Category: housing

With the Departure of Founding CEO Dones, What Comes Next for the Region’s Homelessness Agency?

By Erica C. Barnett

When the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s founding CEO, Marc Dones, announced they were stepping down earlier this month (news PubliCola broke on Twitter from vacation), reactions among homeless service providers, advocates, and agency insiders ranged from sighs of relief to deep concern over what’s next for the beleaguered agency.

Over the past two years, since Dones was hired in March 2021, the KCRHA has struggled to find its footing through a series of pivots, funding battles with Seattle and King County, and internal and public debates over its mission.

Did Seattle and King County create a regional homelessness agency to solve homelessness as quickly as possible, or is the KCRHA merely a clearinghouse for homeless service contracts previously administered by Seattle and King County, its two primary funders? Should the KCRHA set regional policies and spending priorities and expect its member cities to fall in line, or should cities have freedom to establish their own strategies based on their own local politics and context? Is “housing first” a nonnegotiable goal, or is shelter, even basic shelter with mats on the floor, a critical part of the region’s approach to homelessness?

One thing is clear: With Dones out, there is a power vacuum at KCRHA that will be difficult to fill, in a very practical sense: Despite the usual talk of a “thorough national search,” it’s unlikely the agency will be overwhelmed with qualified applicants. Dones, readers may recall, was the second pick for the position, and ascended to the job after the KCRHA board’s first choice, Regina Cannon, turned it down in 2020. The position now comes pre-loaded with two years of baggage and more urgency than ever; a new CEO will need not just a big-picture vision for the region, but a plan to show swift progress on homelessness and get the authority back on track.

Prior to taking the CEO position, Dones was a homelessness consultant whose firm, the National Innovation Service, created the framework for the KCRHA. As the architect of the regional plan, Dones frequently fought efforts to alter it, battling with local leaders over funding priorities, questioning the expertise of longtime service providers, and expending scarce political capital on ambitious plans that didn’t always pan out—like an early proposal to make big investments in safe parking lots for the thousands of people living in their vehicles across King County.

Under Dones’ leadership, the KCRHA established a clear picture of the homelessness problem in King County, but the agency also fell behind schedule on many of its initial goals.

Dones’ supporters praised them as a visionary who emphasized the disproportionate impact of homelessness on people of color,  particularly Black King County residents, foregrounded and empowered people with direct, “lived” experience of homelessness, and never shied away from telling the unvarnished truth about what it would take to truly end homelessness in the region. Critics said Dones elevated lived experience over practical expertise, engaged in unnecessary battles with potential allies like Mayor Bruce Harrell and homeless service providers, and focused on the 10,000-foot view while neglecting ground-level basics, like opening severe weather shelters and paying homeless services providers on time.

Under Dones’ leadership, the KCRHA established a clear picture of the homelessness problem in King County—tens of thousands of people are living unsheltered, in vehicles, and in emergency housing such as hotels and congregate shelters—and housing or even sheltering them all is a problem with a price tag of billions of dollars a year.

But the agency also fell behind schedule on many of its initial goals, including relatively short-term commitments like the plan, announced with great fanfare in February 2022, to end unsheltered homelessness in downtown Seattle in “as little as 12 months” through a public-private partnership with the corporate-backed nonprofit agency We Are In. Although efforts to respond to homelessness continue downtown—including escalated sweeps by the city of Seattle, combined with more thoughtful one-off projects like the Third Avenue Project—unsheltered homelessness remains a pervasive issue in the area.

The plan, known as Partnership for Zero, was for the KCRHA to use private donations to hire dozens of outreach workers with “lived experience,” who would serve as a single point of contact for people living unsheltered downtown, navigating them “longitudinally” and directly from street homelessness into permanent housing, much of it provided by private landlords motivated by a desire to help solve the homelessness crisis. The coordinating body for this partnership is a “housing command center” that meets daily to discuss clients’ individual cases, with the goal of moving them into permanent housing that works for them.

From inception, there were a number of issues with this approach, chief among them the fact that Seattle—unlike, say, New Orleans and Houston, two cities that have successfully moved people directly from the streets to housing—does not have an abundance of vacant apartments, much less housing low-income people can afford. (The Partnership for Zero plan assumes that, in many cases, people will begin paying full rent after a year or so of subsidy).

The plan also assumes that Medicaid will become the primary funding source for the partnership, an assumption many providers have called premature, given the difficulties existing agencies face securing Medicaid reimbursement even for services that are traditionally covered by the federal program.

By setting up a in-house outreach program that duplicated work the agency’s own nonprofit outreach contractors have been providing for years, the KCRHA also created an unequal system in which government employees receive substantially higher pay, and access to more housing resources, than existing outreach providers. This two-track system has understandably irked some nonprofit outreach agencies, who have protested that setting up a parallel system puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to helping clients and retaining qualified staff, who can earn far more money doing the same job for the KCRHA.

The agency’s initial five-year plan—widely, if somewhat unfairly, criticized for being a “$12 billion plan to end homelessness”—included a number of unforced errors, beyond its eye-popping price tag.

More importantly, the partnership hasn’t produced the results it promised, putting about 200 people so far on a “path” toward housing, according to the KCRHA—one reason agency leaders could sunset the program in the post-Dones era.

One criticism of the KCRHA, under Dones’ leadership, is that Dones’ big-picture proposals have sometimes been at odds with political and practical realities. For example, the agency’s initial five-year plan—widely, if somewhat unfairly, criticized for being a “$12 billion plan to end homelessness”—included a number of unforced errors, beyond its eye-popping price tag.

Under the agreement that established the KCRHA, the five-year plan was supposed to set out practical goals for the first five years of agency operations, with the goal of reducing homelessness among specific population groups. Instead, the initial version of the plan laid out what it would cost, in theory, to eliminate unsheltered homelessness in five years. (The plan does not deal directly with housing, which is the responsibility of other agencies, like the city of Seattle’s Office of Housing.) The plan proposed spending billions of dollars a year on shelter, along with thousands of new “safe parking” spaces for people living in their vehicles—an utterly impractical proposal, given the region’s inability to site even one permanent safe lot in more than a decade of efforts to do so.

The initial five-year plan also called for reducing funding for tiny house villages, singling out this shelter type (along with the region’s tiny house village provider, the Low Income Housing Institute) as undesirable despite the fact that the city of Seattle, the KCRHA’s chief funder, prefers to fund tiny houses over almost every other form of shelter. Defending the proposal to cut funding for tiny houses while investing billions in other forms of shelter and parking lots for people to live in their cars, Dones said it was “just math,” pointing to a survey the agency conducted of about 180 homeless people that was used to determine the mix of services in the plan.

The proposal antagonized other existing shelter providers, too, by asserting that almost one in four shelter beds are vacant (and, by implication, useless). And it set off alarms among suburban city leaders because it called for the complete elimination of funding for congregate shelters—the only form of shelter that exists in many cities outside Seattle.

Ultimately, the agency adopted a rewritten plan that omitted most of the prescriptive language from the initial proposal, along with language criticizing the purported failures of the existing shelter system. While the original proposal included seven goals and dozens of sub-strategies, the plan adopted by the agency’s boards earlier this month focuses on “one goal”: Reducing unsheltered homelessness and preventing homeless people from dying. More than 30 pages lighter than the original proposal, the new five-year plan meets the bare minimum requirements of the KCRHA’s charter while allowing plenty of room for future leaders to pick their own priorities. Continue reading “With the Departure of Founding CEO Dones, What Comes Next for the Region’s Homelessness Agency?”

The 2023 Housing Levy Renewal is Meeting The Moment

An overview of the Seattle Housing Levy renewal plan, via City of Seattle

By Patience Malaba and Jane Hopkins, RN

Nearly every day, our organizations hear from workers, employers, and housing providers about the tremendous need for more housing options across Seattle. Just how big is the need? The Washington State Department of Commerce just released new projections that the city will need about 112,000 new units over the next 20 years.

To get there, we’ll need to maximize all the tools in our toolbox. The good news is that there is momentum. The state legislature went big and bold for changes that will make an impact, by investing in the housing trust fund and adopting reforms that allow more missing middle housing around the state.

In Seattle, these improvements work in concert with a proven housing program that is up for renewal this year: The seven-year housing levy. Mayor Bruce Harrell released his levy proposal in March and the city council is leading a process to place it on the ballot this November.

For nearly four decades, the housing levy has been our city’s voter-approved funding source to build and maintain thousands of units of permanent, affordable homes for vulnerable and low-income residents. It is an unparalleled success story—not only supporting the construction of housing, but providing assistance to seniors to mitigate displacement, emergency rental funds to prevent homelessness, and targeted homeowner support to address inequities and build generational wealth.

The proposed $970 million levy package builds on this record of accomplishment, and is supported by a diverse coalition of leaders and stakeholders who have been rethinking how we leverage levy funds to meet urgent needs while better coordinating with other funding sources. Our shared goal and commitment has been to partner with the mayor and city council to present voters with the best possible levy proposal this November, to make the largest—and most lasting—impact on the diverse housing needs of our communities.

The next levy should build upon proven and cost-effective staffing and housing programs that restore lives. This includes both the physical residences and the staffing needed to keep people housed and on pathways to stability and recovery.

First, we must expand our commitment to the basics: Thousands of units of affordable homes for low-income, working, and vulnerable families and individuals. These include new construction, restoration and preservation of existing buildings, and purchase of buildings to maintain or improve affordability.

Second, we need to emphasize the importance of permanent, supportive housing solutions for people we are helping back into stable housing or those at risk of slipping into homelessness. Levy funds have, and must continue, to be part of the larger solution as we address the acute and individualized needs of people experiencing mental health and addiction crises. The next levy should build upon proven and cost-effective staffing and housing programs that restore lives. This includes both the physical residences and the staffing needed to keep people housed and on pathways to stability and recovery.

A third critical element is maintaining funds for emergency rental assistance—making sure a low-income worker who loses a paycheck or has an unexpected medical bill doesn’t lose their home, resulting in greater downstream costs and trauma. These simple and proven programs to prevent eviction and homelessness are essential to community stability and economic independence.

Finally, our levy renewal should continue progress in addressing past inequities that have led to lower rates of homeownership for communities of color, and greater rates of displacement and gentrification in historically redlined neighborhoods of Seattle. Thoughtful investments in down payment assistance, home repair, and other programs not only allow families to place and maintain roots in our city but provide for future generations to achieve goals of homeownership and financial equity.

Seattle voters have demonstrated a commitment to affordable housing again and again, dating back to our first housing levy in 1986. But we are not taking this commitment for granted. Voters need to know that the investments they approve are making an impact at a scale that makes a significant difference. The levy is not a cure-all for every housing need facing our city, but it is an integral part of the solution and must expand to continue serving as the foundation for a broader set of investments.

Now, with the need greater than ever, it’s critical to unify  around a bold vision for affordable housing. We look forward to building on this record of success with a 2023 levy renewal that meets this moment and provides a foundation for the future.

Patience Malaba is the Executive Director of the Housing Development Consortium, a 200-member association of affordable and low-income housing developers, providers, and advocates.

Jane Hopkins, RN, is the President of SEIU 1199NW, a union representing nurses, care providers, and other healthcare professionals.

After Ambiguous Election, Council Will Decide Whether to Expand Human Services Levy

Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus

By Erica C. Barnett

The nine-member King County Council is expected to vote this afternoon to place the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy renewal on the August ballot, although the size of the levy was still up for debate going into Tuesday’s meeting.

The two options on the table are a flat renewal at 10 cents per $1,000 of property value—the plan King County Executive Dow Constantine sent the council for approval back in February. A levy renewal at that level would raise about $565 million over six years, but—due to inflation and increased construction costs—would produce only about half as much housing as the expiring levy and require 45 percent cut to housing-related services. The other option on the table is to increase the levy to 12 cents per $1,000, which would raise about $678 million over the same period. The higher levy would cost the owner of a median ($838,000) home about $17 more per year.

The levy pays for housing, domestic violence prevention, senior centers, and supportive services for low-income and homeless veterans, seniors, and other King County residents. Over the last six years, it has raised around $350 million. Placing a levy on the ballot requires a six-vote supermajority, which means that in order to pass a higher, 12-cent tax, at least six of the county council’s seven Democrats will need to be on board.

In a special meeting last Friday, the county’s 12-member Regional Policy Committee, which makes recommendations to the county council, failed to reach agreement on the appropriate size for the levy, with five members voting for the lower rate and four holding out for the 12-cent option. (Because county council members on the RPC get two votes each, a 5-4 vote in favor of the smaller levy option resulted in a 6-6 vote).

Originally, the RPC was supposed to make a recommendation at its regularly scheduled meeting last Monday. Instead of voting then, the RPC decided to hold off on a recommendation until after Tuesday’s election on another countywide property tax levy—the King County Crisis Centers Levy, which will build five mental health crisis centers across the county, restore some residential mental health care beds, and increase behavioral health workers’ pay.

“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by] I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”—Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus

That levy is currently passing with nearly 57 percent of the vote. However, both County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who represents Bellevue, and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus noted last week that the levy was failing in parts of rural and suburban King County—suggesting a lack of appetite for higher property taxes outside Seattle.

“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by],” Backus said. “I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”

“I have to say that I hear very clearly the message that Mayor Backus is sending,” Balducci said. “We need to look at what our voters are telling us.”

Last week, around the same time that the RPC was meeting, King County Executive Dow Constantine posted a “community survey” asking voters to pick which services to cut in light of a $100 million projected 2025-2026 shortfall Constantine said was “due to the state’s arbitrary one percent limit on property tax collection.” Constantine’s announcement noted pointedly that services for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, gun violence prevention, programs for BIPOC youth, and public health clinics were all among the options on the chopping block.

In the legislative session that just concluded, lawmakers proposed, but did not pass, a bill that would have raised the cap to 3 percent. The bill never got a hearing. A fiscal analysis by legislative staff found that it would increase local tax revenues statewide by about $480 million during the 2025-2026 biennium. According to an analysis of the legislation by Constantine’s staff, however, a 3 percent cap would have increased property taxes for the median King County homeowner by $7.96 a year, an amount that would not make up for the $100 million biennial shortfall Constantine blamed on the legislature.

Alison Eisinger, the executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said it was absurd for Constantine to blame the legislature for the county’s budget shortfall, especially when he chose to leave money on the table by proposing a flat renewal of the levy.

“Are people supposed to think that government can actually be part of the solution if, on the one hand, government is saying we have a $100 million shortfall and we’re going to have to cut critical services, and on the other hand, they’re debating something that would cost the average homeowner pennies?” Eisinger said. “This is about elected officials not having the courage of their convictions and taking the necessary votes to let the public decide whether or not we are going to house veterans and seniors and support our communities.”

The services identified in the county’s survey are funded with the general fund, not the veterans’ levy, and the county can’t legally use levy dollars to supplant items that would ordinarily be paid for by the general fund; Eisinger’s comments were about the contrast between Constantine’s complaint about the county’s taxing authority and his support for the smallest version of the levy under consideration.

The last time the veterans, seniors, and human services levy was on the ballot, in November 2017, it passed with 69 percent of the vote.

Will Voter Approval of Crisis Centers Spur a More Ambitious Vets and Human Services Levy?

Revenue breakdown for a levy at 10 cents per $1,000; via King County

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Regional Policy Committee—a group of regional leaders that makes policy recommendations to the King County Council—voted narrowly on Monday to put off a decision about the size of the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy proposal, which will be on the ballot in August, until after Tuesday’s vote on a countywide behavioral health-care levy.

The crisis centers levy, which is currently winning by a 10-point margin, will create five new behavioral health crisis centers and fund new residential mental health care beds. A wide margin of victory for the crisis centers levy could provide a gauge of voters’ appetite for new taxes to fund human services; the last time the veterans’ levy was renewed, in 2017, it passed with 69 percent of the vote. The levy pays for housing, domestic violence prevention, senior centers, and supportive services for low-income and homeless veterans, seniors, and other King County residents.

The debate for the RPC and the county council itself comes down to how large the levy should be. Some committee members representing the suburban Sound Cities Association, including Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, supported renewing the levy at the current rate of 10 cents per $1,000 of property value, which Backus called a “true renewal,” rather than raising it to 12 cents, as the county council’s budget committee recommended last week.

Others, including King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who represents Bellevue, said a higher rate would help offset inflation, which has eroded the impact of the levy. “A straight rollover—even though, because of the way property tax calculations work, it would generate more dollars—… would not keep pace with the needs, and in fact we would be falling behind,” Balducci said.

Last week, after what Balducci called a “robust discussion,” the county council’s budget committee recommended boosting the initial levy in light of analysis showing that thanks to inflation, a flat renewal at the 10-cent level will significantly reduce the amount of housing the levy will build, and force outright cuts to housing operations and rental assistance.

Renewing the levy at the original, 10-cent initial level would cost the owner of a median (in 2024), $838,000 home just under $84 a year—an increase of about $17 a year from the current levy, whose rate has declined over time as property values have skyrocketed. (By law, the amount of funding the levy produces can only increase by 3.5 percent a year, so property value growth higher than that rate results in a reduction to the “effective rate” of the tax, which is currently just over 8 percent.) At that rate, the levy will raise about $564 million over six years.

A 12-cent rate, for comparison, would cost the same homeowner about $100 a year and raise around $678 million a year.

In previous levy discussions, opponents of a larger levy have suggested the higher levy could overburden homeowners who are struggling to make ends meet. In an RPC meeting earlier this month, Backus said, “I fear tax fatigue, and I want to make sure that both of these levies pass. I would love to see them go higher. But I just don’t think right now is the time when so many people are struggling.”

The RPC will hold a special meeting on Friday afternoon to vote on the levy, and the county council is scheduled to vote on a final ballot measure at its meeting Monday.

New State Housing Laws Could Mean Big Changes for Seattle

Under the new law, the area within a quarter mile of frequent transit, like light rail, can have up to six units per residential lot. Photo by Brett V, via Wikimedia Commons

By Ryan Packer

House Bill 1110, which allows new multifamily housing near transit stops, will impact residential neighborhoods in cities of all sizes across Washington state.

But some of the biggest changes will be in Seattle. The legislation, which passed last week, ties density to public transit infrastructure, allowing significantly more density—up to six units per lot—in areas near frequent transit stops.

The bill requires larger cities, including Seattle, to allow four residential units on every lot, and to allow six units on lots within a quarter-mile walking distance of bus rapid transit, light rail, and streetcar stops.

That means that in significant segments of Queen Anne, Madrona, Wallingford, and Mount Baker, where property owners are currently limited to building two accessory dwelling units—like a basement apartment and a backyard cottage—courtyard apartments, six-unit apartment buildings, and townhouses will now be legal.

Seattle’s lobbyists quietly worked to support bills like HB 1110 throughout the session, while trying to make sure they wouldn’t interfere with the city’s own density laws, such as Mandatory Housing Affordability; MHA requires developers to provide affordable housing or contribute to an affordable housing fee when building in the cities’ designated “urban villages.”

“It’s still Seattle and there’s still a process that we still have to go through, but I do think by having these frameworks in place now, it’s going to be able to help accelerate some of the development that we need, and have needed for a long time.”—Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34)

“I think it’s going to have a huge impact on Seattle,” Senator Joe Nguyen (D-34), whose district includes Pioneer Square, West Seattle, and Burien, said.

“Obviously, I don’t think it will be perfect, because it’s still Seattle and there’s still a process that we still have to go through, but I do think by having these frameworks in place now, it’s going to be able to help accelerate some of the development that we need, and have needed for a long time,” he said.

The legislature also made some significant changes to how the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) affects individual housing projects. Currently, as part of the official SEPA review process, anyone can appeal a proposed housing project over its potential impacts, such as loss of views, increased noise, or traffic. These delays can add months or years to project timelines, even if they’re ultimately dismissed. A group called Save Madison Valley, for example, appealed a proposed mixed housing and retail development featuring a PCC in both 2018 and 2020, delaying the project.

Senate Bill 5412, sponsored by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32, Shoreline), will limit those appeals. Under the adopted bill, if a proposed housing project complies with a city’s existing comprehensive plan, it will be categorically exempt from SEPA review, eliminating the lengthy appeal process that’s now common for developments that are controversial for reasons that have nothing to do with local environmental law.

The final version of the bill includes a provision that allows projects in Seattle to take advantage of it before other cities in Washington.

“A lot of the costs that are associated with delay and with litigation get passed on in the high cost of housing,” Councilmember Andrew Lewis, who represents downtown, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, said. “Ultimately as consumers we pay for all the lawyers that interject into these processes along the way.”

“We can legalize increased density, but it’s not going to come very quickly if you keep in place a lot of the tactics and methods that people use to slow it down or to whittle the ambition of the projects down,” he said.

“The debate [now] really is about how we can be thinking about new nodes of development, or new corridors where denser development will happen. How are we thinking about integrating things like corner stores, or other basic or essential services, into those neighborhoods?”—Futurewise Executive Director Alex Brennan

Lewis says intense environmental review of dense housing in the middle of cities is counterproductive and notes that dense housing provides an environmental benefit in its own right. “In the aggregate, it has a colossal environmental benefit. If we are unable to build a significant amount of new housing units in the City of Seattle, in an efficient amount of time, we’re just going to have compounding challenges relating to climate.”

A spokesman for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections said it was too early to say how the new batch of housing legislation would impact SDCI’s work.

The collective impact of changes to statewide zoning will impact Seattle’s comprehensive plan update, due in 2024, as city planners grapple with how to accommodate at least 112,000 new units of housing—Seattle’s share of King County’s growth target—over the next two decades. The zoning provisions in HB 1110 automatically take effect six months after that update to the comprehensive plan.

Alex Brennan, the director of Futurewise, a statewide smart growth advocacy group, says allowing four housing units per lot increases Seattle’s options for future growth. “We don’t have to fight for that baseline anymore,” he said. “So, the debate really is about how we can be thinking about new nodes of development, or new corridors where denser development will happen. How are we thinking about integrating things like corner stores, or other basic or essential services, into those neighborhoods?”

Marquee Plan to End Unsheltered Homelessness Depends on Federal Funding Source Some Call Risky

Image via We Are In.

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s implementation and governing boards approved a 2024 budget proposal that assumes the agency will receive significant future funding from Medicaid to keep the Partnership for Zero program, which aims to end unsheltered homelessness in downtown Seattle, going. Currently, the program is funded by corporate and philanthropic donations through a public-private partnership called We Are In.

The federal funding would come through a statewide program for Medicaid clients called Foundational Community Supports that funds “pre-tenancy” services for chronically homeless people—everything from getting an ID to negotiating an apartment lease.

“Based on current research, we estimate that Medicaid will reimburse 85% of Partnership for Zero (PfZ) costs,” or about $5.2 million, the KCRHA’s 2024 budget says. In 2022, a group of corporate and philanthropic donors pledged $10 million to fund the initial downtown Seattle “demonstration project,” which pays case managers known as system advocates to connect people living downtown to services, shelter and housing. Over the next five years, KCRHA plans to expand Partnership for Zero countywide.

Several members of both boards, including Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, expressed reservations about relying on a federal program that the KCRHA has never used before to fund one of the agency’s marquee initiatives. “I’m just concerned about approving [a budget] where you don’t have the money,” Backus said. “As someone who provides our budget to the council every two years, we never put anything in the budget … that’s aspirational.”

“I think that there were some estimates that were like, ‘this will make it rain money,’ and then there were other estimates that were like, ‘this will get you two nickels.’ We feel confident that this is a capturable amount of revenue.”—KCRHA CEO Marc Dones

“I would love not to spend more money than we have,” KCRHA CEO Marc Dones responded. “So what we’re doing is a number of dry runs with Medicaid billing while we’re still entirely grant- funded”—essentially, submitting invoices for real services to see what gets rejected and approved.

“Our current conservative estimate [is] an 85 percent reimbursement,” Dones added. “I think that there were some estimates that were like, ‘this will make it rain money,’ and then there were other estimates that were like, ‘this will get you two nickels.’ We feel confident that this is a capturable amount of revenue.”

But providers and advocates familiar with Foundational Community Supports, speaking to PubliCola on background, said that although the concept behind FCS is extremely forward-thinking—the six-year-old program treats housing as a form of health care, which is new for Medicaid—relying so heavily on FCS to fund a costly, high-profile effort like Partnership for Zero is a significant risk.

To understand why, it’s helpful to understand a bit about how nonprofits use the program to fund services for unsheltered people in King County.

Foundational Community Supports is a fee-for-service program; it pays $112 for every documented “encounter” between a service provider and a client, up to a maximum of six encounters a month. (In the case of KCRHA, the government itself, rather than a nonprofit, will be the service provider). If a case manager has a dozen clients and manages to document six encounters with each of them every month for a year, that adds up to about $95,000. The starting salary for KCRHA’s system advocates—formerly homeless peers who serve as case managers and outreach specialists for Partnership for Zero—is $75,000, so a $95,000 reimbursement would more than pay for both’ salaries and benefits, with some to spare for administration and other costs.

So far so good. Except, service providers say, that it’s almost impossible to “max out” on providing services to unsheltered people this way. Case managers must document each encounter with an unsheltered person in detail, with case notes that demonstrate what service they provided and how that encounter got the person closer to their housing goal.

Opportunities for “wasted” time abound. If a case worker goes out looking for a client and doesn’t find them—a common situation when trying to find unsheltered people, especially in a city that sweeps encampments—that time doesn’t count. If a case manager is new and still in training, or in the process of convincing someone to sign up for the program, that time doesn’t count. And if everything goes perfectly but the case notes are too short, or too long, or don’t include the right kind of details to convince the third-party administrator reviewing a person’s forms, that time doesn’t count either.

Because Foundational Community Supports isn’t a reliable source of funding, service providers don’t typically rely on it to fund entire programs; instead, they “braid” FCS with other funding sources to create a stable foundation for ongoing programs. The constant documentation and pressure to monetize every interaction with unsheltered clients can make it harder to build relationships with unsheltered people. According to one experienced homeless service provider, FCS is “just not really how rapport-based type outreach services relationships work, or how they’re usually delivered.”

Multiple people with Medicaid billing experience mentioned the concept of the “golden thread”–  a consistent narrative through every piece of documentation that explains why the person needs specific services and how each of those services are helping them achieve their self-determined goals. Failure to convincingly document that “thread” is “why a lot of claims get denied,” one former service provider said.

“We are comfortable that that’s a good number, but we’re not going to know until we start doing it and we’ll build a better and better understanding of what a successful reimbursement package is.”—KCRHA Chief Administrative Officer Meg Barclay

Facing pushback from board members last week, Dones pointed that the agency still has money left over from We Are In’s original $10 million commitment to pay for the program through 2023 and potentially beyond, if getting funds through Medicaid proves more challenging than the agency anticipates. And, KCRHA Chief Administrative Officer Meg Barclay noted, the KCRHA is consulting with the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which trains service providers to do Medicaid billing, to learn how to maximize their reimbursements.

Even so, Barclay added, Medicaid is “kind of a black box—sort of strange. So we are comfortable that that’s a good number, but we’re not going to know until we start doing it and we’ll build a better and better understanding of what a successful reimbursement package is.”

Debbie Thiele, CSH’s managing director for the western United States, told PubliCola last year that FCS is “designed to be as user-friendly as possible to a group of providers who are not health care providers.”

One implementation board member, Simha Reddy, said he saw the KCRHA’s effort to fund Partnership for Zero through Medicaid as an experiment that could be helpful to other nonprofit providers who could “jump on the bandwagon” and “learn alongside us.”

And Dones pointed out that the KCRHA won’t be the only government entity to rely on Medicaid funding to run a homelessness program—Spokane, they said, “funds a huge portion of their system” with Foundational Community Supports.

“I do think that the discussion around the difficulty of these dollars is not actually borne out by even our neighbors in Washington,” Dones told the implementation board last week. However, service providers who spoke with PubliCola said Spokane is both smaller (with a homeless population of around 1,800) and more affordable than King County, making it easier to house people in private-market housing and help them stay there.

The budget both boards approved last week isn’t a final spending plan. The KCRHA will send it to its two primary funders, King County and the city of Seattle, later this year, and adopt a finalized budget in December. What the votes represent is a bet on Dones’ plan to fund Partnership for Zero, which will otherwise run out of funding next year.

Editor’s note: Due to a transcription error by the author, the original version of this story incorrectly attributed Backus’ quote to Seattle Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington.

Hotel Crisis Overshadows Other Pressing Issues for Homelessness Authority, Including Upcoming Budget Vote

By Erica C. Barnett

After an emergency meeting last Friday, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority sent dozens of its downtown outreach workers, known as system advocates, to four hotels where the majority of people temporarily sheltered by the Lived Experience Coalition have been staying, to assess what their needs are and where they can go now that funding for the LEC hotels has run out.

As PubliCola has reported, the LEC—an advocacy group made up of homeless and formerly homeless people who also appoint members to the KCRHA’s implementation board—received federal grants to move people from the streets into hotels across King County through a partnership with the nonprofit Building Changes, but ended up spending far more money than they had. Money from a philanthropic group called We Are In paid for the rooms, which recently totaled over 200, through April 7.

The KCRHA’s CEO, Marc Dones, has distanced the authority from the hotel debacle, saying they only “recently became aware” of the situation. However, KCRHA’s own system advocates used the LEC program this year to shelter dozens of people as part of an effort to end unsheltered homelessness downtown, which is partly financed by We Are In.

People living in least 55 of the LEC-funded hotel rooms are participants in the state-funded Recovery Navigator program, which provides resources for people with addiction, including co-occurring mental health disorders; that program is now responsible for those residents.

The KCHRA is reportedly trying to place other hotel residents in shelter through the United Way, Salvation Army, and other nonprofit agencies.

“KCRHA, with the support of King County, the City of Seattle, and We Are In, has moved into an active emergency response to address the financially unstable LEC motel shelter program,” a KCRHA spokeswoman told PubliCola Monday.

The challenges are significant: Hotel residents include people with significant physical and mental impairments, including a number of amputees, along with people staying in the hotels anonymously because they are fleeing domestic violence. People who can’t be placed in another shelter or housing will be “exited” to the streets, including several dozen the LEC said were planning to “self-resolve” by leaving without shelter or services.
“At this time, we have verified that there are a significant number of families with young children, seniors, and medically fragile individuals, and these groups are prioritized for placement in shelter and housing with appropriate care,” the KCRHA spokeswoman said.

“There Will Always Be a Crisis”

Dones was at the KCRHA’s emergency meeting on Friday, and did not attend a long-planned, all-day implementation board retreat at the same time. Portions of the retreat were audible at a publicly accessible Zoom link on Friday. During their discussion about an upcoming vote on the agency’s 2024 budget, board members expressed frustration that Dones didn’t show.

Dones has no formal contract or job description, board member Ross added, which will make it hard for the board to conduct a credible evaluation of their performance.

“[The hotel emergency] is one crisis, with up to 300 people, but there are thousands more out there,” board member Christopher Ross said. “There will always be a problem [or] a crisis. You should be able to have other people step up. And this crisis, by the way, has been going on for several weeks, so to miss the one day where you need to bond with your bosses—they are creating a hole by not being in this room.” Dones has no formal contract or job description, Ross added, which will make it hard for the board to conduct a credible evaluation of their performance.

Dones has suggested that the budget vote should be a pro forma matter, since the agency adopted a biennial budget last year, but the proposal includes an expansion of the agency to include 11 new staff positions (two of which are currently grant-funded). Board member Ben Maritz questioned the budget’s focus on adding administrative staff, including three human resources officers. “This budget ask doesn’t reflect our shared goal of getting as many more people inside as possible,” he said.

The budget also assumes that the KCRHA will be able to continue the Partnership for Zero project after private funding runs out. The agency plans to use $5.2 million in Medicaid funding through a program called Foundational Community Supports, which pays for “pre-tenancy services,” like case management, for Medicaid enrollees people with complex health problems that make it difficult to keep housing or hold a job.

Also during the retreat, the implementation board decided to have a special meeting Tuesday evening to go over the budget in more detail before approving it and passing it on to a separate governing committee made up largely of elected officials from around the region. That board, whose job is mostly limited to approving policies and strategies the implementation board recommends, is scheduled to meet this Thursday and pass the budget.

Legislature Scales Back One Pro-Housing Bill While Shelving Another

Image via Sightline.org, shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 license

By Ryan Packer

At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, house housing committee chair Strom Peterson (D-21, Edmonds) predicted that 2023 would be the “year of housing.” But legislation to allow more housing statewide ended up being far more modest than many housing proponents hoped.

The state senate approved a bill on Tuesday that will require most cities in the state to allow at least two units on all residential lots, effectively prohibiting most cities from banning duplexes in single-family areas. Despite significant pushback from local officials wary of losing control over land use, HB 1110, which passed the House on March 6, has now passed both chambers on wide, bipartisan margins, and is moving toward Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk.

“It’s a huge and fundamental change in land use policy in Washington State to create a statewide floor of zoning based on population size of the city,” Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia), the bill’s sponsor, told PubliCola. “And there has historically been a significant amount of opposition to making that change.”

However, the senate dramatically scaled back the bill. As introduced, the legislation would have required nearly all cities in the state, regardless of population, to allow four units per lot, and six units per lot close to frequent public transit. Lawmakers reduced the bill’s scope at nearly every stage of the legislative process; the final Senate bill only required four units per lot in cities with more than 75,000 people, like Seattle, Bellevue, or Auburn.

“We did do away with exclusionary [single-family-only] zoning in the state of Washington, and I’m very proud of that. I think there’s some of us that recognize this was a huge first step, and we would like more steps to follow.”—Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27, Tacoma)

Currently, Seattle allows a total of three units per lot in its neighborhood residential areas—a single-family house plus one detached and one attached accessory unit—so allowing freestanding buildings with four, and potentially six, units could eventually increase density substantially in formerly exclusive single-family areas.

The legislation would allow up to six units in areas where fourplexes are legal as long as two units are affordable housing. In smaller cities, the bill would allow less density on a sliding scale, based on the size of the city; cities under 25,000, like Woodinville and Medina, will only have to allow two units per lot, regardless of proximity to transit or whether the housing is affordable.

The changes were substantive enough that the Association of Washington Cities, the influential lobbying group representing a broad swath of local city governments, had dropped its opposition to the bill by the time it got to the senate floor. For most of this session, the group took a neutral position in the hopes of scaling back the density requirements in the bill.

“I would have liked a stronger bill, in an ideal world,” Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27, Tacoma), who shepherded the bill on the senate side, told PubliCola. “We did do away with exclusionary [single-family-only] zoning in the state of Washington, and I’m very proud of that,” she said. Trudeau noted that this likely won’t be the last time the legislature tries to implement statewide zoning reform. “I think there’s some of us that recognize this was a huge first step, and we would like more steps to follow.”

Only two senate Democrats voted against HB 1110—Bob Hasegawa (D-11,, Seattle), and Christine Rolfes (D-23, Bainbridge Island)—along with 12 Republicans. Some Democrats like Lisa Wellman (D-41, Mercer Island) faced intense pressure to oppose the bill from local elected officials in places like Beaux Arts Village, population 315. “We have a problem, [and] we are addressing it in a very thoughtful way that allows for a lot of individual adjustments on the part of each and every community, regardless of their size,” Wellman said on the senate floor before the vote.

HB 1110 was a centerpiece in the housing supply agenda this year, but now that legislators have slimmed it down, another bill—HB 1337—might have a bigger impact on Washington’s smaller cities. While HB 1110 allows duplexes, 1337 allows property owners to build at least two accessory dwelling units (ADUs), allowing three units per lot, much as Seattle does now. And it applies to unincorporated areas, like White Center and Silverdale, which HB 1110 does not.

Another substantial pro-housing bill that would have required cities to allow larger apartment buildings near transit, SB 5466, won’t advance any further this year after it failed to get a floor vote in the house on Wednesday. Just a few weeks ago, that bill looked like it might advance over HB 1110, with some legislators and local leaders voicing support for density near transit over broad changes to residential neighborhoods.

But after Democrats in the House housing committee revamped SB 5466 to require developers to set aside 20 percent of units for affordable housing, the bill lost most of its Republican support. The bill will probably return next year, but the issue of mandating affordability for developments in individual cities—a dicey proposition at a statewide level—will almost certain remain fraught.

No Clear Solution for Hotel Evictions After Chaotic Homelessness Board Meeting; Budget Decision Postponed

By Erica C. Barnett

Update 11am April 15: This morning, the KCRHA reportedly sent its own outreach workers, known as system advocates, to the hotels where the Lived Experience Coalition has been paying for rooms through a federal emergency grant to figure out who is in the rooms and what their needs are. The KCRHA did not immediately respond to a request for more information about what the goal of this outreach is and whether funding has come through to pay for the rooms or provide other accommodations to the people living in them.

An unusually chaotic meeting of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s implementation board yesterday left unanswered questions about the fate of at least 165 people who remain in hotel rooms administered by the Lived Experience Coalition, which ran out of federal grant money to pay for the hotels earlier this year. As PubliCola reported exclusively on Monday, a public-private partnership called We Are In provided $1 million to pay for the hotel rooms through last Friday, but the KCRHA itself has said it can’t provide ongoing assistance for any hotel residents other than its own clients, who numbered about 30 (of as many as 250) as of last week.

In a conversation with PubliCola, Lived Experience Coalition director LaMont Green expressed confidence that no one at the hotels would end up back on the street. “A majority of the folks [who have left the hotels so far] have been accessing diversion, noncongregate shelter, shared housing, and some just regular permanent housing” using rapid rehousing subsidies, Green said.

However, it’s unclear whether the LEC will be able to continue moving people out successfully on their own; a majority of the people who have left so far are KCRHA’s own clients, and if the agency and local funders wash their hands of the situation, the LEC, an advocacy group that is made up largely of volunteers, will be on its own.

“The KCRHA recently became aware of an LEC program that has some financial difficulties . … We need to step away, frankly. I will again clarify for the public, the program is not operated by KCRHA, is not being funded by KCRHA, and has no formal connection to the KCRHA leadership level.”—KCRHA CEO Marc Dones

City officials, including the mayor’s office, did not respond to requests for comment earlier this week. However, on Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington said in an email addressed to “funders and partners” that the “LEC seems fully capable of winding down the work without assistance from KCRHA. I propose that we release KCRHA leadership and staff to focus on other work and key initiatives like partnership for zero”—a reference to the Partnership for Zero effort, funded by We Are In, to eliminate homelessness in downtown Seattle.

Although the KCRHA’s own downtown outreach workers, known as system advocates, were directly responsible for placing dozens of KCRHA clients into the LEC hotels, agency CEO Marc Dones has maintained that the KCRHA knew little to nothing about the hotel program or its funding.

“The KCRHA recently became aware of an LEC program that has some financial difficulties and we are currently evaluating with the city, county, state, and private funders to determine how to fund the program and support residents of it,” Dones said during Wednesday’s implementation board meeting. “We need to step away, frankly,” Dones added. “I will again clarify for the public, the program is not operated by KCRHA, is not being funded by KCRHA, and has no formal connection to the KCRHA leadership level.”

The board meeting included other signs of the growing schism between the LEC—a coalition that advocates for people with lived experience, which the authority has described as “an independent organization that appoints representatives to the KCRHA Implementation Board and Governing Committee, and is a partner in our efforts to end homelessness”—and the KCRHA. Three positions on the board reserved for people with lived experience of homelessness remain unfilled, and a simmering debate over who should fill those roles bubbled to the surface as part of a separate discussion about bylaws, whose details the board is still debating after three years in existence.

Dones said the process for appointing the lived experience positions has been haphazard and “needs to be rethought,” and that the nominees should include “people who are not members of the LEC.” However, members of the advisory committee that appoints people to the board the nominations have tried to call a special meeting to make their nominations, and claim the KCRHA is blocking them from doing so by refusing to post a meeting notice on their website, as required by law. In short: It’s a mess.

With the clock running down on Wednesday, the board had just a few minutes to ask questions about a 2024 supplemental budget proposal they had received less than 24 hours before the meeting (and that still isn’t posted publicly on the KCRHA’s website).

With the clock running down on Wednesday—the KCRHA ordinarily caps its board meetings at two hours, but this one went long—the board had just a few minutes to ask questions about a 2024 supplemental budget proposal they had received less than 24 hours before the meeting (and that still isn’t posted publicly on the KCRHA’s website). Dones said it was “alarming” that the board wasn’t familiar with the proposal, and noted that the board already approved the agency’s biennial budget in 2023, suggesting that this was just a continuation of that budget.

During a brief discussion, board members argued that biennial budgets still deserve scrutiny, and often change from year to year; both the state of Washington and the city of Seattle, for example, operate on a biennial system but still go through a lengthy annual budget process. The KCRHA just proposed a revision of its new five-year plan that would refocus the agency on immediate shelter under a new mission statement—“To Bring Unsheltered People Inside as Quickly as Possible to Prevent Death and Further Harm”—that could, board member Ben Maritz argued, require the agency to change its spending strategy as soon as next year.

Additionally, the 2024 budget proposal includes requests for funding for nearly a dozen new KCRHA staffers, including three new HR staffers and a new “Housing Central Command Manager” for the “housing command center” that opened as part of Partnership for Zero last year. A memo on the budget that outlined the new positions is available on the KCRHA’s website.

The board decided to postpone approving the budget until its next meeting, which hasn’t been scheduled yet, and the meeting ended abruptly after several members dropped off the Zoom call, depriving the meeting of a quorum.

As Homeless Agencies Bicker Over Blame, Time Runs Out for Hundreds Living in Hotels

By Erica C. Barnett

Up to 250 people experiencing homelessness who have been living in hotels around the region could be back on the streets in the next few days now that funding for the hotels, provided through a one-year federal grant to a group of homeless and formerly homeless advocates called the Lived Experience Coalition, has abruptly run out. The people at risk of eviction include both individuals and families, and most have no housing plan in place.

Ordinarily, the LEC is not a housing or shelter provider; its primary role is advocating for policy solutions to homelessness and ensuring that people who’ve experienced homelessness have a seat at the table when policy decisions are made.

Last year, though, the LEC received a series of federal grants, including a $1 million, one-year grant to rent hotel rooms from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program and another $330,000 to program to connect hotel residents to employment. The LEC signed an agreement with the nonprofit Building Changes to serve as its fiscal sponsor—a pass-through agency that distributes funds for new or grassroots organizations.

Over the past year, but particularly between January and March of this year, the LEC moved hundreds of people into hotel rooms funded by the federal grant. By March, cash flow was dire. As of early April, the estimated gap between the funding the LEC had on hand and what it owes various hotels totals more than $700,000, and the shortfall is ballooning at a rate of about $1.1 million a month, according to several sources familiar with the situation.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which has distanced itself from the hotel program, also used the LEC hotel rooms to move people off the streets of downtown Seattle as part of a public-private partnership aimed at ending unsheltered homelessness downtown, called Partnership for Zero.

“We’ve been notifying [the LEC] about the cash issues for a year,” Building Changes executive director Daniel Zavala said. “We shared [concerns] on several occasions throughout 2022, and really in December of this last year we were more formally flagging some of the cash flow issues.”

In emails and memos obtained by PubliCola, the LEC denied this, and said Building Changes failed to provide them with information about their cash flow when they requested it.

“For a very long time, we were operating blindly which caused us to spend $370,000 more than the grant we were awarded,” LEC director LaMont Green wrote in an email detailing LEC’s grievances with Building Changes. “We consistently asked for the financial reports but to no avail. Building Changes made us aware of this gross overspend less than 2 months before year end. … Additionally, when LEC received financial reporting it was often inaccurate.”

Zavala, from Building Changes, disputes this account. “We provided financial information on numerous occasions to the LEC over the last year,” Zavala said. “We’re here because the LEC mismanaged its finances.”

 

But the crisis isn’t just about a single organization falling into arrears.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which oversees the region’s response to homelessness, also used the LEC hotel rooms to move people off the streets of downtown Seattle as part of a public-private partnership aimed at ending unsheltered homelessness downtown, called Partnership for Zero.

The organization that runs Partnership for Zero, another nonprofit called We Are In, initially floated the idea of using $1 million of the remaining program funds to get the LEC out of arrears—and keep the hundreds of people living in the hotels from falling back into unsheltered homelessness.

As of two weeks ago, according to emails, We Are In planned to use $1 million of the $10 million it pledged for Partnership for Zero to pay for the hotels. “We will be allocating $1M of the remaining partnership for zero funds at KCRHA to the outstanding LEC hotel invoices,” We Are In director Felicia Salcedo wrote to Zavala on March 30.

Taking these funds out of Partnership for Zero, Dones responded in the same email thread, would “cause the KCRHA to pause hiring as these funds were obligated to support staffing. My team estimates that this will reduce the overall housing capacity of the project by at least 1/3 if not more.”

On Monday, We Are In spokesman Erik Houser said the organization ended up using $1 million of its own funds, separate from the Partnership for Zero, to pay the LEC’s outstanding invoices for the hotels. That money ran out on Friday, and Houser said it’s now up to “other partners,” including government funders, to address the problem.

A spokeswoman for the KCRHA said Monday that “together with public and private partners, we have been working to identify possible solutions.”

 

Last week, a frenzy of finger-pointing almost overshadowed the imminent human crisis.

In one email exchange with LEC director Green’s requests for help coordinating shelter or housing for people living in the hotels, for example, KCRHA CEO Marc Dones wrote, “As I have stated repeatedly this is not a kcrha program and funding decisions are not being made by kcrha staff. …  I am unclear how else to be of assistance.” It was a comment Dones would echo repeatedly throughout the week, and not without justification—the KCRHA was not involved in the original FEMA grant and played no part in the LEC’s partnership with Building Changes.

But the KCRHA was aware of the program. In fact, the agency’s own system advocates—outreach workers who connect people living unsheltered downtown to shelter and housing—were using the LEC hotel rooms to shelter people living downtown. Starting late last year, KCRHA staff utilized LEC-funded hotel rooms to shelter at least 90 people living in downtown Seattle, something PubliCola first reported back in February. According to an email Green sent to a group of agency and nonprofit partners last week, Green told Dones about the program in April 2022.

Green did not respond to a request for comment (in general, the LEC makes decisions and statements collectively) and the KCRHA declined to speak with PubliCola about the timeline. However, a KCRHA spokeswoman did confirm that of about 30 of the people KCRHA staffers moved into hotels through the LEC program were still in the hotels last week. The spokeswoman said all 30 were either moving into permanent housing or had housing plans in place.

Last week, with accusations flying between the LEC, Building Changes, and the KCRHA, Building Changes announced it was pulling its fiscal sponsorship from the LEC, which will be unable to receive or distribute funds until it obtains its own nonprofit status. The LEC sent a letter to Building Changes saying it would create “cruel and unusual duress” for Building Changes to drop its sponsorship without an exit strategy, but the decision appears final. “I can confirm that we have terminated our business relationship with the Lived Experience Coalition,” Zavala said.

Building Changes is also the fiscal sponsor for We Are In, which has pledged $10 million to the KCRHA for its Partnership for Zero work. That effort, which the KCRHA initially hoped to wrap up within a year, is behind schedule, in part, because landlords have been reluctant to rent to people with one-year subsidies without knowing what happens in “the 13th month,” according to an update from Dones in January.

As the program enters its second year, KCRHA is under pressure to show it’s making progress; We Are In is distributing its $10 million pledge in tranches, including an initial $4 million last year.

 

It’s unclear what, if any, funding is available to cover the hotel funding shortfall, which continues to grow every day the LEC’s clients remain in their rooms, which are distributed across several hotels in South and North King County, as well as one in Tacoma.

The implementation board includes three members (out of a current 13) who were appointed by the Lived Experience Coalition, including LEC co-founder and co-chair Okesha Brandon.

King County, which (along with the city of Seattle) is one of the KCRHA’s primary funders, says it does not have the money to pay for the LEC’s hotel bills. “We were recently made aware that the Lived Experience Coalition (LEC) is unable to maintain their temporary hoteling program, which had been used to shelter people experiencing homelessness,” a spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine said Friday.

“To determine how this situation occurred and ensure oversight and accountability, KCRHA is calling for a formal inquiry and audit of how the LEC program was managed and what will be done to prevent a similar situation in the future.”—King County Regional Homelessness Authority

“The hoteling program is independently run and managed by the LEC and is not a program within the KCRHA,” Constantine’s spokesman continued. “However, public and private partners are concerned about the impact on individuals currently sheltered in hotels and are working together to identify possible solutions.”

Spokespeople for Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city’s Human Services Department did not respond to requests for comments.

In a statement, the KCRHA said the agency was “recently made aware that the Lived Experience Coalition (LEC) is unable to maintain their temporary hoteling program, which had been used to shelter people experiencing homelessness.

“The LEC is an independent organization, and their hoteling program is not funded by KCRHA. However, we recognize that the closure of any shelter program has a significant impact on our communities and on the lives of the people given refuge in these hotels.”

The homelessness authority is “calling for a formal inquiry and audit of how the LEC program was managed and what will be done to prevent a similar situation in the future,” the statement concluded. Meanwhile, at press time, it was unclear what will happen to the people still staying in the LEC-funded hotels, and whether they’ll get to stay until they can move to other shelters or housing or be sent back out onto the street.

The KCRHA’s implementation board will meet on Wednesday, when Dones and the board are expected to discuss the hotel issue in public for the first time.