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.
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.