Mayor Wilson announces her homelessness plan, then leaves out the back door

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said of the city’s current homelessness strategy, “I don’t think that anyone can really argue that our overall approach to homelessness has been successful,” during her first State of the City speech in mid-February.

Given this acknowledgement that the region’s Housing First homelessness strategy has failed, it is surprising that last week the new mayor revealed a plan that differs very little from what has been done during the past decade as homelessness increased 70%.

It is also notable that the mayor continues her strong commitment to tiny homes villages, given the political embarrassment this strategy recently brought to the mayor when it was revealed that black mold has infested an unknown number of units.

Wilson leaves without answering questions

While these errors might be dismissed due to the mayor’s inexperience, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the mayor snuck out a back door during the middle of the event, refusing to answer any questions. It is strange that she would leave in the middle of the event where she is announcing her homeless strategy given that Mayor Wilson has stated that her administration should be judged on its homelessness record.

The event gathered many City of Seattle officials and representatives from the city’s large housing organizations. Yet most importantly for the mayor, nearly all of Seattle’s major media outlets were in attendance. It was the perfect opportunity for the mayor to promote her homelessness strategy to the public.

Normally politicians would take advantage of having a large gathering of Seattle’s media to promote their strategy. Yet Wilson and her communications team decided to fabricate excuses for why she refused to answer questions about her homelessness efforts.

Journalist Jonathan Choe confronted the mayor’s communication director Sage Wilson on why Mayor Wilson escaped the event without answering questions from the gathered media. He stated, “She had to go. She’s busy. She’s the mayor.”

During the brief time Mayor Wilson was in attendance, the mayor reiterated her campaign promise of increasing the number of shelter beds by 4,000 before the end of 2029 when her term ends. The mayor said she will be sending three pieces of legislation to the city council which she claims will add 1,000 beds before the end of this year.

• Increase the number of people who can live in tiny home villages from 100 to 150.
• Take an “underutilized” $5 million from other social services departments and place it into shelter programs.
• Remove the bureaucratic King County Regional Homelessness Authority from negotiating leases for shelter properties.

The mayor did not include a price tag (except to mention the $5 million transfer from other departments) for the additional homes, leased locations, and staff. She also avoided discussing addiction and mental health treatment, even though top experts argue that this needs to be the focus if we are to reverse the continuing increase in homelessness.

Increasing Tiny Home Limits

According to the Seattle Times, there are 11 tiny home villages across the city. The current 100-person limit was negotiated in 2015 due to concerns of having large emergency shelter projects being placed in neighborhoods. The mayor did not say whether her office has yet to talk with neighborhood groups about this 50% increase in size of tiny home villages.

In revealing her plan, the mayor did not mention her recent political blunder involving tiny homes. During her state of the city speech the mayor proclaimed that her team had moved a woman and her three dogs into a tiny home. Yet it was later uncovered that the woman refused to move into the structure due to significant black mold infestation. She felt safer sleeping on the sidewalk.

With such a public unveiling of unsanitary conditions, the mayor made no effort to clear up concerns over the cleanliness of tiny homes. The public should know if mold is a common problem of tiny homes before making such a large investment in providing them to homeless individuals.

“Underutilized” $5 million

While there is much handwringing around city hall over its budget crisis and the looming $140+ million deficit, it took only a few days for Mayor Wilson to find an “underutilized” $5 million in the city’s social services programs to partially fund her shelter expansion. Evidently things aren’t as tough as the politicians have been claiming if that amount of money is “underutilized.”

Remove KCRHA from the process

The expensive and dysfunctional King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) continues to be a bureaucracy seeking a purpose. It is telling that even a big government advocate like Mayor Wilson recognizes that KCRHA is performing duplicative tasks and that even the City of Seattle’s bureaucracy can perform the leasing task quicker and more effectively than KCRHA.

Unfortunately for Mayor Wilson, her early departure demonstrates a lack of confidence in her homelessness plan and her ability to defend it in front of the media. This leaves many wondering why they should support this expensive plan if Mayor Wilson is so lackadaisical about promoting it.

Photo: Jonathan Choe, Discovery Institute