Thursday, October 1, 2026
The Thurston County Board of County Commissioners approved a five-year homeless housing plan, pledging local government and service providers to a strategy the county calls a "north star" guide for addressing homelessness through 2030.
The plan tackles objectives, strategies and tasks mandated by the Washington State Department of Commerce.
The agency, which requires local jurisdictions across the state to submit homeless housing plans every five years, uses the plans to develop a statewide strategic plan for the Washington Legislature. County staff must submit the final plan to Department of Commerce by the year's end.
The commissioners adopted the plan at a meeting on Dec. 16.
The Thurston County Public Health & Social Services Department steered the planning effort through its Office of Housing & Homeless Prevention (OHHP) program. A core team of stakeholders and the Lived Experience Housing Steering Committee (LEHSC) began developing the plan in the summer 2024.
The Thurston Regional Housing Council (RHC) approved a final draft in November before the commissioners signed off.
The adopted plan states the county's Homeless Response System (HRS) “coordinates and provides full-spectrum housing navigation and support services for our most vulnerable residents." It adds that "the scope of these services must be scaled to available funding and resources."
Thurston County oversees the local HRS through funding from the Department of Commerce, supplemented by county dollars through local sales tax (Local Home Fund) and document recording fees.
For residents facing a housing crisis, HRS offers a suite of housing navigation and support services.
Available programs include direct street and camp outreach, emergency and temporary shelter, cold and hazardous weather interventions, transitional housing programs, recovery residences, rapid re-housing programs, diversion programs, homeless prevention through rent assistance, housing subsidy and voucher programs, permanent supportive housing, access to affordable housing and pathways to homeownership.
The county is also exploring new housing types under the plan, including recreational vehicle residences, mobile homes, tiny home communities and room-sharing arrangements.
The common way residents connect to services is through Coordinated Entry (CE). The system assesses people experiencing a housing crisis for eligibility and priority, and refers them to services as they become available.
However, the county acknowledges in the plan that "need in our community outweighs available resources in the HRS, so CE must implement a service priority framework to focus available resources on our most vulnerable community members first."
As a result, wait times between assessment and connection to services are common for many people seeking help.
To determine who receives services first, Thurston County uses the Housing Equity Assessment Tool (HEAT). Local homeless service providers developed HEAT in 2022 to ensure equitable assessment and prioritization of marginalized populations. The county updates the tool at least annually.
“Weekly (by-name) case conferencing meetings are held with many providers present to coordinate care for the individuals whose HEAT assessments prioritize them as the top 100 most urgent cases to connect to services,” the plan states.
Residents can also connect to services directly through organizations providing homeless response programs, word of mouth or other systems, such as physical health care, behavioral health care and the legal system.
Given tightening budgets, the plan states it's "more important than ever for the HRS to leverage resources and establish clear priorities to address the root causes of homelessness with strategy, dignity, and humanity in the years ahead."
Various themes emerged from the planning process. Among them, the county is going to use local data to inform strategic decision-making, increase partnerships with behavioral health and law and justice stakeholders, and address outreach efforts to large local encampments to increase safety and make connections to services more accessible.
The plan also calls for expanding safe parking for people sheltering in vehicles, and exploring longer term safe parking and permitting opportunities for recreational vehicle residency.
Landlord engagement is another priority. Specifically, the county aims to boost landlord education regarding stigma reduction, supportive housing services, housing quality standards, and voucher and subsidy programs.
The plan further calls for exploring opportunities to advocate for increased tenant rights regarding housing affordability, habitability and quality standards, as well as accessibility.
Thurston County began implementing Built for Zero during the previous Local Homeless Housing Plan for 2020-25.
The initiative, implemented by more than 100 cities and counties nationwide, is described as "a movement to measurably and equitably end homelessness."
A complementary initiative, Communities for Functional Zero, targets homelessness among youths and young adults ages 12-24 and is led locally by Community Youth Services.
The county is going to conduct Point-in-Time Counts in 2026, 2028 and 2030 under the plan. The counts move to a biennial cadence beginning in January 2026 due to revised requirements set forth during the 2025 Washington State Legislative Session.
During the creation of the plan, a core team of stakeholders met regularly in 2024 and 2025, with representatives from local governments and organizations working in homeless services and behavioral health.
Meanwhile, the LEHSC provided guidance and vetting of the development process. Members of the committee received compensation of up to $60 per hour for their time attending meetings, according to the document.
Two surveys went out in February 2025 to gather input, one for community members and one for homeless service providers.
Three listening sessions with people experiencing housing instability and one listening session with homeless services staff followed in the spring. The public then submitted eight written comments during a public comment period from Sept. 19 through Oct. 21. Five people testified at a public hearing on Oct. 21.
Looking ahead, the plan labels itself as "a living document that will remain responsive to emerging issues, evidence-based and promising practices, and system data identifying opportunities for continuous improvement over its lifespan."
Under the plan, maintaining current service levels takes top priority for resource allocation. Improving system effectiveness through coordination and data tracking comes next, followed by creating multiple pathways to permanent housing and adding affordable units countywide as capacity allows.
Housing assistance inquiries can go to OHHP at 412 Lilly Road NE in Olympia. The office phone number is 360-867-2500 and the email is HousingThurston@co.thurston.wa.us.
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Honestyandrealityguy
Already a horrible homeless population, other cities will now be transporting even more homeless to TC. Common sense please. What can be done to train so called homeless to have to work?
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Report this
Boatyarddog
Honestyandrealityguy, How about You give some positive ideas instead of your BUM rap. How would YOU Train Anyone to work? How would you see this funded, why do you disparage any help to less fortunate? Why do you think this Rant you give on most any subject would inspire anyone to entertain your Mindlessness toward Vunerable populations? You live in the wrong place in this time, We are Not Going Back to The Middle ages! EVER AGAIN
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Report this
WeLikeLacey
Record keeping
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Report this
WeLikeLacey
I apologize for the double posting, but my concern is with the lack of record keeping regarding these programs. I’m not talking about keeping records of how much money is collected and then spent. Why aren’t we keeping records of who is asking for these services? Why aren’t they asking for prospective residents to identify themselves and why they need housing? That way if the same person keeps coming back again and again for housing, it shows that something in the county’s system isn’t working. Then the providers can work with prospective residents and find a solution that works for everyone.
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Report this
DemTruth
Until we address the two root causes of drug addiction and mental disease, the only thing that will change is the ever increasing waste in tax monies. Those involved use the lives of the drug addicts and mentally diseased as their NGO cash cow, which is disgusting. Just the facts.
Thursday, December 25, 2025 Report this
HappyOlympian
Most homeless completely unable to hold a job, do the required tasks to keep track of money and pay bills, or are convicted criminals that no one would knowingly employ or house. Engaging in crime, begging, or living off community handouts about all they can do to survive. Not really anything that can be done for them aside from continuing the handouts, but if we make those to generous we will encourage more folks to come here and join in. This is a problem that has no good solutions.
Thursday, December 25, 2025 Report this
Boatyarddog
WeLikeLacey, record keeping is in accordence with State Law RCWs. Your questioning those without much of the complicated issues surrounding their conditions of houselssness being evaluated which Requires HIPPA to be involved in these decisions. The complicated mess requires studies, and spending more of the Available Funds to support those Studies. This is just more waste than evaluating case by case.
Thursday, December 25, 2025 Report this
chrispc2u
Wonderful. Enabling and pandering to a population of mainly professional bums and panhandlers. Public shaming used to be a deterrent to the slackers way of life. Now it’s coddling wokeism encouraging them NOT to work instead. At least get them out of the downtown core so we don’t have to look at one dumbly staring at me through the window from the sidewalk in our local eateries or bump into the druggies on the public sidewalk. Enough is enough. Covid is over.
Thursday, December 25, 2025 Report this
TheFireplaceGuy
If municipalities are buying and renovating older hotel properties to try and shelter those less fortunate and people are ranting about homeless finding work, then why not do something similar to like old boarding houses? As long as medically capable of working, why couldn't an available member (or more if avail);from each one the "housing units" in one of these city, county or state owned properties make themselves available for a 35-40 hour/week "schedule" based upon their individual circumstances (schooling, child care, treatment, etc.) as an "available volunteer) to said municipality. This cadre of residents could make a pretty good on demand supply of available help to any arm of local government. I wouldn't think that something like this would require the addition of too many more govt employees. It just seems as if something to this effect would offset a lot of the costs to each form local government who happens to own the property. I'm sure that there are those members of the homeless communities who are experienced in areas like the trades, answering phones, organizing and cleaning, etc. who knows, this may even be used as a way to segue into a permanent paid position sometime down the road with the municipality. As previously mentioned and in theory there would be a substantial labor force ready and willing to put in a few hours in exchange for a stable living environment which would help ease the current financial burden placed on local government.
The fine tuning from a basic model such as suggested above would be endless too and could be customized for each location. Tiered benefits pkgs for avg hours worked per week ie: 35-40hr/wk (full time) benefits, 20-34hr/wk (part time) benefits, <20 hr/wk (as needed) benefits. I don't know, the options are endless. If the city can grab a couple people from work release and other jail options programs to do work the. Why couldn't that be some sort of requirement for public assisted housing? Am I wrong for thinking like this?
Thursday, December 25, 2025 Report this
Boatyarddog
Oh Booohooo! We have homeless and they are minimally taken care of. Privleged People don't care to understand because they are embarressed that homeless people make them look bad. SHAME ON YOU Shitty Attitude Whiners.
Friday, December 26, 2025 Report this
JW
More monumental waste so people like Boatyarddog can virtue signal about how compassionate they are by supporting taking people's money.
Friday, December 26, 2025 Report this
Claire
Ah, there's the reason Boatyarddog is pissed. It's Trump. Took him/her a couple posts to get there, but...
Sunday, December 28, 2025 Report this
ClownPenis88
HOW about enforcing the God damn state laws rcw . There are repeated offenses through the TCSC offices daily with violations through on-going court cases in the County and still with the BACK log of these violations going back even to 2022 still so many victims in our community and these left wing insane commissioners and liberal judges still choose not to enforce the state rcw laws . FBI has received multiple complaints of TCSC and the courts practices. Next phase will be class action lawsuits with judicial conduct review of practices.
Monday, December 29, 2025 Report this
Yeti1981
The City of Houston has cut homelessness in half over the last decade.
Monday, January 5 Report this