UDP passed with better accountability. Now let’s make sure people use it, and do more UDPs.
Seattle expanded its Utility Discount Program 9 to 0, with the accountability we pushed for written into the bill. Now let's make sure people use it, and do more like it.
Last week, the Seattle City Council voted 9 to 0 to expand the Utility Discount Program (UDP), the city’s discount on power, water, and sewer bills for households with lower incomes. The change makes about 31,000 more families and seniors eligible for a benefit worth as much as $1,000 a year, and it takes effect this coming January. At a moment when the cost of nearly everything has outrun people’s paychecks, putting money directly in the hands of the households feeling that squeeze is about as concrete as affordability policy gets.
If you want the full story of how the program works, and why a benefit this valuable has been reaching fewer than half the people it is meant for, we laid it out a few weeks ago in a post we called “$35 million we set aside and never sent.” Start there for the background. This piece picks up where that one left off: the city just voted to put even more money on the table, and the real question now is whether it reaches people. We are grateful to Councilmember Dan Strauss for championing the expansion, to Council President Joy Hollingsworth for co-sponsoring it and moving it through her committee, and to every councilmember who voted yes. This is the kind of practical, cost-of-living policy we want to see far more of.
We pushed for the follow-through, and it made it into the bill
Here is the part we care about most, and the part For Seattle worked on.
A discount only helps if it reaches people, so we did not just put our ideas in writing, we showed up. We wrote to Councilmember Strauss’s office with two requests on top of the expansion: set a public goal for how many eligible households actually get enrolled, and require the utilities to report their progress every year, out in the open. We sat down with his team in person to talk it through, brought examples of how other cities and states already do it, and then testified in support at both the committee hearing and the final Council vote.
And on what may be the most consequential affordability vote the Council takes all year, For Seattle was the only organized community that showed up to speak for it. Shout-outs to Peter, Becca, Bob, Michael, Ben, Lisa, and Mayuree, neighbors and For Seattle members devoted to seeing our city be more affordable and accessible. That kind of community voice is a real part of what moves work like this, and we are grateful to every one of them.
The final legislation now includes annual public reporting. Starting in 2027, the utilities have to publish how many eligible households are enrolled and what they are doing to reach more of them. That is the difference between passing a program and following through on it. Putting the number on the record is what keeps a good intention from quietly stalling, because once it is public, everyone can see whether it is moving. We will keep pushing for a real enrollment target to sit alongside that reporting, but this is a meaningful step, and the office deserves credit for adding it.
The vote was the easy part
We want to be honest about what a win like this does and does not do.
Expanding who qualifies is real progress. But today, only about 44% of the households already eligible for UDP are signed up, and the city’s own budget math for this expansion assumes only about a third of newly eligible families ever will. Put plainly: the city just made more people eligible for a discount that most eligible people are not currently getting. If nothing changes about how people find and sign up for it, we will have widened the door without helping more people walk through it.
That is the work in front of us now, turning good policy into an outcome families can actually feel. It is also exactly the kind of unglamorous, post-passage follow-through that usually has no organized constituency pushing on it, which is a big part of why For Seattle exists. The encouraging thing is that the conversation is finally shifting from “should we do this” to “how do we make it work.” The utilities are testing automatic sign-up through data they already hold, and the new reporting requirement will keep enrollment in the spotlight. This is the phase where outside help matters most.
This is where you come in
We are shifting our own focus from helping pass the policy to helping more people learn about UDP and actually get signed up. And we would love your help.
Neighbors who qualify often do not know the program exists, or they get stuck on the paperwork. That is a gap ordinary people can help close: telling a friend, sitting with a parent or an elderly neighbor while they apply, connecting us with a community group that already has trust where the need is greatest.
If you are in, reach out and tell us you want to help, and we will get you plugged into the enrollment push. It does not take policy expertise. It takes people willing to make sure help the city already funded gets to the families it was meant for.
UDP is the first one, not the only one
Here is the bigger picture, and the reason we are not treating this as one and done.
UDP is one program where Seattle set aside real money to lower the cost of living and then struggled to get it to people. It is not the only one. Across the city and state, there is a whole set of benefits, already funded and already sitting there, that never reach most of the people they are meant for, for the same reason: the help is hard to find or hard to claim. We spent the last month mapping that landscape, and the pattern is hard to unsee.
A few of the biggest:
The Working Families Tax Credit. Washington will send a low-income household up to $1,330 a year, on top of the federal tax credit, and it is open to immigrant families who file with an ITIN. In its first year, only about 45% of the roughly 350,000 eligible households statewide claimed it. It is likely the single largest check a struggling family here is leaving on the table.
Child care assistance. Seattle’s program saves a participating family around $10,000 a year, and unlike almost everything else, it has no waitlist. The main thing standing between families and that help is knowing it exists.
The senior property tax exemption. A low-income older homeowner can cut their property tax bill substantially, in some cases by close to half, yet only about one in five eligible King County seniors is signed up.
Fresh Bucks, the city’s healthy-food benefit, which just raised its monthly amount and cleared thousands of families off its waitlist. Proof the city can move one of these in the right direction when it decides to.
Discounted transit through ORCA LIFT, which runs into the same sign-up wall as UDP: you have to apply, with proof of income, so most eligible riders never do.
Low-cost home internet. After a federal internet subsidy ended in 2024, the city pulled together low-cost plans, some around $10 a month, that can save a household roughly $420 a year. The catch is the familiar one: you have to know they exist and apply to each provider yourself.
The thread through all of it is not money. The money is appropriated. The thread is delivery. And the fix is not a mystery. Other places let people sign up just by stating their income, or automatically enroll anyone the government has already verified as low-income through programs like Medicaid or food assistance. California’s utility discount reaches more than 90% of eligible households that way. Seattle has even built part of the machine already, a one-stop application tool called CiviForm that national judges named one of 2025’s best inventions. The unfinished work is making sure the help actually reaches people, program by program, and eventually letting a family find and claim what they are owed in one place instead of a dozen.
We know this list is not complete, and that is on purpose. If there is a program, a cost, or a fix that would make a real difference in your daily life, or a neighbor’s, we want to hear it. Tell us in the comments below, or send it our way. The whole point is to focus on what actually moves the needle for people trying to make ends meet, and you know where the pinch is better than any spreadsheet does.
That is the portfolio we are building toward: not a single campaign, but a sustained effort to get more money back into the pockets of the people working hardest to make ends meet in an expensive city. UDP is where we started because it was concrete, funded, and winnable. It is the proof of concept, not the whole project.
The kind of city we’re working toward
Two of the things For Seattle exists to help this city deliver are affordability, so people can cover the basics, and follow-through, so the city actually delivers on what it already promised. UDP sits right where those two meet. On Monday, the city promised more. Now the job is making sure the promise reaches the doorstep, and then finding the next UDP to do it all again.
There is more than one way to be part of it. Pick whichever fits you, even just one:
Help us shape what comes next. Tell us which cost of living, or which unclaimed benefit, we should take on after UDP.
Subscribe below and follow along. We will share what is working, what is not, and where we need help.
Help we’ve already funded should reach the people it was meant for. Let’s go make sure it does.