This is a King County wide
problem in a Puget Sound regional problem, not just a Seattle issue.
In January, a new authority takes a lead role fighting a crisis on our streets.
Would you guys be interested in something like that?
The RHA wants to focus on downtown Seattle
right away, but there's a request for extra funding, too.
What do we have to show for the money that we put into it already?
Can the authority get support from business leaders, philanthropists
and city governments who may have some different views?
Absolutely. We want to be part of the process.
I think that this community has the resources and the will to get this done.
We're one on one with the new CEO of the Regional Homelessness Authority.
This budget is not sufficient.
Can a new centralized approach solve a decades old problem?
Find out next on City Inside Out.
Welcome to this edition of City Inside Out.
I'm your host, Brian Callanan,
the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority in January
takes control of a crisis that's been a declared emergency for the past six years.
The RHA will coordinate resources, services and housing options
throughout the county, but those are far from the only challenges.
There's pushback from some local governments.
Tough questions from business leaders and even a clash with Seattle's
plans to build more tiny house villages.
This week we're examining the new homelessness authority,
whose actual authority faces a huge test with a cold winter
and the end of Seattle's eviction moratorium.
Fast approaching.
Kirk McClain's workplace is a short walk through Magnuson Park
to a supportive housing building in North Seattle.
But it's a long way from 2009
when he didn't have a job or a home.
My unemployment benefits ran out and that was it.
I was done and I found myself on the street.
Kirk was homeless for five years, taking
classes at Highline College to become a paralegal.
Often sleeping behind the library,
he now helps others find housing as a case manager
with a nonprofit solid ground, and he's part of the Lived Experience Coalition
on the governing board of the new King County
or Regional Homelessness Authority.
We have looked at how Seattle and King County have
addressed the homeless situation, and we have seen problems.
We've seen shortcomings.
We've seen things that need to be changed.
City and county leaders established the R.H.A.
in late 2019 to provide better coordination
and a more regional approach to homelessness.
The COVID pandemic delayed the start of the authority,
but beginning in January, the new countywide system,
for outreach services and housing placement is scheduled to be up and running.
2022 is going to be a little bit of a year of transition.
Seattle City Council member Andrew Lewis chairs the council's
homelessness committee, which approved the transfer of 114
million city dollars into the R.H.A.'s coffers this year.
This is a King County wide problem and a Puget Sound regional problem, not just a Seattle issue,
"granola bar and hygiene kit if you're interested."
The authority plans to use a more personal approach with peer navigators
to help people experiencing homelessness get off the street.
The R.H.A. says it will not clear out or sweep encampments
leaving that decision to individual cities.
Lewis is bullish about the impact the new governing body will have, but
the underlying regional need for more shelter spaces presents a glaring problem.
It's not a case of a bunch of people that are that are choosing
to be homeless, refusing to go and access services.
It's a case where there's 2.5 times more demand than there is supply
of enhanced shelter options for people to get placed into.
We cannot afford failure anymore.
Former Governor Chris Gregoire leads Challenge Seattle, a group of 21 CEOs
from our region's top employers focused on homeless people with the highest needs.
We have no success when it comes to chronic homelessness
Challenge Seattle says,
Since 2017, the number of chronically homeless people meaning without a home
for a year or more has increased by 42% per year in King County.
And while government spending on homelessness
has increased 21% annually during that time. Challenge Seattle says
that pays for only half of the services and shelter space needed.
What do we have to show for the money that we put into it already?
The R.H.A.
is hoping to involve business groups like Challenge Seattle
in billion dollar capital campaign to build more emergency housing.
Gregoire says the authority needs to enact
proven solutions like California's Homekey program
if they want support from big corporations,
Yes, it's going to take more resources,
but only if we have a plan we focus on the plan,
we execute on the plan and we're open and transparent to the public at large.
But different cities in King County have different responses to homelessness,
and camped individuals on our island are becoming bold criminals.
In February, the Mercer Island City Council voted to expand its decades old
camping ban to include all public areas, not just parks.
For 30 years we've had this on the books in the parks, and we've never once written a citation
or arrested anybody, but we've used it to get people connected to resources.
While many advocates blasted the city's decision, Holmes
says Mercer Island's lack of services means officers are the ones
who deal with encampments and try to connect people with shelter.
And that's been our goal all along.
Holmes says Mercer Island is working on agreements
with two East Side shelters to encourage referrals and fund services.
The type of collaborative effort, he says, needs to happen countywide.
This issue of people who experience homelessness, it's not defined
by jurisdictional boundaries,
so this is a regional issue that we have to be partners in.
It's a regional issue with a new attempt at a regional solution via the RGA.
Kirk McClain says transitioning to the authority
will test local governments across the county to rally around
a new answer for homelessness that's desperately needed.
It's always going to be challenged by people who don't like the
unintelligable
Or how we're doing things, but I think overall, we've got
the political will to make the changes that are necessary.
And joining us to discuss these issues further, we have with us,
Marc Dones, they are the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
Mark, really good to be with you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, you bet.
Well, I want to start by asking what your role is
as the new leader of a new agency, the R.H.A. You describe it, as chief cat herder in an interview
with the Times earlier this year. I want to talk about what this job is and what it is not
because a lot of people in our region are looking to you to solve some pretty big problems.
Yeah, I appreciate that question.
You know, the reason I call my job chief cat herder is because I think that,
you know, there there are a lot of different ways to do any job.
I think of my job
as bringing people together and bringing them along, right?
I don't think that we solve complex
community problems by fiat.
I don't think we solve complex
community problems by sort of running roughshod over each other.
We do it by coming together.
And so a lot of what I focus on in my day to day
is the mechanics of that right, like the mechanics of bringing people together,
of making sure that we have the right connections,
the right information that we're able to really have
a sense of what's happening on the ground, what's happening to people
and also how that is impacting the communities across the region, right?
I think that, you know, oftentimes we think about homelessness,
we see downtown Seattle in our heads, but there are 39 cities in this county.
People are experiencing homelessness in every single one of them.
And it actually does look different.
And the people who are doing the work to ensure that those folks
have their needs met and can get housed again are all doing
that with different resources, different literal terrain.
Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
And looking at that, just some of the nuts and bolts of it, mark, you're
renegotiating contract with service providers, et cetera.
Can you talk about that too?
How's that going?
I know there's a lot to coordinate there.
Yeah.
Fortunately, I have a really growing and very good team. And
you know,
I am not personally have to renegotiate all those contracts
Okay. Okay.
You know, it's a lot of work.
Yeah, I think it's going like, I mean, the idea is it's over 200
contracts, you know, for.
And that is that is that the contracts that come from
the city of Seattle and the county
as we start to bring in contracts that are sitting again
with those other 38 cities, yeah, the number will grow.
Mm-Hmm.
Okay.
But, you know, I think it's I think it's going well.
Our chief program officer, Peter Lin and his team
led by our grant manager,
Carol Mizaguchi are doing incredible work.
And you know, I had the privilege of being on a provider
call yesterday where we were talking about the rollout
of the new 22 contracts, what they're going to look like, etc.
And you know, it is complex work. It is,
you know, it's not.
It's it's not sexy, but like administrative work,
it's not like the stuff that people can get up in the morning.
You're like, Oh, yeah, that's right.
That's going to, yeah, right.
But check done right.
And and so we are fortunate enough
to have a good team that that is leading that work.
And you know, one thing that I will say is, you know,
one of the things we're trying to do is really modernize some of it.
And, you know,
I think that that's one of the hopes that people had for the authority, right?
Right.
Make it more transparent and more accountable.
Sure.
And so, you know, some of just the way that we are doing our grants management,
I think, is going to look different for people.
And, you know, frankly produce different to your point, data availability
and be able to say, you know, sort of what money is going, where and why.
OK, I can't wait to do that story about the H.M.I.S. in the near future here.
So we'll come back on that data piece.
I know later on, Mark, I want to put out a piece here
just focusing on downtown Seattle,
because that really seems like your first order of business here.
You've got a plan for this, you're prioritizing that area.
I want to talk about why you're doing that, what you're proposing
and also how you pay for it, especially because as we're
recording the show in mid-November, you probably saw it recently.
It doesn't appear the City Council is fully supporting this plan in its budget.
Let's try to break this down, Marc.
Yeah.
So the reason why we are are focused on downtown
is because of the
number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness downtown, right?
And I want to be very clear about that because I think that
there are times in again, sort of a community conversation and narrative.
Folks have suggested it's
because of business or, you know, because of other reasons.
And the bottom line is that when we look at the data,
the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness
downtown in the downtown corridor
in a semi-permanent way, meaning like that
is where they live right now is a higher.
And the other sort of main
Seattle neighborhoods get mixed up in that way.
And the reason for that is because there's been a density of services
cited here and right, like when people are released
from King County Correctional Facility from Harborview.
Right. This is where they wind up. Mm hmm.
And so there there are these literal poles
into the downtown corridor and then people don't really have a path back out.
Yeah.
And so, you know, that is that is the reason why
we have selected downtown as our first core
area of operations.
I also want to note, right, that just like in terms of like the theory behind it,
I think it's important to be transparent, right to your point about budget.
The first thing I will say is like this budget is not sufficient right.
Yeah, right?
And so we have we have
ah, you know, frankly, I this is on me at this point, right?
I have the option of continuing a trend
of trying to be everywhere at once
or saying we actually don't have that.
We don't have the capacity to do that. Right?
Yeah, yeah.
And so for us, I think we have said,
let's do place based work and have areas of focus.
And in those areas of focus, let's expect dramatic results
and be clear about where we're focused and why.
Right? Okay.
So that's the underlying theory there in terms of,
you know, the promises and what we think is possible.
I am committed but firmly committed not to being
this community snake oil salesman, right?
Yeah. Right?
Or tell you that a thing is possible when it is not.
And so based on whatever the final budget allocation is,
I will then come out and say, this is what we think we can do.
But I will not
sort of,
I think, frankly continue
a trend in our field it's not about this community.
This is about a very field wide everywhere.
Yeah, yeah.
Where we say, yeah, we can do it on a shoestring and you just
choose to come up with that, right?
And that is that's just not true, right?
And so, you know, when when the final budget is signed into law,
we will evaluate that the funding allocation
and we will tell people based on that what we think is possible.
OK, I want to come back to that issue in just a second.
But there's one piece of this I think is really interesting
with this plan you're talking about here.
You've talked about putting together a high acuity shelter where people who
really have seen some stark needs there when it comes to behavioral health,
when it comes to addiction, things like that.
Also, some peer navigation going on.
I wanted to
talk about the shelter in particular because it sounds like you would like that
not to be in downtown property like other neighborhoods
kind of be involved with this.
I wanted to talk about that, why you want that to happen
and also just this idea of where would you put something like that?
Can you find a neighborhood that would welcome something like that?
Yeah, I think this is I really welcome this question
because it allows me to clarify a couple things.
one, our vision for high acuity
shelter beds was never one giant facility like we.
We think that that would be an inappropriate return to
frankly like the psychiatric hospitals of the 1950s, right, which we shut down
because that right like it is very difficult to manage
that level of intensity in a humane way and like centering people's dignity.
So we really always anticipated
that the high acuity shelter beds would be split up
and layered into existing sites that had
capacity from a room's perspective
or layered into new sites that might be brought online
and to the point about other neighborhoods.
This is a place where, you know, I'm grateful that we're a countywide agency
because for us, it's not just about other neighborhoods
in Seattle, it's about other jurisdictions.
Right? Yeah.
We think that there are places
to cite these high acuity beds countywide, right?
And that allow us to get to
that total number of 150 that we were aiming for.
And and again, not concentrated all in one place.
Got it.
I will say that, you know,
to the extent of the sort of like would would any neighborhood welcome this?
I think of it, as you know,
do neighborhoods welcome hospitals like, right, like like we are talking
about siting infrastructure that cares for people, right? Hmm.
And so I think the conversation around, you know,
the sheltering of folks
who are our need has become as as most parts
of the conversation have become, frankly, really polarized and really toxic
And I think we need to take a step back and and and really sort of
bring ourselves back to basics.
Right, right, right.
I think that what people when they say, you know, I'm concerned about the shelter,
my neighborhood, what I hear them saying very frequently is, well,
what about people who get kicked out or what about people, you know,
and then they're just going to be in my neighborhood? Sure, sure.
And you know, I
hear that and I actually think that there is there is validity there
because, you know, were were we saying,
you know, we're going to take people who have pretty significant needs
and move them from a street downtown
to a street in in Kirkland?
Is it helping anybody?
Right, right, right. Right? Bad.
But that's not what we're saying, right?
And particularly for this high acuity shelter, part of the reason why we think
that this is necessary is many of the people who do wind up back
outside from experiences and shelter are that are this group right ?
The behaviors because they have psychotic spectrum illnesses, right?
Or, you know, significant substance use or co-occurring disorders, right?
Those behaviors cannot be well
managed in typical shelter settings, right?
Right.
The staffing just isn't there to do that.
Right.
So what we're saying actually is that's a valid concern.
And the answer is not to not allow shelters to cite places.
The answer is to build a shelter environment
that is enriched with the right level of service
to make sure that people don't have to go back outside.
Got it. Thank you for breaking that down.
I want to touch on a piece that you hinted at earlier,
just looking at our recent elections, for the most part, more moderate candidates.
Ones who were talking about
keeping our public spaces clear of encampments,
were the ones who got elected, Mayor
elect Harold told me he doesn't think we need new revenue
to deal with the homelessness crisis.
I want to talk about these different political stances.
I know you've heard him too.
How do those align with your vision of the RHA and what you're trying to do?
I think, you know,
on the revenue question I will say, I think I think Mayor elect Harold
is is clear and I've heard him
say this right that more money is needed.
He thinks my understanding based on what I've heard him
say is that we don't necessarily need taxes to get that right.
And and I, you know, frankly, right from my perspective,
so long as we're saying there, we're going to put more money into the work, OK?
I don't care what you're talking about, potentially businesses, philanthropy,
some other options there. Yeah, OK.
Yeah.
And you know, if if mayor electoral Harrold right wants to spearhead
again a community effort to raise that capital,
you know, in a way that is not taxation, then I will be fully
in support of that right and do whatever I can to lift up
the assets that
this agency could provide that he would need to do that work.
I will say that on the I'm again from a polarization standpoint
with regard to the conversation about public space right now
that I really want to make sure that people hear directly from me every time
I have the opportunity to say it is, no one is actually wrong here, right?
Like this is like, this is a situation where we have in,
you know, we're so in pursuit of heroes and villains in this story.
And and neither like those don't exist, right?
And the reality is that,
you know, so I I'm a psychiatric anthropologist.
That's my degree. I like.
So I like I know how to de-escalate someone who's having a psychotic episode.
I know that's the thing I went to school for, right?
Right.
I don't think that it is reasonable to expect people
to know how to do that in order to go buy milk.
Hmm. OK.
I also don't think that people who are suffering
from psychotic spectrum illnesses should have to live outside
like, OK, the two things are true together, right?
So like. Absolutely.
You know, we should be able to access public space
in a way that doesn't require us right to do that work.
You know,
having to be all trained in various forms of crisis management. Well can I jump in?
But can I jump in super quick mark
just on this, I want to try to put a finer point on it.
It doesn't sound like the RHA specifically would be working on
anything like a sweep as they're called here in Seattle here.
But cities would kind of take care of that.
I mean, sometimes there are public
safety issues with these encampments, and I know those need to be taken care of.
Can you walk me through what that's going to look like when the R.H.A.
is in charge?
Sure.
So we're working right now actually on developing a much
finer tuned and
frankly concrete and transparent
set of policies around
how we engage and support people who are living in camps outside, right?
And I think what that is
going to look like for us is to.
There are public safety issues, right?
Yeah, there are incidents where there are shootings, there incidents
where there are stabbings.
There are also very clear incidents
where you know, there are
tents that are being used for
criminal or criminal rackets.
Yeah, and no and no one actually lives in it.
Right, right, right. Right.
And camouflaged in the encampment.
Stolen goods in there, et cetera. Yes. So,
so you know, those kinds of things like we are not a public safety agency.
So in those instances, right,
like what we are working on is a way of determining when we are like,
when our job is done right because the services and the supports
that we could provide to people are, you know, in place.
We've done what we can do or right like when we identify like,
actually, there's a lot going on here that is a significant enough
public safety concern that a public safety agency, right, should respond to it.
I think the other thing
that that we will say early on right is that our vision
and what we're trying to get to is a place where
again, there's a really clear,
there's a really clear way of
determining right, which encampments
need which responses in what order.
Right? Yeah, right.
So that if somebody calls us right and says, Hey, you know, I see this right.
Yeah, we do.
We can.
We like we we we may know about it in advance, I hope.
And yeah, are able to say, you know, thanks for letting us know.
We'll add that to the evaluative criteria that we are, you know,
well, like we can transparently tell you what's going to happen or not.
Got it. Got it. Got it.
I want to move on to another piece.
You're talking about connecting
with all 39 cities in King County here and getting their buy in on the RHA.
I think about places like Bellevue Renton and several others
who opted out of the county's health through housing program for permanent
supportive housing last year kept that tax revenue for themselves.
When you see that go it alone approach and when the RHA starts looking at
subregional plans for different areas there, does that take the teeth
out of the collective effort on homelessness
that I know you're trying to lead when cities don't play along?
What does that mean?
Yeah, I think
that, you know, the level
of trust right in our region around this issue is incredibly low.
And, you know, I'm not going to place blame for that.
That's just the situation that I'm sort of stepping in, right?
And but I do think
that we have had, you know, since I started in April
and I in the six months I've been on the job,
I feel like we've had some
very productive conversations with some of the communities, right?
And I, you know, we were out in Bellevue about a week and a half ago
during a tour with deputy city manager.
And you know, looking at all
that the services and the good work that they're doing there.
Right, right.
And so I think that the reality is that
people were waiting to see what this was going to be like, right?
And waiting
to see if the team that came in to the authority was going to be more of
like sort of my way or the highway team or, you know, focus on consensus
building focused on how do we do what we want to do together.
And I think they're seeing that we are the latter.
And that trust is starting to enter the picture.
That's that's good to hear.
I want to talk about another piece of this mark for our setup piece for this show.
We talked to the police chief on Mercer Island,
which has a law on the books
that says you can't camp in parks or public property now.
The chief told me there have been no arrests under this ordinance,
but he said having that law gives police a pathway to talk
to people experiencing homelessness and get them to services .
I want to talk about that approach and really,
where do police and sheriff's officers fit into your plans on homelessness?
I think this is a really great question, and I think that it's,
you know, if we're for Seattle, right?
Like we often have this conversation in the sort of SPD space,
but I really like that you cited that cited in Mercer first,
because what I would say is that frankly, for some of our smaller,
more rural communities, our our north bends,
our Snoqualmies right like that, whether you like it or not.
And I'm going to be really clear, right?
Because it's not about having at it like an opinion on policing.
It is about the reality of the situation that those are the folks right now
who are interacting with unsheltered folks.
It's almost as they do have these very complex,
you know, outreach and navigate.
They don't have their systems, right?
Exactly like they they have.
You know that the ten police officers, they got cops exactly
who are routinely interacting with folks experienced unsheltered homelessness.
So so I think that I just want to lift that up because.
A context really matters here in terms of like literally where we are.
And my my thought about about that specific law
is, you know, I
I will say like my my policy opinion
is that I don't think you say to me there have been no arrests
made that says, like then maybe you don't need it
like, OK, OK, because there is like the the um,
I think the idea and I can I can see the logic right now that
that law or that ordinance
allows you then to have a pathway to have a conversation
because you can walk up to somebody and say, Hey, you can't be here, right?
Yeah, right.
But like, I think that that conversation is possible without that opener.
I see. I see. OK, OK. All right.
Right.
You know, so what?
I what I am hopeful for, right, is that we can have conversations
again with our smaller communities where that is the outreach, right?
Yeah, we're really focused on equipping the folks who are
in those conversations with the skills and resources that they need.
They don't feel like they need those kinds of ordinances
because ultimately, right, like, you know, the data is very clear
that criminalization approaches to homelessness do not yield
the kinds of results that we want to see as a community.
Yeah. Yeah, I gotcha.
I want to talk about another piece of this, Marc.
You've talked about reaching out to philanthropic partners in the county
for possibly $1,000,000,000 to build what you're calling bridge housing.
I want to talk about what bridge housing is.
And do you think that there is enough philanthropic effort out there, business
support for something like this?
You can make this happen.
Um, you know, so for the first part of the question, bridge housing is,
you know,
straightforwardly, it is something between shelter and permanency, right?
And what we identified is that, you know, we have shelter options,
we have permanency options.
We don't really have a whole lot in the middle.
We might operate a pretty small transitional housing portfolio
and a lot of the vets and youth space.
Not a lot.
And sorry, also intimate partner, violence
based, not a right in other spaces.
And so what that means is that if you go into a shelter
and you get on a waitlist right for
a voucher or an apartment through the housing authority, right?
Yeah.
And that waitlist is five years long.
You don't have anywhere to be.
Right, right.
And so many people, if you are
talking to folks in encampments and you are learning
about what their lives are like
many people, you know, just so that we are dispelling the myths, right?
Many folks are employed.
Yeah, right, right, right. They're working.
Many folks are on the waitlist.
They're doing the things they're supposed to do in order to try to access housing.
Sure.
OK, but they don't have anywhere else to be.
Right. Yeah, right.
And so for us, we immediately identified that as a system gap
that was unacceptable, right?
Let do not have a system that tells people, wait outside,
right, and we don't have space for you anywhere else.
Right, right.
So, you know, from from my perspective and I think our team's perspective
that you know what we began to look
at is the numbers of people
who would need that kind of bridge space.
Yeah.
And that the math was straightforward.
The roughly a billion dollars
And you think the appetite for that in the philanthropic business community
is there? Do you feel confident about that?
I, you know, I just say that because so many plans are through before,
what's different, you know?
No, I hope so.
And I, you know, I think that like, you know that that that billion
dollar figure has floated above this community in one way or another.
Yeah, you're right.
five-ish year's right? Sure.
And and I think that what's important to hear about that, whether or not it's
an investment in bridge housing or an investment in other housing types,
is that the bottom line is that we are and it's why when you know
folks like when your budget is so big, but you have underspent for 30 years, right?
And so the reason why that billion dollar figure floats out there,
the way that it does is because that is the deficit
we are in, right, right, right.
And so, you know, if you're $100 in debt and you pay down five, you are down $5.
And I gotcha.
OK, that's what we often do with our budgets
where we're like, Well, we're going to add $10 million, okay?
We're still $1,000,000,000 behind.
Right, right. Right. OK.
I want to talk about another piece
of the housing puzzle here, if I could with you, Marc.
The City of Seattle planning to build more tiny houses over the next year here.
Councilmember Andrew Lewis,
as this plan called it, takes a village to build twelve of them,
at least one in every city council district. Now.
These houses have had some success in getting people
into more permanent housing, but I know you've raised some red flags
about the expansion of tiny house villages.
What are your concerns about that?
My concerns are twofold.
one, you know, I think that we need to be focused
on the menu of options that gets people inside.
Any time we over
index a system on one thing, you know, it's like that
the investment wisdom right of like,
you don't put your whole portfolio in one thing , right?
Spread the peanut butter a little more evenly.
OK? Yeah.
So there are a lot of other
non congregate shelter types that are can be effective for people.
We've seen that frankly during the pandemic with some of the hotel
strategies, et cetera, quite like my my,
my push back on on that scaling, right?
And I want to be clear, because it's not.
Some of this has been misinterpreted as like the authority does not support
tiny homes. That is not correct.
It is the scaling of them at that that we are
raising red flags about.
Sure.
Other component and part of why those red flags exist for us.
Mm-Hmm.
Is that some of the length
of stay in those tiny homes are very long.
Yeah. Year plus, sure.
Mm-Hmm.
And so like and and it raises, you know, it
raises concerns for us about whether or not
we are able to get people
into housing, right, that that all shelter should be
oriented towards transitions into some form of housing.
Sure. Right.
And some of those length of stay are very long.
And I want to be clear, right?
Like, yeah, because again, I just finished talking about the bridge housing need,
so it could very well be that like, there's not enough of exit pathways.
OK, OK.
I think we need to do a deeper dive there, really.
And really understand why that is the way that it is.
Yeah.
before we talk about any kind of increase.
I want to touch on one more issue with you, Marc,
before we wrap up here because we're tight on time here.
I want to talk about the city of Seattle's eviction moratorium, set to end on
January 15th, just a few days after Mayor elect Harold would be sworn in.
You still have thousands of people behind on rent in our region.
You got some landlords, who haven't received any rent in almost two years.
Do you have any advice for mayor elect Harrell
should that moratorium be extended again?
Any thoughts on that?
You know, my my straightforward opinion is we have to
extend the moratorium and we have and when the moratorium is extended,
this is the key thing that I do not feel we have had the frankly national
support to do.
We need to we need to know how many people are behind.
We don't have clear insight into that number, right?
And so like, you know, there are estimates,
but like we don't we have no idea
if the moratorium evaporated how many people would show up
at the doorsteps of our system the next day.
Right, right, right.
We can't even calibrate and prepare for it.
Right, OK.
So so from my perspective, we need to extend the moratorium
and we need to begin to understand how many people need our help.
We need to sort of work to and the county is working
day and night to do this right to get that rental assistance out the door, to make sure
that we are connecting
as many people as we can to that resource so they can stay housed.
But you know, as you know, from our systems perspective,
if we don't even know how many people might come at us on January 20th.
Right? Yeah, we can't prepare for it.
And my suspicion is we would drown in it right?
Like we would not provide to help the people.
OK, I got it.
I need to wrap up with you here, Mark, and I really appreciate
going back and forth on this final question here.
You have talked a lot
about the urgency of your work with the RHA and in terms of your success,
you have said there's no path to that not happening.
So I want to talk about our region's homelessness crisis.
What's it going to look like after the RHA is in place for three months?
What does it look like after a year? What can you tell us about that?
Well, we've
been around for three months, but yeah, right, right. OK.
No kidding.
Yeah. You know, I will say that like three.
So three months like March of next year.
Right, right. OK.
All right. Fair. Yeah.
Um, I think that the conversation that we'll be having
is what does a fully redesigned system actually look like, right?
Because the authority is a vehicle.
But we like the redesigning of the systems.
That work still needs to be done in a in a down to the program level way.
And we need to work with people experiencing homelessness and providers
to do that work
and that's really going to be the work of the first quarter of next year.
And so I think that, you know, in that sort of March
April timeframe is when we'll start seeing this is
what's on the on the table for, you know, the fully redesigned system
that we're going to bid out and then implement in '23
a year in my hope.
You know, and and this is again budget dependent,
but my hope is that we have successfully
gotten to sort of what's called functional zero right,
which is basically meaning we get everybody inside
for at least
the downtown corridor, if not that and another neighborhood.
Right?
I also would add to that that, you know, I hope that we have at least,
you know, four or five other communities who decided to join the ILA right?
And formerly like this is this is where we're going to put our effort.
I think those would be the the big things that I would look for a year out.
Got it.
Putting a coda on this one, I know some people have called this an impossible job.
Did you see it this way, the role that you have?
No. I mean, you know, like the the I I.
To be honest, right, like,
you know, much has been made of my job being impossible.
Much has also been made of me being young.
My perspective is like I've I
frankly hedged my bets in my career to do the thing like, right, like,
I try not to take on things I can't do
like you helped establish the structure that that the RHA was built on, basically.
Yeah.
I think that this community has the resources and the will to get this done.
We just needed the vehicle and I think the authority can be that vehicle.
And, you know, so for me, it's not like, you know,
I don't view the job as impossible
because I think the community is behind getting the work done right.
This is not a one person job.
This is the vehicle for again community will.
And I would say it was impossible.
If you know, I guess going back to the question
you ask about the election, no matter which way you slice or dice that whoever
you grabbed on the street and said, Hey, what do you care about, right?
The answer was, I just think people shouldn't have to live outside.
Yeah, right, right.
Like, you know, like like,
you know what strategies it will take to get folks inside.
That's not like people don't like they're not in the weeds like that.
They are very clear, though, that like people shouldn't have to live outside
and they would like to see government
really do our job to make sure that that is is not happening, right?
And so I think
that that community will is so clear and present.
And so this job is very doable. All right.
Great.
Mark. A pleasure to be with you.
I really appreciate you taking the time.
Thank you. Thanks, for having me. All right. You bet.
And we will be right back.
What are people saying
on social media about the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority?
one writes Seattle needs housing and it needs parks
because of insufficient willpower and funding at all levels of government
it has neither. Another comments,
We thank local leaders for taking a critical first step
to reducing homelessness
by agreeing to form the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
We'd like to know what you think.
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Coming up next time,
dealing with a rise in mental health emergency calls. Will Seattle's
evolving crisis response system and a new state hotline help?
That's on the next City Inside Out.
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