Gov. Jay Inslee proposed more than $800 million in his 2022 budget to prevent and address homelessness in an announcement on Dec. 15.
The figure includes $100 million for the Housing Trust Fund — the program that offers loans and bonds to nonprofits to create new, affordable housing — and another $100 million for “enhanced shelter operations.”
The largest investment, however, is $334.7 million to “rapid capital housing,” an effort to buy up existing buildings to convert into new housing and shelters for people experiencing homelessness. According to the governor’s office, the money would create roughly 2,460 units, a figure which includes tiny homes.
Roughly 60 percent of the units would be used to “safely transition people experiencing homelessness into safe and habitable spaces, and toward permanent housing solutions,” according to the governor’s office.
The new spaces would be targeted for chronically homeless people, meaning people who have lived outside for an extended period of time and who have a disability. They are also often the most visible people experiencing homelessness.
“We know that supportive housing is [the] most impactful way to prevent the chronically homeless from returning to the streets,” Inslee said in a statement. “Some homeless individuals require a temporary accommodation to bridge the gap from homelessness to permanent housing.”
The proposed supplemental budget comes on top of nearly $2 billion in spending on housing and homelessness that lawmakers approved in 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic continued to take a massive toll on low-income households and people experiencing homelessness.
According to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), as many as 40,800 people were logged in King County’s homelessness database in 2020 alone, meaning they had at some point interacted with a program for homeless people. That figure is twice as high as the most recent point-in-time count, an annual census of people experiencing homelessness that was waived by the federal government in 2021 because of the pandemic.
KCRHA said that it will not be conducting a point-in-time count in 2022, instead looking at other, qualitative methods that leadership believes will provide more useful metrics.
The Washington State Budget & Policy Center — a progressive organization that advocates for equitable taxation policies and access to anti-poverty programs — applauded Inslee’s proposed investments, calling them “a farsighted approach to confront the lingering public health and economic crisis.”
However, the Center said that there is still work to be done.
“Most notably, the proposal maintains high levels of funding for prisons and policing, including $2.4 billion to the Department of Corrections,” the Center wrote in a post. “Funding for the carceral system is more than twice what the state spends on programs that improve Washingtonians’ economic security, such as the Employment Security Department, Department of Labor and Industries, and Department of Vocational Rehabilitation.”
Not everyone is happy with Inslee’s budget proposal.
Rep. Drew Stokesbary, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said that Inslee’s budget would not provide tax relief for families who have struggled during the pandemic and recent inflation rate increases.
“Instead, the governor wants to spend our entire surplus on growing the government more,” Stokesbary said in a statement. “I share his intentions regarding the homelessness crisis and salmon restoration, but his approaches have yet to make serious progress on these issues during his decade in office.”
Homelessness has, indeed, grown over the course of the past decade in Washington and many other states. However, that has been paired with a lack of access to affordable housing, jobs that pay enough for a household to afford rent in large swaths of the state and federal investment in the social safety net.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 14, 2023, after working as a staff reporter for the newspaper for several years. She left to become a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action., previously known as Seattle’s Public Defender Association. Real Change is proud to know this talented person.
Read more of the Dec. 22-28, 2021 issue.