On March 27, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) unveiled its 2024 budget to the city’s Housing and Human Services Committee, made up almost entirely of newly elected Seattle City Council members.
KCRHA’s presentation also included an overview of its methods for providing services to unhoused people in 2023, something both city council members sitting on the committee and community members present at the meeting raised questions about. Council members wanted to understand how the city’s funding is allocated within KCRHA, whereas community activists’ demanded answers regarding recent encampment sweeps conducted by the city.
KCRHA Interim CEO Darrell Powell and senior policy director Jeff Simms claimed 89% of homeless individuals accepted housing offers through the State Encampment Resolution Initiative, a partnership with outreach organizations and state agencies to sweep encampments located on state-owned land, including highways. Additionally, 1,480 emergency housing vouchers that KCRHA received through the American Rescue Plan were utilized.
Councilmember Cathy Moore, who serves as the head of the Housing and Human Services Committee, pressed Powell and Simms for clarification regarding KCRHA’s funds.
“My understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that the money you’re receiving for permanent supportive housing is coming from the state and the federal government?” asked Moore.
Questions about funding took center stage as the city accounts for 47% of KCRHA’s 2024 budget. However, Simms pointed out that KCRHA’s contract with the city of Seattle for its outreach and prevention programming will end in 2025. In February, the city decided to pull back how much money it was allotting to KCRHA in an effort to reevaluate how funding encampment outreach coincides with the city’s overall goals.
“Some areas of improvement [would be] that KCRHA contractors and caseworkers come out during the day, but I feel like encampments’ population change because some people will go to services [or] they have a job and come back at night where there’s no social workers or outreach workers,” Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo said during the meeting. “So, those people get missed during encampment resolution, and they don’t realize it’s happening until ... their things are gone. If there are any points of improvement, [we] would love to see outreach workers at all hours of day and all parts of the week.”
KCRHA and the city were both challenged during public comment by formerly unhoused individuals and activists from the Services Not Sweeps Coalition, a group aimed at dismantling violence against homeless people. Community members expressed their concerns about the two entities’ responses towards providing concrete solutions for those who are unhoused. Many of the public comments echoed frustrations about the lack of transparency around policy when encampment sweeps take place.
Joy R., a volunteer with the Services Not Sweeps Coalition, questioned why the Unified Care Team (UCT) — which the city assigns to sweep encampments and work with KCRHA — is allowed to impose 24-hour notices on multiple encampments. She noted that the 24-hour notices cause an influx of stress and trauma for encampment residents, citing two recent sweeps in Lake City and the U District.
“This council truly does not have the knowledge or information — granted it’s a new freshman council trying to figure it out,” Joy R. said. “That is still frustrating to me because of how immense this crisis is. They should do more of their homework; they should go out and be on the ground instead of funding sweeps. They [need to] know what is going on and talk to people that have lived experience.
“We have to commit to moving away from the immense amount of policing and surveillance that [the committee] is looking at and move those resources to what provides true public safety and that is housing.”
Joy R. asserted that these sweeps have a hand in the high mortality of homeless people. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported 421 deaths of homeless people in 2023 and 95 deaths so far in 2024.
Dee Powers, who was homeless for seven years, shared that they’d been priced out of their once-affordable Pioneer Square apartment and had to live in their car. Powers said the city shouldn’t solely focus on encampment sweeps as a main solution to homelessness but instead should prioritize long-term services.
“Not everyone they’re seeing on the streets is an automatic candidate for permanent supportive housing. We need to have a multi-faceted approach based on the needs of the individual,” Powers said. “I’m concerned that the council is going to throw most of their money toward enforcement sweeps [and] cops instead of the actual things that work — services, shelter [and] housing. We really need to make sure that our voices are heard so that council understands what the public wants may not be necessarily what [the committee] thinks the public wants right now, because sweeps aren’t going to do it.”
The Housing and Human Services Committee is set to meet with KCRHA again in April, where council members plan to continue their discussion to determine if the city will continue to contract with KCRHA for its encampment outreach work and homelessness prevention programs.
Marian Mohamed is the associate editor of Real Change. She oversees our weekly features. Contact her at [email protected].
Read more of the April 3–9, 2024 issue.