Home News Elections Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson on tackling the Chinatown-International District’s biggest challenges

Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson on tackling the Chinatown-International District’s biggest challenges

Chetanya Robinson

December 3, 2025

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Katie Wilson, a progressive activist and organizer, won election as Seattle mayor in early November, beating incumbent Bruce Harrell.

Wilson, 43, previously served as General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, and played a key role in launching Seattle’s JumpStart progressive tax in 2020.

Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson. Photo courtesy of the campaign.

As she prepares to take office as mayor, longstanding issues in the Chinatown International District (CID) demand attention from local government, including public safety, a drug crisis, and disagreements around where to place Sound Transit’s second light rail station in the neighborhood. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will take place next year from June to July, bringing up to an estimated 750,000 visitors to Seattle, with potential to impact the CID for good or ill.

Upon winning election, Wilson named Quynh Pham, Executive Director of Friends of Little Saigon, as one of four co-chairs of her transition team, which will work on policy and staffing recommendations for her administration.

In a short phone interview with the International Examiner, Wilson spoke about issues expected to impact the CID in the first year of her term, as well as Pham’s role in the transition team.

“Quynh is such a great example of a community leader who is deeply rooted in the neighborhood, and who’s doing great work bringing so many different interests and stakeholders together around a common problem,” Wilson said. “This choice was partly about communicating that I as mayor am very committed to focusing attention and resources in those neighborhoods.”

Addressing Little Saigon’s longstanding challenges

Wilson said the challenges of drug dealing, drug consumption, and people living unsheltered in Little Saigon go back a long way, and that many of them are problems spilling over from downtown. She said that in general, her administration will focus on the root causes of these problems by lifting people out of unsheltered homelessness and out of substance abuse, by helping people move into stable living conditions. She noted that while the drug market in Little Saigon is not entirely tied to homelessness, she wants her administration to build on and expand drug treatment services. To address public safety, she believes hot spot areas like 12th and Jackson need consistent police presence in the area, along with non-police outreach teams such as We Deliver Care.

She recognizes that the problems need a long-term approach.

“What is so impressive to me about the work of Friends of Little Saigon—that I also want to build upon—is that it’s not just about… immediate reactions to the public safety problems. It is taking a more holistic view of investment in the neighborhood, of environmental design. How can we change the built environment to improve these conditions at the same time we’re also thinking about the human beings who are on the street and who are suffering, and how can we help them into a better situation?”

FIFA World Cup 2026

When the FIFA World Cup comes to Seattle next summer, it will bring an influx of people and a flow of money. Wilson said she wants her administration to make sure that money spent by visitors, as well as government funding, is not concentrated downtown but used to benefit the CID, with people patronizing its restaurants and small businesses, as well as permanent benefits like beautification of public spaces.

Wilson wants the neighborhood to be protected from negative impacts of a high number of visitors in the downtown core.

“That’s going to be thinking about traffic and parking and all of those kinds of impacts,” Wilson said.

Finally, there is a worry about increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity around the games. Wilson said she would work with community organizations in the CID and elsewhere to be prepared.

Sound Transit’s second light rail station

As General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, Wilson initially supported the 4th Avenue Shallow option for Sound Transit’s second light rail station in the CID. For over a year, Sound Transit analysts have cast doubt on 4th Avenue being feasible, especially given a ballooning budget for the light rail expansion and a potential loss of federal funding—hough the agency is still studying it.

Nonetheless, Wilson is ambivalent about the Dearborn Street Station option, potentially located south of the existing CID station. During her campaign, she toured the prospective site with members of Puget Sound Sage.

“I think from a transit rider connectivity standpoint, [that station is] not my ideal solution,” Wilson commented. “But if that ends up being the direction that things go… my goal would be to make that as great as possible, and to be working with organizations, nonprofits, businesses in the neighborhood, to realize the full potential of that site and the ways that It can help to anchor communities in the CID.”

Potential solutions proposed by Wilson would include creating new space around the CID for permanently affordable housing and for small businesses and community organizations.

Wilson will be sworn in as mayor on January 1, 2026.

Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s senior staff team and 60-member transition team

Senior staff team

Kate Brunette Kreuzer, Chief of Staff
Jen Chan, Director of Departments
Seferiana Day, Director of Communications
Alex Gallo-Brown, Director of Community Relations
Aly Pennucci, Director of City Budget Office
Brian Surratt, Deputy Mayor
Nicole Vallestero Soper, Director of Policy and Innovation

Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s transition team is organized into seven additional policy areas, plus a six-member group of student and youth advisors. Below is the overall transition team leadership, as well as the co-leads for each area.

Transition team leadership