Earlier this month, Mayor Ed Murray announced a civil state of emergency due to homelessness. It was an unusual move that’s normally reserved for natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and riots.
“People have been murdered,” Murray said when he made the announcement. “People have been raped. People have fallen to their death on the freeway.”
In conjunction with the strong words, Murray found $5.3 million, thanks to the upcoming sale of a piece of city-owned property, to throw toward the cause. That money will fund some immediate needs—$900,000 for 100 new shelter beds for a year, for example—but most of it will go toward case management, outreach, and prevention. (The county council, meanwhile, approved a motion on Monday supporting 150 new shelter beds, but a press release about the vote points out that the beds are still “dependent on the availability of funding.”)
Now, some advocates—championed by council members with little love for Murray—are saying the city’s $5 million isn’t enough money and it’s not going to the right places to address the emergency.
“What’s puzzling to me,” says Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, “is 100 beds in face of 3,000 people [sleeping] outside. That doesn’t convey the level of seriousness that I think the mayor and the executive want to convey.”
Council Member Nick Licata agrees. So, he’s introduced legislation to put $2.2 million more toward homelessness, specifically emergency shelter space and beds. That $2.2 million is money the mayor had recommended go toward the city’s rainy day fund instead.
Licata argues “it’s pouring right now.”
With the current state of homelessness in the city, Licata said at a recent council meeting, “There’s no rationale I can think of [to put that money in savings].”
But the mayor is pushing back. This week, Licata sent legislation for redirecting that $2.2 million to the budget committee (which he chairs) and he’ll need five votes to even discuss and vote on the proposal. Now, Licata tells The Stranger the mayor is lobbying council members to vote “no.” Licata says he has four “yes” votes total (himself, Kshama Sawant, Mike O’Brien, and Tom Rasmussen, according to Publicola).
“I’m looking for a fifth vote,” Licata told The Stranger yesterday. “And the mayor is looking to make sure I don’t find it. He’s been making phone calls.”
A spokesperson for Murray hasn’t yet returned my call to confirm this, but the mayor has been clear that he wants that $2.2 million in the rainy day fund and believes $5.3 million as the best amount to spend now (in addition to the city’s regular homeless spending and calls for more money from the state and feds).
“We wanted to find a way to still be fiscally responsible in the long term and find [money now],” Murray spokesperson Viet Shelton told me the day the mayor announced the emergency declaration.
The city automatically kicks some money into the rainy day fund each year from the general fund to act as a a buffer for times when things really go to hell, like the recent recession. It’s balance is currently at $45.2 million. (The level of rainy day funds also affects city’s bond rating. A good bond rating makes it cheaper for the city to borrow money.) It takes a majority of the city council to spend money from the fund.
Sawant supports Licata’s plan and wants to pull even more money—a “significant portion”—out of the rainy day fund to fund homelessness services.
The city currently spends about $40 million a year on homelessness, according to the mayor’s office. Sawant has repeatedly advocated for increasing that and the Seattle Human Services Coalition has asked for at least $15 million in new city funding toward human services. (Sawant also supports new taxes on business to fund things like transit or human services, but her colleagues have repeatedly rejected that idea.)
At a recent council meeting, Sawant called the mayor’s $5.3 million “not in proportion with scale of the crisis.”
Eisinger, with the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, questions whether the mayor has done enough to address short-term homelessness needs. Eisinger was a member of a task force the mayor put together late last year to focus on how to quickly address unsheltered homelessness in the city. The mayor took up some of that group’s recommendations, like allowing homeless encampments on city land, but not others like allowing community centers to be used as nighttime shelter space. Eisinger is still calling on him to do that to immediately provide new space for shelter.
She also questions the mayor’s spending plan for the $5.3 million in emergency funds because of its focus on prevention and case management.
“It’s not that those things aren’t important,” Eisinger says, “but $5 million can go a long way toward emergency response.”
Eisinger isn’t the only advocate with concerns. Representatives from the Seattle Human Services Coalition, Real Change, the Tenants Union of Washington State, the Transit Riders Union, SHARE, Nickelsville, and Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action signed on to Sawant’s statement calling for more money.
When I asked Real Change Director Tim Harris what he thought after the mayor’s announcement, he drew a comparison to Portland’s $30 million plan and Los Angeles’s $100 million plan when those cities announced homelessness emergencies.
“Murray’s is not a resource commitment that is commensurate with ‘an emergency,'” Harris wrote in an e-mail.
Part of the reasoning behind declaring a state of emergency is to ask for money from other sources beyond the city, like the state and feds. But it’s unclear how successful Seattle will be in gaining any ground there.
After the mayor and county executive made their announcement, the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance laid out a robust and detailed wish list for state lawmakers, but next year’s legislative session is expected to last only a few months. When I reached out to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office after the announcement in Seattle, a spokesperson said Inslee has worked to increase funding for homelessness and mental health but acknowledged “there’s also a lot left to do.” His office hasn’t yet made any specific commitments to push for new funding for Seattle’s homelessness crisis.
And here at home, at least two city council members look likely to side with the mayor and oppose Licata’s call for withholding money from the rainy day fund for homelessness. John Okamoto and Sally Bagshaw questioned Licata’s plan when he introduced it this week. Bagshaw said the council should find more money for homelessness but not deplete the rainy day fund.
When she said, basically, that there must be somewhere else in the general fund the council could find more homelessness money, Licata shot back: “We have a billion dollar budget. I imagine we could probably find much more than the $2 million to meet the needs of the homeless in our streets. But I would say to date [neither] the council nor the mayor have found those additional funds.”
The budget meeting is Monday at 10:30 a.m.
Ansel Herz contributed reporting.
