1. City council homelessness committee chair Andrew Lewis introduced legislation this week that would lift spending restrictions on $12 million the council allocated earlier this year for hotel-based shelters, in the hope that Mayor Jenny Durkan will finally agree to invest in JustCARE, a county-funded program that has been moving people from tents to hotels in the Chinatown/International District, or other hotel-based shelter programs.

The bill, which Lewis hopes to fast-track to a vote on June 14, “no longer makes seeking FEMA reimbursement a strict requirement” for the money, Lewis said Monday. As PubliCola has reported, Durkan has declined to seek federal FEMA dollars set aside for noncongregate shelters, such as hotels, arguing that this form of federal funding is a risky proposition.

Lewis told PubliCola the city could use a number of new, non-FEMA sources to pay for hotel rooms, including $40 million in unanticipated 2021 revenues, additional American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funding that’s coming next year, or the $10 million fund Seattle Rep. Nicole Macri created to provide an insurance policy for cities that open non-congregate shelters.

The Downtown Seattle Association and Seattle Metro Chamber are supporting the legislation, which Lewis has described as a way of improving the climate for workers and tourists downtown while actually helping people living unsheltered instead of sweeping them from place to place. Five council members, including socialist Kshama Sawant, are sponsors.

“For all the talk about division in Seattle, and all the acrimony and everything else, this is an issue where the Chamber of Commerce will stand shoulder to shoulder with Kshama Sawant, and I think that speaks to the good work that this consortium of providers have done in creating the JustCARE model,” Lewis said.

JustCARE provides hotel-based shelter to unsheltered people with high needs and multiple barriers to housing and provides intensive case management and services to put them on a path to housing. Durkan’s office has frequently derided the approach as too expensive, claiming a per-client cost of well over $100,000, which the organizations behind the program dispute. Whatever the actual cost, Lewis said the city needs to “come to terms with the fact that there’s no such thing as a cheap program for people who have really really chronic public health challenges. There’s no way for us to say we’re only going to assist these people if it comes at a certain price point.”

Lewis said he hopes to pass the legislation, and for the mayor to spend the money, before Seattle’s economy officially reopens on June 30, when the statewide eviction ban is also scheduled to expire.

A spokeswoman for Durkan said the mayor’s office “won’t be able to comment until we’ve had time to review the legislation.”

2. Compassion Seattle, the group supporting a ballot measure that would impose an unfunded mandate for the city to build more temporary shelter beds in order to keep public spaces “open and clear of encampments,” was forced to take down its “endorsements” page last week because the homeless advocates and service providers listed there had not actually endorsed the measure. Tim Burgess and Seattle Chamber CEO Rachel Smith, who talked up the measure on a Geekwire panel last week, waved away the story, suggesting that the groups just had to go through their own endorsement “processes” before officially signing on.

This week, Compassion Seattle updated its website, replacing the “endorsements” page with one called “What People Are Saying” that uses quotes from the leaders of homeless service organizations to strongly imply endorsement while no longer overtly claiming their support. The page now includes quotes from the leaders of Evergreen Treatment Services (which runs the REACH outreach program), the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and the Chief Seattle Club, all taken from an April 1 press release announcing the campaign.

The Chief Seattle Club said they do not plan to make an endorsement, and the director of DESC, Daniel Malone, said that although he “stands by the statement I made,” the group is “not working on a formal endorsement process right now.

3. On Tuesday, the ACLU of Washington announced their opposition to the initiative. In a statement, the civil-rights group said the measure focuses on “stopgap measures” like temporary shelter to get unhoused people out of public view while doing nothing to fund long-term solutions—most importantly, housing.

“The current housing crisis has long roots in racial injustice,” including redlining, job discrimination, and restrictive zoning laws, the statement continues. “Any effective long-term solution must address the history and systemic nature of the housing crisis and center those experiencing homelessness in the formulation of policy.”

The charter amendment would require the city to dedicate 12 percent of its existing general fund to human services (a slight uptick from this year), no matter what other city spending priorities emerge. Proponents say the spending mandate will force the city to take homelessness seriously; detractors argue that any solution to homelessness will require more resources and an entirely different approach than the city’s current strategy, which already includes short-term shelter and encampment sweeps.