Today Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington sent the City Council a letter laying out two potential options for moving forward with the proposed $30 million participatory budgeting program this year, while highlighting the numerous logistical, budget and legal issues that will need to be sorted out.
Continue readingCategory: human services
JustCare program faces fiscal cliff next month, scrambles for new funding
The JustCare program, which takes a compassionate and constructive approach to bringing off the streets 130 of downtown Seattle’s homeless individuals causing the greatest issues, is set to run out of money next month. That has left organizers and some local officials scrambling to find additional funds to keep the program running through September.
Continue readingLewis unveils new partnership to build twelve “tiny home” villages
This afternoon, Council member Andrew Lewis announced a new partnership, called “It Takes a Village,” to create an additional 480 units of “tiny homes” in twelve 40-unit villages sited across the city. The effort is intended to help close the gap between the number of people living unsheltered in the city and the number of emergency shelter beds available.
Continue readingDurkan announces some new department heads
Going into 2021, there will be new faces at the helm of the Human Services Department, the Office of Arts and Culture, and the Office of Emergency Management.
Continue readingMayor proposes how to spend federal and state COVID-19 relief funding
On Friday, Mayor Jenny Durkan sent a bill to the City Council with a proposed spending plan for about $14 million in federal and state COVID-19 relief funding.
Continue readingJason Johnson resigns as HSD Interim Director
Today Jason Johnson resigned as Interim Director of the city’s Human Services Department, effective in June. This follows a disastrous hearing with the City Council on Wednesday that further undermined his credibility and leadership. Erica Barnett broke the story yesterday morning, and provided a full report Saturday morning.
Continue readingEffort to create regional governance for homeless response has a rocky road
Last week I wrote that the effort to create a regional governance structure to lead the response to the homelessness crisis was reaching a pivotal moment as a revised plan was brought forth to King County’s Regional Policy Committee and the Seattle City Council. The back-to-back meetings of those two groups last Thursday showed that fractures still remain and the chance of moving forward with a plan is far from certain.
Continue readingNew report shows bias in how homeless people are prioritized for services
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.
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.
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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 …
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