Seattle Social Housing Board
Seattle Social Housing is governed by a 13-member board of directors. Members are appointed by the Seattle City Council and Mayor, Seattle Renters Commission, and community and labor organizations. Board members have a breadth of relevant expertise and experience spanning development, planning, finance and the lived experience of being a renter in Seattle’s market.
Cliff Cawthon
Board Member
CLIFF
About
Cliff Cawthon is a longtime community activist, public employee and a former journalist as well who has a long history in fighting for affordable housing and the rights of renters and low to middle income people to have a safe and healthy place to call home.
Cliff Cawthon has lived in the Seattle area for 11 years now and in that time he has worked with local labor and progressive organizations to raise the minimum wage- in Seattle and outside of it- fund housing through the Seattle Housing Levy, and expand mass transit with the Mass Transit Now campaign. For the last several years, he's worked with Habitat for Humanity and the Sightline Institute to advocate for building more homes, and with the former organization he won millions to build affordable housing in Seattle and King County. He currently works for the Washington State Dept. of Commerce and Bellevue College as the Homeownership Policy Manager and in the former position, he works with affordable housing developers and policy advocates to advance affordable housing.
He currently resides in Kent with his wife - a legal professional - and two cats.
Devyn
Forschmiedt
Board Member
DEVYN
About
Devyn was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. They grew up in Shoreline and moved to Seattle in 2016. Devyn worked full time as an early childhood teacher from 2015 until early 2024, which has contributed to their passion for building a better world for the next generation. They taught at a Head Start program for four years, through which they saw even more of the impacts that lack of access to safe and supportive housing and other resources have on families, especially those who are more marginalized. In 2024 Devyn started working as a paraeducator in a middle school special education class, which has even further intensified their drive to fight for a society that works for all people. Devyn strongly believes that housing is a fundamental human right. They believe that a healthy society has systems in place that allow every person to thrive.
In addition to working to connect families to resources, Devyn has done occasional small-scale volunteer work distributing material aid to unhoused communities. Devyn canvassed for Initiative 135 and has also been volunteering as a community organizer with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition for several years, which has given them significant experience with building broad coalitions, public speaking, and managing logistics. Devyn has spent most of their adult life living in inadequate or unsafe housing of various types and absolutely knows firsthand how hard it is for even a single person working full time to reach a place of stability. To Devyn, social housing represents an opportunity for loved ones, the communities they serve, and so many others to reach that stability. Devyn believes it is one small first step towards an equitable world.
Julie
Howe
Board Member
JULIE
About
Julie was appointed to the board by the Seattle City Council. Julie brings over twenty-five years of experience in affordable housing development and asset management. She has spent her career managing the acquisition/rehab and development of multifamily and single-family projects, both conventional, affordable/LIHTC and demonstration, senior and family, ownership, and rental. She is drawn to the complex and innovative, especially projects that are blazing new trails in how we live more affordably and build community, such as cooperatives and co-living. She has served as director, development manager and investment manager for several real estate development organizations, has served on multiple housing advisory boards and is a licensed real estate broker.
Julie has an undergraduate degree in environmental design and architecture from the University of Colorado – Boulder and a Master of Urban Planning with a Certificate in Commercial Real Estate from the University of Washington. Julie teaches about housing and real estate development in the UW Runstad Department of Real Estate. Julie is currently an Interdisciplinary URBDP PhD candidate at the UW, researching how housing may influence our mental health.
Kaileah
Baldwin
Board Vice Chair
KAILEAH
About
Kaileah was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. Kaileah is a queer Black ciswoman born and raised in Seattle and living in the South Park neighborhood (98108). Her professional background is in non-profit people-centered HR, which she currently does at Seattle-based advocacy organization, Puget Sound Sage & Sage Leaders. HR approach to HR and life in general people- and care centered, in opposition to white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy, and celebratory of QTBIPOC ways of working and being. Kaileah’s multiracial background (mixed white & Black) has given her personal insight into how Seattle’s history of racialized land use and housing policy impacts people today. While both her white and Black grandparents having moved to Seattle within 15 years in the mid-century, she is the only Black person across three generations who continues to live in the city due to the region’s subtle yet persistent anti-Black racism and the sheer unaffordability of Seattle housing.
Kaileah is looking forward to helping the new Seattle Social Housing Developer add permanently and actually affordable people-centered housing to reinvigorate the city’s affordable housing landscape and meaningfully tackle our homelessness and displacement crises.
Katie
LeBret
Board Secretary
KATIE
About
Katie was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. Katie is Native American and comes from a small-town reservation in Belcourt and has lived in Washington state for 7 years. Katie is currently living unhoused as a vehicle resident in Seattle, having lived previously in supportive housing, youth-oriented shelters, and having received rapid rehousing assistance. Katie has experience navigating Seattle’s complex system of resources geared toward serving people living unhoused and with that experience carries the knowledge of the challenges associated with accessing services, and with staying housed in our current ecosystem. Katie is a proud trans woman who has faced a lot of no’s and hurdles growing up. Katie wants to help others help themselves and to be a role model for others.
Karen Estevenin
Board Member
KAREN
About
Karen was appointed to the board by Martin Luther King County Labor Council. Karen Estevenin has proudly served as the Executive Director of PROTEC17 (Professional and Technical Employees Local 17) – a labor union with over 10,000 public sector members across Washington and Oregon – since May 2019. Alongside talented staff and dedicated member-leaders, she organizes through collective action for social, economic, and racial justice in our workplaces and communities.
As Executive Director, Karen is the responsible for the vision, direction, and operations of PROTEC17. She represents the union in official business and in advocacy and organizing efforts to build power for working people. Her passion for housing is aligned with the union’s mission to inspire action, advance equity, and build community – housing is a human right, especially for workers in and at the City of Seattle whose contributions are vital to making our city thrive.
Working in berry fields and fruit processing plants while growing up in Whatcom County was formative in the development of Karen’s passion for dignity and respect for workers. Years later as a tech-worker in Seattle, she led an organizing campaign in her own workplace to form a union with WashTech of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Over the last 20+ years she has worked for CWA, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 3000, and Teamsters 117.
When not causing good trouble, Karen is active with her community and family in Seattle. A graduate of the University of Washington, she loves the Huskies, is an avid runner, and enjoys spending time in the mountains with her husband and three boys.
Kay
Zimmerman
Board Treasurer
KAY
About
Kayellen was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. Kayellen was born in Michigan, was a treeplanter throughout their 20s and experienced intermittent homelessness into their 30s. Kayellen worked as a baker and cook for the next 30 years, as a side hustle Kayellen worked as a caregiver, and now work as a a full time caregiver. Throughout this time, Kayellen has done mutual aid, food security and housing work. Kayellen believes that to make it through the times ahead, we must bring all people to the table. Kayellen has worked for many years with LIHI, Bellwether, Community Roots, HUD, and SHA to get folks into housing. Kayellen looks forward to social housing adding more housing to the current landscape.
Mike
Eliason
Board Member
MIKE
About
Michael was appointed to the board by the Green New Deal Oversight Board. Michael Eliason is the founder of Larch Lab –part architecture and urbanism studio, part ‘think and do’ tank – focusing on research and policy; decarbonized low-energy buildings; and climate adaptive urbanism. Michael is also a writer and an award-winning architect specializing in mass timber, social housing, baugruppen (urban cohousing), and eco-districts. His career has been dedicated to advancing innovation and broadening the discourse on sustainable development, Passivhaus, non-market housing, and decarbonized construction. Michael is a graduate of Virginia Tech and became a Passivhaus consultant in 2010. His professional experience includes work in both the Pacific Northwest and Germany.
Tom
Barnard
Board Member
TOM
About
Thomas was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. Thomas was born in 1954 in Syracuse, NY, and lived there until 1980, moved to San Francisco and then Oakland during the early 1980’s. then moved to Dallas, TX in 1985, and then to Seattle in 1987. Thomas relocated to Seatac in 2018, as they could not find affordable rent in Seattle. Thomas spent three years in factory work, and many years in the restaurant business as a cook/chef, transitioning out in the late 1980’s after moving to Seattle.
In the 90’s Thomas received a BA in Political Economy and Community Development from Evergreen State College and worked for the WA State Legislature as a Session Aide and as an organizer, researcher and writer in two nonprofits. In the 2000’s Thomas received a Master in Public Administration from the Evans School of Public Policy with a concentration in urban issues, including housing, workforce and economic development and transportation. Worked as Policy Analyst for the Port of Seattle Commission from 2008-2016. Thomas ended working life driving for 3 years for Uber/Lyft. Retired in 2019-2020.
Wylie
Duffy
Board Chair
WYLIE
About
Wylie was appointed to the board by the Seattle Renters Commission. Wylie is a systems engineer at a construction company that prioritizes reducing harm in the built environment, specializing in zero-carbon construction. They moved to Seattle in 2014 after 2 years of homelessness in Nashville and over a decade of housing insecurity. While their housing insecurity initially continued in Seattle, they found community and purpose that made Seattle more of a home than any other place they’ve been. Now that their renting situation has stabilized, they actively contribute to mutual aid and direct action efforts in the local area and prioritize dismantling kyriarchy.
Wylie brings experience from serving on two other boards for arts equity non-profits in the past, working extensively in the non-profit sector in IT, as well as an instructor at film camps for queer youth. As a non-binary disabled queer, they hope to bring their lived experience to the table so they may advocate for folks who are often dismissed or left behind with seemingly insurmountable systemic barriers to access. There is much work to be done and many hurdles to overcome, but Wylie is dedicated to doing whatever is in their power to increase access to affordable housing and make oppressive systems obsolete.
ChrisTiana ObeySumner
Board Member
CHRISTIANA
About
ChrisTiana ObeySumner (they/them) is a nationally recognized disability and housing justice advocate, social equity strategist, and founder of Epiphanies of Equity. Their lived experience with housing instability across six states—including Seattle—deeply informs their lifelong commitment to transformative, intersectional, and community-centered change. With over 325 clients served nationally, ChrisTiana has supported organizations in embedding anti-oppression frameworks that center those most impacted by systemic inequity.
Though initially applying for the Community Development seat, they were honored to accept a seat appointed by the Seattle Renters' Commission to bring their personal experience, passion, and strategic insight to the forefront. They view this appointment as a vital opportunity to help shape Seattle’s future in social housing by uplifting renter voices and advancing reparative justice.