Homeless Agency Launches emergency command center with federal help
One of the last pieces of an ambitious plan to reduce visible homelessness downtown is now up and running in Seattle’s Emergency Operations Center.
In the same high-tech space on the edge of Pioneer Square and the Chinatown International District that the city uses to respond to natural disasters and other catastrophes, a new command center has recently taken shape to coordinate all the steps required to move people from the streets and into housing.
Known as the Housing Command Center, it’s part of the Partnership for Zero effort that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority announced earlier this year. The partnership, using public money and more than $10 million in private funding, is focused on reducing the number of people living in tents and doorways in Seattle’s downtown core — which includes the neighborhoods of Belltown, Pioneer Square, and the CID — where that population is largest.
To get the center off the ground, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development deployed three staff members there last month, a rare move by the federal government to support a region’s local homelessness efforts.
The command center operation is similar to the homelessness system already in place — outreach workers and social service staff, working through nonprofits paid by public contracts, connect people to shelter and housing, along with other necessities, such as new identification cards or signing up for Medicaid.
This center, though, will rely more on public sector workers and will centralize the operations required to move one person from the streets to housing. During a news conference at the Emergency Operations Center Wednesday, many officials compared the efforts to work the federal government would do after natural disasters, helping people quickly find and move into new housing.
The Housing Command Center is adopting this “emergency approach” by holding daily, in-person meetings with key members to speed up the identification of housing; find parts of the homelessness and housing systems that move slowly; and look for ways to cut red tape, such as reducing housing paperwork requirements and working directly with private landlords.
“We’re making real-time decisions about deployment and resources together that influence, in turn, how the authority does things,” said Marc Dones, CEO of the authority.
Now that the center is up and running, HUD has reduced its staff with the goal of leaving the project entirely once it’s fully operational. HUD has not contributed financially to the project, only staff hours and expertise, according to Margaret Salazar, HUD regional administrator for Region 10, which includes Washington state.
“We know that there are a lot of resources on the street, but the challenge is aligning those resources and working with urgency and efficiency,” Salazar said. Salazar said that she hopes that this emergency response model can be applied in other parts of the Pacific Northwest facing a growing crisis of unsheltered homelessness.
The latest Point-In-Time count, held this year, estimated that more than 7,600 people live unsheltered in King County, more than half of the county’s 13,368 homeless population.
As part of Partnership for Zero, the command center is working in coordination with a new team employed by the Regional Homelessness Authority, known as “systems advocates,” which began work in July.
So far, the systems advocates team has connected with 665 people in need of housing, according to Dones. As of Wednesday, no one has been moved into housing under this new program, but Dones said that the Command Center is prepared to start moving people into housing shortly. Dones said that efforts will first focus on moving people at five large encampments across downtown into housing.
The system advocates will add the people they connect with to a “By-Name List,” a tool being adopted in many places to better identify the specific needs of each person living outside.