I wonder what plan ‘C’ will be for Seattle’s homeless crisis
Apr 4, 2017, 2:20 PM | Updated: 2:28 pm
A consultant for the City of Seattle said solving the homeless crisis wouldn’t take anywhere near the amount of money the mayor proposed raising through a property tax over five years.
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On Monday, Mayor Ed Murray backed out of his plan to raise $275 million over five years. In its place, he and King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a proposed countywide sales tax increase of .01 percent. They will try to get that tax on a 2018 ballot.
What the mayor and county executive are saying now is that it isn’t just about housing people, it’s about getting them treatment, presumably to keep them off the streets.
The proposed tax would raise about $68 million per year. According to KIRO 7, it would cost the average person an additional $30 per year — depending on how much a person spends.
The proposed tax is well over the additional $9 million the city’s homeless consultant told leaders they would need to mostly solve Seattle’s crisis.
Before any countywide sales tax is approved, it will have to be voted on — if it even makes it onto the ballot. People can certainly say no.
There’s no denying that a lot of this has to do with mental illness, which is not easy to cure. If the idea is that because the federal government is pulling back on aid we now have to pay for everything ourselves, that’s a pretty tall order.
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I am surprised the plans to address the homeless crisis keep changing at this point. I mean, I thought the property tax was basically a done deal in terms of a proposal and, suddenly, that’s gone overnight and now there’s a sales tax.
I wonder what plan C will be.
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