. How could surveillance pricing theoretically result in me paying more for it than you do? When you're walking into a store, it might be a little more difficult, but if they were to use an algorithm based on your loyalty points, they might give you. they might know that you're always hungover. You're always getting pizza and Gatorade. Whereas I am never hungover and I'm never getting pizza in Gatorade. And so that definitely describes us. That's our dynamic. So they know they can charge you whatever because you're always going to buy it. And so your pizza is going to be $12 and your Gatorade's going to be. 399 or something once you get up to the self-checkout because there'll be no workers in this reality. And when I get up there, it's going to be a much lower price because they are using my data and didn't expect me to get that. And that's kind of far off in the future because right now they have like, you know, the prices are there and stuff. But it definitely could happen. And we don't really want these companies to have access to our data because we don't actually know exactly how they could use it to make this nightmare scenario. But I mean, I think like there was a report that like getting rid of like algorithmic price fixing could like save people like $1,200 a year. Like there's real actual like material impact that's going to happen here. Yeah. So I want to ask you this, Ryan. Like I know there are people seeing. electronic price tags popping up in Seattle grocery stores. So should shoppers look at those and think, uh-oh, we already have dynamic pricing, are we conflating two different technologies? I mean, it's important not to conflate, I think. And I don't know how prevalent the Instar, you know, dynamic pricing is yet. It does seem to be mainly confined to apps and delivery services. When Kroger, you know, announced its merger with Albertsons, like they're, one of the things that they touted was having the access to.

the amount of data that's available on their customers. And so there's clearly a big desire to kind of hone in on data. And obviously, in-store purchases are such a bigger market for these companies than the ancillary delivery markets, I think. I think this is an instance where there's not really much evidence that there's dynamic pricing happening in stores right now, but this is laying the groundwork for... other cities to kind of follow the lead and kind of cut this off at the past, really, and not wait for this to become a larger issue. Yeah, let's hope some other cities potentially take note of this. It seems like to me that the mayor and the city council members who are supporting this, that their basic argument is pretty intuitive, right? It's you got the same product, same store, same price. But grocery pricing is always. involve either coupons or loyalty programs or discounts. So where does this bill, as it's currently proposed, where does it draw the line between an ordinary discount and discriminatory pricing? It seems like it's based on where the information comes from. If it's available to the general public, it's just a general discount, then that's not prohibited. But if it's based on your consumer information, the data. So it's essentially prohibits spacing pricing on specific information that's about you as a consumer. And let's also remember that discount is like a marketing tactic. There's no such thing as a discount. They set the price. They could always give you, if they can afford to give you that discount, most time they can always afford to give that price to everyone. And so if there's discounts for run people, that means there's actually upcharges for everyone else. Well, I can give you a discount on a bridge in Fremont if you... that I'm selling if you all want it. Anyway, though, that said, I have noticed that it seems like the grocery industry is pushing back in full force. So what have you all noticed about companies and groups opposed to this in terms of what they're saying about the quote-unquote? unintended consequences. Yeah, they seem to be really hammering this like, they're taking away your discounts. You're not going to have loyalty cards anymore, which is just not true. And you should feel like your intelligence is insulted by them and you should not listen to it. Well, I mean, it also signals to me that this, I mean... You know, they seem to think that this would be impactful for them. And so, you know, I've heard some people in other cities, particularly looking at this in Seattle and be like, this is, you know, sloppilism. This isn't a real policy. It's not really happening. But if that's true, then why are these companies so mad about it? Yeah, they know they stand to like gain something from algorithmic pricing and surveillance pricing. Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending a bunch of money to protect it.

Yeah, I think that is absolutely correct. Well, that said, y'all. We are going to leave that here for now. But let's take a break. And when we come back, there's a bit of affordable housing deja vu, shall we say. You want crisp and refreshing, but you're not willing to drink something forgettable. Fram Pilsner was made for exactly that. Inspired by the great traditional Pilsners of Germany, Fremes set out to build something that could stand next to the best loggers in the world. And it turns out they did. Frem is brewed right here in the Pacific Northwest, and this Pilsner has been winning gold medals consistently for over a decade, from the Oregon Beer Awards and SIP Best of the Northwest to the World Beer Cup and Australian International Beer Awards. On every continent against every competitor, the same verdict keeps coming back. It's the best in class. The Pilsner has this bright floral aroma, clean and crisp on the palate with a snappy finish that makes the next sip inevitable. You can find it on tap and in cans throughout Seattle, including at Teamable Park. Visit freembeer.com, that's p-f-r-I-e-M-Bear.com, and click Find Freembeer.

Now, Ryan, you have a piece out in The Urbanist this week that basically begins. The year is 2018. Seattle is studying affordable housing. The year is 2025. Seattle is studying affordable housing. The year is 26. And Seattle is studying affordable housing. So first off. Why in the hell are we still studying affordable housing? Can you give us a big picture overview of what's happening here? Yeah. And so this story is about the Fort Lawton Affordable Housing Project, former military based right next to Discovery Park, that has been advanced as a campus for affordable housing for 20 years now. And at certain times, it's gone through different iterations. all of which have been pretty much opposed by a lot of the groups in Magnolia and with ties to Discovery Park itself in terms of not wanting to see that 34 acres right next to the park get redeveloped with housing. And so. Yeah, the city just released yet another environmental study because they're really trying to dot all the eyes and cross all the T's in large part because of our state environmental laws that make it really easy to kind of challenge projects like this. And so that's, you know, the State Environmental Policy Act, which I talk a lot about in the piece because it's been in the news a lot that I've talked about on this program in terms of the Eddie Lynn bill that we talked about a couple weeks ago. Yeah, definitely having a bit of deja vu here. Yeah, easy to have. I noticed, though, that meanwhile, as we continue to study, Issaquah just broke ground on 154 affordable homes after a process that itself took about a decade. So why does it take 10 years to get from we need affordable housing to somebody actually pouring concrete? Yeah, I mean, I think a large part, you know, to try and connect the dots between these two projects, um, which I haven't, you know, done yet in my head. So I'm doing this on the fly. But I think, you know, um, middle math, man, Ricker. I think the common thread is how bespoke everything has to be. And so in Isoqu, you had to like relocate a cell tower and you had to get a variance for the exact, you know, number of units that you wanted to do in this zoning district. And that took several years and, and these all compound on each other. And in Magnolia, the main delays have been legal challenges. And so, you know, in the interim, part of this is a good news story because previously we were just going to build like 250 units of affordable housing, which is not a lot for 34 acres. And so Bruce Harrell, you know, decided that we were actually going to take another look at that and do 500.

While that was a great decision in terms of actually utilizing this parcel, it restarted everything. And so now we're back to having to do another environmental analysis of this. You know, the story I wrote about today is how they had to do a second draft supplemental environmental impact statement because they had a public hearing last year where people, including friends of Discovery Park members, how old about how they didn't, hadn't studied a alternative that. wasn't building housing. And so they had this alternative that is building more park next to Discovery Park and building the housing somewhere else. which is how, you know, people always want to have a affordable housing rate as somewhere else is the most convenient place for you, you know. And so they, the city did that. And they looked at what would it look like to actually build these 500 units on Aurora Avenue instead. And would you rather live on Aurora Avenue or would you rather live inside Discovery Park, I guess, is my question for, for you to. You know, if you water your own grass, it's just as green as everybody else is right. That's so sweet. You make your own magic. I'm happy where I am. And there's political implications for saying either one. And I'd rather not. I'd rather live where I am now. I'm not, yeah. So anyway, quick pivot. And I want to ask, you've, you know, covered. The city call of municipal politics, basically since you graduated, even when you were at the daily at the University of Washington, when folks hear things like, quote, unquote, environmental, review, planning, community engagement, and feasibility studies, what are officials actually... doing. Oh my God. Well, that's a great question. Like, it is just like kind of a long arduous process that like, I mean, like SEPA, you're trying to figure out, are you going to break the planet or whatever? And, you know, design review, you're going to figure out if the doors are ugly, I guess. And it's just, yeah, a lot of steps. Some of them, some make sense. Some make less sense. Ryan probably has a more detailed perspective on like the process. But. It is like, yeah, a super long, drawn out process to get anything built. Yeah, and I guess, Ryan, I do want to be fair, right, to certain people who say that there absolutely does, of course, need to be due diligence when a project comes up. But I'm guessing how do we balance due diligence with just halting something to halt it, right? I mean, when does due diligence become paralysis? Yeah, and, you know, I bring this up a lot in terms of the fact that the environmental laws that are being used here, you know, were created several decades ago in a very different paradigm of environmental sustainability and preservation. So not created in the age of climate change. And so there's an intense status quo by this environmental analysis was wild to me that it actually stated that there would be no environmental justice implications from.

changing the location from Discovery Park to Aurora Avenue because it doesn't look at the impact on the new people, the 500 people who would get to have homes and would they be exiting their front door onto Aurora or a park? And there was no study of that at all, zero. And so it's all about the existing infrastructure and whether the people who live near either site would be impacted. But. There's such a bias toward what is existing right now and very little study of what happens if we do nothing, which is the biggest question when it comes to climate change is what does the status quo look like when we have to move very quickly? I do want to say, I mean, this issue does seem a bit bigger than housing in the sense of the reputation that our city has for, quote unquote, the Seattle process of studying, consulting, convening, and then studying the previous study and then convening and commiserating and so forth. Is, in y'all's opinion, I mean, is that reputation deserved? And can it be changed? I think it's deserved. I mean, I'm thinking about, I mean. Like a lot of times we you do a study and this maybe is not actually so applicable to like to building because I think like they probably probably do need to figure out if it's going to like stand up and stuff but for example the surveillance cameras not to beat a surveillance camera into the ground but like we kind of have an idea of what's going on and it seems like studies are designed to find the solution that elected's want it to find and they do the study to give themselves cover like, well, this is what the study found. And we asked this narrow question and we're going to interpret the answers this way. And it seems like that happens all the time. Or if they don't find what they want, like when we reference like those cities like surveillance like oversight body that was like, please don't do these cameras. We're like, well, we did the process. So we can do whatever we want now and ignore the fact that the surveillance group is like, well, absolutely do not do these cameras. So I don't know. Like that's like an aside kind of. But yeah, I think that Seattle definitely has that reputation. I'm sure other cities too. Ryan, that's it. And wrapping this up, I want to ask like, What do you think the cost of waiting is, right? I mean, if Seattle had moved forward with Fort Lawton when this was being discussed years ago, how much cheaper or even easier with those homes have been to build? I mean, you know, there is the fact that we did increase the amount of units during the Herald administration so that if we started with that number originally, been a little more ambitious. But I think the costs and delay, which so rarely get quantified, are huge. And especially thinking about all of the city time that was spent on this project that could have been spent on other projects, go back to the 500 people who could have homes right now. And what those people are doing and what the impacts are, 100 of those units are permanent supportive housing. So getting people directly off the street into support networks and services. Those costs are being born right now in public health.

and in other areas. But we never really see a report, and it doesn't make it into the SEPA analysis of for Lawton. Instead, we just get another study about whether this will be impactful or not. Got it. Well, we will unfortunately have to leave it here for today, but there will certainly be follow-ups. I am so sure. It is such a pleasure always to be with you both. So that is all for today here at CityCass Seattle, Hannah Krieg, founder of the burner. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. And Ryan Packer, contributing editor at the Urbanist. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. And I'm your host for today, Marcus Harrison Green. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Send us your news tips, questions, hot goss, are your thoughts about dynamic pricing for groceries by sending an email to Seattle at citycast.fm. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail on the CityCast hotline at 206-880-3931. Until next time, see you, Seattle.