At a press conference on Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson explained why she issued her first veto against the council’s recently passed RV ban and presented her own alternative executive order. But it was a surprise guest who stole the show: centrist City Councilmember Rob Saka.
Saka’s presence signaled his reversal on the controversial RV bill, which he had voted for last month. Together with the three progressives on the council, Saka’s support will be enough to safeguard Wilson’s veto from a potential override.
The legislation, sponsored by Councilmember Dan Strauss, would have required RV owners to obtain a special new permit to park their vehicles on city streets for more than two hours. But homelessness advocates and services providers argued the true intent of legislation was to “regulate” (read: banish) RV residents out of city limits altogether.
Wilson echoed the concerns over the well-being of homeless vehicle residents, and also said that Strauss’s bill would expose the City to potential lawsuits. It would also cost millions of dollars to set up a new permitting bureaucracy, she said.
“It is my responsibility to ensure that our city policies and programs are feasible, are a cost-effective use of public resources, and have a reasonable likelihood of achieving their stated goals,” Wilson said.
Wilson did pass Strauss’s four other ordinances to increase outreach funding, set up large vehicle storage lots, and rewrite the City’s definition of junk vehicles. As an alternative to the permitting system, which would have taken effect at the end of April, Wilson signed an executive order establishing a new interdepartmental work group to respond to Seattleites living in RVs, trailers, and other large vehicles.
The order requires the group to create an interim report within 60 days and publish its final recommendations by the end of March 2027. It also directs city departments to better prioritize resources for homeless vehicle residents.
Saka says Wilson’s executive order persuaded him to change his mind on the RV ban and support her alternative plan instead.
But Saka’s about-face may have less to do with benevolence toward vehicle residents—his office reported RVs to the City’s sweeps team 128 times in 2024—than pressure from his progressive constituents. According to Alison Eisinger of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, hundreds of residents wrote emails to council members opposing the legislation.
Meanwhile, at his own hastily organized press conference later that day, Strauss took credit for forcing the mayor to act, even as he criticized her decision to veto his bill. He said the executive order copied parts of his bill, and didn’t hide his displeasure toward Wilson, or even how personal it had all become for him.
“I feel like her word has been disingenuous,” Strauss said, to a room full of journalists. “There have been a number of times that she’s broken the promises that she has made to me or the commitments that she’s made to me, and that’s why I say I can’t trust her word anymore.”
Strauss claimed that Wilson had promised to support his legislation, or at least not veto it. For her part, Wilson said she always had serious concerns about the RV bill and “expressed strong concerns” about the legislation with the “hope they would be addressed before passage.” She also said conversations with department heads deepened her concerns over the difficulty of enforcing the new permitting program.
Unlike Wilson—who appeared alongside city department leaders, progressive advocates, and Councilmembers Saka and Alexis Mercedes Rinck—Strauss’s only companion at his press conference was Council President Joy Hollingsworth, who looked like she showed up to offer moral support.
The optics were terrible. Or as the youth say nowadays: Dan got press-conference mogged. Humiliation kink fodder.
At times, Strauss got flustered and seemed to almost undermine his own argument. Although the ordinance could make it easier for the City to remove unpermitted vehicles, he argued a proper implementation plan would minimize the legal risk.
“If you tow somebody’s house, that’s illegal,” Strauss said. “That’s the legal risk, which is why we shouldn’t tow people’s houses.”
Strauss also accused the mayor’s office of sitting on vehicle resident outreach funds and not deploying them sooner. In email to The Stranger, Wilson’s spokesperson Ansel Herz wrote that the Human Services Department had withheld the funding until “the policy deliberation at the Council was completed.” With the signing of the executive order, the RV outreach money is now being disbursed, he added.
Seattle has gone more than a year and a half without even one open vehicle safe lot in operation. The Low Income Housing Institute’s 72-unit Glassyard Commons is set to open at the end of the month, and Wilson said the City plans to open a second next year. Even these investments will likely be inadequate, as the most recent survey of homelessness found that people will be living in nearly 180 large vehicles on any given night in the Seattle metro region alone.
So while the political drama in City Hall rolls on, homeless vehicle residents still won’t have the resources they need. But they might get some relief from not having to navigate a new bureaucracy designed to fail them. That is, if Wilson’s veto holds.
The council has until December 2 to vote on whether to override it. Strauss said he’d want the vote to be sooner than later, though as long as Saka doesn’t flip-flop again, he’d be unlikely to prevail.
There is also a political motivation to Strauss wanting to push up the voting timeline. With her dominating early lead, progressive council candidate Nilu Jenks is poised to join the council’s ranks on November 24. Since Jenks is running for a vacated seat, she’ll start pretty much right away once the results are certified. Jenks told The Stranger that she didn’t want to take a public position on the legislation until she’s talked to the mayor and her future council colleagues.
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