Tag Archives: Human Services

OPINION: Homelessness, Poverty, and the City Budget

by Jay Sygiel, Isaac Litwak, and Sawyer Hanners


Walking down the streets of Seattle, tents, tarps, and sleeping bags have become a familiar sight. The state of homelessness in our city can only be described as a human services emergency. To solve this dilemma, we must look at where it stems from. The primary cause of homelessness can be boiled down to two things: the cost of living and the income gap that plagues the city.

In recent years, 77,300 Seattleites (5,000 more than the seating capacity of Lumen Field) reside below the poverty rate. Of these people, more than 11,000 of them are homeless and half of those are unsheltered. But this statistic is not representative of the amount of people not having their needs met due to low/unstable incomes. The national poverty line is set much lower than what is considered livable in Seattle. For one person to live comfortably here, you must make around $72,092, which is over five times the national poverty line.

Over the past six years, rents in Seattle have increased 57% while the average salary has not scaled to compensate for that increase. Thus, the income gap is only getting larger, leaving the people of Seattle in the dust.

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Advocates, Service Providers, and US Census Workers Describe ‘Chaotic,’ ‘Confusing’ Process to Count the Unsheltered

by Erica C. Barnett

 (This article was originally published by PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)


Tonight, temporary census workers will fan out across King County, and communities all over the country, and attempt to count everyone who is living unsheltered by doing a “head count” of people observed sleeping in tents, vehicles, and on streets and in green belts statewide. Similar head counts, which are a way to include homeless people in the census rather than an effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness, began across the nation starting on Tuesday and will wrap up tomorrow.

Continue reading Advocates, Service Providers, and US Census Workers Describe ‘Chaotic,’ ‘Confusing’ Process to Count the Unsheltered

HSD Staffers, Community Seek Racial Equity In Human Services Department Director Appointment

by Aaron Burkhalter

City staffers from the Human Services Department, community members, and activists say that Mayor Jenny Durkan sidestepped the city’s own procedures and race-equity process in the appointment of Jason Johnson as the director of the Human Services Department (HSD).

Continue reading HSD Staffers, Community Seek Racial Equity In Human Services Department Director Appointment