Yang prioritizes housing, community, and transit in bid for council seat
In 2001, Lin Yang, now 41, was an Eastlake High School senior and a student liaison to the Sammamish City Council. For his senior project, he started the Sammamish Youth Board to bring together local youth, adults, and government. That commission still operates today. Now, as Yang raises his family in his hometown, he is running for a seat on the same council he helped the community connect with over 20 years ago.
Yang is running for Sammamish City Council Position No. 5 in the November general election.
“The reason I’m running for the City Council is because I see so many critical gaps that our community continues to have. And I want to be in a position where I can work with the community to fill those gaps,” said Yang in an interview with the Sammamish Independent.
One of the gaps Yang identified was in 2017, when the Sammamish Review went out of print. The Review had been a trusted source for local news. Then, in 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Yang founded the Sammamish Independent to serve the community as a local news source.
Once he started his campaign, Yang resigned from the newspaper to avoid a conflict of interest.
Along with his background in journalism and education, Yang has a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
One of Yang’s top priorities is affordable housing.
“When I first came to Sammamish, I came with my single mother who could afford a house here. That would not be true today. We live in a community where the median home price is $1.7 million,” Yang said.
If elected, Yang would work toward increasing the city’s affordable housing requirement for new development from 10% to at least 20%. He would like to see more types of housing–townhomes, duplexes, and apartments–built instead of single-family units.
“I believe we need to offer more diverse housing choices, so that our neighbors can stay in Sammamish, our teachers can afford to live close to the schools they teach, and our firefighters, police, and service workers can live in the community that they protect and serve,” Yang said.
Yang specifically wants to densify Sammamish through multi-family housing. He believes that density promotes public transit and helps relieve traffic. With multi-family housing, more land would be preserved for parks and open space, complementing the City’s Comprehensive Plan.
In addition, Yang would like to create a Sammamish community center where residents can gather. He believes the soon-to-be-vacated Central Washington University building would be the best location. He suggests creating a non-profit group run by residents that would work with the City to run the center.
“That building is perfect for a future Sammamish community center. That community center should have a teen center, a senior center, a small business hub, and co-working space for small businesses,” Yang said.
Yang would also prioritize improving the Sammamish transit system. He notes that unlike nearby cities, Sammamish is car-reliant and “still feels very disconnected.”
“I want a frequent shuttle service that picks people up every 20 minutes in Sammamish, and after it hits the last stop in Sammamish, it goes straight to the light rail without stopping. I think that the light rail is an incredible asset. It’s just too bad that it’s three miles away from Sammamish,” he said.
Yang proposes to address economic issues by investing in more retail, services, and a town center to diversify revenues in Sammamish.
As a supporter of the town center development, Yang believes that more retail space will benefit the community in two ways: by providing a source of revenue, alleviating some of the property tax burden, and by serving residents with more local activities.
Yang suggests a system of performance-based budgeting to measure the city’s progress.
“I think performance budgeting and having performance metrics is really, really critical because it helps you decide what programs are effective and what programs are not,” Yang said.
As Sammamish continues to expand and faces challenges in its growth, Yang feels a sense of responsibility.
“Being the first person who grew up in Sammamish to run for City Council, I felt that in this moment it’s really time for my generation to step up to shape the future of this community,” Yang said.
Lin Yang is running for Sammamish City Council Position No. 5.
Sammamish Independent is committed to fair, balanced, and independent journalism. As part of our coverage of local political races, we disclose that Lin Yang, a candidate for city council position five, is a founder and former board chair of this publication. Mr. Yang stepped down from the board on 3/18/2025.
To uphold journalistic integrity, our reporting on this race will follow strict editorial standards. Editorial decisions will be reviewed to ensure fairness and impartiality. Opinions expressed in editorials, op-eds, or letters to the editor reflect the views of their respective authors and not the newspaper as an institution.
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