In August, Mayor Bruce Harrell bragged that his #OneSeattle Homelessness Motion Plan managed to lower homelessness encampments by 61 p.c over the past two years. On the identical time, the 2024 Level-in-Time Depend tallied greater than 16,000 folks experiencing homelessness in King County, the most important quantity ever reported within the survey and a 23 p.c improve over the past two years.
The ideology that fed these disparate outcomes lies naked in Harrell’s 2025-2026 finances proposal, whereby he defunds stuff that homes folks with the intention to fund stuff that briefly pushes homeless folks round city, permitting homelessness to fester out of sight. Primarily, Harrell is giving town council a selection as they rework his finances within the coming weeks—deal with homelessness as an aesthetic challenge, or deal with it as a humanitarian disaster.
BTW We Are in Disaster
In case you’ve missed it: Seattle, together with many of the United States, is in a housing disaster. To dig town out of the disaster, we’d like 112,000 new properties by 2044, in keeping with a latest report from the Seattle Workplace of Housing (OH). That complete contains greater than 41,000 personal market items for these making between 80 and 120 p.c of the world median earnings (AMI), greater than 42,000 backed items for folks making between 0 and 80 p.c AMI, after which about one other 28,000 items of everlasting supportive housing for these with high-acuity wants.
All which means Seattle must fund at the least 2,100 items of inexpensive housing yearly for the subsequent 20 years. Harrell’s finances doesn’t do this, not even when mixed with the couple hundred items the Housing Levy pays for yearly.
As a substitute, in his 2025-2026 finances proposal, the mayor defunds inexpensive housing by raiding $330 million from the JumpStart Payroll Expense tax, a tax on town’s largest companies that should reserve 62 p.c of its income to inexpensive housing. Harrell’s proposal does pump up inexpensive housing investments to a historic $342.2 million in 2025, representing a 2.5 p.c improve from 2024. However, had he honored the legally mandated JumpStart spending plan, he would have allotted an extra $204 million to inexpensive housing.
Doing a little bit back-of-napkin math right here, let’s assume a unit of inexpensive housing prices about $320,000, as estimated within the Housing Levy. In that case, Harrell’s “historic” finances funds about 1,068 items a yr. If he hadn’t raided JumpStart, then he would have $526.2 million from all streams to fund about 1,706 inexpensive items in 2025. To fund the two,100 items we have to do our half this yr, he would want to allocate about $630 million complete to inexpensive housing. If he actually believed we have been in a housing disaster, then he might attain that complete by combining the cash he budgets for housing this yr, plus the inexpensive housing funds he stole from the JumpStart tax, plus the $100 million for brand spanking new programming that he added this yr to “activate” areas and set up CCTV cameras, primarily to indicate off to World Cup vacationers in 2025. However he did not.
Staying Housed
Apart from short-changing inexpensive housing development funding, Harrell’s finances proposal additionally pokes holes in our social security web, weakening the Metropolis’s skill to guard staff from their bosses and renters from their landlords.
Serving to tenants keep of their properties, whether or not by defending their wages to allow them to afford hire or by night the enjoying discipline in the case of evictions, will help stop homelessness. On that former rating, Harrell’s finances proposal lower greater than $600,000 from the Workplace of Labor Requirements (OLS), the Metropolis’s solely mechanism to implement its 19 distinctive labor legal guidelines, together with the minimal wage ordinance, the wage theft ordinance, the Honest Probability Employment ordinance, 4 legal guidelines particularly defending lodge staff, and three legal guidelines defending gig supply drivers.
The cuts embody three full-time positions; $216,000 from basic working bills, $100,000 from outreach to marginalized small enterprise homeowners, and in 2026 Harrell plans to chop one-third of the funding devoted to serving to unfold consciousness of staff’ rights in partnership with community-based organizations. All of this limits the company’s skill to implement labor requirements. In line with the finances doc, the mayor’s proposal “maintains core companies” of OLS at a “lowered scale” with the intention to protect “vital Metropolis companies” within the face of the $250 million shortfall in 2025.
However labor leaders argue that OLS does present “vital Metropolis companies.”
MLK Labor Govt Secretary-Treasurer Katie Garrow stated the nation acknowledges Seattle as a vanguard for staff’ rights given its early adoption of the $15 minimal wage and its protections of gig supply drivers. However none of these rights matter if the Metropolis doesn’t implement them, she says.
Garrow famous that yearly employers steal a surprising $15 billion from staff in america. In line with the Financial Alternative Institute, the entire worth of property stolen via robberies, burglaries, and carjackings provides as much as lower than 4 p.c of what bosses steal from their staff every year. With out enforcement from OLS, the Metropolis would enable corporations to “proceed this crime with impunity as a result of a minimal wage employee doesn’t have the cash or time to litigate a declare towards a multi-billion greenback company,” Garrow stated.
And it is not like trimming a little bit fats from the already slim division will fill Harrell’s gap. In 2023, the Metropolis spent $8.4 million in complete on your entire division, accounting for simply 0.14 p.c of the Metropolis’s working finances. That yr alone, OLS recouped greater than $4.4 million in wages for staff who have been wronged by their bosses. When the Metropolis gave the company more cash in 2022, about $12.1 million, it raked in much more for staff–about $7.7 million. In complete, since its inception in 2014, OLS has recouped greater than $42 million for staff.
So perhaps labor legislation enforcement shouldn’t be a “vital” service in Harrell’s eyes, however for the greater than 94,000 staff with more cash of their pockets due to the OLS, enforcement might imply the distinction between making your hire on time and getting evicted, which frequently results in homelessness.
The mayor’s finances additionally limits the Metropolis’s skill to guard renters, leaving all of them the extra weak to eviction and homelessness. In his proposal, Harrell lower tenant companies funding from $2.6 million in 2024 to simply $1.8 million. And as a substitute of renewing further one-time funding of about $1 million for rental help, he solely designated about $527,000 of the $1.8 million to pay hire for struggling tenants. That leaves tenant companies at a measly $1.2 million.
Kate Rubin, the co-executive director of tenant advocacy group Be:Seattle, stated $1.2 million is “nowhere close to sufficient to help tenant schooling, organizing, counseling, and authorized companies,” all of which fall beneath the umbrella of “tenant companies.”
The Metropolis contracts with organizations similar to Be:Seattle to offer tenant companies. Be:Seattle, with simply two paid employees members, serves about 785 renters per yr, in keeping with Rubin.
“Renters usually come to us annoyed by unresolved points,” Rubin stated in an electronic mail to Council Member Tammy Morales’s employees. “We equip them with information of their rights, information them in navigating landlord-tenant relationships, and train strategic organizing expertise. This data spreads via their communities, usually reaching those that won’t in any other case have entry.”
With out funding this work, Rubin stated “disputes would escalate, landlords would exploit renters unchecked, and extra folks could be vulnerable to displacement and homelessness.”
The mayor’s proposal additionally cuts $50,000 promised in a earlier finances to ascertain a piece group to assist create an Workplace of Rental Housing Requirements. That workplace would assist creator new renter protections and implement current ones. As Garrow stated of labor requirements, legal guidelines defending renters imply little after they’re not strongly enforced.
Cease the Sweeps
As he blamed the finances deficit for each lower to applications that profit working folks, Harrell discovered methods to extend spending for sweeps, seemingly his homelessness resolution of selection.
His finances bolsters sweeps by including $880,000 to the Unified Care Crew (UCT), a cross-department workforce that conducts encampment removals. The brand new funds pays for 11 new full-time positions and allow the UCT to conduct sweeps seven days every week slightly than simply 5.
And boy does the UCT already make use of these 5 days. In line with Actual Change, the Metropolis of Seattle carried out a record-breaking 2,827 sweeps in 2023, a rise of 207 p.c from the 922 carried out in 2022. Meaning the Metropolis carried out about 11.3 sweeps per day, excluding weekends and the 12 acknowledged Metropolis holidays. If the UCT saved that tempo on their new seven-day schedule, then the Metropolis might theoretically conduct 4,000 sweeps a yr.
However extra sweeps doesn’t imply much less homelessness. At most, 11 p.c of the Metropolis’s shelter referrals really result in folks taking the provide, in keeping with a report analyzing the UCT’s efficiency between July and September of 2023. Publicola reported that individuals usually rejected the shelter referrals as a result of the UCT provided them a keep at an in a single day, congregate shelter slightly than at a spot in a tiny shelter village, or, most desirably, in precise housing.
And that’s when the UCT makes the provide in any respect. In line with Actual Change, greater than 99 p.c of all sweeps carried out by the UCT in 2023 have been thought of “obstruction” sweeps, which suggests the Metropolis doesn’t have to provide three days discover or provide shelter upon removing.
Alison Eisinger, the manager director of the Coalition on Homelessness (Seattle/King County), tells The Stranger that investing within the sweeps workforce quantities to the “least efficient and most cynical response to homelessness in our neighborhood.”
“Most individuals perceive there isn’t a magic wand,” says Eisinger. “It takes actual and sustained work to assist folks get the housing, shelter, well being care, and different helps they want.”
Eisinger says the Metropolis would see higher outcomes if Harrell or the council took the funding from sweeps and put it towards regional approaches which have extra success.
For instance, the state’s slower, extra methodical Encampment Decision Program has closed 47 encampments whereas bringing 70 p.c of their residents–or about 1,200 folks–inside. The mannequin works significantly properly in King County, which managed to shut 18 encampments and produce 90 p.c of the folks inside. In line with the Seattle Instances, the Encampment Decision Program discovered extra success as a result of it provided higher, extra everlasting shelter choices.
Whereas the Mayor didn’t renew $2 million in one-time funding from 2023 to 2024 to CoLEAD, the group that conducts the slower, more practical sweeps, CoLEAD Director Lisa Daugaard stated the State pays for the removals, and so the way forward for this system relies on who wins the gubernatorial race and who makes up the State Legislature.
From the Mayor
The Mayor’s workplace disagrees with the framing that his finances perpetuates homelessness, and it argues that to say so is to neglect “the nuance of the homelessness disaster, the $250 million basic fund deficit, and the total breadth of the mayor’s work throughout all of those points,” mayoral spokesperson Jamie Housen stated in an electronic mail to The Stranger.
Housen famous that Harrell delivered historic investments to inexpensive housing within the face of the deficit and saved 300 current shelter beds whose funding would have in any other case lapsed. In fact, the finances deficit excuse form of falls flat when you think about he additionally added $100 million in new spending all through the finances.
Housen additionally stated Harrell tried to extend housing provide exterior of the finances. He streamlined the design assessment course of, made it simpler to construct ADUs, supported a brand new redevelopment plan for inexpensive housing at Fort Lawton, and up to date the Metropolis’s maritime and industrial lands coverage to create extra alternatives to construct housing, he stated. These insurance policies add capability, however they don’t fund housing. The Fort Lawton plan will enable for as many as 500 items. The maritime and industrial land replace will enable for about 3,000 items over 20 years, in keeping with the mayor’s press launch.
He additionally talked about Harrell’s One Seattle Complete Plan, however that plan didn’t precisely impress anybody, because it solely plans for about half the housing we’d like.
As for the UCT, Housen stated the workforce receives a “fraction” of what the Metropolis invests into homelessness companies, shelter, and everlasting housing. Nonetheless, he stated UCT’s method is “making a distinction.” Seattleites see fewer tent and RV encampments, much less gun violence and fires associated to homelessness, and extra shelter referrals, he stated.
Housen additionally casted doubt on the Level-In-Time survey, which discovered a rise in homelessness beneath Harrell’s watch. He claimed the rely “lacks consistency” in its technique, which “creates difficulties in evaluating year-over-year information.”
He didn’t deal with the cuts to renter companies and labor legislation enforcement or how they might threaten housing stability for working folks.
“The mayor believes that it’s inhumane for folks to stay exterior, and our finances displays an funding technique to proceed making progress bringing folks indoors with the companies to get well, utilizing the assets we have now accessible,” says Housen. “Finally, a major finances deficit requires troublesome choices, and this proposal is now within the fingers of town council to assessment the finances, suggest modifications, and full the method.”
You’ll be able to inform town council how you’re feeling in regards to the finances at public remark Wednesday at 5 pm. Enroll opens an hour earlier than the assembly.
