Olympia has presented its updated One Community Strategic Plan to guide the city's response to housing and homelessness for the next five years.
At the city council meeting on Tuesday, September 26, Assistant City Manager Rich Hoey said the updated strategic plan outlines Olympia's priorities and role and provides a clear roadmap for resource allocation and implementation.
Hoey said the city has been dealing with a house and homelessness crisis since 2018. In the summer, the city council declared a state of emergency in response to the growing problem.
The city council launched the One Community Plan initiative in March 2019 to address the homelessness crisis, led by a diverse community workgroup.
Through their outreach, which included 20 community conversations and online surveys, over 1,200 residents shared input. The workgroup's recommendations, presented in February 2020, aimed to balance compassion and accountability in the community's response.
"In February of 2020, the council accepted recommendations from the community workgroup. That has been our guiding work ever since regarding housing and homeless response," Hoey said.
Three years into the One Community Plan, Hoey cited the city's accomplishments regarding how they responded to the housing crisis.
Hoey said the city has been working on additional housing, affordable housing, and permanent housing within the community with a wide range of activities to support the people, such as renter protections, critical home repair programs, and different services. It also includes partnerships with state departments that infused a lot of resources to help house people who were camped along the public right-of-way.
Hoey noted that the One Community Strategic Plan does not replace the One Community Plan. He added that the updated plan demonstrates the city’s continued commitment to balancing compassion and accountability in addressing the root causes of homelessness.
The One Community Strategic Plan will:
Homeless Response Director Darian Lightfoot recognized that their role as first responders has the important job of being the first point of contact, which guides how they engage with others and lays the foundation for the next steps. When serving in this role, Lightfoot said the top priority is to connect individuals with essential services by approaching them with "compassion, open-mindedness, and innovative thinking."
Lightfoot enumerated the four goals and strategies of the plan:
Lightfoot admitted that connecting homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders is challenging.
In the same meeting, Lightfoot announced that Olympia and the Catholic Community Services had successfully secured a $ 1 million grant from the Department of Justice's Arrest and Jail Alternatives Program. That would help address the issue and expand the program within the city for over three years.
Lightfoot said the city is projected to develop 756 low-income housing units between 2024 and 2027 to address affordable housing in the full continuum.
The housing director added that they developed 221 low-income and supportive housing units between 2021 and 2023.
In the last two city council meetings, community members bombarded the councilmembers with their complaints about increasing encampments in their neighborhoods. They expressed concern about their safety.
With this, Councilmember Dani Madrone inquired about the strategies and measures in place to prevent the formation of encampments.
Lightfoot said the strategy is to engage people with services as early as possible before an encampment becomes entrenched.
Lightfoot also offered that having a variety of housing choices available, and ensuring everyone is on the coordinated entry list also helps with the prevention.
The housing director added that they now use a fit-based process, where they have the list of people with the highest vulnerability score, the available options for housing, and where these people fit best.
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