Wednesday afternoon in the Human Services and Public Health Committee meeting, the City Council was asked by the Human Services Department (HSD) to lift restrictions on $125,000 set aside in this year’s city budget for a contract related to human service providers in the North Seattle area. They asked no questions, and quickly passed it out of committee for final approval on Monday. This represents their general approach to oversight of HSD, and it is a big mistake.
Continue readingTag: HSD
Understanding the Budget, Part 3: Human Services Department
The Human Services Department, often referred to as HSD, is one of the largest departments in the city with 325 full-time employees and a proposed 2017 budget of $156.7 million. Where does the money come from, and where does it all go?
Continue reading
The slow road to an effective homeless crisis response, part 2: HSD’s plan
This is the second installment of a two-part report on last week’s big announcements around the city’s response to the homeless crisis in Seattle and King County. In response to the Poppe and Focus reports discussed in Part 1, the city’s Human Services Division (HSD) announced a new initiative to respond to the homeless crisis called Pathways Home.
Continue readingThe slow road to an effective homeless crisis response, part 1
This is the first installment of a two-part report on last week’s big announcements around the city’s response to the homeless crisis in Seattle and King County. Part 2 can be found here. Last week we all finally got to see the long-awaited and much-delayed report from consultant Barb Poppe on Seattle’s response to its homeless crisis. And it immediately became clear why it took so long to see the light of day.
Continue readingBagshaw gives Human Services Department a long leash — too long
Yesterday we saw the Parks Department leadership demonstrate that they haven’t yet built a strong working relationship with the Council committee that provides oversight to their work, and how that can go wrong. Today we saw what happens when a department — in this case, the Human Services Department — builds a relationship that is close and comfortable. Too comfortable.
Continue readingHomelessness response, part 2
This afternoon the Human Services and Public Health Committee received the second part of a briefing on the city’s overall response to the homelessness crisis. Part 1 was focused on the immediate, emergency response; today’s presentation was about the long-term investments being made.
Continue reading