King County officials with the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) held a meeting and tour Monday afternoon at the site of a shelter in SODO where the county plans to add more housing and services for those experiencing homelessness.
The more than $66 million project from King County is called the ‘SODO Services Hub.’ Bordering the Chinatown-International District, the hub will be an addition to the Salvation Army SODO Shelter, which is slated to cease its operation at the site in November.
The county signed a new five-year extension of its lease on the property. Without that lease, signed in May, the shelter would have shut down last month. It provides 270 semi-private spaces for people, without housing.
The county also wants to add more housing on the site, by adding 40-50 pallet shelters. There’s no designation yet where those will go, but Leo Flor, director of DCHS for the county, said those will probably be placed just north of the shelter, along 6th Avenue South.
Last week, residents from the CID held several protests raising concerns about the shelter expansion. The groups protested again Monday as the tour of the shelter was starting.
They say they want to know the plan to safeguard them and that they’ve been left out of the process.
“From what I’m hearing, a lot of community members are really upset that King County hasn’t reached out, or done engagement to the community. No one knows what’s going on and community outreach is absolutely necessary,” community organizer Tanya Woo said.
“We’re gonna keep having a conversation with the community about how the facility can contribute to a safe environment for people here,” said Flor.
County officials said the longer a person lives on the street, the greater their chances are for suffering trauma, depression and chemical dependency and so they've already contracted Pioneer Human Services to run a sobriety shelter in SODO and now they're looking to contract a group to offer behavioral health services as well.
“You bring them inside, you help them stabilize you stop worrying about where they’re going to sleep or what you’re going to eat and then people are able to turn their attention to other types of help and set goals for themselves,” said Flor.
The Lighthouse Shelter will keep working on helping people find permanent housing. Since it opened in November 2020, it’s housed 1,000 people. Just more than 100 of those people have since moved into permanent housing.
“We’re going to build shelter and supportive housing every place that we can. We’re looking for more sites in combination with our partners in the Regional Homelessness Authority, city of Seattle and other cities. We need more supportive housing everywhere in King County and we believe that when people describe the conditions of homelessness that they see outside right now, building more shelter and housing is a way to bring those folks inside to help solve the problem,” said Flor.
Right now, Flor said they’re planning to get the sobriety services at the SODO hub up and running in early 2023.