Category: homelessness

City Council, Courts, homelessness, housing, LGBTQ+, Police

This Week on PubliCola: February 14, 2026

 

Nine stories you may have missed this week.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, February 9

Bill Targeting Sex Buyers Would No Longer Result in Immediate Felony Charges

State legislation that would have made it a first-strike felony, rather than a misdemeanor, to pay another person for sex has been amended; under a version that passed narrowly out of committee, buying sex would be a gross misdemeanor and sex workers would get access to services in lieu of jail. Proponents of the original, harsher bill said the new version fails to crack down enough on the “demand” side of sex work, and suggested that lenient prostitution laws allowed traffickers to go unpunished.

Tuesday, February 10

Sex Worker Advocates Demand Action from the City After Prosecutors’ Dehumanizing Presentation

The changes to the state law we covered Monday came partly in response to a lurid presentation by local prosecutors at a city council meeting, which included photos of identifiable, brutalized women and graphic details of assaults. Advocates for sex workers, also appalled by the presentation, issued a list of demands for the city, including a separate panel on non-carceral, humane approaches to abuse and trafficking and the inclusion of people with direct experience in policy discussions about sex work.

ACLU Drops Lawsuit After City Attorney Evans Drops Blanket Affidavit Against Judge

City Attorney Erika Evans and the ACLU of Washington announced that the ACLU is dropping its lawsuit against the city over a policy instituted by Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, that disqualified Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing criminal cases for almost two years.

City Council Gets New Central Staff Director

City hall veteran Ben Noble, who’s currently in his second stint as director of the city council’s policy-oriented central staff, is retiring in March after more than two decades at the city. His replacement, Lish Whitson, is another city old-timer who has worked on four comprehensive plan updates, including the upzone of Seattle’s former single-family enclaves last year.

Family of Jaahnavi Kandula, Pedestrian Killed by SPD Officer in 2023, Reaches $29,011,000 Settlement with City

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office settled for $29,011,000 with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, the 23-year-old student who was struck and killed in a South Lake Union crosswalk by a Seattle Police Department officer traveling 74 miles an hour in 2023. The $11,000 is a pointed reference to a comment made by Daniel Auderer, then the vice president of the police union, that the city could just “write a check” for that amount because that’s all Kandula’s short life was worth.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Wednesday, February 11

Tax For Social Housing Brought In Twice the Original Estimate, Mirroring Early JumpStart Results

Funding for Seattle’s new social housing developer, which the City Council approved in a 7-0 vote yesterday, is coming in significantly higher than anticipated: In its first year, the developer will receive an estimated $115 million to acquire existing apartment buildings and develop new ones. The revenues mirror early returns from the JumpStart payroll tax, which is also a tax on large companies that pay high wages.

Thursday, February 12

Review Finds Multiple Police Failures Preceded Violent Response to Counterprotests During Anti-LGBTQ Event in May

The city’s Office of the Inspector General released a report today finding that the Seattle Police Department’s actions during the anti-trans “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” rally, held by an extremist group called Mayday USA, showed a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event. After chatting amiably with security for the anti-trans group, officers began referring to protesters as “transtifa.”

Friday, February 13

New Councilmember Dionne Foster Tells Seattle Nice: Police Cameras “Should Be Turned Off and Come Down.”

On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, David, Sandeep, and I interviewed new City Councilmember Dionne Foster. Our conversation touched on encampment removals, police surveillance cameras, the upcoming library levy, and the

Homelessness Authority Rescinds Tiny House Village Grant, Gives Money to Salvation Army Instead

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has rescinded a $3 million grant it gave the Low Income Housing Institute to build 60 new low-barrier tiny houses outside King County’s youth detention center, claiming LIHI delayed the process by failing to secure a site in time. The money, which LIHI secured in last year’s city of Seattle budget, will now go to the Salvation Army to convert 35 of its existing transitional housing units into shelter.

homelessness

Homelessness Authority Rescinds Tiny House Village Grant, Gives Money to Salvation Army Instead
LIHI Director Sharon Lee speaks at the opening of Rosie's Tiny House Village in the University District
LIHI Director Sharon Lee speaks at the opening of Rosie’s Tiny House Village in the University District

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has rescinded a $3 million grant it gave the Low Income Housing Institute to build 60 new low-barrier tiny houses outside King County’s youth detention center, claiming LIHI delayed the process by failing to secure a site in time.

Tiny houses are small, freestanding, heated structures that provide shelter for one or two people. Unsheltered people often prefer tiny houses to other kinds of shelter because they provide privacy and a door that locks.

The money will now go to the Salvation Army, which will use it to convert some of the existing transitional housing beds at its William Booth Center in SoDo into non-congregate emergency shelter beds, according to KCRHA. While the converted rooms are technically “new” shelter beds, they aren’t really additive, since the people living in the existing transitional housing will either have to leave or see their housing downgraded to emergency shelter.

“Without this funding, we may have had to close beds,” Salvation Army spokeswoman Sara Beksinski said.

KCRHA spokeswoman Lisa Edge said the agency “chose to prioritize speed of implementation in the competition for these funds,” KCRHA spokeswoman Lisa Edge said. “Because LIHI could not perform in the period clearly outlined for the second location, we proceeded with an award to the next highest rated applicant, the Salvation Army.”

The Salvation Army’s original application was for $1.1 million; we have a call out to find out if this is how much the KCRHA awarded them and, if so, what will happen to the rest of the funds.

The $3 million more than half the funding—nearly $6 million—LIHI worked to secure for tiny house villages in the Seattle’s 2025 budget. The other half is funding a new tiny house village in North Seattle called Olympic Hills, which opened last month. The second shelter was a joint project between LIHI and Purpose Dignity Action’s CoLEAD program, which provides temporary lodging and intensive case management to people with physical and behavioral health needs; now, CoLEAD will relocate its operation to the North Seattle village.

In late January, LIHI appealed KCRHA’s decision, pointing to the agency’s own delays in approving contracts that were funded back in 2024, and says they were blindsided by the agency’s decision to take back the funds less than three months after they sent LIHI a letter signing off on the county-owned site.

“We should ask why the KCRHA’s [Request for Proposals] process took so long, given the homelessness crisis,” LIHI director Sharon Lee wrote in her appeal. Although the city council approved the funding in late 2024, the city didn’t announce the awards until the following July. “We believe it is KCRHA, not LIHI, that delayed the overall timeline in creating two new villages.”

Lee acknowledged that LIHI experienced hiccups securing a location for the second shelter, but said King County Executive Girmay Zahilay had made it clear that securing the King County site was a high priority for his new administration. As backup, Lee said, LIHI also secured an agreement with Mount Baker Housing for a second site—the old Thunderbird Treatment Center in Rainier Beach, which the housing nonprofit plans to redevelop in about three years.

“We were excited to have the county commit to finally doing something” with tiny houses, Lee said.

The KCRHA didn’t let Zahilay know they were rescinding LIHI’s funding for the planned tiny house village at the county site,  his office confirmed.

“Our office was not aware that KCRHA was going to rescind funding and award it to another provider, and we expressed disappointment that they did not update or coordinate with our administration before making this decision,” Zahilay spokeswoman Callie Craighead said.

Zahilay is currently “having initial conversations with stakeholders about the potential to site a tiny home village at the juvenile justice center property,” Craighead said. “Before a tiny home village is sited, we would need to engage with staff at the facility, see robust neighborhood outreach plans and timelines, and understand how services would be prioritized for those in need in the immediate area.”

The city’s budget didn’t explicitly grant the $6 million to LIHI, because all large contracts must go through a standard bidding process. But it was LIHI that secured the funding, working with City Councilmember Bob Kettle to add the money in 2024, with the understanding that it would fund tiny house villages or some other form of new noncongregate shelter.

In a letter rescinding KCRHA’s funds, KCRHA’s deputy director, Jeff Simms, blamed LIHI for the delays, saying the homelessness authority had already granted one extension to give LIHI more time to nail down a location and that this violated the KCRHA’s “preference for applications that had a site located and prepared for operation.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

But LIHI said the timeline was significantly more complex than the KCRHA was letting on, and pointed to another email from Simms, in October, saying that  “LIHI has met the requirements of the [request for proposals] to have located a site for operation of a second non-congregate shelter” at the juvenile detention center or the former treatment center.

That letter did note that KCRHA might “take steps” to reallocate the money to another agency if LIHI didn’t secure a site by December. Lee says LIHI signed a letter of intent with Mount Baker Housing to lease their Rainier Beach site and sent a copy to KCRHA in mid-December, but never heard anything back until the agency rescinded their funding in January. “For a whole month, there was silence, until they yanked the contract,” Lee said.

KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison rejected LIHI’s appeal earlier this month, and LIHI’s efforts to get city officials to intervene have been unsuccessful so far. Kettle, who got the money into the city budget back in 2024, told PubliCola, “We understand LIHI’s frustrations but also KCHRA’s need to press forward. We will work with both to move ahead on other important projects in [Council District 7] or that have important public safety impacts.”

A spokesman for Mayor Katie Wilson’s office, Sage Wilson, told PubliCola, “We’re not going to comment on the details of a dispute between LIHI and KCRHA. However this situation does underscore the importance of accelerating the development of emergency shelter, which is why the mayor has already issued an executive order doing just that.”

LIHI and KCRHA have long had a tense relationship, going back to the time of founding CEO Marc Dones, who frequently clashed with Lee over funding for her projects. Lee said she isn’t done fighting over the rescission, and she’s talking to KCRHA’s governing board about what she considers overreach by Kinnison and Simms.

Meanwhile, she said, “We are going to continue to develop tiny house villages, because we know that the mayor is very supportive and we think there are going to be other opportunities for us.” LIHI just opened a new tiny house village in Tukwila and is working to site a new RV safe lot, with tiny houses, in West Seattle.

homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Transportation

Wilson Issues Orders to Speed Up Transit and Shelter, Will Replace More Harrell Appointees

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson issued two executive order on Thursday. The first is aimed at speeding up the production of shelter in the run-up to this year’s World Cup games and beyond. The second will help speed up the city’s slowest bus, the 8, by finally painting a long-planned bus lane on Denny Way.

Wilson announced the orders at a meeting of her transition team at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill.

More news is expected out of Wilson’s team in the next week, including the dismissals of several high-profile department heads appointed by her predecessor, Bruce Harrell.

City Light CEO Dawn Lindell, appointed in 2024, is out, internal sources tell PubliCola (no word on her replacement yet). So, we’ve heard, is interim Office of Labor Relations interim director Chase Munroe—a Harrell appointee who worked, on city time, on behalf of the Royal Esquire Club, a private men’s club with longstanding ties to Harrell. Adrienne Thompson, a onetime labor policy advisor to ex-mayor Jenny Durkan who applied for the labor relations in 2022, will reportedly be Munroe’s replacement as interim director.

Other departments that could see changes in the next week include the Office of Housing (currently headed by Maiko Winkler-Chin) and the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (headed by Hamdi Mohamed, who’s also a Seattle Port Commissioner.)

Wilson’s first executive order, on homelessness, sets a deadline of March for a multi-department work group to “identify all possible financial incentives, permitting changes, and policy changes” that could help the city build new shelters and housing quickly. The group will also “identify City-owned property that could be used temporarily or permanently to support shelter and housing opportunities.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

The order also directs the city’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations to work with other governments to identify additional public land that could be used for shelter and housing, and directs the Human Services Department to identify existing shelter programs that have room for expansion.

Wilson has pledged to add 4,000 new shelter beds and housing units by the end of her term, with a short-term goal of adding 500 before the World Cup games here in June.

Wilson will have to find funding for the new shelter projects in the existing city budget. Last year, the city council set aside a little over $11 million to help address potential funding cuts from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had changed its guidelines for funding housing projects to emphasize short-term housing over the type of permanent housing projects that rely on HUD funding locally.

After a judge ruled that HUD couldn’t change its standards in the middle of a funding cycle, the department allowed the application process to move forward under the old criteria. HUD could still pull the rug out from under providers by refusing to fund projects next year, but if it doesn’t, that $11 million could be used to fund Wilson’s shelter push.

There’s also the 116-member Unified Care Team, which removes encampments and costs the city upward of $30 million a year. Although the council adopted a Rob Saka-sponsored amendment prohibiting Wilson from spending the UCT’s budget on other purposes, some creative reallocation could put the giant team to better use.

Wilson said she’s evaluating how the UCT prioritizes encampments for removal and may change them. As an interim step, Wilson halted a planned removal of an encampment in Ballard after meeting with encampment residents earlier this week; on Thursday, she said she wanted to gain an “understanding, from the perspective of folks who are living outside, what can we do to make the process of an encampment removal more comprehensible and just maximize the the opportunities for people to get into a better situation.”

Wilson’s second executive order directs the Seattle Department of Transportation to immediately paint a long-delayed bus lane on Denny Way, a change that will help the most infamously delayed bus in the city, Metro’s Route 8, be a little less late. Last year, under Harrell, SDOT rejected the bus lane, arguing that giving buses priority would make drivers late. Wilson said the bus lane would run, at a minimum, from Fifth Ave. to Fairview, the most congested section of the route.

“I know the feeling of waiting at the stop for the bus to come and it’s 30 minutes late or 40 minutes late,” Wilson said. “I know the feeling of sitting on the bus knowing that you could be walking up that hill faster than that bus is going.”

homelessness, housing, legislature

Bills Would Crack Down on City Efforts to Banish Homeless People, Shelter, and Housing

By Erica C. Barnett

In previous legislative sessions, lawmakers have successfully overruled efforts by cities, including Seattle, to keep renters out of neighborhoods that were once exclusively single-family, and have even reined in suburban cities that have tried to ban shelter and emergency housing altogether. (Thanks, Jessica Bateman!)

This year, pro-housing lawmakers want to stop cities from taking advantage of loopholes that have allowed them to prohibit market-rate and emergency housing, and to stop cities like Seattle from banning ground-floor apartments, among other proposals to crack down on local NIMBY policies.

Rep. Strom Peterson (D-33, Edmonds) has introduced legislation, House Bill 2266, that would require cities and counties to allow all forms of STEP housing—that’s shelter, transitional, emergency, and permanent housing—in any area that isn’t zoned for industrial use. The bill would also prevent jurisdictions from passing regulations for these types of housing, including shelter, that are more restrictive than the ones the apply to any other type of housing.

The bill expands on 2021’s House Bill 1220, which required cities to allow shelters and permanent housing in all areas where hotels or market-rate housing are allowed, but provided a carveout for “reasonable” restrictions “for public health and safety purposes.” Cities, Pedersen said, took that loophole and ran with it, rejecting shelters because they were within 1,000 feet as the crow flies from another shelter or a school, “even through it wasn’t really 1,000 foot walking distance,” Peterson said.

Last year, Peterson and other legislators proposed a fix that would have given the Department of Commerce “a very big hammer”—if the department determined that local rules limiting housing weren’t reasonable, they could withhold state funds—but that idea proved too unpopular, and potentially expensive, to pass last year.

“‘Reasonableness’ is the word that haunts me,” Peterson said.

This year’s legislation is more straightforward, and it doesn’t include dispute resolution through the Department of Commerce; instead, it states flatly that jurisdictions must allow all types of STEP housing and can’t apply zoning or design rules that are different than those that apply to other residential housing.

Peterson says the changes reduce the potential cost of the new rules—an important factor in a year when lawmakers are trying to close a more than $2 billion budget gap—and takes out any ambiguity about “reasonable” restrictions.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Cities have been more receptive to some parts of the bill than others, Peterson said. “On the plus side, and I think this is a pretty significant step, cities have said that they believe permanent supportive and transitional housing shouldn’t be treated differently than market housing. … Where we’re running into some issues is on the shelter and emergency housing side.”

Some cities have argued they should be allowed to impose requirements that would preclude certain people, such as people who have criminal records or active addictions, from accessing shelter, a proposal Peterson says could violate state fair housing laws. Others have argued that shelters should be subject to special regulations on noise and litter. “My retort back is, doesn’t the city have noise and litter restrictions? Why is [shelter] being treated differently?”

Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-33 (SeaTac), has proposed legislation this year that could work in tandem with Peterson’s prohibition on shelter and housing bans. House Bill 2489 would prohibit cities and towns from passing bans on sleeping and other activities necessary for survival “unless the city or town can demonstrate that adequate alternative shelter space was available at the time and place of the conduct.”

Gregerson said the proposal is a clarified version of last year’s House Bill 1380, which would have required cities that restrict people’s ability to sit, lie down, keep dry, or sleep on public property to have “objectively reasonable” regulations on these activities. “Last year’s bill was an attempt to really provide total local control” over anti-camping laws, Gregerson said; but as with 1220’s “reasonable” restrictions on shelter, the phrase turned out to be too squishy. “Cities wanted more definition,” Gregerson said.

This year’s bill says that cities can’t ban such “life-sustaining activities” unless adequate shelter is available, and defines the minimum requirements for a shelter to be considered “adequate.” For example, shelters must allow people to stay with their partners or pets, be accessible to people with disabilities, and be located inside the city that has a law banning homeless people from public property.

That last provision could be controversial. Cities without any year-round, general admission homeless shelters at all, like Burien, have passed laws banning people from sleeping in public; in other cities, such as Kirkland, efforts to establish shelters to get people out of parks and off sidewalks have met with fierce resistance. (Burien has one year-round high-barrier program that includes shelter for nine women.)

“One low-turnout election” can completely upend the leadership of small cities, Gregerson noted; in that context, “We’re trying to be the adults in the room—can we come around the table and say we all want people to have a space to live?” After last year’s “productive conversations” about HB 1380, Gregerson said she’s hoping to get traction on a bill that balances local control with the reality that banishing homeless people doesn’t solve homelessness.

 

homelessness, housing, Trump

Seattle Homelessness Programs Get Temporary Reprieve as Anti-Trump Lawsuit Moves Forward
DESC’s Steven’s Place offers permanent supportive housing for single adults in Interbay. The Trump Administration wants to limit funding for this type of housing for chronically homeless people.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle’s permanent supportive housing programs got a temporary reprieve from federal funding cuts last week, when the US Department of Housing and Urban Development walked back its new rules limiting the kind of housing programs that are eligible for federal assistance.

HUD abruptly decided to change how it funds local homelessness programs in November, imposing new restrictions on agencies like the King County Regional Homelessness Authority in the middle of a two-year funding cycle. Among other changes, the new rules would have eliminated most federal funding for permanent housing and required nonprofits to make ideological commitments against trans people and racial equity.

In the Seattle area, more than 90 percent of  funds currently go to permanent housing, so the abrupt, midstream change threatened to cause chaos in Seattle’s housing system and put thousands of people on the street.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, along with King County and other jurisdictions, sued HUD over the changes, and got a preliminary injunction from US District Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island in December, which initially prompted HUD to announce it was holding off off on the funding process indefinitely, leaving agencies that rely on federal funding in limbo.

Last week, though, HUD changed course, announcing it will operate under existing rules for this year’s funding applications as long as that injunction remains in place. The announcement doesn’t mean local agencies will get funds, but it does allow them to continue applying for federal dollars under pre-Trump rules.

The reprieve doesn’t exactly have local agencies and housing advocates breathing a sigh of relief. For one thing, even if Judge McElroy issues a permanent injunction (which could happen in early February), HUD could still challenge it, putting the case on a fast track to a Trump-friendly Supreme Court.

Even if federal funding for homelessness comes through as usual this year, experts who spoke to PubliCola said they expect the 2026 federal funding application to have the same restrictions as the one that’s currently being challenged in court, meaning that even in the best-case scenario, housing providers and the local governments that help fund them have just one extra year to figure out how to stay afloat without the kind of federal funding they’ve always relied on.

“For supportive housing of the kind we do, this money is a goner,” said Daniel Malone, head of the Downtown Emergency Service Center—the region’s largest recipient of HUD homelessness dollars. “The question is whether it’s now or later.” Malone is hoping the injunction stands, because at least “that kicks it out to the latter part of 2027 before it becomes a financial crisis.”

Last Thursday, about 40 local leaders, including representatives from advocacy groups, providers, Mayor Katie Wilson’s office, and all nine council offices, met to discuss the federal funding situation, including the current uncertainty about next year.

“We’re trying to pull together a strategy for how we move forward” in the absence of federal funding in 2027 and beyond, said Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who now chairs the council’s human service committee. “Part of the long-term sustainability conversation will be, how do we restructure and prioritize local dollars?” This includes the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s annual budget, which comes primarily from Seattle and King County, Rinck said. The city and county are both facing tens of millions in projected budget deficits starting in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

City Council, homelessness, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: December 13, 2025

A 14-point plan for incoming Mayor Wilson, a new police contract that raises cops’ pay another 42 percent, a parking enforcement labor slowdown, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 8

A 14-Point Plan for Mayor Wilson

Josh and I laid out a 14-point PubliCola manifesto for incoming mayor Katie Wilson, including everything from revamping the city’s comprehensive plan to allow more housing across the city, to building Park- and School-Oriented Transit. Also: Get rid of special rules that have enabled SPD to evade public disclosure and empowered mayor after mayor to sweep people living unsheltered without notice or assistance.

Tuesday, December 9

Feds Yank Homeless Funding Process for “Revisions,” Adding More Confusion to Changes that Could Impact Thousands in Seattle

After announcing new rules for federal homelessness funding designed to defund permanent housing and housing-first programs, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development abruptly yanked its call for funding applications without specifying why—or when the application process will open again. The upshot is that programs serving thousands of people could face funding gaps starting early next year.

Wednesday, December 10

Divided Council Passes New Police Contract That Raises Officer Pay 42 Percent, With Few Accountability Concessions

In a split vote (with Rinck, Lin, and Saka voting “no”), the city council approved yet another round of generous pay increases for cops, without the accountability measures that were promised when the city approved 23 percent retroactive pay hikes for police last year. While the new contract allows the CARE Team of unarmed first responders to expand and respond to some 911 calls without police in tow, it also imposes many new restrictions; for instance, CARE can’t respond to crisis calls if drug paraphernalia (like foil) is present or if it appears any “crime has occurred.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Mayor-Elect Wilson Will Retain Police Chief Shon Barnes

On the heels of the contract adoption, Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson announced that she’ll be keeping Police Chief Shon Barnes, along with the heads of Seattle’s other public safety departments, saying she expected him “to make SPD a place where professionalism, integrity, compassion, and community partnership are at the center of every action.”

Friday, December 12

Parking Enforcement Officers On Work Slowdown After Contract Negotiations Stall

After two years of negotiations with the city, the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officers Guild authorized a “realignment of enforcement priorities”—essentially, a work slowdown—to signal to city negotiators that they need a better contract. The issues at play include pay—parking officers’ pay is capped at $37 an hour, which the union argues is too low—and working conditions, like having to respond to calls on unpaid lunch breaks.

Seattle Nice: New Police Contract, Wilson Keeps Police Chief, and We Celebrate our Four-Year Anniversary!

On the fourth anniversary of the Seattle Nice podcast, we discussed some of the big stories of the week, including the new police contract, Wilson’s decision to retain SPD chief Barnes, and what HUD’s decision to yank its annual homeless program funding application might mean for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle (and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.)