A study released last week confirms something that many people in the homeless-services community had suspected: a key tool used to assess and prioritize homeless people in King County for access to services is biased against people of color.
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Council deliberates on city’s 2020 homelessness spending plan
With a plan in the works to transition to a regional authority to organize the response to the homelessness crisis, yesterday the City Council and a collection of city departments had a public discussion of the Mayor’s proposed homelessness budget for next year.
Continue readingCity reports on performance of homeless response programs in first half of 2019
Yesterday HSD Interim Director Jason Johnson delivered a report to the City Council on the performance of the city’s homeless-response programs through the first half of 2019. There was some good news.
Continue reading“RV Ranching” ordinance further modified, further narrowed
Yesterday the City Council made further tweaks to the controversial “RV Ranching” ordinance proposed by Mayor Durkan, intended to stop predatory “vanlords” from renting out extensively damaged RVs and other vehicles to homeless people.
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“RV Ranching” bill gets rewritten, inches forward
This afternoon, the Council once again took up the Mayor’s bill prohibiting “RV Ranching” of dilapidated vehicles. But it rewrote the bill to change the focus from cracking down on the predatory ranchers to protecting and providing assistance to the victims.
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City’s “prolific offenders” task force issues report, Mayor proposes response
You will likely recall that last February a group self-published a report on “prolific offenders” who cause problems for local communities and businesses, and who cycle through the criminal justice system. As I wrote at the time, that report had plenty of methodological issues and other flaws that limited its usefulness, since the authors didn’t have access to most of the relevant government, law-enforcement, and human-services records. However, in the aftermath of that report, Mayor Durkan commissioned her own task force to look into the issue of prolific offenders. That group published their report last week, concurrent with a budget …
Continue readingDurkan and Constantine announce proposal for regional homeless response agency
This morning, King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that they have jointly submitted a long-awaited proposal for a regional governance structure for responding to the homelessness crisis. The proposal, as detailed in a proposed Interlocal Agreement and a Charter for the new organization, lays out the services that will be consolidated into the new authority, the governing bodies that will oversee it, and the initial funding.
Continue readingSawant looks to expand sanctioned encampments and tiny house villages, but faces SEPA appeal
Over the summer, Council member Sawant has been working on a bill that would expand the city’s ability to establish additional “tiny house” villages and issue permits for more sanctioned homeless encampments. However, her bill has already been tied up in land-use bureaucracy.
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RV Ranching, the Sequel
Earlier this week, the City Council had another committee hearing on the Mayor’s proposed ordinance to curb “RV Ranching,” predatory renting of RV’s and other vehicles in poor condition to homeless people. The second conversation went better than the first one last week, and the issues are becoming clearer.
Continue readingDurkan administration tries to stop “RV ranching,” writes a bad bill, gets told off by Council
Back in June, Mayor Durkan announced that she would be transmitting to the City Council a bill that prohibits the renting of “hazardous vehicles” to vulnerable individuals as shelter. Today that bill had its first hearing in front of a Council committee, and it did not go well.
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