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Mayor unveils ’90 day’ plan to increase bridge housing, shelter in Seattle

Seattle and King County’s homeless population is growing and the number of people living here completely unsheltered appears to be increasing even faster. This week, Mayor Jenny Durkan unveiled a three-month plan to try to quickly boost the amount of “bridge housing” and shelter in the city.

If approved by the City Council, Durkan’s proposal would increase the number of bridge housing and shelter units in the next 90 days by 25% and serve an additional 522 people every night, according to the mayor’s office.

The proposal includes five elements:

  1. Expanding enhanced shelter capacity to serve an additional 180 people;
  2. Creating bridge housing at Haddon Hall serve 100 people through a master lease;
  3. Expanding City Hall’s basic shelter serving 120 people each night;
  4. Supporting of Whittier Heights Women’s Village, a tiny home village serving 19 chronically homeless women; and
  5. Opening 54 tiny homes in South Lake Union and 30 new tiny homes at 18th and Yesler following community engagement and site approval. These tiny homes would serve approximately 103 people.

CHS reported here on the plan for the new tiny village in the Central District.

The estimated cost of the five-element plan is $8.75 million with $6.3 million coming from the sale of city property.

The mayor’s office says Seattle currently has space for around 2,000 people every night at its shelters and sanctioned encampments like tiny house villages.

Seattle will spend around $80 million in 2018 on the homelessness crisis with more than $30 million going to the shelter system.

Thursday, results of the annual “point in time” count of people living homeless and unsheltered in King County were released. The latest Count Us In report shows a smaller than expected 4% countywide increase from 2017 but the count of homeless in Seattle jumped 17%. Of those considered homeless in the report, researchers provided separate measures for those living in various states of homelessness including transitional housing or living unsheltered. According to the report, the unsheltered population increased by 15% across the county.

 

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RWK
RWK
5 years ago

This proposal really is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the overall homeless problem, but at least it’s a start at getting people out of illegal tent camps and into more stable, long-term housing.