SEATTLE (Feb 20) – This afternoon, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to approve Mayor Jenny A. Durkan’s “Building a Bridge to Housing for All” proposal, which invests in affordable housing as well as bridge housing and shelter. Last month, Mayor Durkan announced her proposal to sell an underutilized City property to create urgently needed bridge housing for those in our community experiencing homelessness and to support households on the verge of homelessness, while also reinvesting in essential City services.
“Our homelessness and affordability crisis is the moral challenge of our time. Our City must act urgently to create new bridge housing and shelter, which is desperately needed with our shelters near full capacity. Thousands of our neighbors are currently living in transitional housing and shelters, and thousands more are living outside on our streets. While there’s no quick solution, we can and must focus our efforts to rapidly deploy cost effective shelters to move people out of doorways and tents and into safer spaces. We also have to provide more short term options that are safe, humane and that actually move people to long term permanent housing,” said Mayor Jenny Durkan. “Leveraging one City property, this bill focuses on essential services while investing resources to combat our affordability crisis. Thank you to the City Council and their leadership for taking urgent action on this critical issue. This is the beginning of meaningful change for our neighbors living in tents and RVs.”