February Government News

Concern was raised this month by the City Auditor, as the auditor's office found a disconnect to the amount of recourses dedicated to homelessness and their overall impact. Read more below:

Review of Navigation Team 2018 Quarter 2 Report

• Seattle City Auditor criticizes homelessness response in Navigation Team report

  • The auditor’s office criticized the unwieldy amount of city agencies that are dedicated to the issue, and the lack of a central communication between all of that staff.

  • It also said with the lack of such a system and oversight, it’s clear why they saw hygienic issues crop up, that other cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles were doing a better job of handling.

• Seattle’s outreach to homeless tent camps needs improvement, city audit says

  • To improve the city’s ability to prevent people who are new to the streets from staying there for long periods, Seattle should centralize and improve communication among the various groups providing outreach, according to the report released Thursday.

  • Seattle could reduce the number of people living in unsanctioned camps if the city gave the Navigation Team authority to divert people from shelters by spending money for things like one-time rental assistance and travel, which would allow homeless people to return to family elsewhere. Seattle already has adopted that strategy, but it has implemented it more slowly than Pierce County, where it has proved to be cost-effective.

Seattle mayor, HSD say investments in enhanced homeless shelters paying off

• The city increased its spending on homeless prevention and response from just over $71 million in 2017 to nearly $87 million in 2018. Half of the spending in 2018 was for emergency response, which includes things like outreach, Seattle’s Navigation Team, and shelter. In 2018, much of emergency spending went to nearly doubling the number of beds in enhanced shelters, which operate 24/7, have showers and storage, and help people connect with services and housing.

  • Enhanced Shelters

“We’re seeing that these enhanced shelters are five times as effective at connecting clients to housing as basic shelter,” Johnson said.

• Tiny Homes

Three new villages came online in Seattle in 2018 that he says really are similar to enhanced shelters, with case managers. About 650 people lived in them in 2018. There was a 10 percent increase in those people who moved on to housing — 33 percent compared to 23 percent in 2017.

• Diversion

With diversion, case managers try to connect homeless people back with their own friends or family, work out differences with landlords, or find other creative solutions. It can also provide them one-time money to help them get or stay in permanent housing. The city says diversion is responsible for the five percent increase in moving people out of homelessness than the year before, or 72 percent in 2018 compared to 67 percent in 2017.

February Services News

The unprecedented levels of snow this month provided Seattle shelters with the opportunity to connect a larger portion of its homeless patrons to long-term services. Services also highlighted in this month's news cycle were Mercy Watch, a volunteer medical service for the homeless, as well as a recourse fair hosted by Seattle Center's Exhibition Hall. Read more below:

Seattle homeless brought in from snowstorm connected with long-term services

• After snow snarled Seattle last week, advocates for the homeless said it could be a major opportunity to connect with people in need.

• The city opened about 550 additional shelter beds during the winter storm. Meg Olberding, of the Human Services Department, said many of the people don’t know what services might be available for their individual situation.

Doctors, nurses in Everett use street medicine to stop spread of infectious disease

• Thanks to a grant that provides them medical malpractice insurance, Mercy Watch has a team of volunteer doctors and nurses who treat people on the spot.

• About a third of the people they encounter have some kind of infectious disease they can treat and nearly every patient is a candidate for prevention.

Seattle homeless resource fair gives opportunity for housing, jobs

• The Seattle Center’s Exhibition Hall offered one-stop shopping for Seattle’s homeless Friday when the City opened the doors during a resource fair.

• From 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. more than 250 people stopped by the event in search of services, said Will Lemke, a spokesman for the City of Seattle’s homeless response effort.

Washington lawmakers consider bill that would provide the homeless with a free ID card

• People without identification have a harder time renting an apartment, opening or accessing a bank account, using medical insurance, qualifying for federal benefits, like food stamps, or even staying in some homeless shelters. And, of course, getting a job is nearly impossible.

• A measure in the state Legislature, Senate Bill 5664, is aimed at eliminating barriers to identification for homeless people. If passed, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Licensing (DOL) would be required to create a program to provide homeless individuals with a free ID card, also known as an identicard.

February Housing News

Seattle continues to battle with housing affordability and availability this month. Citizens voted earlier this month on Seattle's up zoning measure, which could "provide at least 6,000 new rent and income-restricted homes for low-income residents," while mayor Durkan signed an executive order which looked to increase housing affordability and address residential displacement. Read more below:

Seattle has a plan to keep low-income resident in their neighborhoods

• Longtime residents, fear Seattle’s ongoing boom, coupled with the Mandatory Housing Affordability program’s upzones, will push out Chinatown-International District’s diverse Asian community.

• Surrounded by community advocates at Hirabayashi Place in Chinatown-International District on Wednesday, Mayor Durkan signed an executive order putting in motion a broad package of ideas, from funding the Equitable Development Initiative to collecting data on residential and commercial displacement from the city to lobbying Olympia for a larger housing trust fund. Much of the order extends or tweaks existing programs and ideas.

  • But at its heart is something new: the Community Preference Policy, which gives residents of certain low-income neighborhoods a greater chance to live in city-funded affordable housing that’s built in their community.

• The Community Preference Policy would apply to city-funded affordable housing developments being built in neighborhoods with residents at a high risk of displacement, which typically means lower-income communities and communities of color. The policy would set aside a portion of the units in the new development for residents living in the neighborhood in which it is being built, and possibly even for former residents of the neighborhood already displaced by growth.

Heated debate at final hearing for Seattle's up zoning measure

• The up zoning measure would enact requirements for building affordable housing and taller residence buildings in select neighborhoods throughout Seattle. The goal: To provide at least 6,000 new rent and income-restricted homes for low-income residents.

• Additionally, it would levy substantial fines on developers who don’t dedicate between 5 and 11 percent of projects to low-income housing. Concerns have been expressed, though, that developers would simply choose to absorb the fines and not fulfill the affordable housing requirement.

Oregon set to become first state with mandatory rent controls

• Oregon is poised to become the first state to impose mandatory rent controls, with a measure establishing tenant protections moving swiftly through the Legislature.

• Oregon's measure prohibits landlords from terminating month-to-month leases without cause after 12 months of occupancy and limits rent hikes to once per year. Those increases are limited to 7 percent above the annual change in the consumer price index.

• Landlords can terminate tenancies only with 90 days' written notice and payment of one month's rent, with exemptions in some cases. A landlord can refuse to renew a fixed-term lease if the tenant receives three lease violation warnings within 12 months and the landlord gives 90 days' notice.

Temporary Housing

Olympia looks to close down an unsanctioned encampment east of downtown due to safety concerns. Read more below:

Olympia plans to clear downtown homeless camp

• The Olympian reports the city posted notices Wednesday at the unsanctioned camp saying it would be cleared due to "ongoing health and safety concerns."

February Research News

This month a report was circulated throughout Seattle news outlets discussing the "revolving door" between Seattle's homeless population and jail. Commissioned by several Seattle neighborhood districts, the report highlighted the heightened recidivism rate for King County's homeless. Read more below:

Report: Seattle needs reform to end revolving door between jail and homelessness

• The report, commissioned by the group and released Monday, lays bare just how much overlap exists between jails and the streets and how little is done to prevent a return to either.

• The picture it paints is one in which people repeatedly cycle between jail and homelessness, with very little done to prevent returns to either. According to the report, addiction is at the root of almost all of the offenses.

• In Seattle, the most recognized effort to reduce this intersection between homelessness and jail is the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program (LEAD), a partnership between outreach workers and police officers that offers low-level offenders alternatives at the point of arrest.

In Seattle, 1 in 5 people booked into jail are homeless

• As Seattle grapples with a homeless crisis, the number of homeless people continue to make up a disproportionate number of arrest-bookings by police. According to its own data, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in 2018 booked just over 1,000 homeless people into jail a combined 3,211 times. That means one out of every five bookings last year was of someone struggling with homelessness, despite the homeless making up about 1 percent of the city's population.

Fact check: Actually, Seattle doesn't know how many people it's getting off the streets

• Earlier this month, Mayor Jenny Durkan said during her State of the City address that in 2018, the city helped "more than 7,400 households move out of homelessness and into permanent housing." But that’s not entirely accurate, as was first reported by Erica C. Barnett.

• That 7,400 number? It actually represents two different things.

  • It includes more than 1,800 households that were already in permanent supportive housing – housing with on-site support services for people who are formerly homeless and face significant challenges – and were able to maintain that housing throughout the year.

  • And it includes more than 5,600 exits from services like shelters or housing voucher programs to permanent housing.

Who’s falling into homelessness, and how: King County hopes better data leads to better help

• The count has become increasingly sophisticated in the past three years, but it counts homelessness only on that night — just over 12,100 last year, up from around 11,600 people in 2017.

• Since 2011, when there were 11,400 episodes of homelessness in King County, the number of people flowing into homelessness has increased every year, nearly doubling by 2017, and the count of newly homeless people (those who have not accessed homeless services in the past two years) was up 67 percent.

• King County and Seattle have also seen another number on the rise, one that indicates positive change: households that left homelessness for some kind of permanent housing. That happened nearly 6,300 times in 2017, compared to 2,500 times in 2012, a 148 percent increase, even though the county is now “being more conservative about how we’re determining if someone is permanently housed,”says King County's chief of performance measurement and evaluation for homeless services, Jennifer Coldiron.

• Service providers need to look critically at the systems that lead to homelessness, like the criminal-justice or mental-health systems, rather than focus on why individual people are homeless, said Jeff Olivet, CEO of the Center for Social Innovation, which is researching the intersection of race and homelessness in roughly a dozen U.S. communities, including Tacoma and Pierce County.

Ending Homelessness: How New Orleans Reduced Their Homeless Population By 90 Percent

• In this article, Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, tells Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson the strategy to tackle the “unprecedented explosion” of homelessness in the city following Hurricane Katrina was threefold.

  • Assemble a solid outreach team that “was willing to go anywhere and do anything to rescue and rehouse a homeless person.”

  • Put all their effort behind gathering a rent assistance fund. “We went directly to Congress,” she says. “We were very fortunate to get some resources together to actually be able to provide rent assistance and house people in what apartments we could find.”

  • Their team took a “Housing First” approach, which is “simply the idea that you accept people as they are,” whether they are sober or not.

January's Government, Services, and Research News

Government 

This month, King County continued its development of spaces and facilities for its homeless population. However, public and political concern still remain concerning the overall approach and leadership in the response to combating homelessness. Read more below:

Update: Mayor Durkan’s plan to increase shelter capacity by 25 percent 

• With the opening of Harborview Hall and launch of the new HOPWA pilot, the City opened a total of 516 safer spaces in 2018, serving approximately 540 people experiencing homelessness. This increase in shelter capacity is the largest expansion of City-funded shelter resources in Seattle’s history. The following shelter resources are now available: 

  • Whittier Heights Women’s Village– 16 new tiny houses, serving 22 women experiencing homelessness (Opened May). 

  • City Hall Shelter– 80 new basic shelter beds at Seattle City Hall (Opened July). 

  • YWCA Late Night Motel Vouchers– 40 beds through motel rooms for families experiencing homelessness, which can serve between 40-60 individuals and children each night (Opened July). 

  • Salvation Army William Booth Center– 8 additional enhanced shelter beds (Expanded in July). 

  • Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets – 5 additional beds within existing young adult shelter (Expanded August). 

  • True Hope Village – 35 new tiny houses in Seattle’s Central District, serving 58 people experiencing homelessness (Opened September). 

  • YWCA’s Angeline’s Center for Women– 35 new beds within YWCA’s existing day center for women (Opened August). 

  • Navigation Center– 10 additional beds within the City’s first 24/7, enhanced shelter (Expanded in September). 

  • Haddon Hall-75 enhanced, 24/7 shelter beds operated by Catholic Community Services and Plymouth Housing (Opened October). 

  • Lake Union Village – 22 tiny houses serving 37 adults experiencing homelessness (Opened October). 

  • Bailey-Boushay House– In partnership with Virginia Mason, this shelter will serve 50 HIV positive men experiencing homelessness (Opened November). 

  • HOPWA pilot – In partnership with Bailey Boushay, serving 40 people living unsheltered and with HIV/AIDs find housing (Opened December). 

  • Harborview Hall – 100 overnights shelter spaces at Harborview Medical Center. 

Political rift over who will lead Seattle homeless response 

• Mayor Jenny Durkan’s nomination of a new Human Services Department (HSD) director has touched off a clash with Councilmember Kshama Sawant, leading to barbed statements and unrest at the agency responsible for combating Seattle’s homeless crisis. 

• If confirmed, Johnson would formally assume leadership of the city’s most high-profile agencies. With a budget of around $194 million and nearly 400 full-time employees, HSD oversees the city’s honeycomb of social services that use public dollars to provide services for the homelessness, elderly and families. 

• HSD employees have circulated a petition demanding Durkan retract Johnson’s nomination and undertake a more robust and transparent selection process. 

Is Seattle planning to tax Uber, Lyft rides to pay for transit and homeless? 

• An unidentified market research company surveyed Seattle residents about their support of potential city council legislation to tax ride share companies, to help “raise millions” for local transit, homeless services, and health benefits for rideshare drivers, according to sources familiar with the work. 

• It’s worth noting that it’s not clear what specifically a tax would be directed at, whether it’s a tax on Lyft and Uber rides specifically, the companies themselves, or some combination of both. 

Services 

A new bill was introduced that may hire homeless persons to clean up Washington cities and help them gain housing. Read more below: 

Washington program could pay homeless adults to clean up cities 

• Sen. Hans Zeiger sponsored a bill to hire people experiencing homeless to clean up trash in three cities in Washington state. 

  • A new bill moving through the state Senate would create a pilot program to hire adults experiencing homelessness and help them finding housing.  

Research 

The Seattle Times released two articles this month adding to their continuing research around homelessness. The articles cover possible practices Seattle can implement and adapt from other key U.S. cities, as well as gauges local constituent's attitudes towards King County's current strategy in combatting homelessness. Read more below: 

What can Seattle learn from cities where homelessness has dropped? 

• Project Homeless has gone to many cities looking at what their governments are trying: How San Diego is giving people safe places to live in their cars, how Vancouver, B.C., is betting on small prefabricated homes to end homelessness, and how San Francisco is cracking down on public camping. 

• New Orleans 

  • After Katrina, the state built more than 3,000 units of permanent supportive-housing projects for poor people with disabilities. Today, it’s one of the few states in the country to use Medicaid to pay for the supportive services in those facilities (which Washington is also working toward). 

• Atlanta 

  • Atlanta bounced back really well from the recession, with a job market that’s friendly to entry-level workers and cheaper rents than Seattle. 

  • Atlanta’s most innovative program may be Open Doors, an organization employing people with real-estate backgrounds to leverage their relationships in the market and persuade landlords to rent to homeless people. That program opened up thousands of apartments to homeless people, and it’s a program Seattle and King County are already replicating, as The Seattle Times wrote in December. 

• Milwaukee 

  • First, Milwaukee is one of the cheapest major cities to live in — rent has barely risen since 2015 — in America; and second, the county government — not a federal housing authority, like in King County — controls Section 8 and other federal vouchers. 

  • Milwaukee County (population of nearly 1 million people) focused on ending chronic homelessness with a plan that moved people off the streets and immediately into permanent housing, even before entering mental-health and drug treatment. 

• Virginia Beach 

  • So what Virginia Beach did was part accounting and part restructure: It took most of the money from transitional housing and put it toward “rapid rehousing” vouchers so people could go straight from the streets to an apartment. Seattle and King County have done this as well, reducing transitional housing by about a thousand beds since 2015, according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, while also dramatically increasing spending on rental vouchers (although that approach has been criticized by some nonprofits). 

In new poll on homelessness, Seattle area favors compassion but distrusts politicians 

• Most respondents, even those who supported a compassionate approach to homelessness, said throwing more money at the issue is not the answer. But hard-line strategies — such as a zero-tolerance policy on camping in public spaces — garnered far less support than longer-term strategies. 

• Economic reasons — housing prices, lost jobs, rents that were too high — were cited by 44 percent of the poll respondents. Thirty-one percent cited addiction and substance use as the main cause of homelessness, and 26 percent mentioned mental illness. 

  • A survey of homeless people in last year’s one-night count in King County found that about a quarter of homeless people cited job loss as the reason they had no place to live; about 21 percent of homeless people cited drugs and alcohol and 9 percent attributed their homelessness to mental illness. 

• About 57 percent of respondents cited a problem with strategy or government as the reason why homelessness remains so entrenched. 

• Given a list of six potential solutions that other communities have tried — from affordable housing to strictly enforcing a ban on camping in parks — 94 percent of respondents expressed support for increasing access to mental-health and drug treatment.  

• Fifty-five percent of those polled said they’d like to see a zero-tolerance policy that prevents camping in parks and public spaces — an ongoing concern in Seattle, as camps repeatedly pop up in green spaces.  

• On the whole, poll respondents agreed with her: 60 percent said addressing the crisis should involve the whole region and not just Seattle, though that’s the center of the county’s homeless population.