Mayor's proposed budget increases spending on homelessness, shifts expenditures from General Fund to JumpStart

Wilson's 2027 budget adds money for shelter expansion and shifts $126.8 million in homelessness under HSD’s administration and $46.6 million in ongoing costs from the General Fund to JumpStart.

Editor’s Note: Normally we don’t include Councilmember quotes in policy briefs but during budget, they’re not passing any other legislation and the only action open to the public happens during Select Budget Committee meetings. So we show that.

Also, we’ve noticed some unexplainable discrepancies within the budget and we have some policy thoughts of our own about what’s going on (which we’ll keep to a minimum) that we’ll identify as “NOTE”

The proposed budget includes about $184 million for homelessness response in the Human Services Department, including an $18.3 million increase for Wilson's Shelter Accelerator Initiative and shifts tens of millions of dollars in ongoing expenditures from the General Fund to the JumpStart Fund, i.e. Payroll Expense Tax revenue. (HSD, p. 159; p. 162; p. 170)

Mayor Wilson's proposed 2027 budget includes about $184 million for homelessness response in the Human Services Department (HSD). That includes an $18.3 million increase for the mayor's Shelter Accelerator Initiative, according to a briefing at Monday's Select Budget Committee meeting. (HSD, p. 162; p. 170; video)

NOTE: HSD's budget overview cites $185.5 million for homelessness, up $13.1 million; the budget table shows $183.5 million, up $11.1 million. The book does not explain the $2 million difference. This brief uses the table. (HSD, p. 159; p. 170)

Homelessness is the largest part of HSD's budget, at 41%. Staff said the accelerator increase brings it to $37 million in 2027. They said that supports about 960 new shelter beds added since 2026 and eight new shelters planned for next year, according to video of the meeting on Seattle Channel. (video; HSD, p. 159)

NOTE: Staff described about 960 new shelter beds added since 2026; the proposed budget describes 960 new or accelerated units in 2027 (HSD, p. 159).]

"The goal isn't simply to open more shelter beds alone," HSD Deputy Director Chris Klaeysen told the committee. He said the new sites would include case management, housing navigation and, at some, behavioral health care, medical care, substance use treatment and legal services. (video)

Contracts return from regional authority

The biggest structural change is the return of city-funded homelessness contracts from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) to HSD in 2027. The proposed budget brings in-house $126.8 million of KCRHA’s budget, and the City's contract transition plan counts $112.8 million of city-funded provider contracts, 117 contracts with 40 providers with whom HSD will contract directly. The budget adds 29 positions to handle the returning contracts and the shelter expansion, and it makes permanent 23 emergency positions added this year. (HSD, p. 168; p. 162; KCRHA contract transition plan)

NOTE: The proposed budget moves $126.8 million out of KCRHA's budget line, while the City's contract transition plan counts $112.8 million in city-funded provider contracts. Neither document explains the roughly $14 million difference. (HSD, p. 168; KCRHA contract transition plan)

Mayor Wilson’s proposed budget does not yet include money for KCRHA's own administrative costs. The city and county have hired Turning Point Strategic Advisors to recommend a smaller budget for the authority. Under the plan, KCRHA would focus on leading the region's federal Continuum of Care program, coordinating severe weather response and running its ombuds office. HSD officials said any city share would come out of the existing homelessness budget rather than a new request to council. (video)

The budget also funds about $16 million in homelessness prevention in 2027 and $16.6 million in 2028. That total includes $6.5 million in each of those two years from Housing Levy investment earnings, which the budget treats as one-time money. A $4.8 million one-time item for the same purpose expired from the 2026 base (Office of Housing, p. 229), so the net new money is smaller than the headline. Staff estimated the new prevention money would help about 1,800 more renters stay housed through 2030. (HSD, p. 159; p. 162; video)

NOTE: The proposed budget gives 2027 homelessness prevention and rental assistance as $16.3 million in the overview (p. 159) and $16.1 million in the item text (p. 162). This brief rounds to about $16 million.

To help balance the budget, $46.6 million in ongoing homelessness expenditures would move from the General Fund to the JumpStart Fund. City Budget Office Director Aly Pennucci said the swap is meant to be ongoing, with plans to begin scaling it back in 2029 and 2030 if general fund resources allow. (HSD, p. 162; video)

NOTE: The proposed budget shows JumpStart funding in HSD's homelessness budget rising from $0.5 million to $65.5 million (p. 170), and Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reported about $65 million moved. HSD's stated swap from the General Fund is $46.6 million. The gap of about $18 million is close to the $18.3 million shelter increase, which would mean new shelter operations are also JumpStart-funded, but the book does not say so.

Councilmember Maritza Rivera said she agrees the swap is appropriate given the deficit, and noted that the affordable housing providers and advocates who railed against such swaps in the past have not objected to this one. CivicTide's read is that the difference is the sponsor, not the merits. (video)

Pushback on Unified Care Team

Several council members questioned changes to the Unified Care Team (UCT), the city's interdepartmental team that responds to encampments. Its central coordination has moved from the mayor's office into HSD. (video)

Councilmember Rob Saka called the new structure "a radical experimentation for this work," while acknowledging that how UCT is structured is an executive decision. (video)

Councilmember Rivera asked about a $352,000 reduction tied to UCT. Staff said it eliminates two vacant administrative positions and would not affect field crews. The proposed budget lists the UCT cut as two vacant positions totaling $338,870 (HSD, p. 164), and a separate $352,000 transfer inside HSD's homelessness budget that corrects a baseline error (p. 166). Pennucci called the cut part of a citywide "rightsizing" strategy. Rivera also asked for the mayor's position on clearing encampments. Pennucci said staff would not speak for the mayor and that the budget "continues to support the work of the Unified Care Team at the current levels of service." (video)

Councilmember Bob Kettle said encampments had grown in number and size over the past six months. He urged the city to consider a sobering center. (video)

Chair targets gap in shelter

Select Budget Committee Chair Strauss gave the most pointed critique of the day. He said the city has enough low-acuity shelter, such as tiny house villages, but only one to three shelters for people with medium-to-high needs. (video)

"If we spent it on tiny home villages, low acuity shelter, we could get probably 2 to 3 times as much shelter as we could for complex or high acuity shelter," Strauss said. "And I think that it is critically important that we spend this money in this way." (video)

Strauss said clients placed in city-funded high-acuity shelter sometimes could not get into city-funded permanent supportive housing because of KCRHA's coordinated entry system. He noted that Seattle provides about three-quarters of KCRHA's budget. "I don't have patience for that," he said. (video)

Councilmember Dionne Foster, who sits on the KCRHA Governing Board, pushed back. She said coordinated entry is federally required to receive HUD funding and existed before KCRHA. Foster said vacancy in permanent supportive housing is already low and that the bigger problem is a shrinking pipeline of new units. She said about 4,500 households countywide stay housed through federal Continuum of Care funding, which has been tied up in litigation with the Trump administration. (video)

NOTE: The CoC funding is a very small part of KCRHA’s funding, under $60 million. CoC used to live within King County as it’s a federally funded country line item but was lumped into KCRHA when the agency was created. There has long been disgruntlement about coordinated entry itself and the fact that the process is applied across the board in our homelessness response.

Treatment funding

The adopted 2026 budget restricted $2.85 million in HSD's public health budget to substance use disorder treatment and recovery services, and said it could be spent for no other purpose (Council Budget Action HSD-060-A-1, p 80). A City slide from a March 30 presentation to the Finance Committee lists $2.1 million of that proviso among 2026 funding identified for shelter. At the Select Budget Committee meeting, Councilmember Rivera asked about treatment in the 2027 budget, and HSD acknowledged that $2.1 million of the $2.85 million is being used for shelter in 2027 (Seattle Channel video, 1:15:22). The proposed budget moves $2.1 million out of the public health budget level and into homelessness (HSD, p. 168), and that level falls from $35.1 million to $32.1 million (p. 171). It is not clear where the other $750,000 went. (Disclosure: Sara Nelson, who sponsored the proviso as Council President, leads SeaFor, which publishes CivicTide.) (2026 adopted HSD budget, pp. 179-180)

NOTE: Addiction is a major driver of chronic homelessness. Until the city puts recovery at the center of its agenda, it’ll continue spending more and more money each year on homelessness, the problem will keep getting worse, and people will keep dying on our streets and within city-funded affordable housing and shelter. More on-demand, recovery-based treatment will result in reduced the need for shelter and permanent supportive housing – not only does that make good fiscal sense, it’s the morally right thing to do. Council can address this major gap in the city's homelessness response in budget amendments.

Siting and delays

Saka said District 1 already hosts a disproportionate share of facilities and asked the city to find more sites north of the Ship Canal. Klaeysen said HSD is looking citywide but that sites are hard to find. (video)

Strauss pressed on Glass Yard Commons, a 92-space site for people living in RVs. He said its opening had been pushed back several times. Staff said it is now scheduled to open in November. (video)

The committee will continue budget deliberations in the coming weeks. The Office of Housing was scheduled to present the next day. (video)

What the mayor proposes for housing and human services

Seattle's proposed 2027 budget would keep spending on housing and human services roughly steady or higher in several major areas, but pay for more of it with restricted funds instead of the city's flexible General Fund. Citywide, the Education and Human Services service area would rise to about $637.4 million from $597.9 million in the 2026 adopted budget, even as its General Fund share would fall to about $224 million from $293.1 million. The budget overview says the city is leaning more heavily on JumpStart and other dedicated revenues because General Fund dollars remain constrained. (Expenditure Summary Charts and Tables, p. 2; 2027-2028 Proposed Budget Summary, pp. 2, 4)

That shift is most visible in HSD. HSD's proposed 2027 budget is about $445.4 million, up 5.8% from the 2026 adopted budget of $421.1 million. But General Fund support would drop by about $68.6 million, to $217.5 million. At the same time, JumpStart support would jump to about $67.5 million from $2.4 million, and Human Services Fund support would rise to about $129.7 million from $102.8 million. HSD says part of that change is deliberate: $46.6 million in JumpStart would replace General Fund support for homelessness services. (HSD, p. 158; p. 159; p. 162; p. 171)

The homelessness budget also would be restructured as the city takes back contract administration from KCRHA. HSD says $126.8 million would move out of the KCRHA budget program and into city-run homelessness programs in 2027, when city-funded provider contracts return to HSD. The department would also make 29 budgeted positions ongoing for shelter expansion and contract oversight. In the program tables, the KCRHA line drops to zero, a new Homelessness Programs line appears at about $173.3 million, and Contract Oversight and Administration grows to about $5.1 million from $2 million. (HSD, p. 159; p. 162; p. 168; p. 176)

NOTE: The proposed budget says the 29 positions are emergency positions added in 2026 (7 in April, 23 in July), now made ongoing and funded from HSD's existing budget (p. 162). Those two groups add up to 30, and the book does not describe them as new hires.

More importantly, we’re just taking over the contracts without examining whether or not they’re working. KCRHA is a separate jurisdiction and even though Seattle provides most of the money, City Council didn’t approve its budget and the city in general has a poor record on evaluating the performance of its service provider investments. Now would be a great opportunity for a refresh instead of just bringing KCRHAs failures in-house intact. We think all this money on homelessness without a focus on addiction treatment is a misuse of public funds.

The proposal describes homelessness funding at two different levels, and that changes the topline. HSD's Addressing Homelessness budget summary level is about $183.5 million in 2027, up about $11.1 million from 2026. Elsewhere, the department highlights a larger $185.5 million homelessness figure and a $13.1 million increase. The proposed budget does not explain the $2 million difference. HSD also says it would add $6.5 million in 2027 and 2028 for homelessness prevention, including rental assistance, backed by interest earnings from the 2023 Housing Levy. (HSD, p. 159; p. 162; p. 170)

The Office of Housing is flatter overall, but it relies on similar budget mechanics. Its proposed 2027 budget is about $347.7 million, down $4.7 million from 2026, with 69 budgeted full-time-equivalent positions in both years. The department says that reduction mostly reflects technical changes such as removing one-time items and lower expected weatherization grant funding, while preserving a $140.2 million JumpStart allocation. The budget also says a revised approach to JumpStart-backed housing capital investments freed up $65 million in one-time JumpStart fund balance by abandoning 2026 appropriations, and that the Executive is holding back $37.4 million within OH's 2027 JumpStart budget, otherwise intended for affordable housing production, as a reserve against possible federal funding cuts. (Office of Housing, p. 226; p. 227; p. 228; p. 234)

Budget documents

• HSD, 2027-2028 Proposed Budget
• Office of Housing, 2027-2028 Proposed Budget
• 2027-2028 Proposed Budget Summary
• Expenditure Summary Charts and Tables
• 2026 Adopted Budget, HSD
• KCRHA contract transition plan, Clerk File 323872
• Select Budget Committee video archive
• City slide, "2026 Funding Identified to date for Shelter," p. 3, from a March 30, 2026 presentation to the Finance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee