(The Center Square) — Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said a new community of 75 tiny homes for the homeless should be ready to open in the city’s Interbay neighborhood by early June, the first phase of her plan to create new housing before the World Cup starts.
Wilson said her administration is moving full steam ahead with her homeless housing plan, while acknowledging that it may not be possible to meet her ambitious goal of having all 500 temporary units built by the start of the first game on June 15.
“It’s really being able to rally people together around an ambitious goal,” she said to reporters at a community forum Wednesday night.
Wilson said she was “amazed” by how city employees from various departments have come together to quickly transform the process of building new communities to get people off the streets.
The tiny home villages are designed as a temporary place for the homeless until they receive permanent housing. Opening transitional housing for the homeless has taken the city as long as a year in the past.
Wilson said homelessness is the city’s biggest issue.
“This is a citywide problem, and it’s going to take citywide effort to solve it,” Wilson said at the City Hall meeting.
Wilson, who took office in January, has committed to a plan to shorten the timeline for creating more housing by having the city directly lease land for housing communities rather than relying on community organizations.
Memo predicts delays
But a March 24 City Council research staff memo states that even under an accelerated process, it would take 4 months from the city’s acquisition of the land for a micro-modular village to become operational.
“Even if the Executive were able to secure leases by mid-April, that would put the earliest start date for operations is July 14, ” the memo said.
The last of the six World Cup games in Seattle’s Lumen Field is scheduled for July 6.
Wilson said the city had partnered with Everett-based Pallet Selter to open the village and had signed a contract on Wednesday to purchase the vacant building that will house the new community. Pallet Shelter CEO Amy King said the village should be operational by June 1.
The units won’t be large.King said each individual will live in a 70-square-foot micro-unit, made up of quick-assembled composite panels used in global disaster zones to provide temporary housing.
She said the units will be assembled in Everett and trucked to the Seattle site.
King said the village will be operational by June 1, with mental health, social service and drug addiction services offered to the unhoused occupying the units. King said Pallet has built 100 such communities across the U.S., but none in Seattle
“Our average length of stay is 90 to 120,” she said.
Drugs a problem
Andrea Suarez, founder of the Community Organization, We Heart Seattle, called the announced opening of the first pallet housing village for the homeless, “a positive sign.”
Suarez has been critical of other tiny home villages in Seattle, built by different housing providers than Pallet, saying that drug use and drug dealing had become problems at some of those communities
But Suarez said Pallet Shelter has built a strong national reputation for providing quality transitional housing and has not been given the chance to work in Seattle.
“Let’s try something different,” she said
Wilson said she wanted some housing for the unhoused ready for the World Cup because she doesn’t want a repeat of what happened during the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2023.
“People (the homeless) were kind of just swept to other neighborhoods, swept out of sight in a way that was damaging for those individuals and also for the neighborhoods that they ended up in,” she said. “And so we want to avoid a repeat of that.”
The city committed $17 million to address the homeless housing problem this year with Wilson aiming to open 1,000 new units.
City Councilman Eddie Lin, who attended the community meeting, said in an interview that Wilson’s new program will be “a big test” of whether the city can make a meaningful difference in reducing the homeless population.
He said “robust spending” by the city on mental health, social services and drug addiction services is also essential to make sure that the temporary shelters provide the homeless with the help they need to get off the streets permanently.
Lin said the retail businesses in the city have become particularly frustrated by the homeless issues, as they deal with increased crime that has resulted.
“I am hopeful and optimistic that we will make a meaningful difference,” he said, “And if not, we’ll pivot.”
