King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn introduced legislation Thursday proposing the mapping of all unsanctioned homeless encampments across King County and a comprehensive plan to clear them, his office announced.
In the legislation, Dunn requested that a team including the King County Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, and the Department of Community and Human Services work with local jurisdictions like the city of Seattle to create a publicly available dashboard and map that shows where homeless encampments are in King County, along with the approximate number of people living there.
The dashboard would include site mitigation and removal efforts. Those efforts would comprise strategies to connect residents with available shelter and services, a timeline for encampment removal, a method to prevent the encampments from coming back, and recommendations of policies that the county could implement for how and when future encampments should be removed.
“Allowing homeless encampments in our communities is not only detrimental to those who live, work, or recreate nearby — it’s also not what is best for those who are left living on the streets instead of being connected with services that can help get their lives back on track,” said Dunn. “Especially at a time when King County is ramping up investments in those services, it’s reasonable to expect them to be utilized and only fair to those communities that are impacted by public camping.”
Dunn’s legislation calls on the county to file a homeless encampment map and dashboard no later than Oct. 1.
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