Playing Ultimate Frisbee, and Talking Pro-Housing Policies, With Eddie Lin

This is the second of four profiles, running this week, on candidates for Seattle City Council District 2. Profiles will run in alphabetical order based upon the candidate's first name. To break the mold of traditional candidate interviews, I tagged along with each to do something they like that isn’t related to their campaign.

You can learn more about each candidate at the South Seattle Emerald Primary Candidate Debate on Monday, July 21, 6:30–8 p.m., at the Rainier Arts Center, where you’ll hear each candidate share platform ideas in person.

What might Eddie Lin like to do when he's not working as a deputy city attorney embedded in the Seattle Office of Housing? From his Instagram, you can tell some of his favorite things are his family and his dog, but isn't that like every politician?

Thankfully, when I emailed to ask about activity for a profile, he had several great ideas. Turns out, he's quite the athlete and tries to hit multiple pickup games a week: soccer on Wednesdays, ultimate frisbee on Sundays. Our schedules aligned for a game of ultimate on June 8, which happened to be one of the hottest days of the year so far.

I warned Lin that I haven't played ultimate frisbee since middle school. Don't worry about it, he said. "It's a very friendly game." Maybe so, but everyone who showed up at Jefferson Park Playground that day was great at ultimate — including Lin, 48, who covered me a few times and was impossible to outrun. He also made an impressive diving catch, likely the photo highlight of the game organizer's weekly Facebook post.

After a couple hours popping in and out of the game — the losing side typically switches out some or all players after each point — we were thoroughly dehydrated and fairly winded. Or at least, I was. Lin suggested that instead of sitting down for an interview, he'd give me a ride to a friend's birthday party in Rainier Beach, and we could talk in the car. 

And while transportation isn't his signature issue, he had answers about how to improve traffic and pedestrian safety in the South End. For both MLK Jr. Way South and Rainier Avenue South, he advocated road diets — cutting lanes to give more space to bikers and pedestrians, while also reducing the distance required to cross the street — with zero hesitation.

"People get frustrated because that will slow down traffic," he said, "but that's what we have to do. Rainier and MLK and these other roads were basically highways through the city, and they tear apart communities, they divide communities, they cause pollution, and they're dangerous."

So, yeah, he's a progressive. While that definition seems to no longer include wanting to defund police, Lin plays a lot of the progressive hits: reducing car ownership, increasing density in formerly single-family zoned neighborhoods, amping up civilian oversight of cops, stopping an education levy from funding salaries for school resource officers, expanding civilian-only crisis response, and adopting every progressive tax we possibly can.

When we pulled over to chat at the Detective Cookie Chess Park and found shade, Lin started in on his signature issue: housing. He's a "big, big proponent" of supply-side YIMBYism ("Yes, in My Backyard"). His work at the Office of Housing focuses specifically on issues like subsidized rental apartments or permanent supportive housing for people exiting homelessness or experiencing ongoing mental health issues. 

"It's great," he said, "But that bucket of money is never going to be enough if we don't solve what I would call the market-rate side of the ledger. The need just keeps growing."

Likening an overreliance on subsidized housing to bailing water out of a sinking boat with a too-small bucket, he argued we need to make it easier and cheaper to build, using increased competition among landlords to lower rents. He voiced support for Sen. Emily Alvarado's rent stabilization bill, and he said that, along with stronger tenant protections in general, what we really need is lower rent.

"Rent stabilization doesn't apply to how much they can charge in the first place, right?" he pointed out. "So it's like the only way that you drive down that initial cost is either something like social housing or competition."

Now, supporters of social housing in Seattle will remind Lin he voted for Proposition 1B on whether and how to raise new funds for the Social Housing Developer, but Lin says he's come around. Proposition 1A, which won handily, gives the developer $50 million in new progressive revenue, something Lin is a fan of.

Housing, he said, "is really what motivated me to run." He sees the current council, tasked with finalizing the city's Comprehensive Plan, which will determine where and how housing can be built for the next 20 years, in need of someone with his expertise. And while we talked about homelessness, transit, gun violence, policing, and more, he sees bad housing policy at the root of most issues.

"There's this thing called the housing theory of everything," he said. "It's like a climate justice issue. It's a racial justice issue. It's all these different things."

Now Lin has gotten The Stranger's endorsement, perhaps the most important feather in the cap of any progressive primary hopeful. And while he does bring a wealth of housing expertise to the table, is he more pro-housing than the other three candidates in this race?

Check out our chat with Adonis Ducksworth, and hear about housing (and more!) in our upcoming profiles of Jamie Fackler (Thursday, July 17) and restaurant-industry vet Jeanie Chunn (Friday, July 18). And join us Monday, July 21, to hear from all four candidates, live and in person, at our District 2 Primary Debate at the Rainier Arts Center, 6:30–8 p.m.

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Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.