AGENDA LACEY PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING Tuesday, … · JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 CITYVISION MAGAZINE...

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AGENDA

LACEY PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING Tuesday, February 21, 2017 – 7:00 p.m.

Lacey City Hall Council Chambers, 420 College Street SE Call to Order: 7:00 p.m.

A. Roll Call B. Approval of Agenda & Consent Agenda Items*

Approval of the February 7, 2017, Planning Commission Meeting Minutes Public Comments: 7:01 p.m. Commission Members Reports: 7:03 p.m. Director’s Report: 7:05 p.m. Public Hearing: 7:10 p.m. 2017-2036 Capital Facilities Plan: Tom Palmateer, Management Analyst. The Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing on the proposed annual update of the 2017-2036 Capital Facilities Plan (CFP). At the conclusion of the public hearing, the Planning Commission is requested to make a recommendation on the CFP to the City Council. New Business: 7:40 p.m. Affordable Housing Discussion: Ryan Andrews, Planning Manager. The Planning Commission will hear a presentation from staff and hold a discussion on affordable housing in preparation for release of a white paper on the topic. In preparation for the discussion, the Planning Commission will review the issue of “Cityvision” from January 2016 prepared by the Association of Washington Cities. Communications and Announcements: 8:55 p.m. Next Meeting: March 7, 2017. Adjournment: 9:00 p.m.

2/13/17

CITY OF LACEY PLANNING COMMISSION WORK SCHEDULE

Planning Commission Meeting February 21, 2017 Packets due: February 16th

1. Public Hearing: Capital Facilities Plan 2. Work Session: Training Topics

Planning Commission Meeting March 7, 2017 Packets due: March 2nd

Meeting Cancelled

Planning Commission Meeting March 21, 2017 Packets due: March 16th

1. Work Session: Development Code Audit 2. Work Session: Affordable Housing White Paper

Planning Commission Meeting April 4, 2017 Packets due: March 30th

1. Work Session: Development Code Audit

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MINUTES Lacey Planning Commission Meeting

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 – 7:00 p.m. Lacey City Hall Council Chambers, 420 College Street SE

Meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. by Carolyn Cox. Planning Commission members present: Carolyn Cox, Mike Beehler, Paul Enns, Sharon Kophs, Michael Goff, Mark Morgan and Peg Evans-Brown. Staff present: Ryan Andrews, Christy Osborn, Rick Walk, Tom Palmateer, and Leah Bender. Carolyn Cox noted a quorum present. Paul Enns made a motion, seconded by Sharon Kophs, to approve the agenda for tonight’s meeting. All were in favor, the motion carried. Mark Morgan made a motion, seconded by Michael Goff, to approve the January 17, 2017, meeting minutes. All were in favor, the motion carried. 1. Public Comments: None.

2. Commission Member’s Report:

• Mike Beehler reported on a conversation he had with Dennis Bloom with Intercity Transit regarding the status of the outreach program for their route analysis project.

• Peg Evans-Brown reported on a recent newspaper article regarding impact fees.

3. Director’s Report: • Rick Walk noted some items on the upcoming City Council agenda. • Rick reminded Planning Commissioners about the joint meeting with Council on February 16. • Rick discussed some forthcoming data related to the Mazama pocket gopher which may affect

land use designations in the Urban Growth Area.

4. Public Hearing: Impact Fees: • Carolyn Cox opened the public hearing. • Christy Osborn gave some background information and noted that the recent updates to the

Environmental Policy chapter necessitated revisions to procedures for collecting school impact fees.

• The Fire District had expressed interest in collecting impact fees but has decided to not proceed at this time.

• The proposed Impact Fee chapter was reviewed by Planning Commission, the city attorney, the finance department, and various outside agencies.

• The main policy points of the chapter concern a percentage of impact fees exempted for low-income housing and a deferral of payment of impact fees for contractors.

• There was a discussion about how the fees are assessed and the process of lien release after payment of deferred fees.

• Carolyn asked for public testimony. • Mike Laverty, North Thurston Public Schools, said that the school district supports the

ordinance and thanked the city for keeping the district involved and up to date throughout the process. The next step will be to enter into an interlocal agreement.

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• Curt Andino, South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity, spoke in favor of the ordinance and thanked staff and planning commissioners.

• Joel Baxter, Olympia Master Builders, supports the ordinance and thanked the City. • Carolyn closed the public hearing. • Paul Enns made a motion, seconded by Sharon Kophs, to refer the ordinance to City

Council for adoption. All were in favor, the motion carried.

5. New Business: 2017-2036 Capital Facilities Plan: • Carolyn introduced Mack Funk, an applicant for the open Planning Commission position. • Ryan Andrews gave an overview and explained that the Capital Facilities Plan is a mandatory

element of the Comprehensive Plan. • Tom Palmateer went over the different sections of the plan and some of the projects identified

in the CFP. • The Transportation Benefit District and septic-to-sewer conversion were discussed. • Tom asked Planning Commissioner to email to him any questions or comments so that he can

be prepared to address them at the public hearing on February 21. 6. Communications and Announcements: Ryan asked how many Commissioners plan to attend

the joint meeting with Council. 7. Next meeting: February 21, 2017.

8. Adjournment: 8:08 p.m.

PLANNING COMMISSION STAFF REPORT February 21, 2017

SUBJECT: City of Lacey Capital Facilities Plan 2017-2036 ________________________________________________________________________ RECOMMENDATION: Conduct a public hearing and make a formal recommendation to the City

Council on the proposed City of Lacey Capital Facilities Plan 2017-2036. TO: Lacey Planning Commission STAFF CONTACTS: Ryan Andrews, Planning Manager Tom Palmateer, Management Analyst ATTACHMENT(S): The full text of the Capital Facilities Plan is available here:

http://www.ci.lacey.wa.us/city-government/reports-plans/currently-under-review

PRIOR COUNCIL/ COMMISSION/ COMMITTEE REVIEW: February 7, 2016 Planning Commission Briefing BACKGROUND: Capital Facilities Plans are considered a mandatory element of the city’s Comprehensive Plan by the Growth Management Act as set forth in RCW 36.70A. A capital facility element must show an inventory of existing capital facilities, their locations, and a forecast of the future needs to include locations and capacities. It must also show at least a six-year capital improvement plan that details how the city intends to finance the cost of the facilities consistent with the city’s revenue forecast. The last Capital Facilities Plan was adopted in early 2016. This new update—the 2017-2036 Capital Facilities Plan is formatted the same as previous versions with an executive summary, introduction, and sections for general government, parks, transportation, wastewater, storm drainage, water and applicable appendices. This plan is a minor update to the version adopted in 2016 with only minor changes to project schedules and budgets and a few new projects. Future updates will occur annually and will be completed shortly after the development and adoption of the City’s annual budget in order to make them more consistent with each other in terms of budget and project scheduling. RECOMMENDATION: The Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing to take testimony on the update to the Capital Facilities Plan, analyze the testimony, and is requested to refer the Capital Facilities Plan 2017-2036 to the City Council for adoption.



RAISING THE ROOF

COMMUNITIES TACKLE HOMELESSNESS WITH HOUSING

AND SERVICES

THE ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON CITIES MAGAZINE

JAN/FEB 2016 awcnet.org

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There is no one cause, and no one face, of homelessness.

Cities across Washington State are experiencing an explosion of homeless-ness and human service issues and are struggling to find answers. At its core, homelessness is an economic condition that prevents individuals or families from being able to afford shelter. The causes vary, and the laws of marginal economics apply. A myriad of social issues contribute to homelessness and streets issues, including mental health struggles, substance abuse, health care challenges, veterans’ issues, and youth homelessness. Many of these overlap.

Cities did not create the homeless-ness crisis. But city streets and neigh-borhoods are where homelessness is most visible, with significant impacts on city services and budgets. We are the first responders and the last resort for many of these individuals.

In response to this complex crisis, cities across the state are providing coordinated services, housing, and funding. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has declared a state of emergency, spending considerable funds and coordinating services. In 2014, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson led a “Streets Initiative,” bringing together city and county government and human service providers to address homelessness issues. Bellingham, Spokane, Tacoma, and other municipalities are engaged in similar exer-cises, and these issues are not limited to large cities.

Your AWC has added “Human Services, Homelessness and Affordable Housing” as a top priority for our legislative agenda. In recent meetings with Governor Inslee and legislative leaders, AWC asked for assistance for housing, mental health, and substance abuse funding and improved program coordination. The response has been positive. In December 2015, AWC held a statewide forum in Shoreline to discuss these issues with more than 70 attendees from cities large and small.

AWC will continue efforts to advocate for Washington’s cities as they seek strategies and solutions to this growing crisis.

Sincerely,

FROM THE PRESIDENT

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 CITYVISION MAGAZINE 1

CITIES ACROSS THE STATE ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND ANSWERS.

This issue of Cityvision will explore the issue of homelessness. Homelessness is a wickedly complex problem.

Paul Roberts, Councilmember, Everett

ASSOCIATION OF. WASHINGTON CITIES.

President Paul Roberts

Councilmember, Everett

Vice President James Restucci

Mayor, Sunnyside

Secretary Pat Johnson

Mayor, Buckley

Immediate Past President Craig George Mayor, Dayton

Past President Don Gerend

Mayor, Sammamish

Large City Representative Sally Bagshaw

Councilmember, Seattle

Chief Executive OfficerPeter King

CITYVISION STAFF. Editor

Michelle Harvey

Published in conjunction with

SagaCity Media Inc.

Founder & President Nicole Vogel

SVP, Editorial & Operations Bill Hutfilz

VP, Custom Publishing Jeff Adams

Advertising Sales Carol Cummins

Advertising Sales Coordinator

Danielle Williams

Art Director Nate Bullis

Contributing Artists Daniel Berman

Copy Editor Margaret Seiler

Production Coordinator Keegan O’Connor

AWC BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Marilynne BeardDeputy City Manager, KirklandWCMA Past President

Jim BergerMayor, Carnation

Don BritainMayor Pro Tem, Kennewick

Suzette CookeMayor, Kent

Sean GuardMayor, Washougal

Will HallCouncilmember, Shoreline

Micki HarnoisCouncilmember, Rockford

Sue Ing-MoodyMayor, Twisp

Kent KeelMayor Pro Tem, University Place

Dorothy KnaussMayor, Chewelah

KC KuykendallCouncilmember, Waitsburg

Bob LarsonCity Administrator, SnoqualmieWCMA President

Mario MartinezMayor, Mabton

Ryan MelloDeputy Mayor, Tacoma

Beth MunnsCouncilmember, Oak Harbor

Jon NehringMayor, Marysville

Mike O’BrienCouncilmember, Seattle

Ed SternCouncilmember, Poulsbo

CITYVISION MAGAZINE VOL.8 NO.1

Association of Washington Cities Inc. 1076 Franklin St. SE Olympia, WA 98501 360-753-4137 800-562-8981 Fax: 360-753-0149 awcnet.org

Our jobis making surethat waste no longer goes to waste.Find out more at ThinkGreen.com


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wmnorthwest.com | 425.814.7844

© Waste Management 2016

Welcome noteCityBeatTackling homelessness entails trans-formation: from a frontier fort to a modern VA facility, from tents to per-manent housing, from hidden to found. And in our popular NOTED feature, we peek behind the doors of the Housing Trust Fund.

The Last Shall Be FirstBy upending the inherited sequence for addressing homelessness and other social ills, Everett becomes the latest Washington community to start sheltering its citizens now. By Ted Katauskas

CityWiseExpert perspectives on starting small with housing options, providing services for homeless schoolchildren, and mitigating punishment by being aware of what we make a crime.

CityScapeThe streets are for celebrating, not for sleeping.

1/2.16

FEATURE

14

1

22

28

5

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL BERMAN2 CITYVISION MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

Contents

Everett Lead Prosecutor Hil Kaman and Deputy

City Attorney David Hall


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ICITYBEAT

Veterans Affair The rebirth of Walla Walla’s VA facilities.

IN 1910, NEARLY A CENTURY AFTER the Northwest Fur Company established a military outpost on a promontory in present-day Walla Walla, the U.S. govern-ment decommissioned its fortress and repurposed the site as a medical facil-ity dedicated to the care of the region’s veterans. But in February 2004, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs dropped a bombshell on the city, when it signaled its intent to close the Jonathan M. Wain-wright Memorial Veterans Affairs Medi-cal Center, which employed hundreds.

“That’s a big deal for a city the size of Walla Walla,” says deputy city manager Tim McCarty, then the city’s support ser-vices director. But for McCarty and some 52,700 other veterans in southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and western Idaho, much more was at stake than the idling of a local economic engine.

“Abraham Lincoln said it well when he talked about veterans and widows and families who needed to be cared for after the Civil War for what they had given up,” adds McCarty, who served a three-year tour in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam

continued on page 10

INSIDE:NOTED A peek behind the Housing Trust FundTHE QUESTION How are you working with homelessness?CALENDAR The AWC Mayors Exchange and more


AS IN MANY STATES, WASHINGTON’S homeless population is growing—a fact at times all too obvious on city streets. But what about the homeless who aren’t on the street, the “hidden” homeless, such as single parents who live in shelters while working to keep their families together? How do cities help these people, who could benefit greatly from state resources but might not know what resources are available to them?

For Arlington, and the city’s mayor, Barbara Tolbert, it’s a question of how to pull together resources. Tolbert’s first “aha!” moment in this regard came dur-ing a community forum in spring 2012. Over 100 Arlington residents spoke about the services their organizations offered and whom they were helping. As Tolbert sat in the back row listening, she couldn’t help wondering, “What

would happen if they all worked togeth-er and didn’t overlap services?”

So she got to work. Tolbert formed a committee with the county DHS director and quickly learned that they had a long way to go to better serve Arlington’s hidden homeless. In order to provide access to the city’s currently available resources, they conceived a Family Resource Center, to be funded by grants and donations, that would coordinate services from housing to food and clothing to jobs.

As they were developing the concept, the Oso tragedy struck: a massive mudslide overcame the community, destroying dozens of homes and killing 43. The tragedy created an even bigger need and more urgency for Tolbert and her committee to fulfill their vision—but most important, it crystallized action items. Primarily, it revealed

how necessary a central location to distribute resources was.

In the wake of the Oso mudslides, community organizations came together to coordinate efforts, unintentionally providing the model for the Arlington Family Resource Center. Tolbert saw small organizations doing wonderful work and noted the challenges that face those in need—if you don’t have e-mail or a place to collect your housing voucher in the mail, it’s impossible to utilize the resources available.

Says Tolbert: “The whole thing has been a journey of learning and raising awareness.”

Since opening in summer 2015, the Arlington Family Resource Center has offered sophisticated ways to help many in the local community, at little extra cost to taxpayers. In just its first six months, the resource center served over 500 of Arlington’s hidden homeless, a greater traffic flow than expected.

Especially in the wake of the Oso disaster, the early success offers hope to Tolbert. “I’m a glass-half-full person,” she says. “Now that we have information, we should be able to use that to be more useful, more helpful, and to accomplish more.”

—Rachel Sandstrom

For more information:arlingtonwa.gov

Pooling ResourcesArlington offers one-stop help for the city’s most vulnerable.

FRESH IDEA

6 CITYVISION MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

Home Less, Home More

SLICE OF LIFE

Olympia groups rally to transform makeshift shelters into a community.

Sources: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Homeless Point in Time (PIT) Counts; Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction

IN 2007, CAMP QUIXOTE was a self- governing tent camp of homeless adults moving from site to site of church-owned land, supported by the local faith community. This roving “tent city” was supported passively for a while by about a dozen church-es, but eventually it became clear to faith leaders like Tim Ransom, the director of the first church that sup-ported the camp, that more needed to be done. So in spring 2008, the nonprofit Panza was formed, with Ransom leading the charge.

Panza supported the logistics of creating the camp politically and fi-nancially, finding the next host church and building up a constituency of volunteers to keep Camp Quixote up and running. “A lot of these folks were volunteers who met their home-less neighbors for the first time,” says Ransom, “and realized that they were just people less fortunate than them.” This support from the secu-lar and faith-based communities of Tumwater, Olympia, and Lacey laid the groundwork (quite literally) for Quixote Village, a permanent cluster of tiny homes provided for the local homeless population—Panza and Thurston County worked together to find a city-owned site in southwest Olympia, which Panza was able to lease from Thurston County at a rate of $1 per year for 40 years.

The funding effort for a permanent housing solution for the homeless began in 2012. In June 2013, con-struction began, and Quixote Village opened its doors on Christmas Eve of that year. When asked how a clus-ter of 30 tiny homes could be built

so quickly, Ransom explains that it comes down to a few factors. First, the local architects and engineers who designed Quixote Village had volunteer experience with Camp Quixote, so they were willing to come together to work pro bono, or very close to it. Second, Panza hired a development consultant from a nonprofit in Washington called Com-munity Frameworks, which took over the logistics of managing the finances and the construction process of building Quixote Village. Lastly, Panza also hired a local construction group to build. Says Ransom: “Everybody pitched in a little bit.”

Quixote Village has been open for a little over two years now, provid-ing housing, a kitchen, a living room, showers and bath facilities, and a coin-op laundry to its 30 residents, but the reach extends further. Two full-time staff members are on-site six days a week to coordinate services for residents, including physical and mental health services, substance abuse counseling, and job training. The Village’s $230,000 annual opera-tional budget is covered mostly by state and federal funding, but 25 per-cent comes from foundations, grants, and private donors.

“Also,” says Ransom, “six out of our 30 residents are involved in some kind of higher education, getting their GED, going to community col-lege—and even university, some of them. We’re a supportive community with strong peer mentoring.”

In other words, Quixote Village pro-vides not just housing, but a home.

—Rachel Sandstrom

For more information:quixotevillage.com

Stark numbers on Washington’s homeless

ROOF RANKS

19,419 Number of homeless people in Washington in 2015

6 Rank among states for total number of homeless people

9% Decline in the number of sheltered homeless since 2010

6.7% Are homeless veterans

6.9% Are unaccompanied homeless youth (under 25 years old)

35% Are homeless families

63% Of total homeless are sheltered

43% Increase in homeless students from 2007 to 2014

37% Increase in unsheltered homeless students from 2007 to 2014


The investment leverages an estimated $320M from other sources—housing tax credits, private investors,

other public sources—approximately $5.75 for

every HTF dollar.

$26.9M HTF and

energy-efficiency

monies available for

2016 funding. Round 1

applications close

March 1, Round 2

closes September.

529 units are still needed for

homeless families with children .

281 units needed for people with chronic mental

illness; 400 units needed for people with disabilities and veterans.

For more information: awcnet.org

CITYBEAT NOTED

By December 2015,

Commerce invested

$47.5M of the

2015–17 funds in

36 projects across

the state, building

or preserving 1,369

homes.

Commerce aims at using at least 30% of the HTF in each

cycle for rural projects.

Applicants that don’t

have affordable

housing development

experience within past

7 years must partner

with an experienced

development

consultant.

The 2015–17 Capital Budget provided $71.9M for the Housing Trust Fund with the proviso that Commerce invest in a minimum of 1,900 housing units, including 500 shelter/seasonal

farmworker beds.


THE WASHINGTON STATE HOUSING TRUST FUND, ADMINISTERED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, ENSURES SAFE, HEALTHY, AND AFFORDABLE

HOUSING. SINCE 1987, HTF HAS AWARDED OVER $1 BILLION INVESTED TO MAINTAIN OR BUILD 44,000 UNITS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

Findings. RCW 43.185.010The legislature declares that it is in the public interest to establish a continuously renewable resource known as the housing trust fund and housing assistance program to assist low and very low-income citizens in meeting their basic housing needs, and that the needs of very low-income citizens should be given prior-ity and that whenever feasible, assistance should be in the form of loans.

Eligible organizations. RCW 43.185.060Organizations that may receive assistance from the department under this chapter are local governments, local housing authorities, regional support networks established under chapter 71.24 RCW, nonprofit community or neighborhood-based organizations, federally recognized Indian tribes in the state of Washington, and regional or statewide nonprofit housing assistance organizations. […]

[Eligible activities.] RCW 43.185.070 (5)(5)The department must give preference for applications based on some or all of the criteria under this subsection, and similar projects and activities shall be evaluated under the same crite-ria:(a) The degree of leveraging of other funds that will occur;(b) The degree of commitment from programs to provide necessary habilitation and support services for projects focusing on special needs populations;(c) Recipient contributions to total project costs, including al-lied contributions from other sources such as professional, craft and trade services, and lender interest rate subsidies;(d) Local government project contributions in the form of infra-structure improvements, and others;(e) Projects that encourage ownership, management, and other proj-ect-related responsibility opportunities;(f) Projects that demonstrate a strong probability of serving the original target group or income level for a period of at least twenty-five years;(g) The applicant has the demonstrated ability, stability and resources to implement the project;(h) Projects which demonstrate serving the greatest need;(i) Projects that provide housing for persons and families with the lowest incomes;(j) Projects serving special needs populations which are under statutory mandate to develop community housing;(k) Project location and access to employment centers in the re-gion or area;(l) Projects that provide employment and training opportunities for disadvantaged youth under a youthbuild or youthbuild-type pro-gram as defined in RCW 50.72.020;(m) Project location and access to available public transportation services; and(n) Projects involving collaborative partnerships between lo-cal school districts and either public housing authorities or nonprofit housing providers, that help children of low-income families succeed in school. To receive this preference, the local school district must provide an opportunity for community mem-bers to offer input on the proposed project at the first scheduled school board meeting following submission of the grant applica-tion to the department.

EXCERPTS FROM THE WASHINGTON STATE HOUSING TRUST FUND

SUZETTE COOKEMayor, Kent

While Kent invests nearly half of its human services funding in programs addressing homelessness (almost $500,000), we rely on community partners—local businesses, faith-based organizations, service clubs, and non-profits—to provide direct services. For example, our Kent Rotary clubs pur-chased a mobile shower unit that fol-lows our rotating men’s shelter housed at a different church each month.

For more information:awcnet.org

The Question How are you working with homelessness?

TRAININGS

FEBRUARY 16–17 Retro Safety Academy

Federal Way 23–24 Retro Safety Academy

Arlington

MARCH 1–2 Retro Safety Academy

Federal Way 5–9 NLC Congressional City

Conference 10–11 Retro Safety Academy

Pasco 16–18 Municipal Clerks

Conference 23–24 Healthy Worksite

Summit Lynnwood

24–25 Retro Safety Academy Pasco

STEVE KINGDirector of Community & Economic Development, Wenatchee

Wenatchee service providers embrace new strategies such as Housing First and rapid rehousing; however, the region suffers from a severe lack of housing units, making these programs impossible to implement. With rental vacancy rates hovering around 2 per-cent in an area already suffering from high housing costs, encouraging devel-opment of new units is a key focus.

MAYORS EXCHANGEApril 27, 2016 Wenatchee

The Mayors Exchange transforms your community experiences into a rich set of resources for your peers. To make this exchange more meaningful for you, AWC is asking all mayors to help define your conversation topic at the April Exchange. Look for a training survey in your city hall inbox in February, and let us know what’s high on your discussion radar.

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENTApril 28, 2016 Wenatchee

When an emergency strikes, elected officials and city staff don’t have time to clarify roles. This workshop focuses on who does what before, during, and after an emergency. City officials who have navigated their communities through an emergency will share what they learned. Discover how to communicate with constituents before and during an emergency, when and how to declare a state of emergency, and what to expect from state and federal emergency response.

TRAINING HIGHLIGHTS

TIM SULLIVANProgem Manager, Yakima Valley Council of Governments

We’re inviting local cities and towns to actively engage in countywide activities such as the annual Project Homeless Connect, providing food and housing vouchers, medical and eye screenings, a warm meal, and even a haircut. We have created a Homeless Planning and Policy Council with lo-cal governments, faith communities, homeless housing providers, business-es, and the homeless to develop a new countywide five-year homeless plan.


CITYBEAT

For more information:wallawallawa.gov

War. “The original intent to close the facility was at a time of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when we should have been increasing the size of the facility and the ser-vices, not cutting them back. It was kind of outrageous. For veterans, it was a rallying cry.”

Perhaps no one cried louder than one of the city’s representatives in Washington, D.C.: Sen. Patty Murray, the daughter of a World War II veteran who had earned a Purple Heart, was then chair of the Committee of Vet-erans Affairs. A decade after the closure announcement, she recalled how she let “the President and everyone at every level of the VA know what this facility means to this region—and how wrong it would be to leave veterans without services here in southeast Washington.”

For its part, the City of Walla Walla’s council estab-lished a Walla Walla Veterans Affairs Community Task Force, which lobbied representatives in Olympia and in Washington, D.C., as well as state and federal VA officials, not just to preserve the facility but to earmark millions to augment the services it provided. The first step was enlisting Murray’s help in securing a $250,000 grant for a feasibility study for a new outpatient clinic and other medical facilities.

The work paid off. At the U.S. Capitol in 2009, Mur-ray introduced and helped pass legislation authorizing $71.4 million in federal funding for the construction of a 67,000-square-foot Walla Walla VA Outpatient Clinic, which was dedicated in April 2014. At the same time, Washington’s Legislature earmarked $16.8 million (in-cluding $14.4 million from the 2015 legislative session), matched by a $31 million federal grant, for the construc-tion of the Walla Walla Veterans Home, a long-term care facility for 80 indigent veterans that’s under con-struction; residents are expected to move in this July, a month after a 50-bed permanent home for homeless veterans (a partnership between the state VA and Catho-lic Charities) opens at the historic Fort Walla Walla of-ficers’ quarters next door.

McCarty, who plans to retire in April after 15 years of city service—including eight shepherding the rebirth of Walla Walla’s VA—is looking forward to attending the ribbon cutting.

“This is like the frosting on the cake,” he says. “Going from a perceived shutdown to not only having an upgraded facility but having this project come in means so much to our veterans and to this community.” —Ted Katauskas

Veterans Affair continued from page 5


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Your family has lived in Whatcom County for four generations.My mom’s grandfather was a bronze sculptor from Sweden, and my dad’s dad came here from Croatia and was a fisherman. My father followed in his footsteps: he was a fisherman with his own boat and started a fish processing company.

Did he teach you to fish?I didn’t get to work on the boat because when I was a girl, having a woman on a boat was thought to be bad luck.

So you earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech pathology and went to work for the local school district for 16 years, then served in the state Legislature for 17 years before you became Bellingham’s first female mayor in 2010.It’s kind of fun to be mayor of a city that’s so important to my family.

CITYBEAT PROFILE

Q & A

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL BERMAN

Home RuleFormer state legislator Kelli Linville talks about the lessons she’s learned and the perspective she has gained by tackling homelessness as mayor of her hometown, Bellingham.

Bellingham Mayor Kelli Linville


Tackling homelessness has been a hallmark of your administration. Why?I have to give my community credit: in 2008, the city adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness, then in 2012 the people of Bellingham passed a housing levy, which we are using to provide housing and services for low-income people.

How does Bellingham’s housing levy work?It’s a property tax to the city, generating $3 million a year. We have different goals for the fund, from making sure we have supportive housing and services that allow that housing to be effective to preserving the housing we already have and helping first-time low-income homebuyers.

What’s “supportive housing”?That’s housing low-income people with drug or alcohol addiction or mental illness using the Housing First model and getting them the services they need to be successful, whether it’s mental health treatment or anything that prohibits them from being economically independent.

What innovative programs does Bellingham have to serve its homeless population?One of our funded initiatives is the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT), people who go out with police officers who develop relationships with homeless people and connect them with the services they need. It’s operated by Whatcom Homeless Service Center and has been extremely successful. When I ask our police officers what two things I can do for them this year, one is more community beds; the other is more HOT team hours.

Q & A

CITYBEAT

Talk about Bellingham’s Community Paramedic Program.That’s a program that pairs paramedics with caseworkers and service providers to get the most frequent 911 callers the care and services they need and get them out of the revolving door of the ER—not just to treat the end result of homelessness, but to intervene earlier and treat the symptoms.

Is the city on target to meet the goals of its 10-year homelessness plan?We’re pretty excited because we’ve exceeded our goal already: we wanted to create 400 units of housing serving 1,900 people, and we’ve done over 500 units that are serving over 2,000 people—and we still have three years to go.

What’s next??We recently condemned a motel because we had four deaths there in a year; there was meth contamination and other criminal activity going on there. The housing authority responded to an RFP to build a mixed-use development there that will include commercial office space along with housing for seniors, people with disabilities, and families coming out of homelessness. We are trying everything we can with all of our partners so that we can make the money we are collecting through our housing levy go even further.

How can the state Legislature help with that goal?Money is coming in from the Legislature, but we are asking the Legislature to make sure the money is there to create housing units that will help the greatest number of people. Each community is different. We want to make sure that funding isn’t so restrictive that we can’t help people here in our community.

Bellingham is ahead of its 10-year-plan targets, but will the city ever end homelessness?I can’t tell you that it is achievable, but I know that if we don’t have that goal, we don’t have something to strive for. If we can see that every year we are breaking the cycle of homelessness, we may not be driving it down to zero, but at least we are making progress. . . . Every time we address homeless people in our community, we make things better for them and better for everybody else.

What’s one thing you’ve learned about homelessness?It’s easy to feel very sad about the issue of homelessness, especially when you see people and you know there’s nothing in that instant that you can do for them. In our community, we try to look at what is possible. If we can change lives one at a time, by the end of a certain period of time we have changed a lot of lives.


83,580

By the NumbersCityvision looks at how Bellingham has prioritized its quest to provide shelter.

POPULATION DATA FROM THE 2010 US CENSUS, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

Ethnic Makeup

Population

80,987

2015

2010

Street Surge

671+ Homeless on

Whatcom County streets,

2015

74% Single

individuals

92 Families with

children

32 Average age

25% Under 20

Friend in Need

5.1% Asian

1.3% Black or African

American

84.9% White

7% Hispanic or

Latino (of any race)

.3% Pacific Islander

1.3% American Indian

Founding Fund $21M

Property tax levy for local housing trust fund

56% Voter approval

in 2012

7 Years of

levy term

36¢ Per $1,000

assessed value

74% Of housing trust

fund beneficiaries earn less than

$14,250

21% Earn between

$14,250 and $23,700

5% Earn between

$23,700 and $37,900

51% Of local housing trust fund revenue goes to rental housing production

20% For rental assistance & support services

15% For housing preservation

Public Sectors

SOURCE: 2015 WHATCOM COUNTY ANNUAL REPORT ON HOMELESSNESS

SOURCE: CITY OF BELLINGHAM HOME FUND

SOURCE: CITY OF BELLINGHAM HOME FUNDSOURCE: CITY OF BELLINGHAM HOME FUND


5% Homebuyer assistance

5% Admin

4% Acquisition & opportunity loans

60% Increase in

population with 2011 annexation

$$$$ 60%

Increase in population with 2011 annexation

$$$$ 60%

Increase in population with 2011 annexation

$$$$

FEATURE STORYJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 Everett Deputy City

Attorney David Hall, Mayor Ray Stephanson,

and Lead Prosecutor Hil Kaman

BY TED KATAUSKAS PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL BERMAN


BY UPENDING THE INHERITED SEQUENCE FOR ADDRESSING HOMELESSNESS AND OTHER SOCIAL

ILLS, EVERETT BECOMES THE LATEST WASHINGTON COMMUNITY TO START HOUSING ITS CITIZENS NOW.

On the evening of November 16, a nearly full house of more than 350 city and county admin-istrators, mayors, social workers, ministers, and ordinary citizens pack the Historic Everett Theatre, a restored early-19th-century movie

house anchoring the downtown of Snohomish County’s seat. The crowd’s not here to munch popcorn and watch The Great Train Robbery on Silent Film & Pipe Organ Night or to sing along with The Sound of Music. Instead, they’ve gathered to learn about Housing First from Lloyd Pendleton, a septuage-narian visionary from Salt Lake City whom city leaders have flown in to deliver a presentation about how Utah has used the program to effectively eradicate chronic homelessness in its capital city in less than a decade.

Almost exactly a year earlier, on November 13, 2014, Ever-ett’s Community Streets Initiative, a 23-member task force the mayor had convened to better understand how chronic

homelessness was eroding quality of life in the city’s core, had issued its executive summary. The 54-page report—gleaned from tours of local mental health facilities, drug treatment centers, soup kitchens, and the county jail, as well as inter-views with business owners, nonprofit service providers, law enforcement officers, criminal justice officials, and a focus group of 42 homeless citizens—identified 16 short- and long-term strategies and more than 60 individual action items the city and community could implement to address a litany of social ills bedeviling its central business district, from public intoxication and drug dealing to shoplifting and car prowls.

By the end of 2015, Everett had adopted almost every short-term strategy the task force had recommended, including establishing a downtown Alcohol Impact Area to prohibit the sale of inexpensive high-alcohol beverages; amending the city’s panhandling ordinance to deter aggression and intimi-dation; hiring an embedded social service worker to patrol

BY TED KATAUSKAS PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL BERMAN


downtown alongside police; deploying a team of paramedics, public safety, jail, court, and hospital personnel to identify and assist homeless citizens who were overwhelming the city’s emergency response services; and expanding the use of “ther-apeutic courts” that offered homeless defendants substance abuse and/or mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration. Yet much remained to be done, including peti-tioning the state Liquor and Cannabis Board to make the city’s Alcohol Impact Area permanent and mandatory (since only 17 percent of businesses in the city’s Alcohol Impact Area had voluntarily complied with the city’s pilot project); replicating a housing levy model that the cities of Seattle and Bellingham (see “Home Rule,” p. 11) had employed to help pay for low- income housing projects; and perhaps most important, em-bracing Housing First, a controversial model that turns the typical formula for sheltering the homeless on its head by taking the most problematic homeless citizens off the streets and then treating the underlying roots of their homelessness—conditions like alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness.

“Once a chronically homeless person has stability, they’re better able to work on other issues,” explains deputy city at-torney David Hall. “Having them in housing and off the streets conserves public resources, because they’re no longer cycling through the criminal justice system and the public defender’s office and first responders. Even if it does nothing else, hous-ing the chronically homeless saves the city money.”

“We came to the realization that we need to be pursuing low-barrier housing,” adds Hil Kaman, Everett’s lead prosecutor, who along with Hall invited Pendleton to the city’s Housing First forum. “It was a catalyst for further discussion and the city making a commitment to get low-barrier housing going out here.”

Back at the November 16 event, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, midway through an unprecedented fourth term,

rallies the community, other local electeds, and potential partners behind the cause.

“When I convened the Community Streets Initiative, I knew we had a crisis on our streets,” he begins. “We still have a crisis on our streets, but we have the right people working on the problem, and we are making great progress. . . . Perhaps more important, we have a diverse group of our citizens talking and working together to break down barriers and solve a problem that affects our whole community.”

“Tonight, we focus on housing for the chronically homeless who have been living on the streets and aren’t fit for other programs,” Stephanson continues. “We know our current system, our jails and emergency rooms, are not equipped to address the chronically homeless. Our Chronic Utilizer Emergency Response Team found that just five chronic homeless individuals accounted for nearly 700 days in our jail in the last two years; they also accounted for 1,300 documented contacts with police and first responders in that same time span. Clearly, this is not a long-term solution and not helping get these individuals on a path to recovery.

Deputy City Attorney David Hall

—DAVID HALL

ONCE A CHRONICALLY HOMELESS PERSON HAS STABILITY, THEY’RE BETTER ABLE TO WORK ON OTHER ISSUES.

What sparked your inter-est in homelessness?About 32 years ago, I started volunteering ev-ery day on a bread line in downtown Boston. It was the first bread line in the city since the Great Depression. There were so many homeless people on the streets, and I wanted to understand why.

What did you discover?A failure of public policy precipitated their home-lessness.

How so?There was a well-inten-tioned effort to move peo-ple out of the back wards of hospitals and mental health facilities and house them in the community. We gave people housing, but we did not deliver on the services that were needed to support them in their tenancy. Without that support, they fell, and when they fell, they fell all the way to the street.

So what did you do about it?I became director of homeless services for the City of Cambridge, then a regionally based advocacy group around Boston that was expanded statewide to remedy the failure to support our homeless neighbors.

In 2002, you took your re-gional remedy and made it national policy as Presi-dent Bush’s “homeless-ness czar,” then did the same for President Obama in 2009. What were you able to accomplish?We reframed the issue of homelessness by put-ting business principles and practices to work for homeless people. The most important was cost-benefit analysis. We asked cities and counties across the country to do a cost-benefit analysis of homeless people in their communities, and we dis-covered that they were the most expensive individuals in any city or county.

How expensive?The costs associated with a chronically homeless person on the streets ranged from $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year, because this population is randomly ricocheting through very expensive health and law enforcement systems.

So what did you introduce to address that problem?Something called Housing First, which takes chroni-cally homeless people off the street and puts them directly into housing, paired with customized services

Philip Mangano, presi-dent and CEO of the American Round Table to Abolish Homeless-ness, talks about how government created the current homelessness crisis and what govern-ment—in partnership with the private sector—needs to do to end it.

HOUSE UNITEDQ&A PHILIP MANGANO


“We have learned through our work with the Housing First Approach that this is the most efficient and effective option for our chronically homeless.”

Stephanson then addresses his guest speaker’s bona fides: Pendleton helped write and implement Utah’s 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in the state, which since 2005 has seen its homeless population dwindle from nearly 2,000 individuals to just 178. All but 1.23 percent of Utah’s chronically homeless have been housed over that time span.

Before ceding the stage, Stephanson adds a personal note. “I had a chance to visit with Lloyd this afternoon,” he says, “and this guy is something special.”

The stage lights dim, and “Homeless Homed,” a five-minute video segment that aired on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on January 7, 2015, plays on the silver screen. The audience sits rapt as a voice-over by Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj

booms over the surround sound system:“Across America, new ways of dealing with the homeless

are being introduced, like banning them because of body odor, fining them for sleeping outdoors, and arresting them for sitting down. But Salt Lake City has taken the next step by removing homeless from the streets altogether.”

The camera pans to Minhaj stopping a pedestrian on a deserted Salt Lake City street.

“Sir, have you seen any homeless people?” he asks.“Nope.”Minhaj confronts a woman dashing by with an umbrella.“Have you seen any person living in a cardboard box?”“No, sorry.”He faces the camera and lifts his hands to the sky.“Where the hell did they put everybody?”The scene fades to a studio, with Lloyd Pendleton, a retired

Mormon church executive in a dark brown business suit, owlish eyes behind rimless spectacles, seated across from Minhaj.

“We have reduced our chronic homeless in this county by 75 percent since 2005,” Pendleton says.

“Did you hide them underground?” asks Minhaj.“We did not hide the homeless people underground.”“Did you convert them from Mormon to gay?“We did not convert them from Mormon to gay, or from gay

to Mormon.”“So how did you do it?”“We did it by giving homes to homeless people.”“Whoa. You did what?”“We gave homes to the homeless. Yes, it’s simple. You give

them housing, and you end homelessness.”Further discussion ensues, during which Minhaj continues

to feign incredulity while Pendleton points out that the average cost for Salt Lake City to treat a chronically homeless person living on the streets, at $20,000 per year, is roughly twice the cost of providing housing for that person. After Minhaj tacks to accusing Pendleton of promoting handouts, he goes to visit “one continued on page 19


of these moochers in their moochatorium”—Russell Flowers, an elderly man who had been homeless for three years after losing a construction job due to injury. Seated in his living room at Valor House, a $5.4 million home for 72 chronically homeless veterans that opened in November 2012 as a partnership between Salt Lake City’s Housing Authority and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Flowers explains how having the apartment helped him get a job that will allow him to save enough money to move back in with family in Chicago.

“Now I’m totally lost,” says Minhaj. “We’ve given him a home, he’s gotten his life back together, he’s become a productive member of society, and it’s costing us less. What’s the catch? There has to be a catch. ...”

The scene fades back to Pendleton soberly eyeing the audience.“It’s very simple: it works.”And the segment concludes with another Minhaj voice-over.“If you see a homeless person, don’t feel bad. Know that they

can get a second shot at life: all they need to do is live in Utah.”Or perhaps Everett.

Spotlit onstage, Pendleton, dressed in the same con-servative suit he wore on the Daily Show a year ear-lier, takes the mic and cues his PowerPoint, “Utah’s Homeless Approach.”

“Before I get started, I just wanted to tell you thanks, for who you are and for your interest in this subject, because the number who turned out here indicates that there is interest—you see an issue that needs to be addressed,” he begins. “There are certain key ingredients that I have found are necessary if something really is going to be done. The key ingredient is a champion, and I’ve found that in your mayor, in your council, in a couple of guys—Hil and David—so you have the ingredients you need to make this happen.

“Are you ready? Are you excited?!”Amid hoots and applause, the slide onscreen changes to a

bar graph depicting the Utah’s dwindling chronically homeless population, which, Pendlleton notes, has fallen precipitously in the year since the Daily Show episode aired at the start of 2015, from 539 to 178.

“We’ve had a big reduction in the last year, and basically we are down to functional zero,” he says. “We have a system in place that quickly identifies the homeless person and assesses their needs, and we move them into the appropriate intervention so that their period of homelessness is short-lived. You will never end homelessness. We know there are people who will die in the streets because they are mentally ill, and they have so many issues they will not come into housing; that may be 1 percent or 2 percent of your population. ... But you can provide a housing opportunity for every homeless citizen.”

He tells a story about returning to Utah in 2003 on a flight from Chicago, where he heard Sam Tsemberis lecture about ending chronic homelessness. Tsemberis, a faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry at New York University School

of Medicine, is credited with articulating and applying the fundamentals of Housing First with the founding of a nonprofit called Pathways to Housing in 1992. Pendleton says he had an epiphany while looking out the airplane’s window.

“When I heard about the 10-year-plan to end chronic homelessness, I said, ‘You guys are smoking something.’ They’d use the words ‘ending homelessness,’ and I would say, ‘That ain’t gonna happen. There are too many personal choices,’” Pendleton recounts. “But as I looked out the window at the clouds going by, I said, ‘If any state in the union can achieve this, Utah can do it. My mind and my heart shifted, and I became a determined soul.”

Another slide: “Housing First Principles.”Pendleton talks about the program’s two central tenets:

that once the chaos of homeless is eliminated from a person’s life, clinical and social stabilization occur faster and are more enduring; and that housing is a basic human need, not a reward for clinical success. Then he explains other principles, including moving people into housing directly from the streets or shelters without requiring them to accept or comply with treatment for substance abuse; providing needed treatment services to residents; requiring residents to pay 30 percent of their income, or at least $50; and affirming that all homeless people can be housed.

Someone from the audience interrupts and asks why drug and alcohol use is tolerated, and whether that policy can be problematic for the housing provider.

“Housing First is low-barrier, so you can drink and use drugs in your home,” he explains. “But if you sell drugs, that’s a criminal activity, and the police are called. It’s just like in your own house: you can drink, you can use drugs, as long as you don’t disturb your neighbors. But if you beat up your neighbor, you are evicted.”

Another audience member asks Pendleton about the genesis of Utah’s Housing First program. The answer: it started small. Utah’s Housing First program began with a pilot project to house just 17 of its most difficult cases in scattered apartments around the city while Salt Lake City’s first dedicated 100-bed Housing First facility was under construction, funded by a broad-based coalition that included the city, the county, the state, the Mormon church, a private foundation, and corporate donors like American Express.

And so it goes, Pendleton carefully laying out the blueprint of how Utah achieved its Housing First success, elaborating on step after step for nearly two hours, until finally he arrives at his lecture’s endpoint.

—LLOYD PENDLETON

MY MIND AND MY HEART SHIFTED, AND I BECAME A DETERMINED SOUL.

like addiction or mental health counseling. When we moved them into housing, they no longer were ran-domly ricocheting through county and city services: time in the emergency room dropped, police engage-ment dropped, substance abuse dropped, they weren’t incarcerated anymore.

And that saved cities money.If I’m a public official—a mayor or county executive or governor—I can spend $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year to maintain a person in homelessness, or I can invest $12,000 to $25,000 to end homeless-ness and stop that cycling through very expensive systems. You don’t need to be Warren Buffett to figure out which of those is the better investment.

Does it work only in big cities?We have done studies in large, small, and medium-size cities across the coun-try, and the results are al-ways the same. You have a public policy initiative that is better for the community, better for the homeless per-son, better for the taxpayer.

If the Housing First model works so well, why wasn’t chronic homelessness eradicated in those cities that have adopted it?It hasn’t been scaled to be commensurate with the size of the problem. . . . The resources that are needed are not going to come from government.

What about nonprofits?Nonprofits have done great work, but they don’t have the resources to develop housing at the scale need-ed to accomplish the mis-sion. The private sector can be the agent of scaling.

Why would a developer want to help a city house

its homeless?By building housing, the private sector saves gov-ernment money, and gov-ernment repays private investors with a return on their investment. That’s what the cost-benefit analysis demonstrated, that’s what we launched in Massachusetts, and that’s what’s being considered in many cities and coun-ties and states. It’s called social-impact financing.

But housing is only one part of the Housing First model, right?In the Housing First model, you provide a place to live, and you wrap around that person customized social services that are needed to support that person in ten-ancy. Housing without ser-vices for the most vulnerable sets people up for failure.

Any words of advice for Washington electeds who want to try Housing First?Make a pilgrimage: go see it working. There’s noth-ing better than to visit with another mayor or public official in whose jurisdiction Housing First happened and learn how to do it right.

What’s the big idea behind your nonprofit, the Ameri-can Round Table to Abol-ish Homelessness?When I was in Washington, we saw the first document-ed decrease in street and chronic homelessness in our country. The Round Table continues that momentum by working with communi-ties to upgrade their efforts. To abolish this social wrong, innovation and results are essential along with politi-cal will. And stamina.

And faith.Investing in evidence-based initiatives means that we are leaving behind what didn’t work and em-bracing what does. But I still pray every day!


“What motivates me?” he asks. “To repurpose resources, to reach out and bring hope, and to light that flame within that person where the light has gone out. ... It’s doable. We did it. You can do it, too.”

A brief question-and-answer session follows.A graduate student earning a master’s in social work asks

Pendleton how a theater full of people can begin to elicit the support that will be needed to realize a Housing First success story like Utah’s.

“It’s very easy,” he says. “You take this man right here, this mayor, and you take this man here, the head of the port, and they go on an outreach team, and they meet these homeless people. They have a chance to meet them and find out that they are really human beings not any different from you or me. Numbers are interesting, and that’s part of the discussion, but until you move it into the heart and you have a feeling and a connection, it ain’t gonna happen.”

An agnostic asks why most states and municipalities have yet to adopt the Housing First model.

“There haven’t been champions,” Pendleton replies. “It’s hard work, and somebody needs to step up and say, ‘We’re going to do this and I’m the leader, follow me.”

The evening closes with a final query about the most important step that needs to be taken for Housing First to succeed.

“You say, ‘We’re going to have 20 people housed in the next 2.5 months, and you start doing it,” Pendleton concludes. “It works, but you need to know it works. You will be amazed at the change

Lloyd Pendleton, creator of Utah’s Housing First


ONE OF THE HUNDREDS who attended both Housing First community forums at the Historic Everett Theatre was the Rev. Christopher Boyer, a councilmember from Lynnwood, a south Snohomish County public-transit hub 12 miles south of Everett that’s been using its limited re-sources to grapple with homelessness. Two years ago, Boyer launched Lynnwood’s Homelessness Task Group, a coalition of city electeds, staff, and community leaders that’s similar to Everett’s Community Streets Initiative.

“For a year, we looked at the issue and what services are already there for these folks,” says Boyer, pastor of Good Shepherd Baptist Church, an integral part of an interfaith social services network that provides food and emergency shelter for Lynnwood’s homeless. “And then we spent another several months talking about how can we take a very limited pool of money from our city bud-get to catalyze those services and dedicate it to trying to find real solutions.”

Recently, the City of Lynnwood awarded a $75,000 grant to the YWCA of Seattle-Snohomish-King County, which manages an eight-bed shelter for women and chil-dren in the city (the only homeless shelter between Everett and Seattle), to provide a homeless needs assessment and develop a comprehensive plan to address those needs.

Considering the latest statistics and anecdotal evi-dence, the needs appear great. According to the Point In Time census that Snohomish County’s Human Services Department released on February 1, over the past year the number of unsheltered individuals in the county surged to 481 from 312, an increase of 54 percent, while the number of unsheltered families with children in the county more than doubled, from 16 to 35. And nobody knows the actual numbers.

“Counting homeless folks is very difficult,” explains Boy-er. “The assumption is that the count only represents 66 to 75 percent of the actual total.” A surge certainly can be seen at Lynnwood’s public library on cold and rainy days.

“Our library has become a day center for many of our homeless,” says Mayor Nicola Smith. “Those who are experi-encing homelessness are our neighbors, but they are neigh-bors in distress. Lynnwood doesn’t have shelters for the homeless, and the library can’t be a long-term solution.”

“The word we have embraced in Lynnwood is ‘up-stream,’” adds Smith. “It will cost us less as a city and a county to help people get well and get some cover over their head than to have law enforcement and emergency room services as the only option.”

As an example of such upstream innovation, the mayor points to the city’s Community Health & Safety Program, a team of representatives from five city departments who respond en masse to citizen complaints. If a neigh-bor calls the city about suspicious activity around a drug house, the city team, as it deals with potential criminal goings-on, can address any code violations and health and safety issues, such as exposed electrical wiring.

“It’s been a really successful program,” says Smith, who hopes to expand the program to include an embedded social worker for community policing. But what Lynn- wood really needs is more housing, like the new perma-nent home for 20 chronically homeless veterans that will open on the outskirts of town later this year, a project of the Catholic Community Services of Western Washington (funded with $4.1 million from the state Housing Trust Fund and Snohomish County Human Services).

“As much as we would like to say, ‘Here’s a piece of land, and we’ll build a building to take care of these folks,’ the city of Lynnwood can’t afford that,” stresses Boyer. “One of the things that the contract with the YWCA does for us is to start bringing together our peers and our sis-ter cities and say, ‘We think Lynnwood is the site because of our access to transportation, but if we’re willing to take on this much of the issue, how much can you other cities pony up and help us work on this?’”

As a community of communities.

GOOD NEIGHBORSLynnwood cultivates collaboration to house its homeless.

Mayor Nicola Smith and Rev. Christopher Boyer with Mary Ann Dillon, senior regional director of the YWCA of Seattle-Snohomish-King County, at the Lynnwood Women’s Shelter


in the discussion when you say, ‘We will do this in the next 2.5 months.’ That is key. I hope to hear back from David and Hil, that you have people housed in the next 2.5 months. And that the county is part of the solution. You do it.”

And they did.

At a follow-up Housing First forum on the eve-ning of February 1, a crowd of 225 returns to the plush velvet seats of the Historic Everett Theatre. The bulk of the evening will be spent hearing testimony from a panel of experts that

includes the executive directors from a trio of nonprofits that have been using the Housing First model to success-fully shelter and treat more than 1,000 formerly chronically homeless in Seattle and Spokane. But the highlight is Mayor Stephanson’s Housing First progress report, which begins with an introduction by the evening’s moderator, Mark Smith, executive director of the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County.

“I was an observer on the mayor’s Community Streets Initiative, and as a former elected official, I was so encouraged by Mayor Stephanson’s opening remarks when he introduced this citizens’ task force because he said, ‘We are not going to kick this down the road. We are not just going to give these people bus passes out of our community. We are going to help people.’ And that’s an amazing thing.”

After the applause dies down, Smith notes that earlier that day Mayor Stephanson had convened the first roundtable discussion of a new coalition that includes mayors and coun-cilmembers from across Snohomish County, the county exec-utive and council, and the governor, who pledged his support to secure state funding for the mental health treatment that’s required by the Housing First model.

“It was an amazing gathering of elected officials who talked about a future collaboration to include criminal justice, health care, affordable housing organizers, all of this because of Mayor Stephanson’s leadership,” Smith says. “Governor Inslee was there, and he said something that really resonated with everybody. He said that chronic homelessness is not something that’s urban or rural; it’s not something that’s east or west or large or small. It’s in every one of our communities, and we need a collective, collaborative approach to end it.”

Then Stephanson steps to the podium and talks about a momentous phone call he had made that morning.

“I had a chance to talk with Lloyd Pendleton this morning. It was a little like reporting out to my principal,” he says, elic-iting laughter from the audience. “I learned something from Lloyd, and that was it’s really important to get your partners engaged in this and committed. [County Executive] Dave Somers has been terrific. Before he took office he was there and said, ‘What can we do and how can we help?’ Then we got the governor involved. ... It doesn’t hurt to have the governor of the state saying that Everett is the place to look in terms of how we solve this problem.”

Or the state Legislature.With the support of Everett’s council, Stephanson reports,

the city has committed $2 million toward a capital campaign to build a 60-unit low-barrier housing development for the chronically homeless, and it hopes to close on the purchase of a parcel of land for the project by the end of February. The county has pledged $1 million, and Stephanson is seeking another $2 million from the Legislature, an ask backed by Rep. June Robinson and Sen. John McCoy. But there’s even better news.

“In September, I announced we were going to do 20 units of housing by the end of 2017. Then Lloyd came and made me feel guilty, so I said, ‘OK, we’ll do 20 by the middle of this year,’” Stephanson says, eliciting whoops of approval from the audience. “Then I thought, ‘That sounds good, but we can do a little better. So I said, ‘We’ll do five in the first 60 days.’”

With the help of the local YWCA, in three days, on the mayor’s birthday, the city of Everett would take five chronically homeless citizens off the street and place them into permanent housing—its first Housing First success.

“What’s most important to me is the support I have felt from all of you and this community around this issue and this initiative, like no other effort in my 13 years of being mayor,” he says. “We have a lot of work to do, but we’re on the right track.”

Snohomish County Human Services Director Mary Jane Brell-Vujovic, the first panelist to speak, puts it another way.

“Everett did a masterful job. I wish we could bottle it,” she says. “There’s no shortcut in creating a unified vision of where you want to go.”

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson

—RAY STEPHANSON

WE HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO, BUT WE’RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ARE INCREASINGLY FINDING THEMSELVES struggling to deal with the impact homelessness has on their communities. In the city of Vancouver, our focus and funding are designated for core services including police, fire, streets, parks, water, and sewer. We don’t have a direct role over social services (e.g., education or housing), and, like many other cities, we don’t have excess general-fund capacity to substantially support such services.

Since June 2015, the rental vacancy rate in Vancouver has been around 2 percent, down from 3.8 percent five years ago. From October 2014 to October 2015, the median rent for a two-bedroom/one-bath unit in Vancouver increased 15.6 percent, the highest percentage increase in the nation. Housing inventory, afford-ability, and homelessness are now among the city’s most pressing issues.

The tightening market and the dramatic increase in rental rates are hitting our community’s most vulnerable residents—seniors, disabled, and working poor—the hardest. These conditions are contributing to the rise in the number of cost-burdened households in our community (those paying more than 30 percent of income for housing). Recent esti-mates show that half of Vancouver’s approximately 33,000 renter households are cost-burdened, with nearly 23 percent severely cost-burdened (paying more than 50 percent of their income for housing).

Homelessness in our schoolsThe media tend to focus on the most visible elements of home-lessness, such as people living and sleeping on the streets. But a troubling, often overlooked phenomenon is the growing number of “hidden homeless” in our school-age population.

HOME ECONOMICSVANCOUVER GOES BACK TO SCHOOL ON HOMELESSNESS

ALISHIA TOPPER, Vancouver City Councilmember

Alishia Topper is a Vancouver city councilmem-ber and Director of Strategic Partnerships for the family-community resource centers in Vancouver Public Schools.

CITY 101

Partner PowerFor an initiative on home-less students, potential city partners include school

districts, housing providers, faith communities, nonprofit organizations, private founda-tions, business leaders, phi-lanthropies, counties, and the state. And keep in mind these general considerations:

Partners can come together through a mayor- or city council–designated task force or committee.

Use your partnership to leverage financial resources, contribute lead-ership, and help frame the policy agenda.

A strong partnership has shared goals, shared responsibilities, and shared resources. It is a good idea to have your goals in writing and outline which partner will do what, by when.

A partnership doesn’t always mean money. It can be as simple as a mayor or city manager designating city staff time to work in collabora-tion with other agencies or organiza-tions that have a shared goal.

22 COMBATING STUDENT HOMELESSNESS 24 FROM TENTS TO HOUSING 25 PULLING APART HOMELESS ISSUES AND STREET DISORDER

CITYWISE


In the state of Washington, 45 percent (482,024) of K–12 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a federal indicator of financial hardship. In Vancouver, 52 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction reported in 2013–14 that more than 32,000 of our state’s children are homeless students. In Vancouver Public Schools alone, we estimate there are approximately 500 homeless students.

Numerous studies have shown how homelessness nega-tively impacts student achievement and graduation rates, which in turn impacts future income levels. Unfortunately, this is not an easy problem to tackle, nor is there a one-size-fits-all solution for homeless students. These youth are facing enormous barriers in their day-to-day lives, including divorce, domestic violence, housing evictions, and substance abuse, any of which can cause students to end up homeless or as unaccompanied youth.

Are the issues of student homelessness and affordable housing onerous? Yes. Can we make a difference? Absolutely.

Taking actionThe City of Vancouver has partnered with the Vancouver Housing Authority to help provide safe, sanitary housing accommodations for low-income residents. In 2015, the Vancouver City Council supported this partnership by making allowances for full or partial waivers of impact fees for the construction of low-income housing. Councilmem-bers also helped facilitate a collaborative agreement between the housing authority and local school districts to ensure that homeless students and their families find and stay in stable housing. In addition, councilmembers advocated for the initiation of a Section 8 preference for families who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness, with children in public schools.

In Vancouver, homeless schoolchildren and their families are referred to the Section 8 application process by school advocates or a homeless liaison. The priorities are to stabi-lize students, decrease mobility, and address housing afford-ability.

As a community, we must continue to find, create, and support interventions for homeless children of families living in crisis. Positively changing the trajectory of our students’ future pays dividends not only for the student, but also for the economic vitality of our communities.

A community responseHomelessness and the lack of affordable housing are commu-

nity issues. The government cannot solve this alone. Housing authorities, school districts, nonprofits, and faith organiza-tions cannot solve this crisis alone. We need a community response—a robust network of ambitious and collaborative partnerships.

Communities should consider creating a homeless or poverty task force to bring together thought leaders and direct-service providers to jointly work toward long-term collective solutions to student homelessness. If your commu-nity already has a collaborative task force, make sure a city staff member or councilmember serves on the committee.

Carefully consider how to balance development incentives with requirements that ensure affordability for the lowest-

income community members. (Incentives tend to work best at the higher margins of affordability, for example 60–115 percent of area median income.) Also, make sure options are targeted at helping your city’s most vulnerable residents, including very low-income and homeless households.

The power of partnershipsOne thing is certain: if we don’t talk about the problem and cultivate partnerships focused on resolving the issues of homelessness, especially student homelessness, the future of our cities and state will be compromised. Make it your goal to ensure that city leaders are informed, connected, and engaged with partner agency leaders in the social service, public, nonprofit, faith, business, and education sectors.

Preventing and ending homelessness and promoting affordable housing are ambitious goals. They will require equally ambitious collaboration, innovation, planning, and commitment, but by leveraging our collective knowledge and resources we can help end this problem.

CITYWISE

Homelessness negatively impacts student achievement and graduation rates, which in turn impacts future income levels.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 CITYVISION MAGAZINE 23For more information: cityofvancouver.us

CITYWISE GINGER SEGEL, Community Frameworks

GIMME SHELTERPRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM OLYMPIA’S QUIXOTE VILLAGE

THOUSANDS OF TENT CITIES HAVE SPRUNG UP around the country to offer safety and community to homeless people. Many are on church property, many are sanctioned by local governments, and many are supported by non-homeless people. Building tiny house structures is a logical next step toward permanent subsidized housing.

Quixote Village (see “Home Less, Home More” on page 7) was made possible by the determination of its tent-camp residents and their supporters: telling their story, making the case, and persuading private funders, public funders, and the community. The Panza board’s ability to secure funding through political channels was critical. Can this project be replicated? I believe it can with the right funding scenarios in place.

First, sufficient public funds are available to cover the majority of capital costs, with minimal regulations and no repayment expectations.

Second, sufficient operating funds are available, the most promising being the project-based Section 8, which can be used if the proj-ect can meet housing quality standards (HQS). For Quixote Village, Olympia adopted a single room occupancy definition that met HQS stan-dards. However, some housing authorities have already project-based as many Section 8’s as the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development allows; others are unwilling to convert tenant vouchers.

Third, service funding is available. Although most residents receive medical, mental health, or substance abuse services through other community agencies, an on-site case manager (resident advo-cate) is critical to monitor residents’ well-being. It may be possible to partner

with a mental health agency to provide on-site case management.A project funded by private philanthropic donations without

the use of public funds may be constructed more inexpensively and could perhaps use volunteer labor hours extensively. It is also possible to reduce development costs if the Quixote Vil-lage concept is scaled to a state or regional level using template designs and if the houses are produced in bulk in a factory.

I believe the Quixote Village project can be replicated with the right funding scenarios in place.

Source: Tiny Houses: A Permanent Supportive Housing Model

CITY 101

Ginger Segel develops housing for seniors and people with disabilities, homeless shel-ters, transitional and permanent supportive hous-ing, workforce housing, and community centers.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE? Committed community

organization

Broad community support

Development expertise in financing options and design and land use issues

Site near public transporta-tion and services

Zoning approval

Building and housing code compliance

Management plan—operations, contract compliance, rules, evictions

Operating funding: How much will rents cover, and what other funds are needed?

TINY HOUSE DEVELOPMENT CHECKLIST

WHAT ARE THE CAPITAL COSTS? Tent $70

Unconditioned tiny house (without plumbing or electricity) $2,000

Quixote Village Tiny House (cost includes land, difficult site remediation, community building construction) $102,000

Jail cell $114,986

Subsidized small apartment $239,396

Hospital bed $352,992

FROM TENTS TO HOSPITAL BEDS

24 CITYVISION MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016For more information: communityframeworks.org

STREET LEGALASSESSING HOMELESSNESS AMID PUBLIC-SAFETY CONCERNS

AS CITIES EVERYWHERE STRUGGLE TO RESPOND to the growing homelessness crisis, public discourse increasingly includes the phrase “criminalizing homelessness.” It is useful for policy makers to understand what this phrase really means and to move past the polarizing interpretation— “any ordinance that potentially affects homeless people is criminalizing homelessness”—it sometimes receives. A more nuanced view of the various ordinances that some would characterize as criminalizing homelessness can aid elected officials as they try to maintain public safety and reduce street disorder while addressing the daunting challenge of homelessness.

An example of an ordinance that most people would agree criminalizes homelessness is a citywide, 24-7 ban on sitting or lying in public places—the so-called “sit-lie” ordinance. Everyone needs to sit down occasionally, and we all need to sleep. People living on the street—the unsheltered

homeless—necessarily sit and lie in public. To ban these activities is to make it unlawful to be unsheltered. This type of blanket sit-lie ordinance has been struck down by the courts, with at least one court holding that, in the absence of sufficient space in local shelters, a citywide 24-7 sit-lie ban violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Less draconian sit-lie ordinances may withstand legal challenge, although they will still be criticized as criminalizing homelessness. Many cities prohibit sit-ting and/or lying in certain areas (most often, the commercial core) for some portion of the day (e.g.,

DAVID HALL, Deputy City Attorney, Everett CITYWISE

continued

David Hall is the Everett Deputy City Attorney and lead staff for the Everett Streets Initiative, a community stakeholder task force charged with developing recommenda-tions to address Everett’s street-level social issues.

IT’S ABOUT CRIME

LEGAL AFFAIRS

THE SEATTLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW’S HOMELESS RIGHTS ADVOCACY PROJECT surveyed municipal codes in 72 Washington cities (representing 56% of the state population in urban and rural areas) for ordinances that criminalize common aspects of homelessness. Here is the percentage of cities that have versions of such ordinances:

Sitting or standing in

public places

Sleeping in public spaces

Obstruction of sidewalks

or public places

Aggressive panhandling

Camping in particular

public places

Lodging, living, or

sleeping in vehicles

Dumpster-diving in trash

receptacles

Storage of personal

property in public places

Restricting access to

public facili-ties to those who create body odor

Urination/defecation in

public

78% 78% 75% 72% 63% 63%

32% 28% 22% 21%

Source: Washington’s War on the Visibly Poor: A Survey of Criminalizing Ordinances & Their Enforcement, May 2015

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 CITYVISION MAGAZINE 25For more information: everettwa.org

7 a.m.–10 p.m.). In general, such ordinances are more defensible if they cover smaller areas and less time, if other space is made available where sitting and lying are permitted (e.g., parks), and if the city can show it has suf-ficient shelter space. Any policy discussion concerning sit-lie ordinances needs to acknowledge that the ordi-nance does nothing to solve the problem of homeless-ness; it simply moves it to another part of the city.

Some would include a range of nuisance and “civility” crimes in the criminalizing homelessness category. Many people are understandably offended or even frightened by behaviors like aggressive panhandling, public consumption of alcohol, public urination and defecation, trespass, and other “uncivil” behaviors. Business owners worry that overlooking these behaviors drives away customers; few would dispute that they diminish the quality of life in a community.

Civility offenses are by no means committed exclusively by people who are homeless. Nonetheless, enforcement of civility laws does bring large numbers of homeless individuals into contact with the criminal justice system. If a local government’s only response to these low-level crimes is stepped-up enforcement, it might fairly be accused of criminalizing homelessness. The questions faced by policy makers should be how, not whether, to enforce civility laws and what role enforcement plays in a broader response to homelessness.

Many (but not all) people living on the street have a mental illness, substance use disorder, or other condition that contributes both to their continued homelessness and their repeated criminal conduct. Responding to these behaviors solely with the traditional criminal justice model is both expensive and ineffective. In fact, it often makes the problem worse: people lose benefits like SSDI while in jail; social ties are severed; individuals with mental illness often decompensate in the harsh, unfamiliar, stressful environment of jail and return to the street with even less capacity to function than when they were arrested.

The community may be better served by interventions that address the root causes of their criminal behavior. Diversion programs and therapeutic courts give offenders opportunities to connect with services and successfully complete drug and alcohol, mental health, or other treatment programs instead of going to jail.

Panhandling presents different issues. Only some homeless people regularly panhandle, and only some panhandlers are homeless. Moreover, many social service providers believe panhandling should not be supported because it so often perpetuates an unhealthy lifestyle. But the courts have made it clear that asking

for charity is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, leaving open the possibility only of narrowly tailored prohibitions, such as banning truly aggressive panhandling or panhandling that creates safety hazards. Policy makers wishing to discourage panhandling must do so indirectly, for example with educational campaigns urging people to donate to charities that fight poverty and homelessness rather than directly to people on the street.

Another legal tool worth mentioning is the Alcohol Impact Area. State law allows a municipality to desig-nate areas that are disproportionately affected by the sale of certain alcoholic beverages, typically high-potency, single-serving products sold for off-premises consump-tion. Designation of the impact area must be supported by data, such as elevated levels of alcohol-related crime, emergency responses, or discarded containers. Retailers within the impact area are not allowed to sell products placed on a “banned products” list, and enforcement is against the retailers, not their customers. Research has shown significant reductions of alcohol-related impacts within the several AIAs that have been established by Washington cities.

By recognizing that street disorder is largely a result of social and public health problems, as opposed to criminality, cities can develop policies that protect public safety and quality of life and make a dent in our social ills without criminalizing homelessness.

CITYWISE

Diversion programs and therapeutic courts give offenders opportunities to connect with services and successfully complete treatment programs instead of going to jail.


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This is why

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This is why

Collaboration and coordination can help keep our streets from becoming a refuge of last resort.

WHEN THE BEAT OF THE CROWD IS PULSING, it’s fun to be on the streets. The strength of numbers is in-vigorating; the community connection is energizing. But when you’re homeless—and you can’t take shelter when the party’s over—the streets aren’t such a welcoming place.

Cities around the nation are declaring a homelessness state of emergency. The alarm bells amplify how the 3Hs—homelessness, housing, and human services—are wrapped in layers of complexity. But the simple fact remains: with the cost of housing rising and workers living on the employ-ment bubble, families and individuals can’t always afford shelter.

On the front lines, homelessness can get conflated with street disorder: how do you help someone who is in trouble

and needs assistance, but may be exhibiting antisocial and sometimes criminal behavior? When we struggle to fund and deliver treatment for mental health issues and substance abuse, homelessness increases. Traumatized vet-erans, disadvantaged youth, and people who simply aren’t prepared to function in today’s economy may turn to the streets.

Solving this crisis requires the strength of an entire com-munity, working together to find humanitarian solutions. It’s going to take a deeply collaborative approach at the city, county, state, and federal levels to combat the immediate ef-fects of homelessness and its underlying causes. We’ll know we’re getting close to home when we reach a place where people can leave the streets behind.

HOMEWARD BOUND

CITYSCAPE


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