On Monday the Seattle City Council unanimously approved Mayor Jenny Durkan’s legislation to increase bridge housing and shelter options to shelter over 500 more per night. The plan, introduced on May 31st, will add 333 shelter spaces, add 75 new bridge housing spaces, and add 76 tiny homes along with maintaining 163 shelter spaces that were due to go offline.
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Mayor Durkan praised the council in a statement, but noted that there is still more to do.
“City Council quickly moved to approve my plan to invest resources into expanding badly-needed bridge housing and shelter, which is currently near capacity. When people have access to shelter, they’re more likely to take advantage of services like behavioral health, hygiene services, and employment support, and then move to permanent housing. We all have to contribute to solutions to this crisis, which is why we’re opening City Hall more people each night.”
Though she voted in favor of the plan, Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueda noted at the meeting that it primarily address short-term solutions and contained no funding for permanent housing or outreach.
“We must have long term funding like that which would have been provided by the Employee Hours Tax. This does nothing to fund housing after the first year.”
Mosqueda’s criticism was echoed by Councilwomen Lorena Gonzalez and Sally Bagshaw who used the passage of the legislation to reiterate calls to increase the city’s stock of permanent affordable housing. Councilwoman Gonzalez stated,
“While this plan gets more than 500 people off the street and into safe and secure places, ultimately, we know as a City, we can’t lose sight of the long-term vision of providing more affordable housing. Only when we provide affordable housing can we truly have a lasting impact on our homelessness crisis.”
Councilwoman Bagshaw echoed the sentiment while vowing to move forward.
“We know that shelter beds and tiny houses are not the end goal, but they offer steps towards stabilization. I will continue to advocate for more permanent affordable housing, but we as a City have a moral obligation to do what we can immediately.”
While the legislation will produce some concrete results, homelessness advocates are wondering about the next steps forward. One Table, a regional initiative launched December 2017 has been stalled since announcing recommendations April 4th. The report listed a series of ambitious recommendations including building 5000 units of additional affordable housing in the next three years, but did not specify how the plan could be funded. After the disastrous Head Tax adoption and boomerang repeal, the debate remains as to whether Seattle will adopt a new tax to fund further measures, or will looking internally to better manage and deploy existing resources.
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