Meet Tacoma City Council candidate Kiara Daniels
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of interviews with candidates running for Tacoma City Council. In each interview, The News Tribune asked every candidate two questions: what they pay in rent or mortgage, and if they could correctly state the median home sale price in Pierce County, which is around $500,000 as of April 2021.
Kiara Daniels is running for the Tacoma City Council At-Large District 6 seat in the 2021 election.
The seat represents residents citywide and is being vacated by current City Council member Lillian Hunter, who did not file for re-election.
Daniels, 32, was born and raised in Tacoma and is the business and community development coordinator for Spaceworks Tacoma, a program of the Tacoma/Pierce County Chamber of Commerce. There, she connects Black business owners with resources in the community.
Previously, Daniels has worked at Peace Community Center, Habitat for Humanity and United Way of Pierce County. She has volunteered for the Puget Sound Regional Council AHEAD (AdHoc Equity Advisory Council), City of Tacoma’s Citizen Police Advisory Committee, Hilltop Economic Empowerment Advisory Board and African-American Financial Capability Initiative. She’s also a member of the Fab-5, helping on an initiative to support affordable housing projects and transform vacant property on the Hilltop, which is quickly gentrifying, Daniels said.
Daniels said she thought about running for office in the future, but felt the urgency to run in the past couple of years as major issues like climate and housing were coming to a head.
“It felt like a kind of a ticking time bomb,” Daniels said. “Like we have this very small window before we become every major city in the United States. And we have to do something about it.”
When asked what she feels is the most pressing issue in Tacoma, Daniels said there are multiple pressing issues happening at the same time. She pointed out that climate, housing and public safety are among the top ones.
The urgency to address housing and homelessness in Tacoma was another reason Daniels wanted to run. Shortly before the major outbreak of COVID-19 in Washington, Daniels said her cousin passed away in a homeless shelter in February 2020.
“For me, the important thing about that was that my cousin should have been at home. He should have been in his own house,” she said. “And it really is a question about how we treat folks that need housing … Do we believe in housing as a right?”
Daniels does. She said she knows the city and groups like the Tacoma Housing Authority are working hard to create and find funding for housing projects and options.
“My frustration is, like, what can we put in place to get this done faster? How can we (build) more units faster? Because it’s really a matter of life and death,” she said.
Daniels said she supports actions like the one tenth of 1 percent sales tax the city recently passed for affordable housing. That’s just the first step, she said. With rising costs to own or rent in Tacoma, she wants to see an increase in all types of housing increase across the city.
“When we have more stock, that takes so much pressure off of the market,” she said.
Daniels wants to avoid waiting so long to make tough decisions.
“We talk so much about the housing that we don’t want — we don’t want this development, we don’t want that development. But what do we want? What kind of building are we incentivizing because we have to get to this number of units?” she said.
When it comes to addressing homelessness in Tacoma, Daniels said she’d like to see a more concerted effort, and she thinks the county is headed in that direction. The city, Pierce County and the Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness are now working on a comprehensive plan.
Daniels also would like to see more shelter efforts like the tiny home villages that already are operating in the city, in addition to permanent housing with coordinated mental health care.
“Housing folks should not scare the community,” Daniels said. “... We know that housing (and) homelessness is like a forest fire, right? We cannot come in with a glass of water or with a sprinkler and expect to put out the forest fire. We have to come in with five different hoses.”
When asked about the City Council’s proposed law that bans camping on public property, Daniels said there needs to be adequate, accessible shelter of all types for people before a law like that can be in place.
“And if we get to that point, I don’t feel like (a camping ban) will be necessary,” she said.
When it comes to public safety, Daniels said Tacoma has a long way to go, and the city will not “policy our way out of racism.” Daniels said she often feels the conversation about police reform becomes about whether someone hates or loves the police.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with what we love or hate — it is about the return on investment,” Daniels said. “We need to make sure that if we are paying into a system, that, number one, we are counted in that, that we are protected, that we feel safe in that system — and that’s everybody.”
Daniels said she is interested in the study recently conducted by the city that looks at which calls could be diverted from police to an unarmed civilian response team.
“I think that is a benefit to people of color, that is a benefit to folks experiencing mental health crises, a benefit to everybody in the community to have a holistic response team,” she said.
Daniels has raised more than $43,000 for her campaign, the most of any City Council candidate running this year, aside from Mayor Victoria Woodards, who’s raised $103,000. Her top donors are WA State Democrats ($1,782 in-kind), Jason Kinlow ($1,020) and Jasmyn Jefferson, Catherine Carruthers, South Sound Women’s Leadership PAC, Steven Daniels, Service Employees International Union 1199, Sandra Daniels, Richard Woodard and SEIU 775 Quality Care Committee ($1,000 each).
What do you pay in rent/mortgage?
Daniels said she recently bought her first home in Tacoma and will pay $1,800 a month.
What is the median home sale price in Pierce County?
“Probably about $450,000, but I’d say today, the way that the equity is moving, it’s (likely) to be at least $500,000 now.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
