Category: homelessness

In Divided, Last-Minute Vote, Burien Says “Yes” to County’s $1 Million Shelter Offer

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon and City Attorney Garmon Newsom II

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council voted Monday night to take King County up on a six-month-old offer to provide $1 million and 35 Pallet shelters, voting 4-3 to accept the money and locate the temporary shelter on a vacant lot owned by Seattle City Light. The late-night vote, which came almost literally at the 11th hour, just barely met the November 27 deadline set by King County for Burien to or lose the funding, provided through a federal ARPA grant.

The Burien council has been debating what to do about the encampment, whose residents the city has repeatedly swept from place to place, since March. In September, the council prohibited homeless people from sleeping outdoors at night; that ban goes into effect on December 1.

The money will be administered through the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which will choose a shelter provider through a competitive bidding process that, according to KCRHA spokeswoman Anne Martens, typically takes about three months. The Low-Income Housing Institute, a nonprofit that operates many tiny house villages around the region, has sent its chief strategy officer, Jon Grant, to testify in favor of the agreement at recent Burien City Council meetings, but Grant said the shelter and housing agency has not decided yet if they’ll bid on the project.

Asked about next steps, KCRHA, King County, the city of Burien, Seattle City Light, and the Seattle Human Services Department all gave different versions of the same response: They’ll have to meet and hammer out the details, so stay tuned.

One of the most important of those details is a lease between KCRHA and the city of Seattle for the use of City Light site, which a City Light spokesperson said “has not yet been negotiated [or] received.” Burien city manager Adolfo Bailon has declined to answer Burien council members’ questions about the site, claiming it would be premature to provide details before the council approved the plan to put the shelter at that location.

According to a spokesman for the Seattle Human Services Department, if the city receives a formal proposal from KCRHA, “HSD will work with KCRHA and the City of Burien to discuss next steps including potential terms and costs associated with use of the site.”

Last week, the council deadlocked over the City Light location and another potential shelter site in Boulevard Park, a low-income neighborhood near SeaTac Airport. Monday’s meeting was a hail-Mary, and a bit of a fluke: At the end of last week’s meeting, just three council members voted to support Councilmember Cydney Moore’s motion to hold one last meeting to discuss the offer, but because three others abstained (with Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling voting “no”), Moore’s motion passed.

Councilmember Stephanie Mora—who said last week that she would not attend Monday’s meeting because she doesn’t think the government should play a role in addressing homelessness—attempted to enhance this language with an amendment saying no one could enter the site if they were “under the influence” of drugs or alcohol.

Proponents of the Boulevard Park site argued that it had plenty of access to services and food thanks to the presence of two bus lines and a nearby Dollar Tree. Opponents countered that the site was poorly served by transit, lacked access to services, and would subject tiny house village residents to particulate and noise pollution from planes overhead.  The council had already voted against allowing the shelter on a piece of city-owned land in downtown Burien, which would have given residents access to homeless services, multiple bus lines, and several full-service grocery stores.

The City Light site, Moore noted Monday, was a “compromise” between a piece of city-owned land in downtown Burien that the council had previously rejected and the Boulevard Park location, which came with its own significant baggage. Councilmember Hugo Garcia, who supported the original downtown Burien site, said the council majority’s proposal to put the shelter in a low-income, majority-minority neighborhood “smacks of white supremacy.”

“I personally don’t feel that this is necessarily ideal, but in the spirit of compromising to find something that we can move forward with I am willing to accept these terms,” Moore said.

The “terms” Moore was referring to included a stipulation that residents can’t drink alcohol or use illegal drugs on site or in the surrounding neighborhood, among many other parameters. Councilmember Stephanie Mora—who said last week that she would not attend Monday’s meeting because she doesn’t think the government should play a role in addressing homelessness—attempted to enhance this language with an amendment saying no one could enter the site if they were “under the influence” of drugs or alcohol.

Although Mora’s amendment passed, the KCRHA, not Burien, will actually set the terms of its request for proposals for the site, and it’s extremely unlikely that the KCRHA, the city of Seattle, or any homeless service provider would agree to such stringent terms.

In an email to city manager Adolfo Bailon last Wednesday, KCRHA intergovernmental relations manager Nigel Herbig attempted to explain this—noting, for example, that while KCRHA can set broad parameters for shelter providers, such as “congregate or noncongregate,” shelter providers have the authority to establish their own rules. LIHI and other shelter providers do ban drug and alcohol use at some of their locations and have behavioral codes of conduct, but they don’t restrict access to shelter based on whether a shelter resident is “under the influence”—a standard that could require drug testing every person entering a site.

After this year’s elections, the Burien City Council will have a five-member supermajority of members who support the city’s hard-line approach to homelessness. King County’s money will run out in a year, but it’s likely that additional funding will materialize if the shelter is successful and the next council doesn’t oppose keeping the shelter open.

A poison-pill amendment, also by Mora, that would have shuttered the shelter as soon as the million dollars ran out, effectively barring outside funding for the shelter, failed.

Grant, of LIHI, said his agency “would need to see the details before deciding to move forward with an application”; their questions, he said, include when the program would end and whether LIHI would be required to use the Pallet-branded shelters that were part of the county’s initial offer, or if they could bring in their own stick-built “tiny houses,” which are larger and more homey than Pallet’s utilitarian sheds.

Faced With Monday Deadline to Lose $1 Million for Shelter, Burien Takes No Action

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon

By Erica C. Barnett

Facing a November 27 deadline to take action on a longstanding offer of $1 million and 35 Pallet shelters from King County, the Burien City Council decided last night to do nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing: After rejecting two potential locations for a tiny shelter village—a city-owned lot in downtown Burien that currently serves as storage for a Toyota dealership and a property owned by Seattle City Light—the council voted to ask the county for an extension on the deadline to use the money, which has been available to Burien for the last six months.

UPDATE: On Tuesday afternoon, Deputy King County Executive Shannon Braddock formally declined Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon’s request for a deadline extension. In an email, Braddock noted that the county originally started working with Burien to site a shelter in the city in March, after the city evicted an encampment from its original location outside City Hall, and formalized its $1 million offer in June.

Since our conversations began, the only requirement to utilize this offer has been for the city to identify a location and willing property owner to site the Pallet shelters,” Braddock wrote. “We have identified funding, shelter resources, and off-set parking capacity. To the best of our understanding as of today, the city has not yet identified any location or property owner, including city-owned property, to utilize what we have secured in response to the original request for assistance.” The council will hold a special meeting next Monday, the day the deadline expires, for a final discussion, but the months-long deadlock is unlikely to change.

ORIGINAL POST CONTINUES: The votes on both locations deadlocked 3-3-1, with Councilmember Jimmy Matta—ordinarily part of the four-member anti-shelter majority—abstaining. “I’m not going to make a call for any of the sites until we as a community come together and have a real conversation,” Matta said.

A third proposal to build a temporary Pallet shelter or tiny house village on a vacant lot in Boulevard Park—a low-income food desert with minimal services—failed, after Mayor Sofia Aragon could not get anyone to second it. As Councilmember Cydney Moore noted Monday, the Boulevard Park location is directly in a flight path, with noise levels frequently exceeding 80 decibels.

Aragon also proposed a code of conduct for any future temporary shelter that would prohibit people living in the tiny structures from drinking or using drugs, including marijuana, and would bar anyone convicted of a sex offense, but because her motion to consider the code of conduct violated parliamentary procedure, it didn’t get a hearing, either.

“I don’t believe that it should be the government that has a say or even touches homelessness. I think that should be [done by the] private sector. It should be the organizations that are funded on their own that are able to come up with funding on their own to do this, which is why I don’t support accepting the King County money.”—Burien City Councilmember Stephanie Mora

Although the Boulevard Park location didn’t get a formal vote, it would have likely failed by a similar margin as the other two locations, since conservative council member Stephanie Mora indicated she would not vote for any proposal to accept the money from King County, including the Boulevard Park location supported by her council allies.

“I don’t believe that it should be the government that has a say or even touches homelessness. I think that should be [done by the] private sector,” Mora said. “It should be the organizations that are funded on their own that are able to come up with funding on their own to do this, which is why I don’t support accepting the King County money.”

Moore attempted to bring the council back at some point before next Monday—the county’s deadline for Burien to use the money—but Aragon, Matta, and Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling all said they would be too busy with Thanksgiving obligations. (Mora said she would not attend any meeting to discuss the matter further, period.) If the county does not grant an extension, the council will meet next Monday night.

Instead, they asked the county for another week to discuss options, though it’s not clear what could possibly break the six-month-long logjam. If Burien decides it doesn’t want the million dollars, the county will offer it to other South King County cities through a competitive bidding process.

Prior to last night’s meeting, the city appeared to be teeing up the Boulevard Park location as the preferred alternative.

In a memo purporting to weigh the pros and cons of each option, City Manager Adolfo Bailon used cherry-picked and inaccurate information to make the decision seem obvious, relying on assumptions and unsourced claims about how much a shelter at each location would cost, the ease of obtaining each location, and the kind of access each site would provide to transit, food, and services.

For example, the memo suggested that if the city accepted the money, it would be forced to eliminate specific public safety and human services programs from its budget in the future, including programs aimed at preventing youth violence, feeding people, improving downtown safety, and providing mental health services. Cities can’t actually constrain future budgets in this way, and every item on the list seemed purposefully to suggest that helping unsheltered people would mean abandoning other, more worthy Burien residents.

The city manager’s memo did not include the cost of leasing the other two sites, which are not city-owned, or include this additional expense in the sections describing the pros and cons of these locations. On Monday, Bailon said he had no idea how much renting either the privately owned Boulevard Park lot or the City Light lot would cost.

The memo also included incomplete or inaccurate descriptions of each of the three potential shelter locations. It claims, for instance, that the Boulevard Park site has a “Walk Score” of 68, based partly on its exceptional access to “food sources.” However, the actual Walk Score for the site is 56—”somewhat walkable”—and the only source of nearby food or beverages is a Dollar Tree, which does not offer any fresh or healthy food, and a liquor store.

Dismissing concerns about the lack of healthy food at this location on Monday night, Aragon said, “There’s food there. It may not be a full blown grocery store, which the neighborhood definitely needs. But there is food available there [from] either mini marts or the Dollar Tree.”

The nearest full-service grocery store, a Red Apple, is two miles and a 40-minute walk away. In contrast, the city-owned lot in downtown Burien is five minutes from three full-service grocery stores and 500 feet from the Burien Transit Center.

Bailon’s memo also made a number of unsourced assumptions about the financial impact of each location, including a claim that ending the lease with the Toyota dealership would cost “tens of thousands of dollars” in lost taxes and “potential loss of jobs”—which appears to assume the dealership would close if it had to move its cars 500 feet away to a secure covered parking lot at the transit center.

In fact, while Burien would lose $24,000 a year in lease revenue if the Toyota dealer no longer rented the lot, the dealer would save the same amount, because King County would provide its lot for free. That amount, notably, is less than half the size of a contract Bailon signed with a controversial nonprofit that provides private sweeps and distributed homeless people’s private information to police and sympathetic councilmembers less than a month ago.

Nor did the memo mention the cost of leasing the other two sites, which are not city-owned, or include this additional expense in the sections describing the pros and cons of these locations. On Monday, Bailon said he had no idea how much renting either the privately owned Boulevard Park lot or the City Light lot would cost, claiming he could not even inquire about cost until the council chose a location and “authorized me to negotiate on behalf of the city.” Bailon also suggested Seattle might “say [that] 50 percent of whatever housing units are built at the location will be for the city of Seattle, but did not provide any reason for this estimate.

A spokeswoman for the city of Burien declined to respond to a detailed list of questions on Monday.

A spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine could not immediately say how the county planned to respond to the Burien City Council’s request for an extension on the county’s six-month-old offer.

City Budget Will Fund Shotspotter—But Also Significant Progressive Priorities, Including $20 Million for Student Mental Health

Image credit: Chicago Office of Inspector General

By Erica C. Barnett

The outgoing city council is making its final amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 2024 budget—the final city budget for six of the council’s nine members, and the final year of budgeting before the city enters a period of ongoing $200 million-plus “structural” deficits resulting from a combination of increased costs (construction prices, for instance) and lower revenues from volatile sources, such as taxes on real estate transactions.

Members of the council’s progressive bloc flexed their muscles on some issues, such as funding pay increases for human-service workers, while capitulating on others, like Councilmember Sara Nelson’s proposal to direct $300,000 in city funds to private addiction treatment companies.

Here are some of this week’s budget highlights:

• Although the council plans to wait until after they pass next year’s budget before taking up new tax proposals to address the structural deficit, the biggest progressive win this year is a small tax increase that will fund something entirely new. Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is leaving at the end of the year, proposed and pyearassed a 0.1 percent (0.001) increase to the JumpStart payroll tax to fund mental health counseling and community-based programs for kids in Seattle Public Schools. The tax increase will increase annual revenues from the tax by $20 million, making this new program by far the biggest new investment in this year’s budget.

Sawant’s mental-health proposal had a compelling constituency. On Monday, dozens of current and former public school students testified at a budget hearing about the high rates of mental illness, depression, and suicide among their peers, making a convincing for a large new investment at a time when other needs—such as wage increases for thousands of city workers—remain unmet. Sawant did propose two amendments that would establish a fund to sustain worker pay increases in the future, but neither passed.

• Two proposals to address wage inequity between human services workers that were initially part of the council’s “consent package“—amendments the council has already hashed out and agreed collectively to support—got pulled out for further discussion by Councilmember Sara Nelson. Both amendments, which ultimately passed, addressed a problem that emerged when the city handed its homelessness contracts to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority: Although a 2019 law requires the city to fund annual inflationary adjustments for all the human services contracts it funds, a small number of contracts are funded directly by the federal government and aren’t subject to the annual pay increase requirement. The amendments will bring worker pay under those contracts in line with other human service workers.

Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Councilmember Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused

Nelson argued that the changes, which will cost the city about $2 million next year, create an ongoing obligation without identifying a specific funding source to pay for it, and said the contracts were now the KCRHA’s responsibility, not the city’s. “We no longer have a statutory obligation to pay an inflationary adjustment,” Nelson said. “I understand that that is a desire, but again, we’re talking about another agency, and we’re not really responsible for how they run their books.” In response, council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda noted that the city is the KCRHA’s primary funder, and that the agency has no ability to raise money on its own “When we transferred these contracts, the intent was to ensure that there was inflationary adjustment and wage stability … no matter who held that contract,” Mosqueda said. 

Later in the afternoon, Nelson raised objections to a proposal by Herbold that would require agencies to demonstrate that they’re using city funds dedicated to annual wage increases for that purpose. Nelson argued that the city shouldn’t be assuming annual wage increases in the first place, but should base cost-of-living adjustments on performance standards.

Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused, living in cars, living paycheck to paycheck, and that’s not how we create sustainability.”

• A 10-cent fee on app-based “network” companies like Doordash passed after a lengthy debate over which companies should be subject to the fee, whether the fee was too large, and who should have the authority to increase the fee in the future. Councilmember Lisa Herbold sponsored the underlying legislation, which applies to all app-based workers except Uber and Lyft drivers (who are now subject to a preemptive state law), along with an amendment that would reduce the fee for so-called “marketplace” network companies like Rover and TaskRabbit. These companies aren’t subject to minimum-pay requirements that apply to other gig-work companies because they allow workers to set their own rates and give workers more autonomy over which jobs they accept.

Nelson and Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who is leaving at the end of the year, both unsuccessfully attempted to water down the legislation. Pedersen’s failed amendments would have exempted marketplace companies from the fee and required council approval for any fee increase— a departure from the current system, in which the Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) can increase or decrease many city fees on their own.

Nelson, meanwhile, proposed amendments that would prohibit the Office of Labor Standards to use fee revenue to implement the city’s minimum pay ordinance and cut the 10-cent fee in half. Both councilmembers’ proposals failed by narrow margins.’

According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.

• After the council rejected Harrell’s proposal to fund a gunshot detection system last year, the council appears ready to invest $1.5 million in a “pilot” that will include CCTV cameras in addition to audio surveillance devices. The system is generally referred to as Shotspotter after the company that provides the only widely used gunshot detection system.

As we’ve reported, Shotspotter is not a new or innovative technology, nor does it “detect” gunfire on its own. Instead, sensors installed on utility poles detect and determine the approximate location of outdoor sounds that resemble gunfire and alert human “acoustic experts” who listen to the audio and determine which ones sound like gunshots. These experts then alert police, who can be dispatched to the scene.

On Wednesday, the council voted to reject a proposal by Sawant to remove funding for Shotspotter from the budget and use the $1.5 million to fund behavioral health care at non-congregate shelters, foreshadowing next week’s overall budget vote. (Since Harrell’s budget includes Shotspotter by default, the council does not have to take a separate vote to fund the program.) Mosqueda did manage to add an amendment requiring a separate racial equity analysis for each new location where the city deploys the system; one frequent criticism of Shotspotter is that it leads to overpolicing in communities of color while doing nothing to reduce gun violence in those communities.

Shotspotter has been around for decades, so there’s a large body of evidence suggesting it doesn’t work to address gun violence and consumes scarce police resources by repeatedly sending police out on false alarms. According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.

• As we noted above, the council plans to put off a formal tax discussion until after the budget passes in late November, but we’ll have a separate update on the revenue discussion well before then, so stay tuned. Today, the council discussed Pedersen’s proposal to eliminate the utility tax and fill the $38 million gap by passing a 2 percent local tax on capital gains; skeptics of Pedersen’s proposal argued that the city needs more funding to fill the looming budget deficit, not a revenue-neutral tax swap. And council staff revealed that one of the potential taxes identified by the city’s progressive revenue task force—a “surtax” on JumpStart for very large companies whose CEOs make hundreds of times more than their median employee—would only net a relatively paltry sum of $2 million to $4 million a year.

As Deadline to Use or Lose $1 Million in Shelter Funding Looms, Top Burien Official Offers New Explanation for Failing to Inform Some on Council

By Erica C. Barnett

Burien city manager Adolfo Bailon offered a novel explanation last night for why he failed to inform the full city council about a November 27 deadline for using $1 million in shelter funding from the county: He had, contrary to his previous claim, opened and responded to the email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock, but he had “left it [marked] unopened to deal with the following week.”

The email then got buried, Bailon said, underneath a pile of messages about a sanctioned encampment at a church proposed by a nonprofit headed by Councilmember Cydney Moore, and he was unable to get back around to it until the next Friday, November 3, when he finally told the rest of the council. The encampment proposal “monopolized our time and led to a number of different things occurring” last week, Bailon said.

Aragon confirmed during the meeting that she was also aware of the deadline last week and had discussed it with Bailon during their agenda-setting meeting on Wednesday. It’s unclear which other council members besides Aragon, if any, also knew about the deadline before Bailon informed the full council in an email on November 3.

As we reported on Monday, Bailon initially said that he had not seen or responded to the time-sensitive email until a full week after it landed in his inbox, a claim PubliCola revealed as false after obtaining Bailon’s response to Braddock from King County, sent shortly after he received the letter informing him of the new deadline.

Since March, the Burien council has been debating how to respond to a group of several dozen unsheltered people who the city initially swept from a site next to City Hall and the downtown Burien library and who have since been swept from place to place. King County offered the city $1 million and 35 Pallet shelters, which can each hold two people, back in June, suggesting that the shelters go on a piece of city-owned land that currently serves as excess inventory storage for a local Toyota dealer; under the deal, the county would provide space in its own garage for the cars. In July, the council’s four-member majority voted to reject that offer, and in September, the council enacted a nighttime “camping” ban.

As we reported on Monday, Bailon initially said that he had not seen or responded to the time-sensitive email until a full week after it landed in his inbox, a claim PubliCola revealed as false after obtaining Bailon’s response to Braddock from King County, sent shortly after he received the letter informing him of the new deadline.

“I am sorry to share with you that the email from Shannon Braddock went unopened and became lost until today due to the more than 150 email messages that I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church,” Bailon wrote in an email to the full council and the city attorney. “I have since reviewed all unopened email messages.”

Moore challenged Bailon on his changing story, noting that by withholding the information from certain council members, Bailon deprived the council of a full week—out of four until the deadline—to secure a location for the shelter King County has been offering to fund since June. “I would like to know why the misinformation was given to council that the letter wasn’t read or open until Friday,” Moore said. However, she was interrupted repeatedly by Bailon and Aragon, who said Moore was stirring up irrelevant “drama” and creating a “distraction” from important issues.

Bailon said Moore’s claim that he had withheld information from certain councilmembers was “tantamount to slander,” and the council almost went into a closed executive session on the grounds that Moore was threatening legal action against the city.

Instead, the council meeting continued until a public commenter who opposes the encampment ban, Jennifer Fichamba, suggested Bailon should resign and return to California, where he lived before taking the job in Burien, because he lacked “compassion” for homeless residents and had “not done due diligence to understand what our community is about.”

This led Councilmember Kevin Schilling to suggest Fichamba, an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights, was racist for saying “our Hispanic city manager [should] go back to California” and demanding that she apologize. “I am ashamed at what I just heard!” Schilling yelled. As the room erupted, Aragon shut down the meeting, clearing the chambers for 10 minutes before returning with a warning that the council could end the meeting and reconvene in private if people didn’t behave.

This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that members of the pro-sweeps council majority had accused someone on the other side of the issue of being racist. Earlier this year, Councilmember Hugo Garcia, one of three council members who have voted against efforts to crack down on Burien’s unsheltered residents, expressed his opposition to a potential new encampment site in Boulevard Park. The fact that the council majority wanted to move people from a wealthy, white neighborhood into a poor, Black and brown one “reeks of white supremacy,” Garcia said. Both Schilling and Councilmember Stephanie Mora expressed shock at Garcia’s comment, and Mora called for Garcia to be censured for his “very racist remark.”

The city council has two more council meetings scheduled before the county’s deadline, including one on November 27. The $1 million is time-limited federal money; if Burien doesn’t come up with a plan by the deadline, the county will make it available to other jurisdictions through a standard bidding process.

Use $1 Million in Shelter Funding We Offered or Lose It, County Tells Burien

 

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon and City Attorney Garmon Newsom II

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post has been updated and re-published as an individual post due to length.

UPDATE: Although Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon told City Council members that it took him a week to notice an email from King County imposing a November 27 deadline for $1 million in homelessness funding, emails provided by King County reveal that this claim was not true.

As we reported Friday, Bailon claimed that he failed to notice an email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock sent at 11:56 am on Friday, October 27, because of 150 subsequent emails about a church-based sanctioned encampment proposed the following Sunday. The nonprofit that proposed the encampment is associated with Councilmember Cydney Moore, who has opposed encampment sweeps and voted against the city’s recently-passed “camping ban.”

The email exchange shows that Bailon responded to Braddock shortly after receiving the email last month, confirming receipt of her letter about the new November 27 deadline and saying he would speak to Mayor Sofia Aragon and council members “about the timeline set for selecting a location, and deadlines established by the federal government regarding the commitment and use of ARPA funds,” and “hope[d] to have more news to share with you soon.”

Aragon (a city council member serving as mayor) was included on the email, so was presumably aware of Bailon’s response by last week. It’s unclear whether Bailon let other allies on the council know about the $1 million deadline before claiming the email was “unopened” and “lost” one week after he opened and responded to it.

This email chain directly contradicts Bailon’s claim, made in an email to the entire council and Burien’s city attorney on November 3, that “the email from Shannon Braddock went unopened and became lost until today due to the more than 150 email messages that I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church. I have since reviewed all unopened email message.”

Bailon, in short, opened Braddock’s message and responded to it but did not inform the full council until a full week later, then claimed he hadn’t seen the email because his inbox was jammed with messages about a proposal from a council member with whom he has frequently clashed.

We have contacted the city’s spokesperson for a response to the new information.

ORIGINAL POST:

King County has given the city of Burien a deadline of November 27 to use or lose the $1 million the county offered to build a shelter in the city back in early June.

The initial offer included 35 Pallet shelters, which can accommodate up to two people each, along with a land swap in which the county would provide garage space to a Toyota dealer who is currently renting a city-owned parking lot to store his excess inventory, and in exchange Burien would host the shelter at that site. The Burien City Council voted down that offer in July, and since then has proposed and rejected several other sites, including a spot at the end of a SeaTac airport runway that the Port of Seattle said was “not an option for any sort of residential or housing use.”

In an email to Burien councilmembers on Friday, Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon blamed his failure to open the Deputy County Executive’s message about the $1 million until today—a full week after he received it last Friday—on “the more than 150 emails I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church.” It’s unclear why constituent emails that started coming in on Sunday would make it impossible to open an email sent the previous Friday.

In a letter dated October 27, Deputy King County Executive Shannon Braddock told City Manager Adolfo Bailon and Mayor Sofia Aragon that while the county “appreciate[s] the City’s work to find a suitable location,” the source of the $1 million is time-limited federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that need to be used before they expires. “[I]f the City of Burien has not identified a suitable location by November 27, 2023, we will choose to allocate this money to support homelessness response through a different process and withdraw the current offer. The new process will still allow Burien to potentially receive the funding, but is not a guarantee of funding.”

In an email to Burien councilmembers on Friday, Bailon characterized the letter as “a 30-day notice of intent to withdraw its offer.”

He also blamed his failure to open the Deputy County Executive’s message about the $1 million until today—a full week after he received it last Friday—on “the more than 150 emails I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church.” It’s unclear why constituent emails sent over the course of a week beginning last Sunday would make it impossible to open an email about a $1 million contribution from the county since the previous Friday.

As we reported yesterday, a nonprofit run by Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore reached an agreement with the church to open a temporary clean and sober encampment at the church.

The city has shown that it will fast-track funding for projects that have the support of the council majority and the city manager. On Monday, as I reported this morning, Bailon signed a no-bid, contract with Discover Burien, a business group that is expected to subcontract with The More We Love—a controversial nonprofit run by a Kirkland real estate broker named Kristine Moreland—to respond to encampments in the city and “serve as [the Burien Police Department’s] primary de-escalation effort.”

Burien Signs $49,000 Contract for Encampment Response, with Controversial Private Sweeps Provider Doing the Work

Image via City of Burien

Editor’s note: This post has been updated and expanded since this morning.

Editor’s note 2: This post has been updated on Friday, November 3 to include a link to the contract and more details about its terms.

By Erica C. Barnett

The city of Burien has signed a two-month, $49,000 contract with Discover Burien, a local business association, which—according to multiple sources—will hire a controversial nonprofit called The More We Love as a subcontractor to respond to and remove encampments in the city. The city would only officially confirm the contract with Discover Burien, but the city council has been publicly discussing the contract with The More We Love for months.

City manager Adolfo Bailon has the authority to sign contracts under $50,000 without seeking approval from the city council. The contract is signed by Bailon and Debra George, the director of Discover Burien.

The More We Love is a recently formed nonprofit founded and run by Kirkland mortgage broker Kristine Moreland, whose prior experience with homelessness involves volunteering with Union Gospel Mission, a religious nonprofit that runs a shelter in downtown Seattle, and offering paid encampment “sweeps” at a rate of $515 for each person removed.

The owner of Grocery Outlet property where a group of unsheltered people had relocated after an earlier sweep paid Moreland’s group to remove them from his property earlier this year. In emails to city officials obtained by PubliCola, Moreland has disparaged longstanding outreach and case management groups like REACH and implied that she had access to resources that mainstream homeless groups do not. However, there is little evidence for Moreland’s claims, and experienced outreach providers working in the city say the population of the encampment hasn’t significantly changed over the seven months since the city swept the group from its original location outside Burien City Hall.

The Burien spokesperson did not respond to questions about why the city is not contracting directly with The More We Love, as originally proposed. However, the issue of insurance has come up repeatedly in public meetings about the proposal, and The More We Love may not have the minimum $2 million commercial insurance policy required to contract with the city.

The contract focuses on the encampment’s latest location, at Ambaum Blvd. SW and SW 120th St, along with any “other Burien sites requiring services/support.” The three-page scope of work is vague and does not include any performance metrics or deliverables— routine components  of typical homeless service contracts. Instead, it says the subcontractor—that is, The More We Love—will perform a  “general intake of all camp residents,” “communicate with all partners performing work as necessary,” and “identify options for shelter” that are, at a minimum, “indoors.”

According to the contract, the subcontractor will also “serve as [the Burien Police Department’s] primary de-escalation effort” and be “the primary conveyer of ordinance-specific information to campers that affect the unhoused community.”

In September, the Burien City Council passed an ordinance banning unsheltered people from sleeping in the city overnight. After that vote, Councilmember Sarah Moore—who opposed the ban—asked for a public briefing before Bailon signed the potential contract, which at least some city council members still haven’t seen.  Although a four-member council majority has expressed support for paying Moreland’s group to remove encampments, a public hearing would have provided an opportunity for dissenting council members and the public to weigh in and ask questions about the contract.

George, the director of Discover Burien, is also the founder and operator of a local animal shelter called Burien CARES. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the group rented a city-owned lot—at the bargain-basement price of $185 a month—where unsheltered people had moved after an encampment sweep in March and promptly forced them to leave. The city charged Burien CARES bargain-basement rent—just $185 a month—and the land is now a dog park.

Burien CARES founder and director Debra George, meanwhile, was recently sued by three of the animal shelter’s employees, who alleged that their job duties routinely required them to work more than 40 hours a week, without additional pay, and that one of the three employees was improperly classified as an overtime-exempt manager.

George was recently sued by three of Burien CARES’ employees, who alleged that they were routinely required to work more than 40 hours a week, without additional pay, in order to perform their duties, and that one of the three employees was improperly classified as an overtime-exempt manager.

The “animal control and shelter operations were chronically understaffed,” the lawsuit claims, “and the operation and maintenance of both required Plaintiffs to regularly work more than 40 hours per week, even though Defendant George indicated they would never be paid for overtime hours.”

In her response, George denied most of the allegations, and said the three employees would often show up late and leave early to keep from going over 40 hours a week, “because they were told repeatedly that overtime was not authorized.” The response also argues that George was not the workers’ employer or supervisor, but a fellow employee of Burien CARES; however, George founded and incorporated the organization, serves as its only registered agent, and is the group’s primary governor—a person with authority to make decisions on behalf of a business.

As we’ve reported, The More We Love’s Moreland was sanctioned in 2020 for violating consumer mortgage lending laws, and was allowed to keep her license in exchange for fines that she subsequently failed to pay. Additionally, she has faced criminal and civil charges related to an alleged DUI and unpaid credit card bills. Earlier this year, she distributed a detailed spreadsheet containing personal details and sensitive medical information about dozens of homeless individuals to political allies, police, and the real estate investor who paid her group to sweep the Grocery Outlet property.

Seattle Workers Hold “Practice Pickets” Over Wages; New Wrinkles in Burien Encampment Plans

City workers rally for higher wages and better working conditions in September.

1. On Thursday, city of Seattle employees will participate in rolling “practice pickets” that will serve as a kind of dress rehearsal for a potential strike if Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office does not agree to cost of living and wage adjustments that represent real wage increases. The pickets, organized by the Coalition of City Unions, will take place at a city facility in the International District starting at 6, in the area around City Hall at 11:30, and in South Lake Union at 3:30.

Negotiations between Harrell’s office and unions representing thousands of city workers started off on a bad foot last spring, when Harrell proposed a 1 percent “cost of living adjustment” that was about 7 percent below the rate of inflation. (Any pay increase below the rate of inflation represents a real wage cut because it costs more to buy the same goods and services, such as groceries and rent.) Since then, union sources say, the mayor’s office has barely budged, even as Harrell has proposed significant new spending on new programs like Shotspotter and agreed to cost of living increases for nonprofit homeless service providers.

Last week, City Councilmember Kshama Sawant proposed an amendment to the 2024 budget that would increase the JumpStart payroll tax to raise $40 million to fund city worker wage increases. “I don’t believe that there’s any excuse for asking essential city workers to accept a wage cut, with or without this budget amendment,” Sawant said. “However, making these funds available will make it crystal clear that the city has the funds to offer a wage increase that, at the very least, is not a wage cut in real terms.”

Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda signed on to the amendment, although both made a point of saying that city employees provide core services that the city should prioritize with or without additional funding from JumpStart.

2. UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson for the city of Burien confirmed that the city has signed a contract with Discover Burien, a local business association, that will subcontract with a group run by a Kirkland mortgage broker to respond to and remove encampments in the city. This post has been updated accordingly.

The city of Burien has signed a two-month, $40,000 contract for encampment removal services with the local business association Discover Burien, which will subcontract The More We Love—a controversial nonprofit run by Kirkland mortgage broker and longtime Union Gospel Mission volunteer Kristine Moreland—to respond to and remove encampments. Discover Burien is headed up by Debra George, the operator of an animal shelter called Burien CARES.

The city did not respond to questions about why they are not contracting directly with The More We Love, as originally proposed. However, the issue of insurance has come up repeatedly in public meetings about the proposal, and The More We Love may not have the minimum $2 million commercial insurance policy required to contract with the city.

Burien CARES is the same animal shelter that rented a city-owned lot—at the bargain-basement price of $185 a month—where unsheltered people were living. The company promptly swept the encampment, and the area is now a dog park.

Last month, shortly after Burien passed a new law banning its unsheltered residents from sleeping in the city overnight, Councilmember Sarah Moore asked for a public briefing on the potential contract, which City Manager Adolfo Bailon has the authority to sign without any public process. Currently, there is no such briefing on the council’s calendar. Bailon has the authority to sign contracts under $50,000 without council approval.

Burien CARES founder and director Debra George, meanwhile, was recently sued by three of Burien CARES’ employees, who alleged that they were routinely required to work more than 40 hours a week, without pay, in order to perform their duties and that one of the three employees was improperly classified as an overtime-exempt manager.

As we’ve reported, Moreland was sanctioned in 2020 for violating consumer mortgage lending laws. Earlier this year, she distributed a detailed spreadsheet containing personal details and sensitive medical information about dozens of homeless individuals to political allies, police, and a businessman who paid The More We Love to remove an encampment on his property.

George, meanwhile, was recently sued by three of Burien CARES’ employees, who alleged that they routinely had to work more than 40 hours a week without additional pay in order to perform their duties, and that one of the three employees was improperly classified as an overtime-exempt manager.

In her response, George denied most of the allegations, and said the three employees would often show up late and leave early to keep from going over 40 hours a week, “because they were told repeatedly that overtime was not authorized.”

The response also argues that George was not the workers’ employer or supervisor, but a fellow employee of Burien CARES; however, George founded and incorporated the organization, serves as its only registered agent, and is the group’s primary governor—a person with authority to make decisions on behalf of a business.

3. Burien Councilmember Cydney Moore, who is running for reelection this year, is the director of the Burien Community Support Coalition, a nonprofit that announced plans yesterday to open a sanctioned encampment for three months at the Oasis Home Church in the Sunnydale neighborhood. According to an announcement from the group, residents of the encampment will have to comply with a strict code of conduct: No drugs or alcohol (including in the surrounding neighborhood), no visitors, and no “nuisance behavior” at the encampment or in the vicinity, such as “littering and loitering.”

“We take couples, we take pets, and we’re trying to collaborate with local providers who already work with the homeless population here,” Moore said. Religious institutions have special rights to host unsheltered people on their property under state law, which restricts local jurisdictions’ authority to ban encampments, “safe lots” for people living in their vehicles, and other sheltering activities churches conduct as part of their mission.

The code of conduct “is going to be a barrier for a lot of people,” including some in active addiction, Moore said, “but we had to meet conditions to even get this agreement with the church.” Worries about safety, noise, and intoxication around encampments “are valid concerns,” Moore added, and “even if we could take everyone with no [limitations], we don’t have the capacity to take everyone.”

According to KING 5, which spoke to City Manager Bailon about the proposal, Bailon said the church would need to seek a special temporary use permit to host unsheltered people on its property. The city has the ability (but is not required) to grant temporary use permits for up to 60 days per year for uses that don’t conform to local zoning; however, it’s unclear that the city has the authority to impose such a requirement on a church.

Seattle’s Vehicle Impoundment Policy Betrays Contempt, Not Compassion, for Those Living Homeless

By The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett

In January 2023, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority announced that addressing homelessness in King County would cost about $12 billion and require “tens of thousands more units of housing.” Local officials immediately balked. Two earlier plans to address homelessness were unable to address homelessness successfully, so why should the region spend billions more?

But the alternative, especially for people living in vehicles, has been increasingly onerous and cruel.

This past summer, I filed public records requests with the city of Seattle for all vehicle impounds between January to May 2023. I filtered these impounds to include only that were most likely to be vehicles used as residences: RVs, Campers, Detached Trailers, and Buses, and found that 1,441 of these four vehicle types were impounded over just five months.

The four most common impound reasons included, in order of severity, were: Violations of the city rule requiring vehicles to move every 72 hours, improper licensing (such as expired tabs), having a detached trailer, and parking in prohibited areas, such as residential neighborhoods and retail zones.  The list justifying impounds also included another 17 violations, such as: Parking too close to a sidewalk or a stop sign; blocking a trail; determined to be junk; illegal blocking, such parking in front of a hydrant; parking in a loading zone; improper curb orientation; double-parking; and parking in an intersection, all as determined by a parking enforcement or police officer.

When the KCRHA has to use its limited funds, which come largely from Seattle, simply to keep people cast to the streets by impounds alive, that money is wasted and success continues to elude us. People will blame the regional authority, when in fact, it is as much the failure of every city to address their frequently punitive control of the streets.

The city does not offer people shelter prior to any of these impounds, since in every case, their owners are violating some law. Yet in my view, this appears to constitute a violation of Martin v Boise, the Ninth District Court of Appeals ruling that requires cities to offer shelter before they order anyone living in homelessness to move from a public location.

Why are so few people who are swept while unsheltered—and living in a vehicles counts as unsheltered homelessness, according to HUD—not offered shelter? The city may well argue that Martin does not apply to vehicle residents since the ruling says nothing about people living in vehicles. Maybe more compelling is that there is nothing close to an adequate amount of shelter available. And for people living in any vehicle other than a passenger car, leaving their vehicle for a single bed in a shelter—basically all that is ever offered—is nonsensical.

This shortage of shelter spaces also impacts the formal process the city uses for responding to vehicle residents who are asked to move by the Unified Care Team, which carries out the city’s formal Remediations, Relocations, and Removals program. Under this program, staff from the Human Services Department are required to offer shelter to every unhoused person who must move. Vehicle residents who decline shelter and cannot move have their vehicles impounded.

But even if the city offers some kind of shelter in every case—which some city-funded outreach providers dispute—if the people living in a vehicle are: 1) a couple; 2) pet owners; 3) with children; 4) trans; 5) and so on, there often are no appropriate shelters.

During 12 years of outreach in Seattle to those living in vehicles, I’ve seen that funding is only half the answer to addressing homelessness. Yes, money is needed to provide services and such. Yet elected officials also control the streets and all the public terrain where homeless persons encamp—the other half of the reality of homelessness. By enforcing laws to impound vehicles where people are living, the city is imposing brute force in the form of sweeps, setting back efforts to assist those living homeless to move toward stability.

Elected officials may well balk at the overall cost of addressing homelessness. But the hidden impounds I’ve described have a cost as well. When the KCRHA has to use its limited funds, which come largely from Seattle, simply to keep people cast to the streets by impounds alive, that money is wasted and success continues to elude us. People will blame the regional authority, when in fact, it is as much the failure of every city to address their frequently punitive control of the streets.

In Seattle, there was a better agreement from 2011 to 2020, through the Scofflaw Mitigation program initiated by the Mike McGinn administration. The 2011 Scofflaw Ordinance, which allowed the city to boot and impound vehicles if their owners had four or more unpaid tickets, threatened an enormous escalation of impounds. We in the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness approached the mayor and jointly formulated a partnership with parking Enforcement and the Municipal Court.

The group we formed was, and is, called the Scofflaw Mitigation Team, and for more than 10 years it kept impounds from tickets in the single digits. The current administration ended the program in 2022. Now, 1,441 impounds have occurred in just five months.

The agreement was that parking enforcement would inform us when any vehicle was close to accumulating four tickets, putting it at risk of impound. We would then do outreach to address the tickets and provide whatever the person needed to get their vehicle moving again. The group we formed was, and is, called the Scofflaw Mitigation Team, and for more than 10 years it kept impounds from tickets in the single digits. The current administration ended the program in 2022. Now, 1,441 impounds have occurred in just 5 months, from violations the administration has deemed impound-worthy.

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who during World War II sought to halt the harm in Germany, described the attitude of the nation’s leaders, which also spread among many of the German people, as “a contempt for humanity.” Does this describe some of the attitudes we who are housed have toward those unhoused? Does it describe some of the attitudes of those we’ve elected to govern? Do we have a collective “contempt” for the unhoused?

Key questions for our future include: Can we suspend law enforcement long enough to help the vulnerable? Can’t we do better for our vulnerable neighbors than “sweeps?” Are we half-hearted?

These are questions for jurisdictional leaders and for all of us who vote for them. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has stated it is against sweeps as a tool for addressing homelessness. Why? Because it wastes precious money, and because too many people are dying. But the authority cannot change exacting harm via the law without elected leaders putting unhoused people first, or at a minimum, setting aside “contempt.”

The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett is the director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, in residence at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church.

As the Workers Behind the KCRHA’s Abandoned Partnership for Zero Program, We Were Betrayed. And So Were You.

Editor’s Note: As part of its privately funded Partnership for Zero effort to end visible homelessness in downtown Seattle, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority hired several dozen “systems advocates” with personal experience of homelessness to help to hundreds of people living unsheltered downtown navigate the byzantine homelessness system and access resources and housing. The initial idea was simple: The systems advocates would get to know people living downtown and work to overcome their barriers to housing, rapidly connecting them to either permanent supportive housing or subsidized, private-market apartments and helping them sustain that housing.

The homelessness authority revamped the program several times over its first year, changing the systems’ advocates roles and creating geographic “zones” within downtown in an attempt to address smaller, more manageable areas one at a time. But the authority never came up with a sustainable long-term funding source for the program, assuming—despite warnings from existing service providers and outside experts—that it would be able to rely on a novel use of an existing Medicaid program to pay for ongoing operations.

Last month, the KCRHA shut down the program, laying off dozens of systems advocates, including many who were recently homeless. Some had moved to Seattle from other cities or given up their housing vouchers to take jobs at the agency, and are now facing the possibility of becoming homeless again. This piece is by a group of system advocates who reached out to PubliCola to tell their story.

 

As former Systems Advocates for the recently shuttered Partnership for Zero program, we have been deeply disappointed in and betrayed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as have all of you.

While much has been made of us being hired because of our lived experience of homelessness, the majority of us also had years of direct homeless service and community-building experience and were considered some of the best in our field, which is why we were chosen for this team. We were tasked with building a trauma-informed, holistic approach to deal with one symptom of the systematic economic and social abandonment of Seattle’s poor and working class. All of us signed on to spend five years of our lives building this approach. We left stable jobs and some of us traveled across the country to participate.

From day one, however, our team was undermined by a constant barrage of consultants and bureaucrats, most of whom had spent years failing up the ladder within the Homeless Industrial Complex. Our program was stalled for months at a time by indecisive management more concerned with pleasing politicians than fulfilling our mission.

We were also forced to waste three weeks trying to resolve an “encampment” at Occidental Park, where no people actually camped, because the mayor wanted to put in an ice skating rink; another four months navigating clients who mostly came from outside downtown Seattle from hotels into housing; and the last two months resolving another non-encampment at a dog park in Belltown so the hip restaurants across the street could sell overpriced biscuits and $8 tacos without having to gaze upon the results of decades of bad public policy. These were our assignments, instead of working in the four actual encampments we had repeatedly identified as good candidates for a housing-first approach.

Some of us would not have pursued this job, as this layoff has put several of us in a position to be homeless again ourselves. This action by management has resurfaced feelings of instability in our own lives, and most certainly in the lives of our clients

In addition, it is shameful that the equitable wages that we received for our skilled and challenging work have been cited as part of the reason for the closure of this program. Our original mandate was to do housing navigation and stabilization, which is normally the work of two separate full-time positions; later, the KCRHA expanded our jobs to include outreach as well, even though the authority is already paying longstanding and skilled organizations to perform that work.

At the end of the day, King County and the city of Seattle got a steal, off our backs. We cannot expect to break the cycle of homelessness by supporting anything less than an equitable wage for the people who do this work. That brings us to KCRHA’s labor practices. We were hired as full-time, permanent employees. Our program was never described as a “pilot” in our hiring paperwork, job descriptions, or any of the founding documents. The first time we heard the word “pilot,” or any official word about the precariousness of Partnership for Zero funding, was when KCRHA management decided to discontinue our team.

Some of us would not have pursued this job, as this layoff has put several of us in a position to be homeless again ourselves. This action by management has resurfaced feelings of instability in our own lives, and most certainly in the lives of our clients. KCRHA has also stalled union negotiations for the entirety of our team’s existence and is now pleading poverty in a transparent attempt to avoid paying out our sick and vacation hours, while simultaneously hiring nearly a dozen new administrative and management staff in the last two months.

The first System Advocates were not hired until June 29, 2022, and the program was not at functional capacity until late October of last year. In the short time we were allowed to work toward our mission, we were able to permanently house hundreds of people. We count this as a great success. Compared to downtowns in other major cities, our work has been some of the best in the country. If even 40 percent of the people we were able to put in rapid rehousing are allowed to economically and socially stabilize, taxpayers will save more than the cost of the program in carceral and medical costs alone, as well as reaping the benefits of a healthier society.

We could’ve done much more if our program was given the chance. But the KCRHA is clearly not living by its founding ideas of creating a homeless response system that centers the needs and voices of the unhoused. Instead, the agency seems intent on becoming yet another bureaucratic barrier to getting people housed. We expected more, and the staff, our unhoused neighbors, and the people of King County deserve better.

Council Debates Harm Reduction, RV Storage and Jumpstart Tax as Annual Budget Deliberations Begin

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget turns an estimated $212 million funding shortfall in 2026 into a $247 million shortfall, according to a city council staff analysis.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson raised objections to funding several small harm-reduction programs using funds from the state’s settlements with opioid makers and distributors on Thursday, saying that the funds might better be spent on “treatment” rather than drug user health programs at the Hepatitis Education Project (HEP), Evergreen Treatment Services, and the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance.

These programs, which total less than $500,000, were originally funded using money the council set aside for a safe consumption site; in the face of strong political opposition to that idea, including from former mayor Jenny Durkan, the city worked with advocates to come up with alternatives that would still fulfill the original mission of harm reduction and health care without requiring a physical site.

Nelson, who has advocated for the city to fund traditional, abstinence-based inpatient treatment, said she wanted to know “what is the harm that is being reduced by the use of this money, and how do we measure the the performance of that investment? Because I know people know that I prefer that our scarce dollars should be used for treatment.” Although the three groups received funding from King County through a competitive Request for Proposals process, Nelson said they should go through another one, since the funding source is new.

According to City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, any lot for storing RVs that were previously used as residences has to be directly adjacent to a noncongregate shelter site—a requirement that has had the effect of virtually prohibiting such a lot. Davison said RVs could be allowed in this situation for up to 90 days, with extensions on a “case-by-case basis if the resident is working in good faith towards permanent housing”—a significantly more paternalistic approach than the previously approved proposal.

Both council president Debora Juarez and Councilmember Lisa Herbold seemed exasperated by Nelson’s objections. Juarez said it was already the city’s policy to fund both conventional treatment and harm reduction, while Herbold noted that the King County Board of Health, which includes Herbold and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, just unanimously approved a resolution supporting harm reduction as one use for the opioid settlement funds.

The council, Herbold pointed out, just approved spending $5 million in block grant funds for a new low-barrier opioid treatment facility, along with $2 million for a post-overdose recovery site, on Tuesday.

Another odd detail that emerged on Tuesday: Although the city allocated $1 million a year last year for people who had been living in RVs to store their vehicles for up to a year while they transitioned to living in shelter or permanent housing, the money has not been spent. The reason? According to City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, any lot for storing RVs that were previously used as residences has to be directly adjacent to a noncongregate shelter site—a requirement that has had the effect of virtually prohibiting such a lot.

The reason for allowing people to hang on to their old vehicles, at least for a while, while they transition into shelter is obvious. Many people are reluctant to move from the relative safety and privacy of their own RV into a shelter bed or tiny house, and don’t go into shelter as a result. If people can keep their RVs as a backup option, they’re much more likely to say yes to offers of shelter.

In a memo, an advisor to the city’s Human Services Department told the KCRHA that Davison’s office had determined that RV storage is “not identified as a permitted princip[al] use in the Seattle Land Use Code and is prohibited” everywhere in the city. RVs, the city attorney’s office said, could be allowed as an “accessory use” to a tiny house village for up to 90 days, but only if each resident who owned an RV started meeting with a case manager within 90 days to move toward permanent housing; extensions allowing people to store their vehicles longer “could be granted on a case-by-case basis if the resident is working in good faith towards permanent housing.”

This significantly more paternalistic version of the original proposal will require a provider willing and able to meet the city’s new conditions and restrictions. KCRHA put out an initial “letter of intent” seeking providers that are interested in opening an RV storage lot and a tiny house village next to each other on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Councilmember Lisa Herbold called the city attorney’s interpretation a “pretty significant misunderstanding” of the reason people want to store their RVs while they stay in a shelter. “The idea is is that this is a lot—much like a tow lot—where people voluntarily allow their vehicles to be towed into a fenced-in area,” Herbold said. “There are tow lots all over the city and they don’t all have to be next to housing for formerly homeless people.”

The council is just starting its annual budget deliberation process. At a high level, the council will be debating how best to prepare for a “structural” general-fund budget deficit that’s now estimated at $212 million in 2025, an improvement from earlier predictions. Harrell’s budget plan would increase that structural deficit by adding $51 million in new expenditures, of which almost $28 million are ongoing annual costs.

Although the general fund is actually projected to do better in 2024 than anticipated, a lot of one-time funds that created new programs during COVID are set to expire, and the new council, which will likely have at least five new members, will have to come up with new revenues and, most likely, cuts.

Given that reality, it’s likely the council will scrutinize Harrell’s decision to add 110 new city employees next year, most of them permanent positions that create ongoing new funding obligations for the city. Overall, Harrell’s 2024 budget adds $51 million to the 2024 budget the council and Mayor Bruce Harrell “endorsed” last year) and increases the estimated deficit in 2025 to $247 million. Of the 110 positions, 40 are funded through the general fund—the part of the budget that pays for most of the city’s operations—and another 16.5 come from Jumpstart.

Jumpstart revenues are now expected to come in about $21 million below previous predictions; the tax is based on payroll expenses for the highest-paid employees at the city’s very largest companies, which makes it susceptible to swings when big tech companies cut jobs or move offices elsewhere.

The mayor’s proposal would extend an exemption from the tax for highly paid employees of nonprofit hospitals who make between $150,000 and $400,000. If this exemption was allowed to expire as scheduled, the city would take in an additional $5 million. Most of the private hospitals in Washington state are nonprofits and are exempt from many other taxes.

Harrell’s budget transfers $27 million from the Jumpstart tax fund to the general fund, an ongoing practice that the council has approved every year for the past several years to keep COVID-era programs going. Much of that includes new spending beyond what the council approved last year in the “endorsed” 2024 budget.

For example, the mayor’s budget would use revenues from the Jumpstart tax—which are supposed to be dedicated to affordable housing, small businesses, equitable development, and Green New Deal investments—to pay for higher human service worker pay, relocation costs for a tiny house village that needs to move off Sound Transit property; and subsidies for child care workers.

Nelson noted that she was the only councilmember to vote against raising human service workers’ pay, because she thinks the goal of eventually raising human service workers’ wages by 37 percent—the increase a University of Washington study concluded they would need to get to parity with similarly skilled workers—is unrealistic.

“The taxpayers are paying for a lot,” she said, citing several voter-approved human services levies.

“Regardless of what jurisdiction, it is—city, county, state, federal—it’s all taxpayer money,” Councilmember Lisa Herbold responded, and noted that other local jurisdictions, like King County, are also contributing to higher wages for human services workers, who often make so little that they qualify for social service programs themselves.

Harrell’s budget does not continue funding for a one-time 4 percent pay increase, plus an ongoing 3.6 percent increase, for homeless service workers, which the city had hoped the KCRHA would figure out a way to fund long term. Paying for these pay increases would cost the city an additional $1.9 million a year.

Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who represents the University District, suggested that it would potentially harm the people living at the tiny house village to “quibbl[e] about the pots of money”—a position that runs counter to his frequent calls for audits and “accountability” for programs he believes may be wasting money.

The mayor’s proposal also includes $1 million a year in new funding to evaluate the effectiveness of the Jumpstart tax, which would include two new permanent employees and unspecified additional expenses. It would also extend an exemption from the tax for highly paid employees of nonprofit hospitals who make between $150,000 and $400,000. If this exemption was allowed to expire as scheduled, the city would take in an additional $5 million. Most of the private hospitals in Washington state, including Virginia Mason, Providence/Swedish, and Pacific Medical Centers, are organized as nonprofits and are exempt from many other taxes.

Given how often the council has had to agree to exemptions from the spending plan since Jumpstart went into effect in 2021, a council staff memo asks semi-rhetorically, “is it time to consider expanding the areas of spending the JS Fund can be used for on a permanent basis?” Jumpstart architect Teresa Mosqueda may object to changing the spending plan, as she has in the past, but she’s likely to be replaced by a new, appointed council member next year, assuming she wins election to the King County Council.