A hotel in Queen Anne recently purchased by King County. (Dow Constantine, Twitter)
King County Executive Dow Constantine announced plans This week, the county is slated to buy several hotels to accommodate the region’s homeless population. But what will that look like in practice? Leo Flor, King County’s Human Services Director, spoke with Gee & Ursula Show from KIRO Radio to give an insight.
The two new homeless shelters in Seattle are now officially open
The county plans to accommodate 1,600 people in hotels between now and late 2022, having just bought the Inn at Queen Anne with “several more hotels” expected to buy in the coming weeks.
Flor notes that this is an approach that has been found to be both effective at getting people off the streets and significantly cheaper than building new shelters from scratch.
“When we build new permanent supporting housing, that unit typically costs around $ 400,000, given the land, construction costs, and size of the buildings,” he said. “We have the chance here to cut this purchase price in half.”
“It’s both faster and cheaper,” he added.
This is also supported by the fact that buying a hotel right now is cheaper than any other time thanks to the pandemic, allowing the county to “create housing faster than we normally could”.
Combined with current research from the University of Washington Flor, who demonstrated the relative success of hotel accommodation, sees this as a crucial part of the region’s fight against homelessness.
“We know what works for people with chronic homelessness is to get them indoors, and we are in a moment where we have a hospitality industry that is really affected by the COVID pandemic,” said he.
The hotel accommodations the county seeks to stand up in are largely reserved for those deemed “chronically homeless,” including those with disabilities who have been outdoors for “at least 12 months.”
“These are the people we really want to bring in to do the services and we know it works because we did,” said Flor.
King County is reducing the levels of protection and bringing people to hotels
This will enable the county to partner with groups like the Chief Seattle Club, Downtown Emergency Services Center, and Catholic Community Services to help with Medicaid-funded behavioral health services, job placement, housing assistance, or substance use disorders afford to.
King County will also coordinate with cities and towns, with an emphasis on developing long-term solutions for residents of the neighborhoods where these hotels are located.
“It will only work if we work together,” said Flor.
Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the Podcast here.
