Sara Nelson, Dionne Foster differ on how to tackle substance use in Seattle City Council race

Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson is facing a tough race to keep her at-large seat this November, after finishing the Aug. 5 primary more than 20 points behind her opponent.

Nelson has made addressing substance use disorder a central issue in her campaign. Her challenger Dionne Foster comes from the nonprofit world. And while they are not polar opposites on this issue, Foster has some clear differences with Nelson.

When it comes to Seattle’s strategy for people struggling with addiction, Nelson refers to her own recovery from alcoholism as a touchstone. She said it’s a journey that began abruptly five years ago, during the depths of the pandemic.

“I decided to check myself into treatment one day, it was actually September 24, 2020, when I saw my son doing video on his cell phone and he should have been in class on zoom,” she said. “And so I smashed his phone with a hammer and I realized that that was an overreaction. And I had been drinking, and I decided that it was time to make a change.”

Nelson went to Lakeside-Milam, a residential treatment facility in Kirkland, where she went through detox, then weeks of counseling and education. She found it so effective that she successfully obtained $300,000 in city funds to pilot free residential treatment for people referred by caseworkers in Seattle.

She’s also pushed for sober housing for people in recovery. But as she faces a progressive challenger this election season, Nelson is stressing her support for a broad array of approaches, not just abstinence.

“We’re all wanting the same thing, I believe, which is recovery,” she said. “Recovery doesn’t necessarily have to imply abstinence, it really means helping people get their lives back together.”

Nelson also pushed for funding for additional mobile units for opioid treatment, like the one she visited on a recent weekday in Belltown. They are operated by Evergreen Treatment Services. People entered and exited the unit quickly, stepping inside to check in with a nurse and obtain doses of methadone.

Sean Soth, Evergreen’s VP of Clinic Services, showed Nelson how the process works.

Soth pointed to the community safety staff on the sidewalk. "They kind of manage the flow," he said, "and then create relationships with the patient population to make sure they get connected to services around here.”

As they discussed different spending priorities, Nelson told Soth she was dismayed that the public health community didn’t welcome her funding for free residential treatment. Soth said the problem is that residential facilities don’t usually want to work with people on medications like methadone.

“Oftentimes inpatient facilities have been very, at least, hesitant, if not outright refuse our patient population,” he said. But "as an olive branch," Soth said he’d be happy to work with her to address that.

Nelson’s support to make drug possession a gross misdemeanor in line with state law, and to enact the SODA or “Stay Out of Drug Area” ordinance, drew vocal opposition.

Nelson said she isn’t trying to send people to jail; she wants these laws to steer people into diversion programs and away from areas with drug activity.

“It’s an alternative to incarceration,” she said. “Just stay out of this area. And the benefit of that is you do have to interrupt these areas where there is a very well-developed drug market.”

Nelson’s opponent this November is Dionne Foster, the former head of the Washington Progress Alliance, where she advocated for the state capital gains tax, among other issues. She also worked as a policy advisor to the city of Seattle on the utility discount program. Foster said she opposes the Stay Out of Drug Area orders and believes they're “ineffective.”

“I think the idea that prohibiting people from one particular geographic area is not a way to ensure that somebody gets access to a service,” or to housing or treatment, she said.

If elected, Foster said her focus would be to fund more capacity for outreach workers from LEAD and other programs to help people struggling with addiction to obtain housing and other supports. She said she supports sober housing, but only as part of a spectrum of options.

Foster said she recently had an up-close encounter with the opioid crisis while she was out campaigning.

“A man came up to us screaming for help and asking, 'Does anybody have Naloxone?' His friend is overdosing," she said.

Foster didn’t have the overdose reversal drug Naloxone with her that day. She carries it now.

But Foster said she’s excited about new strategies like the injectable buprenorphine used by the Downtown Emergency Service Center to help people reduce their fentanyl use without the excruciating withdrawal. A UW Medicine study of the practice recently appeared in JAMA Network Open.

“We’re in this moment where we’re seeing new innovations, and they’re coming from here," Foster said. "I think that’s really important."

Nelson has announced her intention to direct some proceeds from a new .1% public safety tax to help fund an array of recovery programs, including the long-lasting buprenorphine injections at DESC and another potential treatment for addiction to methamphetamine. She said either the mayor or the council could introduce legislation in early fall to implement the new sales tax revenue.

Officials are gearing up to mark another milestone on Aug. 28 that Nelson and the current council helped fund: the grand opening of DESC's “ORCA” overdose recovery center on Third Avenue downtown.

As for Nelson’s pilot program to pay for residential treatment, Foster said she’d like to see more data before it’s expanded.

Update 8/22/2025: Seattle's Human Services Department which oversees the residential treatment funding pilot said about half of the $300,000 appropriated so far has been spent. Spokesperson Kamaria Hightower said 18 people have entered the program and five successfully completed treatment so far.

Hightower said, "Of the 18 individuals who entered the program, one is still receiving treatment at Lakeside Milam. The remaining 12 chose to leave before completing the program for a variety of reasons."