The city of Seattle launched a process at the end of June that will put $30 million worth of investments in services for people experiencing homelessness up to bid for the first time in a decade.
The figure represents more than half of the $50 million the city budgets for homeless services. The remaining $20 million is already bid out or doesn’t fall under the scope of the request for proposals, which targets programs meant to get people out of homelessness.
The city will look at five criteria when judging submissions: the ability to get clients into permanent housing, the number of days clients are unhoused, the rate at which clients return to homelessness, the number of people organizations serve who are literally homeless and whether the agency is serving enough people to meet its capacity.
Applications will be reviewed in October, and contracts awarded in December for what the Human Services Department hopes will be a start date in January. They will be judged on their performance on these new metrics with data from the first six months of 2017, as well as answers to questions specific to the services they want to provide.
Top funding priorities include emergency services (up to $16 million), rapid rehousing (up to $8 million) and outreach and engagement with people experiencing homelessness ($4.5 million).
Other areas include permanent supportive housing ($3 million), transitional housing ($2 million), as well as prevention and diversion services.
Ashley Archibald is a Staff Reporter covering local government, policy and equity. Have a story idea? She can be can reached at ashleya (at) realchangenews (dot) org. Twitter @AshleyA_RC
Wait, there's more. Check out more articles from the full July 5 issue.
Real Change is reader supported. Just $5 a month provides work for more than 300 active vendors and keeps community journalism strong.