These beds need to be add a block or two from Comrade Sawant’s house. You know she’d raise hell about that.

@1, LOL!! But on a serious note THIS IS THE FUCKING SHIT THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE YEARS AGO!!!! And don't blame Murray (well The Stranger would never blame McGinn) for this. The City Council sat on their asses doing nothing but virtue signal and blowing money up the homeless industrial complex when they could have been pushing these tangible and immediate solutions.

I thought that the current shelters never even reach capacity because there are so many who choose the streets over beds for several reasons. More money wasted that won't help the problem at all.

Pretty fucking brave of Slog to not allow comments on the Tommy Robinson post...

"City Budget Director Ben Noble said operating the new beds in the future would cost $8.75 million per year."

Jesus Christ--there's only 500 beds at issue here. How can we possibly spend $17,500 per year to "operate" a tiny house in a small encampment, or a cot in an already existing shelter?

Snobattleites would rather pamper four-wheeled planetary overheaterrs . . . . --- https://www.earthfirst.org . Pah !!!

I retract my comment @4.

I think the reason that few are talking about funding health care and recovery for the homeless is because the hipster press corps can't deal with the cog/dis of being coke addicts. Maybe the new police chief from out of town will take care of that cokehead problem...

Inpatient drug rehab costs $6000/month. So $17500 each is barely 3 months of rehab.

Prison costs roughly $40,000/year. I don't really think it's realistic to expect these camps to be cheaper than prisons. In the long run they will be better than prisons, but in the short run I would think in order to be effective they would need to be at least as expensive as prison.

We demanded accountability:

“Over the last year, the city has re-bid its contracts for homeless services and imposed new statistical requirements on service providers requiring them to move more people into housing and show shorter shelter stays.”

But then the people taking our money said they wanted to keep taking our money — really, they really, really did!! — without having to show anything for it:

“Some providers have questioned these metrics, particularly amid the shortage of affordable housing.”

So we backed down:

“The city now says it won't enforce those requirements for the first quarter of this year.”

So, we can expect no improvement. Yay!

It cannot be stated often enough: affordable housing is NOT part of ending homelessness:

“Strategies to stabilize households burdened by high rents and prevent gentrification and displacement are important to ensuring a healthy and vibrant community. However, it is important to keep in mind that these efforts are separate and distinct from homeless crisis response.”

http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/System-Performance-Analysis-Final-Report.pdf

(Also, could we please drop the “tiny house” idea? Warehousing vulnerable persons in unsecurable shacks, without plumbing, is nothing short of inhumane.)

Meanwhile, Kent, Tacoma, Eastside, Spokane and others continue to export their homeless problem for Seattle to solve...

@5 is exactly right. Those costs are WAY out of line. In case anyone was wondering why the voters are getting tired of paying endless millions for this, look no further.

How about this? We rent some 2 bedroom apartments (go to the first ring of suburbs if you are planning to argue that we can't find any apartments in Seattle). I'll even stipulate that we pay $2500 a month for them, which is way too much for, say, Lynnwood or Renton. Put 8 beds in each. That's $312/month or $3750/year. Even if the city pays the utilities, and there is some staff time involved in administering/checking people in/out etc., it is way way less than this proposal. And the people living there would have cooking facilities and private bathrooms, which I bet the shelter would not have.

And @9 - if a shelter (a bed, storage space, laundry facilities etc.) is not much much cheaper than a prison, we're doing something very wrong. Also, these shelters are not drug treatment centers or prisons - they are basic shelter. As I understand it, they are meant to be temporary places people can go when they have no where else, not permanent residences. The City needs to take a hard look at what it is proposing if it thinks that people are going to support this.

@9 You wrote "Prison costs roughly $40,000/year. I don't really think it's realistic to expect these camps to be cheaper than prisons."

The $17,500 figure I referenced was for annual operating costs for each bed. So, what we are talking about here is the operating cost for a plywood shack with no utilities and no security. It's on city land, so there's no rent. Services for substance abuse and so on are a separate issues--we are already spending millions on a host of separate programs (and it's unclear whether these beds would go into low-barrier facilities).

You think this should cost MORE than $40,000 per year? Unless we are stuffing the mattresses with $100 bills, I don't see how that can be possible. I mean, that's roughly double the average monthly rent in this city. For $40,000 a year, we could send these people on a European vacation, put them up in a studio on Eastlake for a year, and give them a $500 monthly grocery stipend.

@16: Your premise is correct: we should not be a "lifeboat to any lifestyle," and there is no reason to assume when we help get a person off the streets of Seattle, that person will continue to reside in Seattle. From the reference I provided, above:

"RRH [Rapid Re-Housing] programs should not limit clients’ housing options based on unrealistic expectations about the percent of income they should pay for rent, the types of neighborhoods they should live in, or even whether they wish to remain in Seattle/King County."

(The document goes on to mention that San Francisco's formerly homeless may now reside up to 60 miles from that city.)

"actively experiencing substance abuse disorders"- bwahhhahahhaaa!!!!

@19- I think you are now supposed to say "spouses experiencing infidelity" rather than "cheating spouses."

Just as you yourself are an "asshat experiencing spammery."

@20- ha! And that should be "asshat inflicting spammery"

You can build all the tiny cottages and affordable housing that you want. It's not going to do a damn thing about the numbers of vagrants roaming our city. What good is it to build 500 units of affordable housing if 500 more of their friends show up? Seattle is seen by drifters andcdrig addicts as the path of least resistance. Until you start closing down these illegal encampments permanently and stay on top of it every day, they're going to keep coming here.