Tag Archives: addiction

Capitol Hill’s Hudson House apartments to become CoLEAD supportive housing on Summit Ave

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(Image: The Easton Group)

Capitol Hill’s Hudson House apartments, long operating as single-room occupancy rentals, is entering a new chapter under a supportive services partnership with Purpose. Dignity. Action., according to filings with the city.

Located at 1712 Summit Ave, the 1906-era 61-unit building has been serving as studio micro-apartments since its $4.5 million acquisition by the The Easton Group from Pioneer Human Services in 2024. Rents hovered around $799 a month, plus utilities.

Under its new plan, the building is being utilized as supportive shelter. On-site staff provide will provide intensive harm-reduction case management, room support, and exit coordination to guide residents off the streets and into housing, according to a recent job listing.

PDA, formerly known as the Public Defender Association, is a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to creating non-punitive, community-based alternatives to traditional criminal legal responses. Rather than developing or owning real estate, PDA focuses on diversion services, systems reform, and care coordination.

Ripples of the city’s increased spending on supportive housing and transition from eras of halfway houses and transitional apartments continue to be felt on Capitol Hill. Continue reading →

Seattle City Council considers bill that would prioritize ‘warm handoff’ diversion in drug use enforcement

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The Seattle City Council is slated to handle two pieces of legislation Tuesday related to the changing nature of the role of the Seattle Police Department in the city.

  • Drug ordinance diversion: In Tuesday morning’s public safety committee session, council members will consider a proposed ordinance that would establish in-field, pre-booking diversion via a direct “warm handoff” to recovery service providers as the city’s preferred approach for enforcing public drug use and possession crimes. The change would follow updates to state law in 2023 reclassifying drug possession and public use as gross misdemeanors and Seattle’s enforcement changes. CHS reported previously on the increase in arrests under the changes but a drop in diversion to addiction and recovery programs. The bill from committee chair Bob Kettle under consideration Tuesday would establish in-field, pre-booking diversion using the City’s LEAD framework as the preferred enforcement method, require SPD operational policies to reflect that preference, and require the department to maintain referral, and outcome data. Continue reading →

Shoplifting, guns, drugs, and ribs: 13 arrested, two trespassed in latest Capitol Hill ‘retail theft operations’

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(Image: CHS)

The East Precinct reports it has made more arrests, drug and firearm seizures, and trespasses in its “retail theft operation” activities at Capitol Hill’s busiest grocery stores.

The Seattle Police Department and its General Investigations Unit say recent operations at the Harvard Market QFC last week and the 15th and John Safeway in February targeted rampant shoplifting and organized retail theft, resulting in multiple arrests and a small haul of recovered weapons and narcotics.

The most dramatic moment of the recent operations occurred in February at Safeway, where plainclothes officers reported they were monitoring a couple at the self-checkout. While the pair paid for a few items, they allegedly bagged nearly $90 in unpaid merchandise. When the arrest team moved in, they discovered the male suspect was wanted on a felony warrant out of Snohomish County for narcotics distribution. Police say a search of his cross-body bag uncovered 4.6 grams of fentanyl and a stolen Polymer80 Glock handgun, which had been previously reported stolen in a separate Seattle incident. Continue reading →

Seattle’s CARE chief: City’s police alternative has grown — but SPD contract is limiting response

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CARE responders are dispatched around four times a day in the East Precinct (Source: seattle.gov)

Barden

The chief of Seattle’s police alternative for mental health and addiction crisis response told the City Council this week the same thing she has been saying in the CHS comments — Seattle City Hall has funded the growth of the new Community Assisted Response & Engagement Department but CARE crisis responders remain hamstrung and sidelined by the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild union.

“Under the constraints of the current SPOG contract, CARE responders are permitted to respond to persons in public space with no evidence of substance use, nor encampment,” Chief Amy Barden said in a briefing of the council’s public safety committee this week. “We had interpreted the contract to mean that so long as a person is not inside a place where they could be trespassed, CARE responders could help them. However, last week, we were advised that we were not permitted to be dispatched to any private property where someone could be trespassed, including outdoor parking lots. What this means — and this actually happened last night — is that somebody could be in a QFC parking lot, clearly struggling mentally or emotionally and when that QFC employee calls 911 and asks if we can send someone to provide resources, our only option is to send an officer.”

Barden says the limits restrict even the use of “dual dispatch” in which a crisis responder is sent along with an armed officer.

The department is costing the city around $6.5 million a year.

So far in 2026 according to the department’s reports, CARE responders have been dispatched 231 times around the East Precinct — around four times a day. Continue reading →

Report: Seattle drug use arrests soared after change in law but diversion counts ‘likely inaccurate’

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In 2023 when the Seattle City Council passed a new law opening the way for a Seattle Police crackdown on public drug use on the city’s streets while doing more to emphasize diversion and treatment, it also legislated requirements to measure the impact of the new approach.

Tuesday, the council’s public safety committee is hearing how difficult measuring diversion can be.

In the planned presentation (PDF) from the Seattle Office of the Inspector General, officials say delays and missing information hinders the analysis and one of the main goals of the measurement in assessing how many drug users are diverted to treatment is currently impossible in Seattle. Continue reading →

After complaints about homelessness and drugs, city planning changes at Capitol Hill parks including ‘potential permanent fencing’

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Fenced-off a decade later, Seven Hills Park debuted in 2015 (Image: Mithun)

Banners mocking the Seven Hills closure briefly went up behind the fences in October

The city will begin a public planning process next week to reshape two Capitol Hill parks where officials say concerns over homeless encampments, drug use, and “bouts of negative park activity” call for new approaches to Seattle public space.

Seattle Parks and Recreation is holding meetings next week to discuss priorities and identify “community activation partners and new potential users” for three District 3 parks where complaints over camping and crime have sparked the planned overhauls. One of the parks — Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park — has been fenced-off and closed since September over the issues. The other — Broadway Hill Park — remains open but has been a center of complaints and Seattle Police Department activity, officials say.

“This community-centered initiative invites residents, businesses, and organizations on Capitol Hill to come together to enhance the safety, vitality, and inclusivity of these neighborhood parks,” the parks department announced about Wednesday’s planned session. “This activation strategy seeks to address ongoing challenges such as safety concerns, accessibility barriers, and park misuse by fostering open dialogue and transparent partnerships.”

Thursday night, parks officials will hold a separate meeting to discuss similar issues at the Central District’s Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park.

CHS reported in September on the surprise closure of Seven Hills after District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth reportedly met with neighbors and the city made an attempt to sweep the park of campers in August.

The city said the shutdown was needed “in order for Seattle Parks and Recreation to assess possible amenity changes and/or upgrades.” Continue reading →

Seattle Council to consider $9M a year ‘Pathways to Recovery’ program as Trump issues order on homelessness and ‘disorder on America’s streets’

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A recent We Heart Seattle cleanup (Image: We Heart Seattle)

With a week until the August 5th Primary Election, Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson says her $9 million a year “bold plan to break the cycle of addiction and homelessness” with a new sales tax increase to fund addiction treatment services will be decided on Tuesday.

CHS reported here on the proposal to direct 25% of a new tenth of a cent sales tax authorized by the state legislature for cities to pay for public safety services to longtime service providers like Evergreen Treatment Services, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and newcomers like The More We Love and We Heart Seattle. Continue reading →

Council’s Nelson wants some of Seattle’s potential public safety sales tax bump to go to drug counseling

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Nelson held a news conference to announce the potential $8.75 million initiative

Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson wants to use a newly authorized sales tax bump to pay for drug counseling.

Nelson says her new “progressive public safety initiative” would direct 25% of a new tenth of a cent sales tax authorized by the state legislature for cities to pay for public safety services to “shore up ‘pathways to recovery’ through investment in critical addiction treatment services.”

If implemented, the public safety sales tax increase would generate over $35 million annually, Nelson’s office says, with a quarter of that going to support counseling and treatment services. Continue reading →

‘In crisis’ — County makes case for Crisis Care Center on Broadway amid biz owner pushback

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Around 50 people attended last week’s meeting (Image: CHS)

By Matt Dowell

King County officials reaffirmed the value of a planned mental health Crisis Care Center on Broadway at a community meeting last week but members of the public pushed back — “Why here?”

Officials tell CHS the meeting was the next step in a process they say is both just beginning — and well under way. There is an offer for the property on the table. More community meetings are being planned.

Meanwhile, a letter sent to District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth protesting the consideration of the Broadway at Union property for the new center has made waves in the neighborhood business community.

Meeting attendees inside Seattle U’s Wyckoff Auditorium and organized by the county and the GSBA chamber of commerce Thursday pushed for keeping the crisis center out of Capitol Hill and shifting the focus to a new location. Ice cream entrepreneur Molly Moon Neitzel took the mic.

“I’m Molly Moon, I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for 22 years. I have gone from a partying kid on one side of the Hill to a mom on the other side of the Hill. I’ve [operated] a thriving business in the Pike/Pine corridor for 16 years. I located that business there in a thriving time for the Hill. Our neighborhood is in crisis.”

“I think probably everyone in this room supports the mission of the Crisis Care Centers and believes that they need to exist,” Neitzel said. “The need for first responders to have the ability to take these folks in need to a Crisis Care Center — we can all give a standing ovation to that mission.”

“Do they need to come to a neighborhood in absolute dire crisis for the last five, six, seven years? No they do not.”

“I would encourage you to look at a site that is in a neighborhood that doesn’t have so much crisis going on right now.”

CHS broke the news last week on the county’s plans to open a facility in the former Polyclinic building at Broadway and Union as part of the $1.25 billion Crisis Care Centers measure approved by voters in April 2023. The nine-year levy calls for a network of five facilities that provide walk-in behavioral health care. The first opened in Kirkland in March. Continue reading →

King County planning Crisis Care Center at Broadway and Union — UPDATE

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Capitol Hill property owners, businesses, and residents are preparing to push back on a planned King County mental health crisis center on Broadway.

Plans for a $1.25 billion network of five crisis care centers across the county include the former Polyclinic building at Broadway and Union, CHS has learned.

County officials are planning to hold a hastily organized meeting with community members Thursday.

Opposition to the Broadway center is already in place as rumors of the planned location have grown in recent months.

The massive 114,000-square-foot Polyclinic building now part of the Optum rebrand has been on the market for lease. A “rebuild letter,” also known as a “Zoning Verification Letter” and issued to confirm whether a property can be rebuilt to its original condition and use, was filed for the property in February. The letters are typically part of the process around a commercial property’s sale or refinancing. Continue reading →