SEATTLE — Mayor Mike McGinn proposed a new six-year plan Friday to help fight homelessness in Seattle.
McGinn’s plan would provide more money for comprehensive social services and permanent low-income housing. The main goal is to move the homeless permanently off the streets.
According to officials, some of the funds will be taken away from nonprofits that provide basic shelter.
After a count of how many people were found without shelter during one night this year, 1,898 was the total.
“How do we get to a place where we can really see changes in the lives of the people we’re serving,” McGinn said at the news conference.
The problem with the six year plan is that McGinn announced a 10-year homeless plan before.
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Essex Porter asked William Price, from the shelter provider known as Share/Wheel, if the six-year plan would work better than the four-year plan.
“What you’ve done is you’ve said to us is that, ‘I apologize, but we didn’t come up with a 10-year plan, so we’re going to add six more years to it, so we can try to figure this plan out,’” said William Price, who stays at Share/Wheel.
The people at Share/Wheel are worried that they will have to compete for the city’s funds with organizations that can afford expensive social services.
The six-year plan determines how agencies will be able to get people into permanent housing.
Precise figures of how much funds will be taken out shelters were not determined since this is a newly laid out plan.