The Spokesman-Review
Mayor proposes using $1 million of opioid settlement funds on treatment
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown wants to spend $1 million in opioid settlement funds to enhance the fire department’s social work program and to create intensive services for people addicted to opiates and frequently commit crimes.
Spokane and Spokane County will receive tens of millions of dollars over the next two decades as part of settlements between the state of Washington and opioid distributors and the pharmacies that sold the addictive pills.
The city will get around $13.3 millionover the next 17 years, while the county will receive roughly $24 million. Spokane Valley will get nearly $300,000, Liberty Lake $168,000 and Cheney $535,000.
Local jurisdictions can agree to pool their funds through a regional Opioid Abatement Council or use the money for approved purposes that help mitigate the opioid addiction crisis.
Brown said in a Monday interview that she believes there are still opportunities to partner with the county and other regional entities on bigger programs, but that she wants to begin using the settlement money more quickly and felt a unilateral city-level program could better accomplish that.
If approved by the Spokane City Council, $500,000 would be dedicated to enhancing the fire department’s Community Assistance Response, or CARES program.
Spokane works to leverage millions to clean up blighted areas of the city, including 2nd and Division
Spokane’s new mayoral administration will try its hand at cleaning up blighted areas of the city, including the area of Second Avenue and Division Street, using millions of dollars of state money and possibly millions more in federal funds.
Some of that entails literal cleanup, with the state agreeing to reimburse at least $440,000 through 2025 for city cleanup crews at “gateways” along state transportation corridors within city limits, including I-90, the North Spokane Corridor, state routes 290 and 291, and the Division Street corridor, which is classified as part of U.S. Highway 395. The state is working to potentially allocate another $400,000 for these efforts.
The city also has $2.5 million leftover from last year’s allocation from the state Department of Commerce’s Right of Way program, meant to get homeless people living on state property, especially along highways, into shelter and housing.
The city expects to submit a plan in the next week or so to request an additional $4 million and hopes to use a significant portion of that $6.5 million to assist with removing the homeless population from around the Division and Browne street corridor.
Funds from that program have been used on services for people living in the Camp Hope homeless encampment, once the largest in the state. It closed last summer. In other communities, the program was also primarily used for similarly large, singular encampments.
No such single encampment exists on Division or Browne streets, but the state has agreed to designate the entire corridor from Sprague to I-90 as a “priority encampment zone,” allowing the program funding to be used to get people off the streets and to clean up the area.
City Council calls for better, more timely data as overdose crisis deepens
After a reported lack of interest from the governor’s office in declaring a state of emergency, the Spokane City Council still says that more needs to be done to address the opioid crisis that is primarily driven by fentanyl.
Overdose calls to police or fire within city limits have risen 30% in just the last year, with nearly 250 calls from Jan. 1 to Feb. 7 of 2024, an average of more than six overdose calls per day.
On Monday, the City Council voted unanimously to approve a resolution calling for better data and a better plan to decrease overdose deaths and help those struggling with opioid addiction.
The City Council had been slated Monday to request that Gov. Jay Inslee declare a state of emergency, theoretically making it easier to use resources to address overdoses and addiction throughout the state.
Nine states have instituted similar emergency orders in the wake of the country’s deadly opioid epidemic: Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.
These states have been able to leverage resources to make Naloxone, a lifesaving opioid reversal medication, more widely available, Spokane City Councilman Paul Dillon said in an interview.
But governor’s office spokesperson Mike Faulk told The Spokesman-Review last week that an emergency order would not do much to help the state’s opioid epidemic.
RangeMedia
One step closer to addressing Spokane’s opioid crisis
And, an ordinance on emergency ordinances, a walking tour of Hillyard, and another Planning Commission appointment at SpoVal.
Some things that stick out to us this week:
Spokane City Council could pass a resolution to address the fentanyl and opiate crisis in Spokane. Spoiler alert — a large part of that plan is better data collection.
At the Finance and Administration committee meeting, the Spokane City Council will discuss exactly what constitutes an emergency, clarifying their emergency ordinance process.
The Spokane Plan Commission is getting their steps in by doing a walking tour of Hillyard to review the parts of the neighborhood up for improvement.
The Center Square
With millions devoted to the project, Federal Way homeless hotel remains vacant
Several years after King County purchased a former Red Lion Hotel in Federal Way, with plans for wrap-around services for the homeless, the building remains empty, potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
It has been more than three years since King County launched its Health Through Housing Initiative,which was expected to address the crisis. The program received nearly $9 million from the state to fund the rehabilitation, according to the Kent Reporter.
Last week, members of the Federal Way community packed a council meeting in Federal Way for an update on the project, and other projects granted funds by the Washington State Department of Commerce to address the homelessness crisis.
he March 19 meeting brought updates on two hotels in Federal Way that are being transformed into resources to reduce homelessness.
They focused on the property at 1400 S. 320th St. that will be managed by the Urban League through the King County Health Through Housing Initiative.
Councilmember Hoang Tran said as a former refugee person, “I am grateful for this service that you provide to the community … I can reassure you that we are no threat to the community or to you,” Tran said.
Local social worker Aaron Walsh also shared support for the project, which county officials assure will have security for concerned neighbors.
“It breaks my heart when I encounter people who are ready to make changes, but due to the lack of stable housing, it is sometimes almost impossible to access services,” he said.
Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell spoke with The Center Square about the projects.
“The nice thing is it’s (the project on 320th) surrounded by an iron gate and it will be staffed by personnel and one of the things we did as a council is to require licensing and a requirement that any organization that operates one of these has to comply with licensing," Ferrell said. “No criminal law violations for tenants, and not allowing things to deteriorate is key, so if we get into a situation where that is happening, we can pull the license.
“These people are going to be signing leases and when they shut the door, they will have privacy and it will be their apartment and just like anyone else they will have privacy with nobody barging in, but we are not going to allow criminal behavior going on.”