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Let’s jump right into the topic of homelessness. Obviously, that was a key part of your campaign. As you mentioned earlier, you have a lot of plans to address this issue. Recently your administration received criticism for a shortage of available shelter beds, particularly during the first week of March when temperatures fell. Dawn Kinder, your director of the Neighborhood Housing and Human Services Division, told media outlets that this issue is a result of a lack of funding. Going forward, how do you plan to address this key funding issue?
We’re looking at both the model and the resources. Currently, the city has two congregate shelters, one downtown and one in an industrial area. That was very controversial because it was essentially a warehouse (Author’s note: Brown is referring to the Trent Resource and Assistance Shelter, which opened in 2022 and can be expanded to hold upward of 400 people) that was converted into a congregate shelter. We’ve made it clear that we intend to close the warehouse and transition to a different model. It will be smaller and more dispersed in terms of sites. And that assessment is underway. We have someone conducting a shelter audit right now. So that looks across the spectrum of providers with respect to their current capacity and potential future capacity for shelter beds.
The model that we are hoping to implement is not just about congregate shelters. It is similar to a facility that was developed with the assistance of (the Washington Department of) Commerce, actually, when I was commerce director before I came to the city. The facility is known as Catalyst. It’s run by Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington. It’s a model in which people have individual rooms and are at the place where they’re in some kind of counseling or treatment.
It’s more like transitional or interim housing before they go to permanent supportive housing. And it’s proven to be very effective (and) certainly more effective than the previous situation. So we hope to create more capacity in that kind of facility.
This transition is going to be complicated. So we’re working with the City Council, hopefully to get the flexibility to create the new types of facilities we want at the same time. Clearly, there are budget constraints here. That’s pretty significant. But part of the good news is that, again, we were successful in the legislative session, with a $4 million appropriation to assist us in this transition period.
And the previous administration closed some shelters. Reopening those shelters (is) on the table. We did temporarily reopen the Cannon Street shelter that the previous administration had closed, and we utilized it as one of the emergency warming centers. And we’re still in an evaluation period of how that facility might fit into our continuum of housing and service options.
During the campaign, you talked about the creation of a navigation center, a centralized place that would triage people who are unhoused. Where are you in terms of developing that system and that center?
We’re looking both at the data part of it, and … the facility part of that. And it’s not clear if we need one facility or a set of facilities that accomplish the same functions. But we’re assessing that right now. We’re looking at available or possible locations. I will say that the community is, in general, sensitive to the potential negative impacts of a facility in their neighborhood based on previous experiences. So that does make locating a new facility challenging. And even though I think the experience with the Catalyst facility has been effective and has not had major impacts on the neighborhood, the expectation as it was starting was quite polarizing. And there was quite a substantial pushback from that neighborhood, which I think shapes the conversation going forward.
The conversation on solutions to homelessness and housing people has always been kind of polarizing in this community. What do you think is key to getting community buy-in and engagement — which seem to be the key to getting some of these projects off the ground?
Many of our emergency warming centers were in churches, and they were in neighborhoods. And the model was that they were utilized as overnight warming shelters, with a maximum of 20 people. Some had more specialized populations due to specific medical or other types of needs. And I would say, in general, that process went quite well. And volunteers would talk to people in the neighborhood, as the church was being opened, and many times neighborhoods got involved in volunteering with food and other items of clothing, and so forth. So this smaller, more dispersed model did work with respect to emergency warming shelters.
The other issue is when facilities are brought into a community, there (needs) to be good-neighbor contracts that are signed between the operators and the neighborhood association. And we need on the city’s part to do our part with respect to neighborhood impacts, whether that is with respect to our code enforcement, cleanup teams, or law enforcement, if necessary.