City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson

Wilson Announces First Steps Toward 1,000 Shelter Beds: Simpler Leases, Larger Tiny House Villages, More Money for Shelter

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson introduced three pieces of legislation on Wednesday that she says will reduce barriers to tiny house villages—groups of small, freestanding shelters—by reducing bureaucratic obstacles, freeing up money, and removing a cap on the size of tiny house villages that Wilson called out of step with nationwide best practices.

Framed by tiny houses-in-progress at Sound Foundations’ 15,000-square-foot tiny house production facility in SoDo, Wilson said the legislation is just the beginning of a plan to dramatically reduce visible homelessness and get people into shelter as a step toward permanent housing.

“We have twice as many homeless people in Seattle as we have shelter beds, leaving thousands of people with nowhere to go,” Wilson said.  “We also have a responsibility to make sure that everyone can access and enjoy our parks, trails, sidewalks and other public spaces. But we can’t just keep moving people from place to place, and calling that progress. The single most important thing we can do to address our city’s homelessness crisis is to rapidly expand emergency housing.”

Wilson’s first bill would allow the city, through its Department of Finance and Administrative Services, to directly lease and prepare land for tiny house villages and other types of noncongregate shelter. Wilson said the 56-word amendment may seem like “a small and technical change,” but will relieve shelter providers of the obligation to negotiate their own land deals with property owners, prepare sites for opening, and connect new tiny house villages to electricity, water, and other utilities, a process that can push opening dates back months.

The second piece of legislation would significantly increase the cap on the size of individual villages. New villages, currently capped at 100 residents, could have as many as 250, with a limit of one such large shelter per council district (or nine citywide). Additional villages could have no more than 150 residents.

Wilson also announced that her office has identified $4.8 million in unspent city funding to help stand up new shelters, which the third piece of legislation would appropriate. The mayor has pledged to open up 1,000 new shelter beds by the end of her first year, 500 of those before the FIFA World Cup comes to Seattle in June.

Speaking to PubliCola late Wednesday afternoon, Wilson said she’s focusing on shelter because it’s a high-impact strategy that can be implemented quickly—unlike housing, which costs more and takes longer to build.

“Right now, the big thing is just that we need to make an impact fast. We’ve seen the number of unsheltered homeless folks going up and up and up, year after year, and it takes time to build housing,” Wilson said. “To me, the most important number is how many people are sleeping unsheltered in Seattle, and I think we’re going to be adjusting [strategies over time] to make more of an impact.”

Several supporters of Wilson’s plan who spoke on Wednesday sounded notably cool on aspects of “housing first,” the idea that people can’t recover from addiction and other behavioral health challenges until they’re in stable, permanent housing. Conservative politicians and talking heads have made “housing first” a bogeyman for all kinds of supposed giveaways to unworthy lowlifes, but the concept is also a matter of debate among homeless advocate themselves, and the pendulum in Seattle appears to be swinging toward a new kind of shelter-first approach—one where shelter (and mandatory case management) is a prerequisite for housing, at least for people with complex needs.

“Strong shelter programs with robust support services can be a game changer in achieving stable, permanent housing placements,” Fé LopezGaetke, co-executive director of Purpose Dignity Action (PDA), said. “In fact, taking three to six months to stabilize a person significantly improves outcomes for those who go on to permanent housing. Housing providers benefit when tenants come in with a lot more support and when a lot of obstacles to recovery and stabilization have already been tackled.”

This is a dramatic turnabout from the rhetoric of, say, 2020, when anti-shelter sentiment was thick in the air. The thinking at that time was that there is no such thing as a person who isn’t “housing-ready,” and that housing, not shelter, is the best way to stabilize a person with addiction or behavioral health issues that are exacerbated by living on the street. In a city without adequate permanent supportive housing (housing designed specifically for people with disabling conditions), people were getting stuck in the shelter system, and a renewed focus on housing was seen as a more effective way of addressing homelessness.

This focus on housing, rather than shelter, led to approaches like the Partnership for Zero, a pandemic-era public-private partnership that was supposed to rapidly “end” visible homelessness downtown. That program shut down in 2023 after housing 230 people.

At the exact same time, the PDA was launching its JustCARE and CoLEAD programs, which included hotel-based emergency shelter combined with  intensive case management, health care, and housing navigation. This model of shelter, proponents now argue, is more effective at getting people into permanent housing than either those that move people from tents into apartments or older, non-“enhanced” shelter models.

Chief Seattle Club director Derrick Belgarde, who spoke at Wilson’s event, told PubliCola Wednesday afternoon that the people who are most successful in CSC’s permanent supportive housing are the ones who’ve gone through mandatory case management at one of their shelters, which include two tiny house villages, first. “If ‘housing first’ is getting people off the streets, getting people in a safe room with a door, then it’s good, but when we’re talking about permanent housing, we haven’t been fans,” Belgarde said.

People can be kicked out of a CSC shelter for behavior that wouldn’t get them evicted from permanent housing, and as a result, they’re far less likely to start fights, blast music, or engage in other un-neighborly behavior once they move into a housing unit, Belgarde said. “In our shelters, it’s not even about shelter—it’s about a program to build community and get life skills and keep them safe, with a roof over their head.”

Wilson’s office suggested that the city will be ready to sign leases on several properties shortly after her legislation passes, assuming the city council approves it (more on that in a moment.) But they wouldn’t say yet where the properties were, or if they’ll include the very large villages Wilson’s proposal would authorize.

“Obviously, we don’t want to just put 250 people in a huge tent and be like, “OK, here you go!'” Wilson told PubliCola. “It’s going to be based on a case-by-case analysis.”

Belgarde said his organization is unlikely to apply to build much larger tiny house villages than the ones they currently operate. “I’m not opposed to other people trying it. I’m not an expert on anybody else’s community,” Belgarde said. “I know about our own unique trauma, and I know where the a chronically homeless person sits, as far as their acuity level and their needs. A 100-person shelter would be downright dangerous for us. We’re not going to entertain the idea of opening a shelter that large.”

Low Income Housing Instititute director Sharon Lee, who also spoke at Wednesday’s event, said if LIHI was to build a very large tiny house village, they would divide it into separate “neighborhoods” to prevent it from feeling dangerously large. Currently, LIHI’s biggest tiny house village has 73 units.

One group the discussion about enhanced shelter leaves out is people who don’t need intensive case management—those who are homeless due to economic circumstances like job loss and evictions for unpaid rent. During the campaign, Wilson proposed providing rent subsidies to some of these “low-acuity” homeless folks to move into tax-credit-subsidized housing units that are currently sitting vacant because there’s a glut of subsidized studio and one-bedroom units that cost about as much as market-rate apartments.

“You won’t be surprised to hear that we are going to be looking at ways to move low-acuity folks into some of the vacant units in our affordable housing sector with some kind of rent subsidy,” Wilson told PubliCola. “That will be a strategy that will take people who are hanging out in the shelter system, putting them into a housing situation, and hopefully freeing up some space in shelter that is set up to deal with higher-acuity folks.”

“Among the homeless population, there are a number of people who just can’t pay the rent—the working homeless person, the person who finally got into recovery and now is employed,” Lee said. “They can live in regular workforce housing. I think it’s a valid model, and it’s a lot cheaper to do it that way than to subsidize vacant units.”

Belgarde, echoing comments LopezGaetke made during the announcement at Sound Foundations, said his main concern about the new push for shelters is that shelter becomes a path to housing, rather than a final stop. “If there’s any worry, it’s a worry that it’s not the solution,” he said. We don’t want people to see there’s not any more tents on the sidewalk and think we’ve solved it, because you haven’t solved it if people are just sitting in a tiny house village.”

Wilson still has to get her legislation through the council. In a break from longstanding practice at City Hall, Wilson did not secure a City Council sponsor for her proposals, discuss the wording or sequencing of her legislation, or ensure that the legislation would get a committee hearing before announcing her legislation publicly. (She also left her own press conference shortly after she spoke without answering questions, prompting audible grumbling from reporters.)

This approach has raised some eyebrows in council offices. Ordinarily, the mayor and allies on the council work behind the scenes to draft legislation and secure support from council members before doing a public rollout; instead, the council has been left wondering who, exactly, is supposed to back Wilson’s bill and even which committee it’s supposed to go through.

“Now that the three bills have been transmitted to council, we need to determine which Councilmembers will sponsor each bill, whether they should move together or through separate committees, and which committee or committees are the right fit,” Council President Joy Hollingsworth told PubliCola Thursday. “We also need time for central staff analysis regarding the legislation and for the executive to answer initial questions as well. We will also invite and offer the executive an opportunity to come to a council briefing to discuss their legislation. Our goal as a body is to run a transparent and open legislative process.”

Density, housing, legislature, Maybe Metropolis

An Alternative Approach to Creating Affordable Housing: Inside-Out Urbanism
Image of a four-unit apartment building
Sneaky urbanism adds housing inside the existing buildable footprint—and can be a way to expand the footprint in advance of major zoning changes.

By Josh Feit

The city of Seattle was supposed to be done with its 10-year comprehensive plan update more than a year ago, in December 2024. The comp plan is the document that governs local land use and zoning, which means it’s also about where the city will (and won’t) allow more density. As you know, it’s now 2026.

This should give you an idea of how many deadlines we’ve missed. Here we are, 14 months on, and pro-housing advocates are still waiting as the city braces for yet more debates over the specifics of the Neighborhood Center and Urban Center strategy that, sigh, continues to cordon density into tightly constricted areas.

We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the city to take action. It’s time to take matters into our own hands—at least as we wait for the new pro-density council members like Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster to join forces with Alexis Mercedes Rinck and new self-avowed urbanist Mayor Katie Wilson to get the zoning right. In the meantime, I’m hopeful about an emerging method to usher in the dense housing we need citywide to address the affordability and climate crises: Instead of fixating on wholesale land use changes, focus on discrete housing regulations with piecemeal reforms. Devious density.

I’m not advocating for timid tinkering around the edges. I’m thinking of ingenious hacks that are possible within the restrictive height limits, contorted floor area ratio guidelines, and setback requirements that currently define and limit the number of units you can fit into an apartment building. Like rearranging how you pack your suitcase rather than buying a bigger suitcase, affordable housing advocates should change the construction equation inside apartment buildings themselves.

Pro-density progressives in Washington state have already had success with this sneaky inside-out approach. In 2025, they won parking reform, which maximizes the square footage available for housing by lowering building costs and forgoing the need for carports and underground garages. Similarly, in 2023, advocates succeeded in passing the nation’s first-ever single-staircase bill, a reform that frees up space for more units in the same building footprint by getting rid of unnecessary two-staircase mandates.

Another recent bit of tactical urbanism, passed last year, made an exception to mandatory setbacks (the distance a building must be from the street and other lot boundaries) for smart construction methods like mass timber, passive house, and modular construction, as well as for affordable housing units.

In the current legislative session, pro-housing advocates are now on their way to passing elevator reform, which will lower costs for developers, hopefully hastening construction of more units.

As I reported last week: While the elevator industry stripped out a push for universal reform, urbanists are still set to pass a deceptively specific change at the ground level. The legislation will change elevator size guidelines for apartment buildings up to six stories tall, lowering costs and allowing more units. This detail-oriented code change will open the doors to multifamily housing in neighborhoods where the the overall zoning remains antagonistic to this type of renter-friendly development.

Consider this “within-the-envelope”-approach a pro-housing hack against the classic anti-density refrain about “neighborhood character.” (The housing “envelope” is the planning term for the ultimate size allowed for a development after all the setback, density, height, and other parameter guidelines are taken into account.) By adding the potential for more units within buildings that are visually in sync with the surrounding area, pro-housing advocates may reveal what intransigent NIMBYs actually mean when they say “character.”

City Council, immigration, Jails, King County

As City and County Consider Banning New ICE Facilities, Local Jails Are Exempted from Seattle’s Ban
Alexis Mercedes Rinck (l) and Teresa Mosqueda (r)

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s proposed legislation to bar new detention centers in Seattle, originally introduced in February, has been delayed and amended to accommodate other council members’ concerns about prohibiting new local jails even temporarily, as the original legislation would have done. The new version of the bill, which would explicitly exempt jails from the moratorium, went up online yesterday.

A brief recap: On February 13, Rinck announced legislation that would ban new detention centers, as well as jails, in the city of Seattle for one year. The bill, announced in tandem with King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s similar legislation prohibiting detention centers in unincorporated King County for a year. Both proposals contains an emergency clause to illustrate the urgency of passing the ban; in December, ICE quietly posted a solicitation for contractors to build a new 1,635-bed detention facility in the Seattle area.

Legally, because of the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, federal law trumps state law—meaning that ICE, putatively operating in compliance with federal law, can violate any or all of the local and state laws blue cities and states put in their way. But laws like regional bans on detention facilities—and other anti-ICE legislation, including an executive order from Mayor Katie Wilson barring ICE from using city property  and a proposal from Mosqueda that will have the same effect for county land—can create friction, Rinck said.

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“We still will have a law on the books, and if they try to challenge our decision, we will see them in court over this,” Rinck said. “It does force a conversation.”

Both bills are based on local land use regulations. They argue that any new detention center could have major impacts on “water, sewage and wastewater, transportation and parking, public safety, and public health” and that a moratorium would provide time to create permanent legislation on detention centers.

“Here at the county, we have explicit authority in our statute to ensure that land is being used in the public’s interest,” Mosqueda said. “Any detention center in King County is going to not only disrupt the local community, but it goes counter to King County’s interests in making sure that we’re promoting safety and well-being.”

Both bills are classified as “emergency” legislation, allowing them to move forward without the usual committee process. On both councils, emergency legislation requires seven of nine votes to pass—which gets us back to why Rinck’s proposal exempts jails from the one-year moratorium while Mosqueda’s does not.

According to multiple city council sources, at least two council members indicated that they would vote against Rinck’s proposal if jails were included in the ban, even though King County has no current plans to build a new jail in Seattle, or anywhere, in the near future. Banning new jails for a year could create an impression that centrist council members who will be up for election next year, including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, are soft on crime.

Rinck can afford to lose two votes, but not three, and several other council members’ votes can be unpredictable when it comes to legislation perceived as “progressive,” as any legislation proposed by Rinck, one of the council’s most progressive members, inevitably is.

Kettle, the chair of the council’s public safety committee, did not respond to questions PubliCola sent on Monday.

Mosqueda said on Tuesday morning that no one on the council had raised an issue about the inclusion of new jails in the ban, noting that her legislation does explicitly allow renovations at Echo Glen, a youth detention center in unincorporated eastern King County.

Rinck’s legislation will be up for a full council vote on March 10. She said the bill will “buy some time” for the city if ICE does propose building a detention facility here. “I think this is worth fighting over,” she said.

erica@publicola.com

housing, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: March 1, 2026

Staff call for civil rights office shakeup, CARE chief says police contract hobbles her team’s ability to respond to crises, state elevator reform bill advances, and much more.

Monday, February 23

Staff Call for Removal of Civil Rights Office Director, Citing “Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Mismanagement”

Through their union, PROTEC17, staff at the city’s civil rights office have asked Mayor Katie Wilson to remove and replace their boss, Derrick Wheeler-Smith, saying he sent misogynistic texts to staffers, ignored LGBTQ+ rights inside and outside the office, and dismissed their efforts to focus on non-Black racial minorities, including Asian Americans facing xenophobia during COVID and Latino residents under threat of ICE detention.

Tuesday, February 24

Police Contract Has Prevented Unarmed Crisis Responders From Doing their Jobs, CARE Chief Says

Amy Barden, head of the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team, talked candidly at a council meeting this week about how a police union contract has made it impossible for the team of social workers to respond to most behavioral health crisis calls. Police Chief Shon Barnes, sitting next to Barden, jumped in several times to defend police, saying he didn’t want them “relegated” to responding to just some kinds of calls. The CARE Team was created specifically to respond to crises that don’t require, and may be exacerbated by, the presence of armed officers.

Wednesday, February 25

After PubliCola Story Details Discrimination Claims, Civil Rights Office Director Accuses Deputy Mayor of Threats and “Defamation”

In response to our story on Monday, Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith sent an email to city leaders and reporters (though not PubliCola) accusing Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt of sending “a few disgruntled staff” our way in order to defame him. Surratt was not a source, much less “the source,” for our story.

Friday, February 27

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SPD’s National Recruitment Push Includes Police Chief’s Alma Mater

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent recruitment teams to several small HBCUs in the South, including his alma mater, Elizabeth City State University, and spent $25,000 of the city’s money to sponsor a basketball tournament for the conference of schools. Most of the colleges in the conference have around 2,000 students or fewer; SPD said the value of the sponsorship can’t be measured in the number of direct recruits.

Chief Attended Tiny Desk Concert with Security In Tow

Late last year, while in town on SPD business, Barnes attended a concert at NPR’s studios, bringing his two security guards with him to the show. SPD has not told us how much it cost to provide Barnes with security at the event.

Elevator Followup: Reform Bill Watered Down

Josh Feit reported that a state bill to allow developers to build apartment buildings with smaller elevators is moving forward, but no longer includes a provision that would have directed the state to support harmonizing national and international elevator size standards. The rest of the world allows smaller elevators, making it more affordable to build accessible apartments.

Former City Department Director Broke Election Law

The state Public Disclosure Commission ruled that the former director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development violated election law when he used the city’s Teams system to solicit the personal email addresses of department heads on behalf of Bruce Harrell’s campaign, but declined to fine the ex-OED director.

City IT Director Resigns

In another department-level shakeup, city IT Department director Rob Lloyd announced his resignation; his last day will be March 27.

LGBTQ Advocates Call for Removal of Civil Rights Director

The Friends of Denny Blaine, a group of LGBTQ+ advocates who organized after learning that Harrell was working with a wealthy homeowner to shut down the longstanding nude beach on Lake Washington, called for Wheeler-Smith’s resignation this week in response to PubliCola’s reporting on what the group called the “repeated dismissal and minimization of LGBTQ+ civil rights issues within the department.”

In Rare Tragedy, Man Dies Inside Rainier Beach Library Branch

A 41-year-old man died from chronic alcohol use inside the Rainier Beach branch of the Seattle Public Library last week after staff and paramedics tried to resuscitate him. It’s extremely rare for a person to die inside a library branch, and staff who were present have access to counseling and can transfer to other branches if necessary.

Seattle Nice: Are These Three Local Controversies All About Union Power?

On the podcast this week, we discussed three local stories that all have links to local unions: The organized backlash to Mayor Wilson’s decision to replace the head of Seattle City Light; CARE Team Chief Barden’s frustration over the police guild’s contract; and the efforts by SOCR staff to get Wilson to remove Wheeler-Smith, which, according to employees, came together after a survey by their union made staffers realize they weren’t alone.

Mayor Wilson, Seattle Nice

Seattle Nice: Are These Three Local Controversies All About Union Power?

By Erica C. Barnett

This week’s podcast, as I promised last week, featured just me, Sandeep, and David, and guys: It got LIVELY.

First, we talked about some behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt that the Seattle Times missed in its coverage of local union backlash to Mayor Katie Wilson’s ouster of Dawn Lindell as the CEO of Seattle City Light. Thousands of IBEW77 union members signed a petition demanding Wilson rehire Lindell in what the Times described as widespread employee “concern by her decision to fire the utility’s previous CEO and her initial pick for her replacement.” Meanwhile, the MLK Labor Council, a union of unions, passed a resolution demanding more transparency into the process of hiring Lindell’s replacement.

But there’s more to the story—according to multiple sources in the city, an IBEW (and former MLK Labor Council) leader lobbied Wilson hard to oust Lindell and appoint her as Lindelll’s replacement; after that didn’t happen, according to internal city sources, the unions started their full-court press against Wilson. Both IBEW77 and the MLK Labor Council endorsed former mayor Bruce Harrell.

In another city union-related story, SPOG—the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild—negotiated a ludicrously generous police contract last year that also happens to restrict the CARE Team of unarmed first responders from actually doing first response. This week, CARE Department Chief Amy Barden was extremely candid about the limitations the police contract imposes on her team of social workers, which she said SPOG has interpreted to include any area from which a person could be trespassed, such as parking lots or even sidewalks adjacent to a private business.

I’ve been reporting since last October about the explicit restrictions, which prohibit CARE from responding on their own to calls if there is drug paraphernalia in the area, if the person is inside a car or building, if there is evidence that any crime has taken place, or if a minor is present. (Yes, Seattle is so committed to alternative response that they signed a contract saying police, not social workers, are best suited to help vulnerable young people.)

The additional restrictions SPOG is claiming now make it clear that the police guild, at least, doesn’t want CARE to succeed. And as Police Chief Shon Barnes confirmed at the committee meeting last week (when he said, among other things, that he doesn’t want cops “relegated” to doing cop stuff), there’s no internal pressure at SPD for the union to renegotiate the agreement so CARE can actually do their jobs.

We also discussed my story about Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith, whose employees have accused him of discrimination and retaliation. Through their union, PROTEC17, some staffers asked Wilson to remove him before she started her term, saying his behavior rose to the level of “just cause” that’s required from removing the SOCR director.

Addiction

In Rare Tragedy, Man Dies Inside Rainier Beach Library Branch
Image via SPL.org.

By Erica C. Barnett

A 41-year-old man died at the Rainier Beach library just after 3pm February 13 after library staffers tried but were unable to revive him with Narcan and CPR. The library shut down for the rest of the afternoon.

According to library spokeswoman Laura Gentry, library patrons “alerted staff that there was something wrong with a patron at the computer area”; thinking the man had overdosed, a staffer administered Narcan while other staff called 911. The 911 call taker told them to try CPR, but library staffers and medics who showed up a few minute later couldn’t revive the patron.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office later reported that the man died of “chronic alcohol use disorder,” not an overdose. According to the CDC, about 178,000 people die in the US from excessive drinking every year.

It’s extraordinarily rare for a patron to die inside a library, although several people have died of overdoses outside library branches after hours. The experience of witnessing someone can be extremely traumatic, especially for workers whose jobs don’t ordinarily involve trying to save lives. Gentry said staff who witness a serious or traumatic incident get access to resources including free counseling, and can ask to move to a different location or take leave if they aren’t ready to return to work.

Staff don’t receive any specific training in recognizing alcohol-related medical emergencies, and training on how to respond to opioid overdoses is optional, Gentry said.