The King County Council voted Tuesday to send a $1.25 billion behavioral health levy to create a new “regional network” of emergency mental health care centers to voters in an April special election ballot.
CHS reported here in September on King County Executive Dow Constantine’s proposal for an April ballot measure that would go into effect in 2024 if approved and would cost the median-value homeowner around an estimated $121 a year over a nine year period. The levy could raise as much as $1.25 billion through 2032 to fund construction of the five crisis care centers and increase services in the county.
County Department of Community and Human Services director Leo Flor told the council last month that “Families and People in Crisis” need “places to go for help instead of waiting for a crisis to occur or get worse” while law enforcement and first responders “need better, more equitable, and faster options than jail and emergency rooms.” Flor says Mobile Crisis Teams are also need “access to places where people in crisis can get immediate help when outreach is not enough.”
With council approval, the proposal will now appear on the April 25 special election ballot.
Constantine said following Tuesday’s vote that he looks forward to voters “having their say” in April.
“The behavioral health crisis is intersectional – it shows up in our streets, it shows up in our jails, and it shows up in our communities,” Constantine said in a statement. “By improving and investing in our behavioral health crisis system we can also create solutions for other important arenas, from public safety to public health to homelessness. The Crisis Care Centers levy is how we help people get from crisis to recovery, and how we ensure they have the necessary support to be able to start reclaiming their lives.”
The April vote will be the second important ballot of the year for Seattle voters. The special February election to decide on I-135, an initiative that would create a new public developer “to build, acquire, own, and manage social housing” in Seattle, is currently underway. Ballots in that vote must be turned in or postmarked by 8 PM on Tuesday, February 14th.
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OK – if this will end up with not seeing a SINGLE homeless person on the sidewalks, parks; and end the rampant harassment homeless do to housed people every single day- sign me up.
I’d pay $5k more every year happily if it ends all the rampant issues the city has with homeless
This measure only proposes to create five crisis centers in King County, so maybe one is Seattle. On that scale it will not take much of a bite out of the homelessness you refer to in Seattle.
I have no doubt you believe that every unhoused person has mental health issues as I assume do most people that are not you. Maybe you should consider not lumping people together like that. There’s a word for that kind of thinking.
Pragmatism? Solution-oriented?
Thinking about words and spending our energy on words like “unhoused” is not helping. There are increasing number of unhoused people; and those who need serious mental and addiction support. Best time for action was 10 years ago, next best time is now. Change needs to be driven, not focus on defining the problem.
There is no single solution that will solve the entire crisis. It will take multiple solutions in tandem.
But you knew that, right?
Why does everything have to start with $1 billion. Put together a crisis center and show us that it works and then we can duplicate them. I have no faith in the government to do some thing on time and on budget and find people that can staff such places. There’s a crisis of low staffing in healthcare workers.
Good point about staffing. Architecture alone will be meaningless.
This proposal includes funding for the recruitment and retention of mental health care professionals, so they seem to have considered that issue too 👍
We have a mental health crisis in that services have gone underfunded and neglected for too long, and people are dying as a result. We don’t have time to tinker around and experiment. We should have done that years ago. We need a bold solution.This is a positive step.
Do proponents of this massively pricedlevy actually think “people in crisis” will be voluntarily walking into these facilities?
Include in your myopic understanding of “crisis” the dictionary definition then yes. This is for more than just people on a machete rampage.
I hope you find what you need in life.
Good point. Most of them will not. It would be the same problem we face with “offering” homeless people shelter, which is often refused because acceptance is voluntary.
“acceptance” is applying for an approximately one in three chance of getting a shelter spot if you get referred, because there isn’t enough shelter space. If you do get shelter, then you have to decide whether to give up the few belongings you do have in order to take shelter, because you’re not getting space for your stuff. Have an emotional support dog, guess what, most shelters don’t allow pets. Work odd hours, most are only overnight and don’t let you in after a certain time… Sheltering has consistently been shown, with evidence-based research, to be an incredibly ineffective solution. Long-term stable housing has been shown to have to biggest success with getting people out of homelessness and dealing with the issues that led to it and the issues developed because of it.
My voting pen will break the sound barrier on its journey to ink “No”.
Unless this has an aggressive drug detox aspect to it, I would say it’s a non starter. A lot of the mental illness seen on the streets is drug induced psychosis from the new cheap street drugs like P2P supermeth, fentanyl, and now ‘tranq.’ The withdrawal from these drugs is supposed to be horrendous, life threatening even, much worse than heroin, and so unless there is good inpatient services for that there’s little incentive for users to stop. It’s why one sees so many addicts bent over at a 90 degree angle these days. Unfortunately, to implement this type of care will be extremely expensive. Just putting an addict in a tiny home, or getting them to talk therapy is not the answer.
Nice to meet you Charles. You obviously know what you’re talking about. Drug treatment is the number one thing we need. Many of the people that are deemed mentally ill are suffering from the effects of addiction. The old adage that addicts need to hit rock bottom before they will stop is very old school and not applicable to today’s drugs.
From the original article on the proposed levy:
“In addition to the new centers, the plan would include increased funding for the “recruitment and retention of the community behavioral health workforce,” as well boosting the number of “residential treatment beds” available in the county.”
It seems like a step in the right direction. This problem stretches beyond King County and will require federal, state, and local answers, along with a “yes and” philosophy.