Mayor hoarded 2026 treatment funding to pay for shelter expansion in 2027

For the past several years, the Mayor has faced a massive projected budget deficit in the following year, each time managing to close the gap and send Council a balanced budget to deliberate in fall budget season.

In 2022, the projected General Fund deficit for 2023 was $117 million. In 2023 it was $200-250M for 2024; in 2024 it was $200M for 2025; and in 2025, it was $150M- $170M for 2026. This year, the projected 2027 deficit was $175M – and, ta da! Mayor Wilson’s proposed budget closes it.

How did she do that? Well, it certainly wasn’t through massive layoffs – that was a political non-starter, especially after PROTEC17 endorsed her over Harrell. In fact, the number of citywide positions in her proposed budget grows from 13,963 in the adopted 2026 budget to 14,011 in 2027, up 48 (City of Seattle 2027 - 2028 Budget, p 638).

No, the Mayor balanced her proposed budget primarily by tapping the JumpStart Fund, 62% of which is supposed to go to affordable housing, the rest . For homelessness spending, the budget summary says it "shifts roughly half the cost of the City's homelessness response from the General Fund to the JumpStart Fund" (Summary, p. 16).

Sidenote: Using JumpStart to pay for General Fund expenditures is nothing new. What is new this year is that affordable housing providers and advocates aren’t crying bloody murder about it, presumably because it’s their political ally doing the “raiding.” But we digress.

And then there are the underspends. Wilson’s balancing act wouldn’t be possible without all the money Council appropriated last year sitting around unspent. The $37 million shelter expansion alone needs $19M in "existing or reallocated department funds” to pull off, per the Mayor's Office as reported by KOMO.

The budget itemizes only part of that $19M:

• $4.9M repurposed from closing shelter sites (HSD, p. 163)
• $2.1M moved from public health (p. 168)
• $1.7M of federal block grant money (CDBG) (p. 169)

Here’s what we’re mad about: That $2.1M is 74% of the $2.85M Council locked down by proviso last year for recovery-based services and sober housing as specified in Council Budget Action HSD-060-A (see p 80).

The Wilson administration even told the Finance Committee back in March she was planning on stealing that money, calling it “not uncommitted” – and what a surprise, it stayed that way!

And the only reason she couldn’t take all the $2.85M is because service providers had been using the $500,000 allocated for on-demand inpatient treatment, a preexisting program to get people immediately into a treatment facility that later bills the city directly. And it was saving lives!

Now, $2.1M may not seem like much to get worked up about. But considering her budget would allocate $118 million for the same old homelessness services that haven’t produced stellar results (on top of a whopping $347.7M for affordable housing), you’d think this tiny amount would be left inviolate given that addiction is a root cause of so many problems we spend gazillions of dollars to solve. Guess not.

Only CM Rivera inquired about what’s going on with the money Council unanimously restricted for treatment that hasn’t been spent and HSD admitted it got moved in the budget for shelter (Seattle Channel video, 1:15:22).

As we rant in our homelessness policy brief:

“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 in city-funded housing and shelter. Providing more on-demand, recovery services means less need for shelter and permanent supportive housing. That not only makes good fiscal sense, it’s the morally right thing to do. Council could address this major gap in the city's homelessness response in budget amendments.”

Yes, that’s a subtle hint. If we were to issue a real Call To Action, we’d say: “Contact your Councilmember and request that they restore $2.1M to the Promoting Public Health Budget Summary Level in HSD for the recovery services and housing listed in HSD-060-A.”

But that’s not really CivicTide’s style. It’s up to you.