In The News - 12/10/24

The Spokesman Review

Commissioners approve 2025 budget of $865M

County turns focus to projects like homelessness prevention, addressing behavioral and mental health, with sales tax going toward court, schools, transitional housing and expansion of regional stabilization center

The Spokane County Commissioners adopted a 2025 budget last week that’s smaller than in years past, despite increased investments in the criminal justice system, mental health services and capital improvement projects.

This year’s economic climate put some pressure on local governments in balancing their 2035 budgets, including Spokane County.

Revenue streams – primarily sales tax proceeds – did not meet expected growth, leading to some tightening of the purse strings for local governments across the state. As the commissioners began the budgeting earlier this year, they requested departments identify cuts and efficiencies wherever possible.

The commissioners approved using more than $15 million of the county’s mental health sales tax proceeds next year to operate its mental health court, the county’s Initiative for Student Wellness in local schools and behavioral health transitional housing.

Another $7 million is being put toward the county’s effort to expand the regional stabilization and crisis center, which, at present, is only accessible through contact with law enforcement. The tax proceeds make up nearly half of the $15 million set aside for the expansion of the center, which has also received funding from settlements related to lawsuits with opiate manufacturers and distributors.

“Because of the lack of sobering beds that we have in the county today, commissioners were really intentional about setting some dollars aside with the opioid funds to bolster up our accessible beds for sobering,” Simmons said.

The tax also will be used to fund one of a few new programs next year, a co-responder pilot program championed by Commissioner Chris Jordan, that will pair a behavioral health expert with Spokane Fire EMTs responding to mental health calls.

On the often-related issue of homelessness, the commissioners have set aside $9.9 million for affordable housing projects and programs, and $7.4 million for homelessness prevention, street outreach and emergency shelter services.

CRISIS CONNECTION

While Seattle appears to have cleaned up its downtown disorder, Chinatown International District sees increase in homelessness

For more than a year after Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his Downtown Activation Plan, it seemed like nothing would work.

He threw the kitchen sink at making downtown Seattle look cleaner and feel safer for tourists, workers, and shoppers. A project to end homelessness downtown, a team to monitor and de-escalate conflicts on Third Avenue, extra police presence, lights crisscrossing the streets.

Despite that, public drug use, illicit markets and disorder in the area persisted, and by some metrics, grew.

But in the last two months, a combination of arrests and street cleanings has turned the effort around. Crime, police calls for drug activity, and the number of people occupying streets there have decreased.

But as one neighborhood’s crisis subsided, another’s surged.

Homeless people and people seeking drugs moved to the Chinatown International District, leading to complaints from residents and business owners there. Nine people were stabbed in two days in November, and while it is unclear whether the stabbings were connected to the visible disorder, community members said it makes life increasingly precarious.

People living on the streets, on the other hand, feel like they’re being herded and are asking where they can go.

Harrell acknowledged the migration and directed the city to mirror the tactics it used to clear out downtown in Chinatown International District.

That, too, is starting to work. But as people leave Little Saigon, they will likely move either farther from public view or to different neighborhoods as the city struggles to keep up with indoor spaces for them to go.

RangeMedia

Stairways to Heaven

One small change to Washington’s building code could increase density, save Spokane money and encourage more family-sized apartment construction.

Our search for an apartment was nearly six years ago now, but not much has changed. Spokane’shousing crisis has only gotten worse, and three-bedroom rentals are still uncommon. A quick search of Zillow shows that currently, just 23% of the available homes and apartments have three or more bedrooms.

There are plenty of studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms available, but for families wanting three bedrooms, finding a place to live is incredibly stressful. It’s also the result of a seemingly insignificant piece of state code that changed how buildings could be developed in Washington and de-incentivized the construction of apartments that could fit a family.