Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you to the Tye for Five volunteers, donors, and supporters!! We couldn’t have gotten here without. I can’t wait to see you all out there making real changes in each other's lives.
Tye Reed for Seattle City Council, District 5
Building Healthy Communities
Tye is building a Seattle where all of us can thrive. From safer streets and greener public spaces to robust investments in housing, transit, and human-centered services, Tye’s track record both legislatively (I-135 for social housing) and in the community (direct service and mutual aid) is forging a path towards Seattle rising; building healthy, safe communities that are resilient together.
MEET TYE REED
Tye is building a safer, healthier, greener Seattle
Worker, Renter, Community Organizer
With a passion for housing justice and climate resiliency, Tye co-founded House Our Neighbors which put green, affordable social housing on the ballot making Seattle one of the first cities in the nation to pass this robust and sustainable housing model.
From Kansas City to Seattle
Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Tye left the Midwest for the dream of Seattle’s queer oasis, studying Society, Ethics, and Human Behavior, with a minor in Human Rights at UW Bothell. “We discussed institutions, how institutions fail to meet people’s needs. It doesn’t matter if the government is intending to hurt people or not: negligence is hurtful.”
Worker Solidarity
“I worked full time all night. Manual labor, 10 pm to 7 am jobs to go to class at 8 am.” These jobs included working at Amtrak for $17.30/hour and at a soup factory for $12/hour, 10 hours/day. “The weeks were long with 12-16 days in a row… we got time and a half so we thought it was good but it was actually just $18 an hour, barely a living.” Tye’s understanding of the value of labor and working conditions eventually made its way into I-135, where voters said yes to union-built housing.
Housing Advocacy
Tye is deeply connected to Seattle’s housing justice movements; she’s a board member of Housing Justice Project, as well as Be:Seattle, a renter education organization. With Transit Riders Union, Tye co-founded and coordinates an outreach team in Ballard, and co-organizes a weekly community meal downtown with Stop the Sweeps.
“When they swept the Ballard camp was the beginning of the end of finding the people we used to see every week. We just can’t find people anymore. We could not get them tents, medicine, pills, cat food, clothes, since that first sweep– our only connection to that community, gone. The sweeps have 100% interrupted our ability to get people the supplies they need to survive outside; if a case manager or friend or family is trying to get someone into a housing or rehab program– the odds of success plummet with sweeps.”
Any progress that we hope to gain through expanded non-congregate shelter, behavior and mental health services, or survival supply distribution is undone by sweeps. It is vitally important that the City Council divest from sweeps and investigate legal options for banning them in Seattle.
As a recently displaced renter, former housing specialist, organizer for social housing, and a steadfast advocate for stopping the sweeps, Tye understands that it is only through mass mobilizations of impacted communities that we will ever begin to see a revolutionary change to the ways we are able to live and thrive in this city.
As a co-founding member and co-chair of House Our Neighbors, Tye helped to put social housing on the ballot in Seattle!
“There are a lot of good candidates in D5. However, I’m not seeing people confronting the root causes of a lot of issues. I’ve spent a lot of time working to stop the sweeps. I hear people talking about services, but services go to waste when we’re moving people over and over again and case managers can’t even find folks. Our focus should be on stopping the harm and building services rather than just doing services. Also, given the budget shortfall, we need to be looking at progressive revenue. I want to refocus the conversation on the massive task in front of us.”
