Seattle mayoral candidates unveils plan to address city’s homeless crisis

Seattle Council President and Mayoral candidate Lorena Gonzalez revealed her plan to address the city’s homeless crisis in its first 100 days if she wins the November elections.

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Gonzalez outlined seven different facets of her first 100-day approach. This includes the promise to “rapidly increase accommodation capacity and evaluate warehouses in all neighborhoods,” as well as building affordable housing, creating additional mental health resources, tackling the city’s rising cost of living, and more.

“Trying to deal with the symptoms of homelessness without addressing the root causes will not be successful,” Gonzalez said in a written press release detailing her plan. “My administration will leverage all of Seattle’s resources and rely on our partnerships at all levels of government and in every neighborhood.”

Her proposals include a plan to tackle the city’s single-family legislation to provide more affordable housing.

“To build the affordable homes we need, we need to change outdated laws that prevent apartment buildings in 70% of Seattle’s residential areas,” she said.

Gonzalez also promises to “start realigning the tax law” to make big companies like Amazon pay higher rates, though it doesn’t specify how this would work in contrast to the city’s existing JumpStart big business tax.

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It did so after urging Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign opponent Bruce Harrell to implement components of a recently defeated Compassion Seattle homeless initiative. Harrell outlined his own goals in an open letter to city council members on his campaign website, urging them to include parts of Compassion Seattle’s proposal in the city budget this November, which included an investment of at least 12% in homeless assistance efforts includes and “reflects the core”. Mandate of the proposed change. “

The initiative would have amended the Seattle City Charter to require an additional 2,000 emergency shelters or permanent housing units within a year by waiving building permit fees, treating residential permit applications as “first-in-line” for expedited treatment, and passing the payee to those from the city VAT portion paid for these facilities. It would also have called on the city to “ensure that parks, playgrounds, sports fields, public spaces, as well as sidewalks and streets, remain open and free of camps”.

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