You can’t make this stuff up, but it is far too easy to miss it.
The problem of affordable housing and homelessness has been growing year after year. In 2020 a long term effort to provide a revenue stream to support affordable housing culminated in the passage of HB1590 by the Washington State legislature and signature by the governor. HB1590 authorizes Washington counties (or cities, if the county does not) to impose an additional local 1/10 of 1% sales tax for the following use:
A minimum of 60 percent of revenues collected must be used for constructing affordable housing and facilities providing housing-related services, constructing mental and behavioral health-related facilities, or funding the operations and maintenance costs of newly constructed affordable housing, facilities providing housing-related services, or evaluation and treatment centers.
In November 2020 the Spokane City Council voted, under this enabling state legislation, to impose an 1/10 of 1% sales tax in Spokane. In 2023 that tax is projected to raise seven million dollars for the specific services detailed above. (It is expected to cost the the average City of Spokane citizen between about $25 per year. At passage several council members noted and lamented that this is a regressive tax, but it should be noted that, in our State, options for raising money with a non-regressive tax are severely limited.)
No one thought this would “solve” the ongoing problem of housing affordability, but it looked as though the seven million would fund 100 additional units of affordable housing per year.
The Housing Sales Tax first appeared in the Mayor’s 2022 budget (adopted December 13, 2021). In that budget revenues from the Housing Sales Tax were pegged at $6.8M. No expenses were projected. So far, so good.
But now the devil is in the details.
This coming Monday, December 12, the City of Spokane City Council is expected to vote on Mayor Woodward’s proposed 2023 budget. In it, on page 18, the No. 1 point under “Homeless Services” is (the italics are mine):
1. Support the Continued Operations of the Cannon Flex Shelter, TRAC & other Homelessness Resources ($7.0 million, Affordable Housing)
In order to retain beds in an environment where demand is increasing yet funding is decreasing, the Mayor is proposing the use of affordable housing sales tax dollars. Homelessness programming would continue to be supplemented with federal and state funding with a planned tapering down of local funding over the next three to five years.
At the best this is puzzling language, but it certainly reads to suggest that Mayor Woodward plans to sink most of the $7.0 million additional sales tax NOT into the affordable housing for which it was authorized by HB1590. Instead, she plans to use it mostly to support her warehouse Trent Shelter (“TRAC”). It doesn’t take a lawyer to to suspect that Woodward’s budget proposal for use of the Housing Sales Tax dollars violates the intent of the enabling state legislation. Only at a great stretch can the beds and pallets in the Trent warehouse of the homeless (TRAC) be seen to be or to support affordable housing. Equally maddening is that from one side of her mouth Woodward laments that “funding is decreasing” (funding from what source is decreasing?) while from the other side she tries to score political points with her doomed veto of a negligible one percent rise in the City’s property tax levy—a tax that will help correct the lamented decrease.
The rest of Woodward’s 2023 Budget offers no help. On page 311 claims to provide “Housing Sales Tax Budget Detail”, but after projecting $106K for administrative costs, the remaining $6894K is listed as unspecified “Services”.
Mayor Woodward’s attitude toward the issue of homelessness, the issue she campaigned to fix, is coming into focus. Early on she proved her lack of empathy with the comment that the homeless need to be “less comfortable”. Her goal is to displace the homeless sheltering downtown. Thanks to the Martin v. Boise decision Woodward and her administration aren’t allowed to simply demonize and persecute the downtown homeless (make them “less comfortable”) with repetitive sweeps and confiscations of their worldly belongings. Martin v. Boise first required the administration to provide shelter beds. The Trent warehouse shelter (TRAC) was the convenient answer. Not only was the warehouse located far enough away from downtown, but it could be leased from Larry Stone, the man who funded the youtube video Curing Spokane, a thinly veiled contribution to Woodward’s campaign for mayor. Despite the rhetoric by the administration and the sincere efforts of those who attempt to make it work, for Woodward, the Trent warehouse is about claiming sufficient numbers of shelter beds. Meanwhile, she works to close out beds downtown, quietly removing funding for the Hope House women’s shelter (downtown on 3rd Avenue), stimulating Catholic Charities to relocate, and ousting smaller operations like God's Love International from 930 W Second Ave during a Covid outbreak (on the pretext of code violations). All are stepwise efforts at downtown clearance. Force all the homeless into a one-size-fits-all cavernous warehouse (TRAC, aka “the Trent Shelter) on the industrial outskirts of the city—out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Helping the homeless obtain permanent shelter was never the primary concern.
Camp Hope is the newsworthy, visible reminder that the homelessness issue is far from resolved by simply warehousing people. As a visible reminder of the inadequacy of the Woodward plan, Camp Hope must be closed before it has too much success at getting people housed, hence the harassment by Sheriff Knezovich’s helicopter overflights and the recent provocative invasion of Camp Hope by tens of law enforcement officers to “provide information”.
This entry in the Mayor’s 2023 Proposed Budget, the apparent diversion of money to Woodward’s warehouse from its legally authorized purpose of funding affordable housing, fits the pattern of her intent.
Contact your City of Spokane City Council members either as a group (citycouncil2@spokanecity.org) or individually over the weekend and let them know what you think of Woodward’s budget diversion. Exactly what “Services” does Woodward plan to purchase with the $6894K of our sales tax receipts designated for affordable housing?
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry