(WSB photo: Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, right, with Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
In advance of Mayor Bruce Harrell‘s mid-term State of the City address next week, his administration says its homelessness response is making progress.
To elaborate on that, the mayor’s office invited reporters to a City Hall briefing today. The mayor wasn’t there – he was out planting trees – but Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, whose portfolio includes the homelessness response, presented updates and answered questions. Video recording wasn’t allowed. We were there; here’s what we heard.
A key point: The city has developed a database that allows them to track actions, statuses, and results. Before the database, Washington said, it was all tracked by hand, and not very well at that. Building the database took up much of this administration’s first year, she added. Among the toplines they’re touting are these stats from the Unified Care Team, the multi-department city task force that handles encampments (not to be confused with the crisis-response CARE Team):
Another major change: Washington says they no longer remove encampments based on who’s complaining the loudest. That wasn’t fair, she said, since the loudest usually meant those who had the luxury of the most time on their hands to complain. Now they have criteria. That was part of the briefing, to review how they evaluate encampments for removal, or at least cleaning. For one, the assignation of points:
But, she said, it’s not just a scoring system:
Washington did not mention a specific number of cleared encampments (and keep in mind that as little as one tent can be classified as an “encampment”). But she said “progress” includes fewer tents and faster responses:
(“Triaged” basically means “responded to,” it was explained.) The city also says two incident categories – “shots fired” and fires – have dropped:
The category that has not dropped – medical calls to encampments – is likely largely because of the fentanyl crisis, Washington said.
Another thing her briefing sought to clarify is what the city is accountable for, versus what the embattled King County Regional Homelessness Authority is accountable for:
(An asterisk denotes an area in which both the city and the regional authority have some accountabilities.) The RHAKC is currently under interim leadership, but Washington said, in response to a question, that the city is not considering pulling out of it – for one, they don’t believe it’s failing.
Also outlined was the process by which encampment reports were handled. After the city gets a report (say, via Find It Fix It), a field coordinator visits and assesse the site, gives it a “public impact” score, and either it gets onto the schedule for “resolution” or enters into a “harm reduction phase” – which means there’s a plan for what to do to “minimize harm for everyone involved.” As we’ve reported previously, the Unified Care Team operates with five regional teams; our area is part of the Southwest Region team:
Sites considered “active” are inspected monthly. The UCT has weekly meetings, meantime, said its director Ali Peters, who also participated in the briefing.
The briefing wasn’t entirely devoted to encampment response – building/converting more housing is an emphasis as well, and city Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin and policy director Kelli Larsen were also there to underscore that. Washington said 1,400 units “opened” last year, and that 7,600 units are funded and “under development.” The city is also funding homelessness prevention through the Housing Levy, with rental assistance part of that.
As for getting people into emergency shelter – that’s not the same as housing, it’s an interim step – that’s where what Washington at one point called the “historic” (as in history-making) database meets its limits. She says they believe the number of shelter enrollments – people who go into shelters once they’re referred – is “undercounted” because they may give different names to outreach workers, or might not give personal information at all.
That segued into the list of “top challenges” with which the city is dealing:
The deputy mayor took questions, along with the panel that joined her, after the 13-page presentation (see it in full here). Regarding one of the “top challenges,” what’s being done about finding more RV lots? Washington says “regional partners” – in other words, outside Seattle – need to step up to help with that. “I think Seattle is exasperated” with carrying the burden of “most shelters in (King) County …. homelessness doesn’t just reside in Seattle.” She says more of the smaller cities around the county are starting to realize that.
Asked if the city has enough money to cover the mayor’s hopes of handling homelessness, Washington said that on one hand, no, “there’s never enough … if we had enough (money), you wouldn’t see people living outside.” Overall, though, she insisted that “the mayor is committed to investing the resources needed to make progress.” Some of which, she reiterated, has already been made, saying that one metric with which they’re impressed is the “reduction in the number of verified tents.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Though this wasn’t described outright as a precursor to the State of the City address, the mayor’s office announced later in the day that Harrell will present that annual progress report on Tuesday (February 20th) at noon. You can watch via Seattle Channel.
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