Okay, thank you.
Good morning.
I'm King County Executive Dow Constantine.
Thank you for joining me and Mayor Durkin and leaders from across our region as we announce a new regional homelessness response which will answer the challenge of our time.
How to tackle a crisis that impacts all of our 39 cities and the unincorporated county with services that are hopelessly fragmented, not coordinated, often duplicative and confusing to our customers.
Well, here this morning, I say the status quo is no more.
I want to thank those who are going to speak this morning and also our partners who are joining us this morning, Joe McDermott, Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, Redmond Council President Angela Birney, Renton Council Member Ed Prince, Shoreline Mayor Will Hall, and Tukwila Council Member DeShawn Quinn.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
That is what this region has needed.
It's a new way of doing business.
It lays the foundation for making real and lasting impact on our communities.
Mayor Durkin and I propose an interlocal agreement initially between King County and Seattle, but welcoming each local city.
This agreement consolidates separate efforts into one regional homelessness authority, including emergency response services that consists of shelter and case management, of outreach and engagement, of diversion and prevention.
The King County Regional Homeless Authority will centralize and coordinate assessment and referral to housing for individuals and families experiencing homelessness countywide.
It will coordinate our housing programs, including transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive housing.
And it will coordinate business administrative and evaluation functions in one shared location.
Here's what makes the authority so different from past efforts.
Seattle and King County are dedicating funding for services and for operating costs.
For King County, that will amount to some $55 million for services and administration each year.
And the city of Seattle will dedicate $73 million annually.
Of course, actual funding will be subject to appropriations through our normal budget processes.
Throughout the development of this plan, we placed persons with lived experience of homelessness at the very center of our work.
Some of those partners are here with us today.
You're going to get to hear from them.
In our new structure, they will hold meaningful roles in how the King County Regional Homelessness Authority should be governed.
Both staff and our lived experience participants kept a strong focus on equity and social justice.
This is essential because we know the number of people of color experiencing homelessness is far higher than the population as a whole.
As a region, we must address these disparities with explicit strategies and actions to ensure that race does not determine or deny access to housing and to opportunity.
To sum up, our new structure will merge our homeless response, will tackle racial disparities and inequities countywide, will coordinate our funding in contracting and in performance management to achieve better outcomes and accountability and ultimately transparency.
This is the right way to run government.
This is what we in King County call best-run government in action, embracing partnerships, evidence-based practices, data-driven decision-making.
The creation of this new authority sets a solid foundation for the future, but it will not solve the crisis.
We still have so much work to do.
From one table to our announcement today, On this, we are clear.
No single government, no single program, no single stakeholder can succeed alone.
We need a response that unifies us and is equal to the challenge, one rooted in partnership, where everyone brings what they have to contribute in a collective impact, shared ownership model.
We are all part of the solution.
King County and Seattle embarked on this path together, and we will now work with our respective councils to move this collaboration forward.
Members of both councils are here today.
I want to thank them for their commitment to improving our homelessness response, and I look forward to our work ahead.
And I'm pleased to introduce now the mayor of the city of Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Thank you so much, Executive Constantine.
And I want to thank everyone for being here.
First, for everyone who's standing with us and who's going to speak.
And for the usually unheralded people who are in the back of the room, who have been working so long, so hard on so many issues, thank you for everything you're doing.
This really is the start of a new era, and it is one historic day that I think we will remember.
For years, leaders in our region have talked about the need for a unified system, and a unified system with governments, authority, resources to address homelessness together.
And I think what you're seeing here today and what you will hear from the speakers is, as the executive said, there is no one government, no one city, and no one solution.
And we recognize that in the county, in the city, and with the mayors and council members from throughout this region standing here today and the others I've talked to, we know we have to empower each other to really meet the challenge of our times.
Today, after months of work, after really over a year's period of working together, we will be transmitting this legislation to our mutual councils.
And I want to say to people who are out there who feel in these times that government cannot rise to the challenges, that we cannot come together.
They're wrong.
This is a step that shows just the opposite.
We bringing together providers and those who are providing for people experiencing homelessness, for the people with lived experience themselves, with governments big and small from this region, coming together to say we need to tackle this together.
And only together can we make real progress.
We are not saying that we have a solution or that this is the panacea, but we know what we have done before has not worked.
We know the challenges we face are the same in every town in this region, big or small, but yet they are different because of the makeup in those communities.
For the city of Seattle, we knew we could not go it alone.
So I want to thank all the leaders who are standing with us today to say we will work shoulder to shoulder to see how we move forward, to build synergies, to build partnerships, to make sure that we really do what we need to do, to have those range of services for people experiencing homelessness, for those who are in jeopardy of losing their homes, to move together across this region in many ways together.
Last year, the city and the county delivered the largest increase ever in shelter capacity, increasing our shelter capacity by 25%.
We also expanded our navigation team and outreach to move more people into housing.
And for the first time in many years, last May, we learned that our county and its one night count, unlike every other major city on the West Coast, went down.
But we didn't take much comfort from that because we knew there's so much left to be done.
And so since signing the MOU last year, we were thinking, how do we create and implement a plan that will actually work?
And it takes a lot of work behind the scenes.
meetings, conferences, talking.
How do we really reach the people who need the services and empower them to change their lives?
As Executive Constantine said, today we will be transmitting this interlocal agreement.
It is a huge change, but it's also a beginning.
We will not have all the answers today.
As we move forward in this process, we know that as we bring more partners to the table, we will have to adapt to the realities that we see.
But what you see today is everybody joined in one cause together to make sure we know that we build solutions together and empower each community.
We will have one governing board.
We will have the structure we'll talk about is to empower those parts to make sure there's accountability for leadership, but also to create a governing board that is really focused on expertise and solutions.
and then making sure that we have advisory committees so that we can make sure that we are learning as we go what is working and what is not working, looking at the data, and most important, really incorporating people with lived experience at every level so that we know the steps we take actually will be those that can make a difference.
I really, again, want to thank all the other cities who have participated in this, who've been on this journey from one table to now.
I give them my pledge that the city of Seattle is there to work with you and to make sure that you are empowered.
You will hear, for example, Auburn taking amazing steps for that city.
that is going to work for Auburn, that may not work for Renton or Tukwila or Issaquah or Bellevue.
But each city knows the challenges and has to have the tools to meet those challenges.
So I am very, very optimistic about where we're going.
It's a step we need to take.
I want to thank everyone.
And now I want to introduce our next speaker, which is Gordon McHenry, who is one of the people who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes and in front of the scenes, making sure that we are providing those kinds of responses we need to meet this challenge.
Gordon.
Well, good morning.
This is a great day.
With Sarah Levin of United Way of King County, I have the privilege of co-chairing the All Home Coordinating Board.
And when I'm not doing that, I'm leading one of our human service partners in homeless prevention and homeless services known as Solid Ground.
The All Home Coordinating Board, along with the All Home staff who is here, is responsible and accountable for our region's federal homeless continuum of care.
We know that as the COC, and we compete each year and receive over $40 million in federal funds that are invested locally to address our homeless situation.
The all-home staff and the coordinating board have been working for over a year to provide input and recommendations into the design of the new regional authority, and we support the progress that has been made and is represented by the charter and interlocal agreement that is being released today.
Early this year, the all-home board adopted a theory of change that I want to share with you.
It reads, if we create a homeless response system that centers customer voice, then we will be able to focus on responding to needs and eliminating inequities in order to end homelessness for all.
It is for this reason that we are so excited by the progress we're making as a region today.
We think that the new regional authority is important.
It will have a unified homeless emergency response system that is aligned with and responsive to the needs of those struggling with homelessness and housing instability.
The new system is designed to implement strategies and services on a regional basis that have been validated by those who are most impacted by our homeless and housing crisis.
The charter, interlocal agreement, and the eventual regional authority is aligned with our federally funded continuum of care that enables local human service providers and governments to invest over $40 million each year in homeless prevention and response funds.
This is really important work and this milestone must be supported as we work to have a regional homeless emergency response system that is aligned, that is effective, that is more impactful, and is rooted in racial equity.
We work very closely with those who are most impacted by our homeless situation.
I'm really proud to now introduce two people from the Lived Experience Coalition that is a part of All Home and will be a part of the new regional system.
I introduce Carol Lynn and Julius to provide their perspectives on today's important work.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'd like to invite the other lived experience coalition people up to join us.
Thank you for having us here today to speak our voice to an issue that affects many people, no matter what cultural background you come from.
I'm Carolyn Malone.
I'm 74 years old.
I just came out of five years of homelessness, not self-inflicted.
It was beyond my control.
My point is homelessness can affect anyone just like misfortune, woe, illness.
I joined the Lived Experience Coalition because I want my voice heard.
I've lived it five years.
I know what it's like.
I know strategies and different approaches to make homelessness extinct in this county.
But we all must consolidate and work together.
That's why it's so important to hear the voices of the homeless, people who've been there, people who are still there.
And I feel very much a part of the homeless experience, even though I have housing now.
I want my voice heard.
I want lived experience to be at the table when we talk about these strategies, because after all, we are the people who are out there.
And consultants, experts, and different agencies have been very effective in helping us, but we need more.
We need to change the process.
We need to change the path.
And so by including us, Lived Experience Coalition, I think we are headed in the right direction and we can nick this thing in the butt.
Thank you so much.
Hello, my name is Julius, and I'm gonna read this in front of me.
The Live Experience Coalition is a diverse group of people who are coming together to lift each other up.
Advocates for ourselves and others in advanced race and social justice.
We work beyond oppressive structures by unifying our voice in an effort to dismantle multi-system barriers impacting people who are experiencing homelessness, involvement in the justice system, face unmet behavioral health needs, and are fleeing violence or emotional, psychological victimization.
The Live Experience Coalition is a part of our continuum of care consumed board that is providing live experience, expertise in shaping the homelessness response redesign system.
Thank you.
And now I would like to introduce our Auburn Mayor Nancy Beckett.
Good morning.
Executive Constantine asked me to also acknowledge that Burien Mayor Jimmy Mata had joined us today.
Thank you Mayor for all of your work.
And it's humbling to come up here after hearing from two people with lived experience.
Hopefully the days of sitting in meetings and at the end of them saying how many people did we house during this meeting have come to an end.
Working together is what's going to make this happen.
Every city in King County shares the goal of a coordinated, seamless system that successfully transitions every individual and family experiencing homelessness into stable housing.
Along with Executive Constantine, Mayor Durkin, other mayors and council members that you have seen here today, I have been included in the conversations throughout the development of the initiative, from one table to today.
Although there is not agreement on every issue yet, it is the start of the legislative process after all.
The proposed legislation incorporates important feedback from the cities and makes great strides in addressing several key concerns about governance and funding.
Key amongst those is sub-area planning.
This is a key component in this new proposal, allowing community-driven plans and responses that will recognize, as Mayor Durkan stated, Auburn is not Seattle, is not Bellevue, is not Renton.
I understand the need to start this program with just Seattle and King County as our region's two largest funders of homeless programs.
I am pleased that the ILA allows for additional cities to join over time.
This will provide cities the time we need to evaluate the new entity and is critical for the overall success of creating a truly regional program and system.
This is a thoughtful, pragmatic approach and the urgency of the homeless crisis demands our action.
I look forward to continuing conversations with the executive, with Mayor Durkan and councils and mayors as this legislation is finalized.
as representative of Auburn, fervently hope the new authority will be successful and look forward to a potential future partnership.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at one of our community suppers in Auburn, asking what individuals who are homeless need from our city.
They gave me a lot of concrete ideas, but one of the last ideas that they left me with is, we need hope.
And so today, as we stand here announcing this new regional governance structure, I ask that all of us continue with the hope that we are coming to a new day where people are housed, where they have the services that they need, and they become, again, respected, vital members of the community that they have lived in for so long.
And it is my honor to introduce to you Someone who I consider a friend, the Chief Seattle Club Executive Director, Colleen Echo-Hawk.
Well, good morning, relatives.
And I say that purposely because when we're talking about our friends who have been experiencing homelessness in the Native community, we consider them our relatives because we're all connected.
We all have responsibility to each other.
And as I begin, I want to remind us that we are on Coast Salish territory.
This is a territory that for since time immemorial, has taken care of the community.
This is a place that has sustained every single person that lives here.
And I look forward to working with my colleagues around the room to once again remember that responsibility to each other.
I am pleased to be here to add my voice to the movement towards creating a stronger and more unified foundation for our homeless response services.
Chief Seattle Club is one of the many agencies working every day across King County to help people experiencing homelessness gain the health and stability to be able to move from street to home.
We have to remember that unified does not mean uniform.
In fact, the planning for this new regional authority has embraced the opposite view.
The disproportionality of homelessness among communities of color is well documented.
We know that within the native community, if you are native and live in this county, you are 10 times more likely to be homeless than anyone else.
To me, that is a moral outrage as we already have discussed that this is Coast Salish territory.
Our native community deserves to be inside, deserves to have secure housing and stability, as do all people who live in this region.
To be effective, our homelessness response as a collective must acknowledge racial and cultural needs and ensure a truly person-centered approach to service design, delivery, and governance.
This requires that the leadership of the new authority include and represent the communities disproportionately impacted and individuals who have experienced homelessness.
The proposed new regional authority moves us in that direction.
Chief Seattle Club is proud to be collaborating with King County right now on a new housing project in Soto that will focus on an outreach and engagement towards Native American and Alaska Native people experiencing homelessness.
We are designing services and supports based on the needs of the people we will serve in that project.
It is exactly this kind of collaboration that will drive our success forward as a region.
Executive Constantine and Mayor Durkan are proposing the first steps.
We will need to take the rest of them together.
I will remind us all that prior to 1492, there was no homelessness in this country.
And I look forward to building on that legacy together, that we can do amazing things as a region, that Seattle and King County should lead around the country to bring everyone inside.
And it is my pleasure now to introduce Council Member Colwells, who has led the way on many of these amazing, this amazing work to take care of people who are the most vulnerable and need the most support, so please.
Thank you, Colleen.
Just wonderful words and I cannot thank her enough and appreciate that she is part of this very important process.
I am Jean Cole-Wells and I chair the King County Council's Committee on Health, Housing, and Human Services.
In a perfect world, we would not be here today.
We would already have an education system in place that gives all kids a fair start.
We would have a healthcare system that prevents illnesses rather than emergency service care when a person's mental, physical, behavioral health has already reached a crisis stage.
and no one would face bankruptcy to pay for medical care or housing.
I really appreciate Executive Constantine and Mayor Durkan for working so hard with so many other partners in the community to bring us here today.
and we know that there's urgency in what we do.
Perhaps if they had been the leaders in the far past and had extended the same federal benefits to all people, we would not have the level of systemic and institutional racial inequities that we see reflected in our communities today.
But, as we know, our world is not perfect.
The Great Recession, followed very quickly, it seemed, by an economic boom that added over 200,000 people to our region, mostly high earners, has only exacerbated the income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest among us.
For along with that strong economy and being one of the most desirable places in the country to live and work, we unfortunately have increased housing instability, unaffordability, income inequality, racial inequality, food insecurity, housing displacement, and homelessness.
But we are not staying in that track.
We are very much moving forward, as we cannot continue with the status quo, as Executive Constantine brought out.
It's not working.
And too many people, too many of our neighbors are falling through the cracks.
But it's going to take all of us, government, business, regional partners, organized labor, service providers, philanthropists, and importantly, as you've heard, people with lived experience working together to move the needle.
I'm very appreciative of the many ideas that many of us have suggested in a whole lot of meetings over the last many months that are reflected in the work that went into crafting this very important proposal.
And now the mayor and the executive have provided us today with a very strong blueprint, and I applaud them for that.
But there is still a lot more to do.
This is by no means a finished product.
This is a work in progress as the legislative bodies get their hands on it.
It's now up to all of us, however, to lay the bricks and make the adjustments needed to make and ensure that this proposal works.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on the County Council, including Councilmember McDermott here, and the City Council, and working with our regional partners in the suburban cities to have a constructive dialogue with the public as well to ensure that the final product that we come up with that the county executive and the mayor sign, I hope in a joint signing, that we will have a solid alliance across the county, across governments, across agencies, so we can finally really reverse the effects of this bleak chapter in our region's history.
It will be an exciting start at that point.
Thank you.
Oh, and I...
One more thing.
I would very much like to introduce now my very esteemed colleague on the Seattle City Council, Sally Bagshaw.
Well, I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be here after how many years.
It's actually been 25 years for me, first as a prosecuting attorney and now for the last 10 years as a council member, seeing what is coming together with the county and the city and our sound cities and our region coming together to really address this problem around homelessness.
I want to do a little way back machine here.
We, on November 2nd, I believe, of 2015, you were standing almost here, I was next to you, we had a different mayor, a number of the people that are in this room, and we declared an emergency around homelessness.
I know that we have heard it from all sides.
We haven't done enough.
We've done too much.
We're not addressing the needs of people.
We're doing things that the taxpayers don't like.
What I believe now that we're going to be able to do is to bring together the vision that has been brought forward and I want to extend great thanks to Mayor Durkan for the work you've done to increase investments in diversion and rapid rehousing in our 24-7, and the team that you brought together to help us define that.
Mayor Baucus, thank you, too, for being the voice of Auburn, but also for the suburban cities.
It's mattered so much to have you there with us.
And also, in the back, Tess Colby, thank you, April Putney, it's just been Rachel, thank you all for coming together here with the vision that we are going to solve these problems.
And I don't believe they're here right now, but I do want to acknowledge Dan Satterberg and Pete Holmes and our judges in the Superior Court and the Muni Court being able to say, yep, Seattle is going to do this differently, and we're moving forward.
And as all of you who read Nicholas Kristof's article in the last couple of weeks, Seattle's out front on this, and this next step we're taking is going to take us that much further.
I do also want to acknowledge Mark Putnam, all home, and the work that you have done.
We know that bringing this together, bringing our region together, is what's going to make this big difference.
On City Council, Council Member Teresa Mosqueda, Mike O'Brien and I have been working very hard, and with Human Services, with our King County counterparts.
Council Member Cole-Wells, thank you for leading that.
I think we have a one o'clock meeting where we're getting back together to continue this work.
Council Member Dombowski and Up the Grove, Council Member McDermott, and Council Member Balducci, too, and looking forward on how much additional housing.
What we know is that the combination, we know what causes homelessness.
We know that the lived experience, the people like Caroline, who is here speaking to us, we can learn so much from you.
And because we're listening to you and bringing you into the fold at long last, this is how we're going to make the progress that we want going forward.
So I see this coordinated work, one organization, and as everybody's up here said, this isn't going to solve the problem.
We've talked a whole lot about process.
Yet, we're going to be together in such a way that we're going to be able to work with our investments.
We're going to take what we learned by that emergency declaration, what we learned from Barb Poppe's report, the McKinsey report, the Ego Northwest report, the focus strategies, and the NIS strategies, all of this, these are best practices from which we are going to learn.
We know what we need to do.
We need to invest in all of these things, whether it's mental health, public health.
I saw Patty Hayes back there somewhere.
These are the kinds of investments that are going to make a big difference, and it's what the taxpayers are demanding of us, too.
We want to see people getting better.
We want to see fewer tents on the street, fewer needles on the street, and to have individuals have a roof over their head.
It is our right to have a place where we all can call home, and that's where we're going.
So, including the people that we have, the leaders across the region, the communities, the individuals who have given us really good information and advice so far, it is a step that we are taking.
I am proud to be part of this.
The legislative process is getting started with the city and the county.
separately, but we are coming together on all of these issues to make this happen.
And that's the best part about this.
Seattle and King County and our regional cities are going to be out in front of this.
We're going to be the national model.
So not long from now, we're going to be able to say people are housed and it's the right thing to do and they're getting the help they need.
So thanks for being part of this.
Really glad you're all here today.
Well, thank you to all of our speakers and to everyone else who's joined us.
I'd like to summon the leads from the county and the city who are the best people for technical questions.
And now, if you have any questions, Mayor Durkan would be happy to answer them.
Seattle just recently rebid all of its contracts.
It was a big deal.
How does that affect these sort of new benchmarks that Seattle rolled out to great grandeur just a couple years ago?
And then similarly, it looks like the amount that Seattle is contributing is $73 million.
That's essentially the whole budget.
So it's all of the money that Seattle is now spending on homelessness.
So multiple questions there.
So number one is, there's been a lot of work behind the scenes.
And so we have been, we've already been seeing the fruits of one table and pushing towards regional governance.
And so thanks to the executive's direction and leadership, our teams have already been working together on trying to come up with joint RFPs.
We have a lot of the same providers.
I think the overlap is in excess of 50. And so we're working to make sure that we have the same sets of contracts, same RFPs, same measurements for success, so that when we move to this new entity, we won't have to recreate the wheel.
One of the things that we will gain from this is efficiencies, not just in how we do the work, so that those frontline people actually doing the work can spend more time doing the work, rather than thinking themselves how to navigate different bureaucracies.
So we will continue with the same accountability measures.
They're going to be lining up more directly.
And the new governing board, then on an ongoing basis, will make sure that those are the right ones.
Remember, this is a new legal entity with new governance.
And they are the ones who are going to have to assess on an ongoing basis if what we're doing is working.
And, you know, a lot has been said about, you know, how do the cities work together.
And again, just want to say is, you know, one of the reasons Seattle has made such a financial commitment to this is because we believe there can only be a regional solution.
We cannot go it alone.
And so we are willing to make sure that to see that succeed, we will tie our raft to everybody else's raft.
That's the commitment that we're making.
Let me just see if I answered.
Did that answer your question, David?
There will be the process what will happen is there's different layers of accountability.
So no executive will speak for its legislative branch.
We're smarter than that.
And so we will see that each of the legislative branches themselves will have to approve what the budget is that goes into the entity.
Once that budget goes into the entity, the governing board of this new entity will create an overall budget that the oversight group will either vote up or vote down.
And there's obviously going to be discussion along the ways, but it's both to give accountability at the local levels so that the local taxpayers know that their elected leaders have accountability over their tax dollars.
But to say once we do that, it is going to be governed by those people who are professionals, who have solving the problem in mind, in a combined way.
And so that's why there's the different layers, and that's why Seattle's money.
So the money ultimately will be decided by the mayor working with the city council, the executive working with the county council.
Sorry, Erica.
There's been every year that the budget that we had last year increased the amount of funding for homelessness significantly.
And at the end of the day, again, it will be up to the local legislative authorities to allocate their portion, and then for the governing board to decide what is the budget and action plan.
And then the oversight group, the elected leader group, will vote it up or vote it down.
And this is both to provide accountability, but also a little bit of insulation so that the people responsible for the work can actually do the work.
Did you want to add anything to that, Jeff?
I agree with that and since then we have been able to successfully renew, for example, the veteran seniors and human services levy, adding seniors and making sure that there's additional funding for the kinds of services people experiencing homelessness need.
I am very optimistic that this new structure will allow us to marshal all of our resources in the region to be more effective in addressing homelessness.
That is the key, that we're going to be able to get more for the funds we have to move the needle ultimately to get ahead of this crisis and to be able to reinvest in those who have the greatest challenges, so that we ultimately reach our goal of no person being without a secure home, every person being able to live in dignity.
Yes.
The money, the pool you're talking about, the 73 million, the 55 million, county, city, is that coming out of existing funds, existing budgets, or is that new money?
I think that's what...
The existing budget.
I don't think that's the case.
The structure provides a representative on the steering committee from the sound cities from cities outside of Seattle.
an opportunity over time to create a second steering committee member.
It is intended to provide on-ramps for each individual city to join the organization in ways that best fit that city's needs.
And that was important.
That was one of the important changes that we made that was based on what we heard from the cities.
one-size-fits-all, even when it comes to the way we're handling governance.
And I believe that the representatives of these cities will continue to have a very strong voice with their county council and with this organization, because as the mayor said, no one city is going to be able to solve this acting alone.
We have to begin, as we are progressing in some other areas like high-capacity transit, to think of ourselves less as dozens of individual jurisdictions and more as a single metropolitan region with big challenges that need to be solved collectively.
Would any of our city representatives like to speak to that?
Sure, so the opportunity for that sub-regional approach is what we've been fighting for all along and advocating for in such a strong way because we do feel that we have a better pulse on our own communities and it's not a one-size-fits-all.
There is no treatment that is one-size-fits-all.
There is no opportunity for housing that is one-size-fits-all.
And so, as electeds and other experts within each of our communities, we will have a say, that's that sub-regional approach, we will have a say in how that funding is utilized within our communities.
So we're excited by that opportunity.
Well, I don't think I have any right now other than the unknown.
But as I said, hope is what's going to move us forward in this.
And trust.
There are a lot of relationships that have been built and nurtured over time, especially in this process for the last few years with OneTable.
and now this regional governance and so trust is one of those big key elements in any of these relationships and partnerships going forward and that's what we build on.
In many ways, the biggest leap of faith is the City of Seattle right now.
Because as David pointed out, we're all in.
This can't work unless we're all in.
But it also can't work unless we make sure that we really have a regional approach.
And some of the best conversations I've been able to have has been with my fellow mayors.
Tell me what you need to make it work for your cities and your communities.
Because I will tell you, I know now from two years of experience that every unit of housing built in any town in this region helps Seattle.
Any job created in any city in this region helps Seattle.
And any services provided to people experiencing homelessness in their own communities helps us.
And so I want every town and city in this region to succeed and for them to learn to trust and to learn to see that this is value added for them.
I think what you're seeing is healthy democracy in action.
As Colleen said, unity is not unanimity.
And we have to have the ability to have different voices, different points of view, and still have action.
That's what people in this region want to see is action, that we're actually doing things together to solve this challenge.
And that's what they'll see from this.
Do you both think that the region needs to raise between 400 million and a billion dollars to adequately manage the homelessness crisis?
And if so, where do you think the new authority is going to be?
So you are, the question you asked is about homelessness, but it was actually the housing numbers.
And this entity, so related, this entity will not be the entity that is developing the housing for the region.
This is the homeless response.
And so separate and apart from this are lots of conversations going on with every part of this region.
with the state and with the feds on how do we get more housing.
Because while every person experiencing homelessness has their own story and needs their own solution, they all need the same thing, a house, a home.
And so this homeless response is dealing with those issues we need to do to get shelter, prevention, and services people need.
And conjoined with the discussions around housing, but it is a separate conversation.
Could you explain the specific problems now in addressing the homelessness crisis that forming this authority will help you address better?
Yes, so there's a range of challenges and I think everyone up here can speak to them because this has been a process through one table and the like is, for example, we were asked about the contracting.
You know, to have separate entities contracting with the same providers and different contracts, different RFPs, different metrics and measurements for are we seeing success and is it working.
We'll have that unified.
We will for the first time have the behavioral health dollars for the people who are experiencing mental health and other health issues unified with the shelter dollars.
Because right now, Seattle pays for the majority of shelter space in the region.
The county pays the majority of the behavioral health, the mental health and the addiction services, for example.
Having a one place that is dealing holistically with people so that we have one place to deal with that itself will address efficiencies that we don't have right now.
to be able to unify the number of case managers and what their job is and how they approach it, to make sure that we have a system in place for not just how those case managers approach their work but how they're paid, to make sure that, you know, case managers who deal with a client who might pick up and live in Seattle today but may live in Auburn tomorrow or Tukwila the next day or Renton or Burien, we've got to have a system where we are a mobile society.
And if we don't have a response that deals with that reality, then what we will just see is a continuing escalation of the issue.
I think we've got time for...
I just want to follow up on that, if I can, because you just talked about behavioral health, and we've been hearing a lot about housing here.
And one table talked about all the root causes of homelessness, and even in the one I count, there were significant numbers of mental illness and drug addiction.
So should we look at this authority as a housing endorsement of housing first?
and then the other services come later?
Or is this really a holistic approach where there'll be mental health dollars included to treat the root causes of homelessness?
Do you want to address that?
I'll let them address it, but the answer is all.
It's not an or, it's an and.
So I want to introduce Leo Flohr.
He's the director of the Department of Community and Human Services and is one of the technicians at the center of all of these interlocking sets of services.
So thank you for the question, and what we know is that when we take a look at things like enhanced shelter, when we take a look at things like case management, the commonality that they have that makes them effective is that they do use evidence-based practices like Housing First, and then layer on the ability to provide supportive services when and where people need them.
So the principle that this new authority is able to accomplish both at the system level and the individual level is unified systemization of the total network of services that we know are essential for people to be successful.
Somebody said here today that we know what causes homelessness, we also know what can help solve homelessness.
And it's a place to live, and it's a support network, it's a feeling of belonging, and it's the social services and behavioral health services on-site, on-demand, where we need them.
And that's what this is going to enable us to do.
about the structure of how this will work, who the experts on this board will be, when an executive director will be hired, and I guess also, when is HSI?
Yeah, we've got a whole interview on all those things.
Let's get with you, Erica, afterwards, and we can give it to everyone in terms of all the details.
People have different things.
But as Mayor Backus said, we've got the ILA we're transmitting.
There's basically You've got the elected officials who provide the oversight, but the governing board is where it's a new legal entity that is going to be run by a governing board.
And it's experts at the table.
So to be on the governing board, they have to have – there's a combination of people with lived experience.
People have been able to manage a budget of about $150 million or more if you start putting in all the money.
and who also have experience in each of the areas we need to do.
What are those things that we know work, and those people are at the table to be able to evaluate?
Because what we've seen, as Leo said, is we know what works, but what works today will change a little.
When I came in as mayor, we saw that we needed more shelter as quickly as we could get it.
So we increased shelter by about 25%.
But then looking at the data, what we also saw is the existing shelter system we had was stood up in the emergency, but wasn't very effective at actually moving people from shelter to long-term housing.
And so we started turning it to create most of the shelter now in Seattle is enhanced shelter.
So people get those holistic shelters five times more effective at moving people from shelter to housing.
So we know from looking at the data what works and working with people and making sure that we center this on the humans who are actually needing to be integrated back into our society to get housing, to get the support, to get the services they need.
It's a complicated process and gives us the ability to go upstream.
So one of the things you'll see here is one of the emphasis is going to be on diversion, for example.
If someone comes to the front door, we don't just want to say, you're homeless today, here's the shelter you're going to live in until we can find you a house.
We want to ask them, tell us why you're here.
And for some people it may be, I got sick, I work a gig job, I got fired from my job, I lost my apartment, I have nowhere to live.
That person needs a different intervention than the person who might have significant addiction and behavioral health issues.
So we've got to be able to say, here's six months rent and a job and get that person up and running.
For the person who has health, give them the holistic health care system they need and the place to live.
So we have to have a system in place that can deal with all of those realities to start asking better questions for the people who are coming through and designing the interventions so that they will work.
Okay, go ahead.
Did you say last question?
Last question.
Okay, go ahead.
I just want to know, and maybe for Council Member Cole-Wells, unless either of you want to speak to it, significant criticism coming out of the King County Council this morning about this plan, and Council Member Reagan Dunn, who I believe is going to have a counter-proposal tomorrow, tells me that there's
I think first we'll rely on the majority council members who are available here today to help guide us in getting approval on the county council for a measure that really does address homelessness.
I'm not interested in speculating about what people are going to do politically right now.
What I want to know is what the people who are sincere about solving this challenge are ready to do to step up to the plate.
Would either of the council members like to say a word about that?
Thank you for the question, too, and thank you, Councilman, Executive.
I have not gotten any details on Councilmember Dunn's proposal, so I'd have to see it.
My sense right now is that most Councilmembers have questions about what the proposal will be.
It'll be a lot clearer to them with the transmission of the legislation, but we are having a huge number of meetings.
We have been.
trying to inform, keep informed our council on what is going on.
I don't know, standing here, that we will have unanimity at a council vote.
I think there likely will be amendments as the legislation goes through the deliberative process.
Other than what you've said, I have not heard any other council member come up and say, I'm opposed to this.
It's more, I'd like to learn more about it.
I have some concerns, but I don't know all the details yet.
So I'm looking forward to it.
I believe that the legislation will be referred to the Health, Housing, Human Services Committee, and may possibly have a joint referral with, a mandatory referral with the Regional Policy Committee.
We're waiting to see about that.
But I think there'll be very healthy dialogue and a very positive spirit of finding the right solution.
Thank you.