Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s office is pushing the interim plan as city officials fine-tune a broader strategy that emphasizes permanent housing.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray agreed the city’s method of cleaning up unauthorized homeless encampments needs reforming. He announced details of a plan Friday to do that and other changes for tackling the city’s homeless crisis.
The plan includes opening four more city-authorized encampments, garbage and needle collection, more outreach and more shower facilities.
“As we all know, the city’s response to unsanctioned encampments on public property needs improvement,” Murray said in the “Interim Action Plan” released Friday. “It is clear that the people of Seattle are asking for a better path forward.”
The announcement comes after an angry crowd packed a Seattle City Hall hearing on homeless camping policies Oct. 14, and thousands of emails from residents have flooded the inboxes of City Council members recently.
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Since the mayor declared a homelessness state of emergency last year, the city has carried out hundreds of camp evictions, also called sweeps or cleanups. Earlier this year, The Seattle Times documented bureaucratic failures, disorganization and other issues during the efforts.
The plan aims to improve coordination among staff and agencies, as well as the city’s transparency, for instance, by releasing an online report for each cleanup. The mayor also hopes to establish an advisory committee.
City officials are fine-tuning a broader strategy for responding to the city’s homelessness issue, called Pathways Home. Murray released that plan in September, though it will not take full effect until 2018, the mayor’s office said.
Pathways Home outlines changes in how Seattle spends money to help people on the street, with more emphasis on permanent housing.
The mayor’s office expects the four new encampments to serve about 200 people, with the first to open by December, according to the interim plan. Locations for where officials would establish the sites remain unclear.
Also, the plan says, up to two of those camps would have low barriers to entry, meaning they would accept people who suffer from chronic substance abuse or behavioral disorders.
In addition to the new sites, Friday’s announcement sets out to establish more indoor-shelter options, as well as to get the Seattle Navigation Center up and running by January. That facility will be a 24-hour service center with showers, restrooms, laundry machines, lockers and dining facilities, as well as other outreach services.
Also, the plan calls for a full-time team of Seattle police officers paired with outreach workers, beginning in January, and rolling out new training for some city employees.
The Interim Action Plan was sent to City Council members Friday for review, according to the mayor’s office. It is unclear when they will formally discuss it, a city spokesman said.
In his proposed 2017 budget, the mayor vowed to increase spending on homelessness by millions of dollars more than the record nearly $50 million this year.