Mayor Durkan to build bridge housing with land sale proceeds

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced today she's planning to spend $5.5 million on temporary housing to get homeless people out of tents and off the streets. But she says it will be tougher to get them into permanent housing.

Mayor Durkan wants to build more of what she calls "bridge" housing such as tiny houses like those under construction by students at the Seattle Vocational Institute.

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They are meant to be safe places to stay while homeless families get the help they need to go on to permanent housing.

We asked the mayor if housing meant to be temporary won't instead become permanent.

"We need to build capacity at every part of the pipe, we need more long-term affordable housing and we needed it two years ago. And so, it's going to take us time to catch up to that. But I think if you see what's coming on line you will see that we are making as much progress as we can, as quickly as we can. As we have that capacity, we will have more throughput. We don't have what we want right now and we've got to be honest about that," said Durkan

No word on where all the tiny houses will go, but some of them are likely to replace tents at the sanctioned campgrounds the city already has.

The city got $11 million in all for selling a lot in the South Lake Union neighborhood.

Two million dollars will go to help families with rent vouchers and another $2 million will be used to help build permanent affordable housing.

Cox Media Group