Near 'the breaking point': Seattle affordable housing providers face operating troubles as mental health crisis grows

Affordable housing providers and small-scale landlords in Seattle say a rise in mental health crises and substance abuse is impacting their ability to provide safe housing. They’re calling on the city council to create a network of behavioral health programs that specifically support affordable housing residents.

They’ve also urged the city to work with King County to address an eviction court backlog, which they say is impacting their ability to get paid. The housing providers say they need to be able to remove problem tenants in a way that doesn't make them homeless.

Andrew Oommen is the chief operating officer of Community Roots Housing, which houses approximately 2,200 people. The program has built several hundred units of low-income housing in the past year, adding to its total of 46 properties in Seattle.

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But not all of those units can be occupied and there’s currently a 6% vacancy rate, Oommen told city council members during a Housing and Human Services Committee meeting on Wednesday. That’s because people going through a mental health crisis or a substance abuse cycle sometimes damage property, leaving units uninhabitable until expensive repairs are made. In other cases, units may go unused in an effort to avoid placing new residents close to neighbors who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

“The consequence is clear: We are actively losing affordable housing units in the city,“ he said.

On the housing spectrum, "affordable housing" is that which doesn’t require tenants to expend more than 30% of their monthly income. "Permanent supportive housing," on the other hand, offers tenants both financial assistance and support services, such as those required to lift a person out of chronic homelessness. That includes mental health services.

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The needs of people served by those housing systems have changed significantly in recent years, according to Derrick Belgarde, executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, a permanent supportive housing provider.

“The general behavioral level of your tenancy has all shifted a level,” he told KUOW. “The regular affordable housing levels are now dealing with what permanent supportive housing used to deal with, and permanent supportive housing now is dealing with stuff that should be clinical.”

The Chief Seattle Club has social workers and safety protocols, but the program can only do so much to address the surging mental health and substance abuse crisis, Belgarde said.

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“We believe that home is the foundation from which people thrive. And we know that we urgently need collaborative solutions that braid together public health, affordable housing, and homeless solutions,” said Michael Seiwerath, the executive director of SouthEast Effective Development (SEED).

Seiwerath told council members that SEED, which provides affordable housing in some of Seattle's historically Black and diverse neighborhoods, faces operational challenges, mostly cost increases related to repairs, labor, and the recent surge in insurance rates.

This week, he said, he and his colleagues have had grapple with a hard choice that’s emblematic of the infrastructural problems they’re facing:

“Do we lay off the security or keep a vacant maintenance tech position vacant? Those are the kind of week-by-week choices we're making right now, and that's how close we are to the breaking point,” he said.

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Several of the housing providers at Wednesday's committee meeting pointed to slow or non-existent 911 responses when they seek help for residents in crisis.

The Seattle Police Department's Crisis Response Team deploys an officer and mental health professional in response to such calls. But currently, the team only operates from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. A department spokesperson said staffing constraints on the Crisis Response Team and department-wide are a factor.

Also hanging over affordable housing providers is a projected $240 million budget deficit the city must climb out of.

Council members at Wednesday's Housing and Human Services Committee meeting acknowledged the problems housing providers face, including the pandemic-era eviction moratorium that led to affordable housing programs losing millions in unpaid rent. Now the city and King County must pay that money back.

Affordable housing providers presented several long-term solutions to the council, including selling off property — something that's common, according to Oommen with Community Roots Housing. But another option, they said, would be for the city to better fund behavioral health and housing infrastructure.

Correction notice, Friday, 7/12/24 at 10:36 a.m.: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of residents living in Community Roots Housing properties, and the number of properties owned by the program.