President Joe Biden's administration wants to accelerate efforts to get unsheltered people in Seattle into permanent housing as part of a federal initiative to reduce homelessness by 25% in two years, the White House announced Thursday.
Through the initiative, ALL INside, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness will partner with Seattle and five other cities and states: California, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and the Phoenix metropolitan area.
At a virtual event with White House officials Thursday morning announcing the partnership, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said the initiative provides an opportunity for different levels of government to "stop talking past one another," and unite to get more people inside.
King County Executive Dow Constantine agreed, saying, "It depends on partnerships across our region to meet the needs of the people we serve, including the large percentage of those who are unhoused."
The program will embed a federal official in Seattle for up to two years, to work on locally driven strategies. Although this initiative does not bring in new funding to address homelessness, Executive Director Jeff Olivet of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness said federal officials could help communities "navigate the maze of federal funding streams, break down barriers between different programs, and facilitate a peer-learning network across the six communities."
That could aid the King County Regional Homelessness Authority's plans to capture more Medicaid funding that is available to aid homelesspeople, which it outlined in an updated draft of its five-year plan released Friday.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will also give communities technical assistance to leverage Medicare coverage of housing-related support services and behavioral health care.
The federal agencies seek to address barriers homeless people may encounter when getting government identification and other documents. ALL INside also has a goal of improving access to support services like housing vouchers.
The Department of Labor will connect the communities with local workforce boards and Jobs Corps sites so unsheltered young people can apply for employment.
Seattle and King County have the third-highest homeless population in the country, at more than 13,300 people, according to 2022 Point-In-Time Count data. But experts acknowledge the annual federal count, held over the course of one day, is unreliable and likely an undercount.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is using the state Department of Commerce's methodology that calculated 53,532 people experienced homelessness in the county in 2022.
This isn't the first time Seattle has received federal help with the region's homelessness crisis. Last September, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development deployed three staff members to help the King County Regional Homelessness Authority start up its Housing Command Center, which is part of the authority's plan to greatly reduce homelessness in downtown Seattle.
HUD released a package of grants totaling $486 million last month to help 62 communities, including $8 million in grants to Washington.
