Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, challenger Katie Wilson spar over homelessness policy

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is trying to win a second term in office, something a sitting mayor hasn’t done in nearly two decades. Running to his left is populist progressive activist Katie Wilson, who has made the city’s response to homelessness a central issue of this race.

“It often feels today as though we've actually given up on meaningfully addressing homelessness,” Wilson said during a KUOW mayoral debate Oct. 20. “We're moving people around from place to place without meaningful offers of shelter and support.”

Her message has resonated on the campaign trail so far. Wilson, the founder and chair of the advocacy group Transit Riders Union, led Harrell by nearly 10 percentage points in the August primary election.

Her plan to address homelessness includes housing people in some of the nearly 3,000 vacant affordable housing units in the city. She says she’d fund this with housing levy dollars voters approved in 2023.

The plan requires buy-in from stakeholders like affordable housing developers. It would also mean that those housing levy funds wouldn’t be going to building new affordable units at a time when private sector construction is at a standstill. Wilson plans to add an additional 1,000 units through tiny homes for recently homeless people.

Mayor Harrell, a lawyer who served on the City Council before becoming mayor, contends that moving funds from the housing levy is “not good policy.” He’s also skeptical of moving homeless people with complex needs into affordable units that weren’t designed with them in mind.

“We don't want to kick teachers out, baristas out, social workers out of affordable housing. We want to build for them and give homeless people the support services that they need,” Harrell said.

During the 2021 election, the mayor promised to open 2,000 new units for homeless housing that included shelter beds and supportive housing. Since he took office, the city has funded 13 more shelter beds in Seattle, according to a Seattle Times count.

The mayor asserted that Seattle needs other cities in King County to work more on addressing homelessness, too.

Both candidates agreed on one thing, however: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is not functioning the way it should. The agency was created in 2019 to coordinate and develop homelessness policy across the region, but its work has been overshadowed by a string of controversies, leadership problems, and criticisms over how it spends money. In the past year, the city has taken back some outreach and homelessness prevention contracts from KCRHA to administer on its own.

KCRHA is set up so that Seattle and King County each put in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to fund its mission, while other cities in the region put in no money. The mayor believes there is a future for the regional model, but only if other jurisdictions contribute.

“It is not Auburn's fault. It's not Kent's fault. It's not Tukwila’s fault. They never agreed to put resources in,” Harrell said. “My argument to them now that I am negotiating with [them] is that if you don't have money, you have land, you have resources other than money.”

Wilson agreed that KCRHA’s future is uncertain, but stressed that a regional approach is important.

Listen to Harrell and Wilson debate public safety, answer lightning-round questions, and more here or wherever you get your podcasts.