by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Last Friday, a state appeals court issued a ruling staying any enforcement of a King County Superior Court decision finding Seattle’s rules on “obstruction” encampment removals unconstitutional. The City defines an “obstruction” as any encampment, tent, person, or property that is located in virtually any public space, including remote areas of public parks. The stay comes in response to an appeal filed by City Attorney Ann Davison’s office on Friday, and allows the City to continue its practice of no-notice sweeps, which have ramped up dramatically under the Harrell administration. Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case have until Aug. 11 to respond to the City’s appeal.
Continue reading City Can Continue ‘Obstruction’ Sweeps for Now; Ex-KCRHA Director Turns In First Work on City Contractby Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
King County Executive Dow Constantine announced on Friday that in response to “community feedback,” the County will abandon plans to provide new shelter beds and a sobering center on vacant land next to the existing 270-bed Salvation Army shelter in SoDo. In a statement, Constantine said, “It is clear that building trust and resolving underlying concerns about the conditions in the community today will take considerable time before we can move forward with any added service capacity.”
Continue reading Under Pressure, County Executive Constantine Cancels Plans to Expand SoDo Shelterby Tanya Woo
Residents and business owners of the Chinatown-International District (CID) are just now hearing about a $66.5 million, 6.8-acre project to expand and enhance a shelter that will house over 500 people with support for 50 RVs and a 50-home tiny house village. It was approved by the King County Council in partnership with Seattle and the King County Regional Homeless Authority. For a complex that opens this fall, these decisions were made without any meaningful community outreach or engagement. This follows a long history of policies that have been forced on the CID with no engagement or outreach. This is systemic racism.
Continue reading OPINION | King County’s Lack of Outreach on CID/SoDo Shelter Complex Is Systemic Racismby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Over the past two years, a broad consensus emerged that non-congregate shelter — hotel rooms, tiny houses, and other kinds of physically separated spaces — was both healthier and more humane than the typical pre-pandemic congregate shelter setup, in which dozens of people sleep inches apart on cots or on the ground. When people are offered a choice between semi-congregate shelter and more private spaces, they’re far more likely to “accept” a hotel room or tiny house, and once there, they’re more likely to find housing than they would in traditional congregate shelters.
In January, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) issued a request for proposals for almost $5 million to fund new non-congregate shelter spaces. (An RFP is a preliminary step in the process of selecting and funding nonprofit service providers.) The Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), which operates a dozen tiny house villages in and around Seattle, applied, as did Seattle’s JustCARE program, which offers hotel-based shelter and case management to people with complex behavioral health challenges and criminal justice involvement.
Continue reading Pallet, a For-Profit Provider of Utilitarian Shelters, Could Be a Contender for County Fundingcurated by Emerald Staff
by Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared in PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
As temperatures dipped below freezing Tuesday, Feb. 22, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCHRA) announced the opening of a single, nighttime-only shelter for up to 96 single adults at City Hall. The shelter will open at 7 p.m. and close at 6:30 a.m. Two additional shelters are opening for young adults and unaccompanied youth — one in Rainier Beach and one at the Orion Center near downtown. (Details and updates, including information about shelters outside Seattle, are available on the KCRHA website.)
Continue reading Cold Weather Shelter Plan Illustrates Challenges With Encampment Elimination Proposalsby Erica C. Barnett
(This article previously appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted with permission.)
Last week, the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) announced that it will forego next year’s annual count of King County’s unsheltered homeless population, leaving the region without one major source of information about how many people are living unsheltered, and in what circumstances, for two consecutive years after last year’s count was scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The count, which is generally regarded as an undercount, is often used to measure whether homelessness is increasing or decreasing over time and how; in 2020, for example, the count suggested a large increase in the number of people living in their vehicles.
Continue reading King County Will Forego Annual Count of Homeless Populationby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted with permission.)
Mayor Jenny Durkan released the final budget of her term yesterday, Sept. 27, outlining the proposal at a very high level in a six-minute speech from North Seattle College. In the coming weeks, the proposal will be debated, analyzed, and rewritten by the Seattle City Council (the addition of 35 net new police officers is an obvious target for their red pens), and PubliCola will be covering every aspect of those upcoming discussions. For now, though, here are a few initial notes on the plan, which reflects better-than-expected revenues and incorporates a lot of ongoing federal funding for COVID-19 relief.
Continue reading Durkan Budget Would Gut JumpStart Spending Plan, Increase Funding for Encampment Responseby Erica C. Barnett
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Advocates and city councilmembers are putting pressure on Mayor Jenny Durkan and the City’s Human Services Department (HSD) to move forward with three new tiny house villages — groups of small shed-like shelters for people experiencing homelessness — this year, before the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) takes over the City’s homelessness-related contracts in 2022.
The short-term (and at this point, probably quixotic) goal is to convince Durkan and HSD’s short-staffed homelessness division to commit to moving forward with all three villages before the City’s homelessness contracts move to the KCRHA at the end of the year. The long-term goal, which may be equally quixotic, is to demonstrate strong community support for tiny house villages in the face of strong opposition at the new authority, whose leader, Marc Dones, has no allegiance to what has become conventional wisdom at the City.
Earlier this year, the Seattle City Council adopted (and the mayor signed) legislation accepting $2 million in state COVID-19 relief funding to stand up three new tiny house villages and setting aside an additional $400,000 to operate the villages once they open — the Seattle Rescue Plan. Since then, HSD has declined to issue a request for proposals to build the villages, arguing that the council doesn’t have a long-term plan to operate the villages after this year. The longer HSD waits, the more likely it is that the job of deciding whether to stand up additional tiny house villages will fall to the regional authority.
Continue reading With Future of Tiny Houses Up in the Air, Advocates Push for Action This Year
