Washington state nears goal for housing formerly homeless people

SEATTLE – King County’s effort to house homeless people in hotels it purchased during the pandemic is approaching its original goal more than two years late.

King County officials promised to house 1,600 homeless people by the end of 2022. It fell significantly short, with only 565 units open and occupied by then.

The county has now opened more than 1,000 units of housing for homeless people, with 300 more set to open by the end of the year. The Health Through Housing program is funded by a 0.1% county sales tax that raises about $70 million per year.

“This is the largest scale program that the county has ever been able to deploy, especially in this quick succession,” said Kelly Rider, director of the King County Department of Community & Human Services.

Despite that, the county’s homelessness numbers have continued to increase to record levels. More than 16,000 people are homeless on a given day, according to a one-day count in 2024, with 60% of those people living outside.

Rider said the program has brought more suburban cities outside of Seattle into the fold of addressing the region’s homelessness crisis. And the program is meeting its goals for addressing racial inequities in homelessness.

The Health Through Housing program started with an idea in 2020 to buy cheap and empty hotels during the pandemic and use them to house people in the growing number of encampments around the region. They needed to convert hotels into permanent supportive housing – housing with on-site social services for formerly homeless people – which retains more than 90% of residents every year on average in King County and nationally.

The top priority was urgency. Officials passed the sales tax in 2020 and bought 11 hotels in rapid succession. But the program faced numerous obstacles: There was a shortage of staff to run the buildings, with human service workers underpaid and burnt out by the pandemic.

Converting hotel rooms to housing for formerly homeless people also ran into construction delays.

The county faced lengthy community engagement processes, with residents and business owners near the proposed sites trying to block them.

That’s typical of projects like this, but in some cities, this was the first permanent supportive housing project residents had seen.

“People were worried that things were going to be, you know, really drug dens,” Redmond Mayor Angela Birney said.

Jessica McMorrow, who owns a dance studio across the street from the Health Through Housing building in Redmond, formerly a Silver Cloud Inn, was one of the people who raised concerns about drug use. But since the building opened, she said not much has changed.

“I would say it’s not as bad as I feared,” McMorrow said. “It’s just sort of like this quiet, shuttered building.”

Last holiday season, McMorrow and her staff organized a gift drive for a dozen people living at the Health Through Housing building who requested Bibles and gift cards for groceries and gas.

Redmond is in the process of adding its own second permanent supportive housing building. Birney, who sits on the Regional Homelessness Authority’s board, hopes to inspire other cities to pitch in.

“That’s my goal: To make it work in Redmond but to show people the opportunities that could be in their community as well,” Birney said.

King County’s Rider said the Health Through Housing program removes the biggest barrier for cities to add homelessness services – finding the money. Plus, city officials like that at least 60% of the units are allocated for homeless people from their city.

Burien feuded with King County over homelessness policy last year and slow-walked a county-funded shelter proposal to the point that the county rescinded its offer. But Burien officials say they’ve requested the county add a second Health Through Housing building in their city.

Health Through Housing owns 11 buildings across Seattle, Auburn, Federal Way, Kirkland, Redmond and Renton.

The county is not planning to purchase more hotels or buildings. Nearly all of the ongoing sales tax revenue is tied up paying off the buildings the county purchased and paying for operating costs. Plus, hotels are no longer cheap, and it was more work to convert them into permanent housing than officials anticipated.

The county had to remodel front desk areas, create spaces for service providers to meet with clients, install kitchenettes in hotel rooms and redesign fire sprinklers so people wouldn’t set them off unnecessarily.

But even with renovations, county officials said it was a cheaper and faster way to bring units online than building from scratch. The county paid about $270,000 per unit for hotels compared to the $400,000 they say it would have cost to build those units.

The county has also pivoted to paying the costs for other organizations to run the buildings. For example, Chief Seattle Club built Sacred Medicine House, a 120-unit permanent supportive housing building in Lake City using federal tax credits and other sources, and King County’s Health Through Housing program is paying for staffing and other costs.

While that building took nearly five years to open from start to finish, there are advantages to building with formerly homeless people in mind. There are case manager rooms with two doors so staff can easily slip out if a client is experiencing a crisis, bathrooms with drains to prevent flooding and stoves that turn off automatically after an hour.

The majority of people living in Sacred Medicine House are Native. Chief Seattle Club fills its units using “affirmative marketing,” which means staff reach out to Native people who are homeless and help them apply when units are opening up.

Ten percent of people who live in all Health Through Housing units are Native and 25% are Black, part of King County’s efforts to address racial inequities in homelessness. King County officials say these efforts will continue despite President Donald Trump’s orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“Federal funds do not touch this program,” Rider said. “And so we continue to be strongly committed to the equity values and the antidiscrimination values that we’ve baked into this.”