A Growing Crisis Calls for a New Approach
In One Seattle, we will act with urgency and compassion to create places to live, bring people indoors, and innovate new ways to help people in need.
“By acting with urgency and compassion we can – and will – move from crisis response to stability and sustainability.” – Mayor Bruce Harrell
This dynamic framework represents Mayor Harrell’s vision for focused action to address homelessness by providing upstream services to help at risk communities, crisis response to help those in need, and long-term housing development to improve affordability and availability.
But this plan is just the first step. The City of Seattle cannot solve this multi-faceted problem alone and we will be leading the charge to unite our region’s government, nonprofit, and private partners towards ending this longstanding crisis through:
Collaboration: Homelessness is multi-faceted problem, and addressing the many challenges takes close coordination of many city departments and partner agencies. The new Unified Care Team is a central hub that pulls together every City department working on homelessness, along with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and numerous non-profit partners.
Robust Data: The One Seattle Homelessness Action Plan combined six different databases into one, laying the groundwork for the City to collect, track, and share never-before-seen data. This is critical to our ability to properly document, inspect, and monitor the scope of homelessness in the city, and it will inform and refine our response strategies moving forward.
Above: Map of Seattle showing verified Tent and RV encampments and removals snapshot by neighborhood.
Equity: The One Seattle approach is rooted in equity. The City’s responses will be driven by objective criteria and robust data — not by complaints. We are working with partners to develop programs, services, and outreach that meets the unique needs of our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities who are disproportionally impacted by homelessness and a lack of affordable housing. Read the Homelessness Action Plan here.