This week, Seattle City Council member Nick Licata is rolling out legislation to allow new homeless encampments on public and private property. The measure, which was hammered out with the help of Council Member Mike O'Brien and Mayor Mike McGinn, is intended to address deteriorating conditions at Nickelsville, the infamous homeless encampment currently residing on city land in Highland Park.

"Conditions at Nickelsville are not the best we should have for people," Licata says. The camp has recently faced flooding, a rat infestation, a spate of crime, and concerns about its self-governing structure after a two-year stint on its current site. The neighborhood group Highland Park Action Committee asked the city to evict the camp last month, saying its "existing management is actually intimidating campers into not seeking help or services, and pressuring residents to not call police." Says Licata: "I don't think we can continue having them there without providing them legal basis to move somewhere else." Mayor McGinn urged the council to support the legislation in a May 13 letter, saying, "The City cannot ignore the health and safety issues at the current Nickelsville site," nor the concerns of neighbors.

This legislation, slated to be formally introduced next week, would allow for new encampments on city or private land for up to a year, under certain management requirements.

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If you're wondering why that helicopter is circling up there. At the intersection, the scene is this:

• ANNA MINARD

Witnesses told me it looked like the van took a right on red and slammed into the bus. Two people were just loaded on stretchers into ambulances.

SDOT says:

Collision at Boren Ave & Pike St 2 eastbound lanes blocked, 1 westbound lane blocked
— seattledot (@seattledot) May 9, 2013

Seattle Fire says:

Medics transporting a male driver and female passenger ofa van to HMC in stable condition after Pike & Boren VanVS busAX.
— Seattle Fire Dept (@SeattleFire) May 9, 2013

Buses are backed up down Pike right now.

UPDATE: Slog tipper Derek Erdman says in comments: "The 11 is getting through now. Should start moving soon."

• Kelly O
• SMALL APARTMENTS: Far less expensive than the average one-bedroom, which has hit $1,230 a month.

Neighborhood groups in Seattle are banding together to stop construction of microhousing—AKA aPodments—and if they succeed, they will have one effect: pushing the poor out of town. But their movement is based on dishonest arguments.

Check out my story on their misguided movement.

Last week, the Seattle Times ran dueling editorials responding to a recent study that showed that Seattle has the worst gender pay gap among major US cities. I didn't link to the editorial at the time because it was mostly unsubstantiated garbage—mostly thanks to Bruce Ramsey—and I didn't have time to respond to its unsubstantiated garbageness point by point. (Sample garbage argument, courtesy of Ramsey: There's no real gender gap, Seattle's job market just disproportionately benefits men. It's not men's fault that Seattle is misogynist! Women are simply fundamentally better suited for poorer paying, "indoor" work like secretarial and nursing duties, which, silver lining "has become better paid because women [have] more alternatives to it." Never mind that male nurses are still paid slightly better than their female counterparts.)

But in a delightful turn of events, today Mayor Mike McGinn published a blog post addressing and debunking Ramsey's garbage arguments with—gasp!—facts and studies:

Leaving “personal choice” aside, even women who follow a man’s playbook and pursue leadership positions in high-paid industries are still paid less than their male counterparts. This gap persists even when you control for education, experience, ambition and choice to start a family. This study from non-profit advocacy group Catalyst surveyed only men and women who graduated from an MBA program and were recruited by top firms across industries. They found that even when they only looked at men and women with similar levels of experience, education and ambition, women were still being paid nearly $5,000 less in their first job out of their MBA program. These findings were consistent even when examining only men and women who did not have children. So when Bruce Ramsey says “the “gap” everyone talks about is not between men and women with the same jobs” he’s just factually incorrect.

Seattle has a problem with gender inequality in pay. Let’s not make excuses and blame women for their “personal choices.” That isn’t going to help the 141,949 households in the Seattle metro area that are headed by women, 23 percent of which are living below the poverty line. For these families, the wage gap isn’t just a matter of fairness – it’s a matter of survival.

McGinn ends his post with a "we have to get our house in order" stump speech by announcing that the city is taking a "hard look" to make sure city employees are paid equitably for their work, and that he'll announce a firmer policy proposal addressing the city's gender pay gap soon.

Which, frankly, McGinn needs after the commanding lead his mayoral challenger Bruce Harrell has taken on this issue.

I guess the better question is, why the fuck are you reading Slog right now?

• The Stranger

If you're not a contagious shut-in or an overturned turtle, then you have no excuse not to be outside right now. Go buy a six-pack of wine coolers at your favorite gas station and then head to the nearest park, for fuck's sake.

Posted by news intern Ben Steiner

• Reset Seattle
• Number of underwater mortgages in Seattle by zipcode.

Karen Hart, the president of the Service Employees International Union Local 925, explained that principal reduction would reduce the payment obligation on underwater mortgage loans to match the market value of the house, thus bringing the mortgage out from underwater. As a result, Seattle's 42,000 underwater homeowners will save an average of $771 per month on their mortgages. Reset Seattle is asking for the Seattle City Council to take action, while others in their ranks expect the legislature to step in.

The risk of foreclosure disproportionately affects people of color, says Pastor Willis, a speaker at yesterday's meeting and a leader in the United Black Clergy of Washington, but he also emphasized the impact of foreclosures on seniors. "We have seniors sleeping in their cars," he said. "We have to do something about this crisis, this epidemic. We need to demand in Olympia, to our mayors and governors, that they do something about this."

The very cool project Pollinator Pathway, a mile-long corridor of pollinator-friendly gardens being planted along Columbia Street, is having a work party this weekend, May 4 and 5, from noon to 4 p.m. Show up to 21st Avenue and Columbia Street in the Central District and get digging and planting.

• Brian Carver Brian Carver Brian Carver Brian Carver

The kind of guy who drinks mint tea instead of coffee in the morning, so his breath always smells like a television ad.

The kind of guy who talks enthusiastically about "lean management" and who, I suspect, would happily tattoo a heart with the word "bureaucracy" on his chest if it wouldn't hurt his chances of being a blood donor.

Carver, a 33-year-old Kindle product director at Amazon.com, is announcing today that he's joining the race to oust four-term Seattle City Council fixture Richard Conlin.

"I'm a new dad and I'm a little younger, so I think I bring a new perspective to the council," Carver explains. "I'd bring in diversity in age, experience with the high-tech industry, and a lean management style."

The Wallingford resident ticks off Conlin's muddy leadership as a two-term council president, his lone "no" vote on Seattle's paid sick leave legislation, and Conlin's lip service environmentalism, which has produced no substantive support for transit, as reason enough to oppose him. "Transit is now just getting into the planning phase, and that's mostly thanks to McGinn," Carver says. "We must do better. We can’t fix every pothole before we start planning the transit infrastructure we need to get us into the 21st century."

Carver hopes to bring a more progressive voting record to the council (he supports apodments!), starting with Seattle's contentious South Lake Union redevelopment. Although Conlin voted in favor of legislation to raise affordable housing rates in the booming neighborhood, Carver says Conlin has been "short sighted" in suggesting the city invest low-income housing revenue in areas where it’s more cost efficient—e.g. poorer neighborhoods, instead of neighborhoods where new jobs are being created, like South Lake Union. "In the long run we want to be building more-equitably distributed neighborhoods in the city, we need to ensure people can afford to live while they work," Carver says.

Carver also thinks the council should be doing more to impact public school education. "We can do more to support early learning and improve our attendance," Carver explains, while neatly sidestepping my questions about policy specifics. "We can work with the school board and the state to find incentives to keep kids in school."

But even Carver admits that in entering this race, he's drawn a short stick.

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