By Erica C. Barnett
A program started under former governor Jay Inslee to resolve encampments on state-owned rights of way could shut down this year, advocates and King County elected officials warned on Tuesday, unless state Democrats restore funding to continue the program in this year’s budget. The program, unlike the daily sweeps that have become part of the urban landscape in Seattle, involves extensive outreach and, for most participants, ends in housing.
Currently, both the House and Senate versions of the budget reduce funding for the right-of-way program, as it’s known, from $75 million a year to $45 million a year. That funding, advocates said Tuesday, would only be enough money for the program to continue housing people from past encampments, not to provide ongoing outreach and shelter for new encampments in the future. To keep the program at current levels—accounting for inflation, capital costs, and payments to WSDOT for costs associated with physical cleanups—the state would need to restore $40 million to the budget.
Speaking at the Arrowhead Gardens senior housing complex in Highland Park, near the former site of an infamous encampment that was resolved through the program, King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said, “We do not see results in getting people inside by sweeping people out of sight and from one location to another. We do not create trust with our housing service providers by making it harder for them to find people when there’s actually a unit available.”
In King County, the right-of-way program is run by Purpose Dignity Action, which created a program called CoLEAD to provide temporary lodging during the pandemic. Unlike previous efforts to shut down encampments through brute-force sweeps, the PDA’s program resolves encampments by providing sustained outreach, intensive case management, and hotel-based shelter to former encampment residents.
The strategy is more expensive than the sweep-and-repeat approach, but unlike sweeps, it has a strong track record of keeping people housed. According to the PDA, the program has resolved 23 encampments and moved 479 people into housing in King County since 2022, with more than two-thirds of those individuals still housed.
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“Without restored funding for those programs, the front door will close. In other words, we will not have an encampment resolution program that cannot resolve new encampments,” Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said on Tuesday. “No new encampments will be resolved if this goes forward. But we know there’s a way that we can fix this, and leaders from the local and state level have a moral imperative to ensure that there is a path forward for this work to continue.”
Diane Radischat, president of the resident community at Arrowhead Gardens, worried out loud about what would happen if money for the right-of-way program dried up. Already, she said, people are beginning to set up tents and RVs in the area.
The people who have set up encampments on Myers Way are “not the cooperative ones,” Radischat said, “but they still need help. They still need services, and we cannot give up on them ever. So we can’t afford for the state to take any money away from this program in any fashion at all. If the money disappears, what you think will happen? People will just suddenly be all fine, and we don’t have to worry about them anymore?”
After the meeting, Mosqueda told PubliCola that along with restoring the cuts to the right-of-way program, state legislators also need to pass (and Governor Bob Ferguson needs to sign) the $12 billion progressive revenue package that state Democrats have proposed this session. “It’s not a zero- sum game,” Mosqueda said. “We cannot take funding from another bucket to invest in this evidence based program—it needs to be additive so that we are also investing in upstream safety net programs with new revenue from the state.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Mosqueda said the King County Regional Homelessness Authority needed the ability to raise revenues on its own, rather than serving exclusively as a pass-through agency for funding from outside sources.
Last year, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci proposed spending $1.8 million of the county’s budget to supplement the right-of-way program, calling it a “bright spot” at KCRHA, but the council voted it down 7-2, with only Balducci and Jorge Barón voting yes. Then-budget chair Girmay Zahilay urged a “no” vote at the time, citing the need for fiscal discipline amid a growing county budget deficit. Both councilmembers spoke Tuesday in favor of the state budget request.
Oh Theresa Mosquedo, please be more specific when you refer to “evidence-based programs.”
Housing First is a scam as a one size fits all solution to homelessness. Housing First is an extremely successful at serving elderly, medically compromised, chronically homeless people with substance use disorder, who are willing to use in their rooms and maintain a code of conduct in building’s common areas. This housing model is effective at serving a population that is too old and medically fragile to be disruptive to the general community. Bravo to DESC for creating a housing model (1811 Building) to serve a specific chronically homeless population. Shame on local housing providers for deceitfully parading Housing First as a one size fits all housing model for all people coming from homelessness.
It’s Teresa and it’s Mosquedx. You’re welcome.
“The people who have set up encampments on Myers Way are ‘not the cooperative ones,'” Radischat said, “‘but they still need help.'”
I don’t think taxpayers should be on the hook while people breaking the law take their own sweet time to decide if they want to stop reaking the law. They can be moved along or, if need be, arrested.
This sounds like a good program that should be available to those willing to make use of it, but not a penny to those who are stringing us all along, please.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
― Anatole France
One of the problems is it costs a lot more to do all this extensive outreach. End that and tell the people that they are trespassing and have a choice take the offer of shelter that is being given or leave but if you are found trespassing again you will go to jail. The city, count6y, and state cannot afford all this hand holding and coddling of homeless people who continually break the law.
Sure, but we can afford the more expensive option of putting them in jail. Love how lizard brained people like to couch their viciousness in how it will “save money,” but it is nothing of the sort.
Why not just gas them like we used to do to the unwanted flocks of Canadian geese? Come on, that’ll save some money. Falling through the gaping cracks in our disintegrating society should be a capital offense. Come on, you and your friends would love it.
What a silly bad faith comment. Jail is certainly an option as a last resort and should always be on the table as an option. Believe it or not, among your sainted homeless there are those who are more than happy to establish not only illegal encampments, but then also drive neighborhood disruption, crime, etc. If we have to spend money to address that, then so be it.
Bad faith, yeah right. You call them my “sainted homeless” and accuse me of bad faith. The only bad faith I see are those who think punishing homelessness is the best way to fix the problem. Here we are, an extremely wealthy city in the wealthiest country in the world and all the lizard brains can come up with is tearing out even more of our social safety net, passing ever more strident laws, and tossing those who fall through the ever wider cracks in jail.