Who Oversees the System? Questions of Transparency in Seattle’s Homelessness Strategy

A City in Urgency

Seattle is moving rapidly to expand shelter for homeless drug addicts before the FIFA World Cup comes to the city.

Faster than the public has been given time to fully understand.

Mayor Katie Wilson set a goal of adding hundreds of new units in a matter of months.

The strategy relies heavily on taxpayer dollars to expand tiny house villages.

No one questions the urgency. But speed should not replace accountability and transparency.

Lack of Transparency

Right now, Seattle is making high-impact decisions about land, funding, and service delivery through a relatively tight network of policymakers, advisors, and providers. And the public has not been given a clear, transparent picture of how those decisions are being made.

Jon Grant

One of the key architects of this strategy is Jon Grant, now the mayor’s senior policy advisor on homelessness.

Connection to LIHI

Prior to joining the administration, Grant served as chief strategy officer at the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), one of the largest operators of tiny house villages in the region.

Political Affiliations

Grant calls himself a socialist and also ran for Seattle City Council in the past but lost.

What is LIHI?

LIHI, led by longtime executive director Sharon Lee, is one of the most influential leaders in the city’s homelessness space, controlling thousands of units of affordable housing. In theory, this non-profit stands to financially profit the most from this hyper focus on tiny house villages.

Public Concern

That does not prove wrongdoing. But it raises a legitimate public concern about influence and proximity to power.

Important Questions

When a senior policymaker responsible for shaping shelter expansion strategy comes directly from a nonprofit that operates those same programs, the public deserves to know what safeguards are in place. What disclosures have been made? What decisions, if any, require recusal? How is impartiality being protected?

Conflict of Interest?

Those same questions extend to public safety. Dominique Davis now serves in Wilson’s office overseeing public safety strategy while also being the founder of We Deliver Care, an organization that provides de-escalation and safety services connected to homelessness response efforts.

Davis’s group directly receives millions of dollars in city funding. Is this a conflict of interest?

Again, this does not automatically mean anything improper is occurring. But it creates a clear optics issue that must be publicly addressed.

Optics Issue

Should individuals in positions of influence over public funding and policy be allowed to stay connected to organizations operating within that same system?

If the answer is yes, then the city must clearly explain how conflicts, or even the appearance of conflicts, are being managed. Because right now, that’s unclear.

Other Organizations Associated with City Policy

At the same time, a small group of organizations continue to appear across multiple layers of the system.

Purpose Dignity Action (PDA), through its CoLEAD diversion program, is embedded in Seattle’s response to street-level drug use. Evergreen Treatment Services REACH is supposed to help homeless people off the streets.

As stated earlier, WDC provides safety and de-escalation services. LIHI continues to expand tiny house villages as a primary shelter model.

Is the System Accountable or Insular?

In some recent projects, these same organizations appear together in overlapping roles, advising, implementing, and receiving public funding.

Regardless, each of these organizations may be doing important work.

But when the same network repeatedly appears across policy design, funding allocation, and program delivery, the public has a right to ask whether the system is open, competitive, and accountable, or whether it is becoming increasingly insular.

Financial Questions

There are also serious financial questions that remain unanswered.

The city has identified approximately $4.8 million in existing funds to help stand up new shelter capacity quickly. But the longer-term costs of operating these sites, including staffing, case management, behavioral health support, and safety services, have not been fully detailed.

In fact, current planning documents indicate that ongoing funding for expanded shelter operations may not be fully addressed until future budget cycles.

Is the System Sustainable?

That raises a critical question: Are we building a system we can sustain?

Because shelter without adequate services is not a solution. It is stabilization without a pathway forward.

Seattle’s own budget documents show that even service-enhanced shelter models often rely on phased funding, with only partial-year operating support initially identified.

If we expand quickly without fully funding services, we risk creating environments that are under-resourced, difficult to manage, and less effective at helping people exit homelessness.

King County Regional Homelessness Authority

Seattle already has a regional entity, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, that was created to bring coordination, standardization, and accountability to this work. The agency oversees contracts, manages funding processes, and is intended to provide system-wide performance tracking.

Interestingly enough, the first KCRHA CEO Marc Dones hated tiny houses so much he left LIHI out in the cold when it came to major contracts.

Speed Without Accountability

Yet at the same time, the city is pursuing pathways that allow it to move more quickly on its own, particularly around land acquisition and shelter expansion. Speed matters. But so does accountability.

If decisions are being made outside of clear, consistent oversight structures, then the public deserves to know where accountability ultimately sits.

Where Are the Treatment Services?

And there is one more question that cannot be ignored:

Why are we moving faster to build shelter than we are to expand treatment?

Investments in behavioral health and substance use disorder services are happening. But those investments are not being scaled at the same pace or urgency as shelter expansion.

If we are serious about ending homelessness, addiction, and exploitation, then treatment and recovery must be central to the strategy, not secondary.

The city cannot shelter its way out of addiction.
It cannot shelter its way out of trafficking.
It cannot shelter its way out of untreated mental illness.

We need solutions that move people beyond crisis into healing, stability, and independence.

And that starts with transparency.

More Unanswered Questions

Seattle residents deserve clear answers:

Who is making these decisions
on how funding is being allocated?
What procurement processes are being used?
What ethics disclosures and recusals are in place?
What outcomes each provider is achieving? And are these programs actually working? What is the standard for success and how do you measure that?

The Homeless Deserve Real Solutions

If the current strategy is right, then the data should support it.

If not, then we have a responsibility to admit mistakes were made and correct course.

Because the people living in this crisis should not be seen as pawns, numbers, or profit signs.

They are human beings. And they deserve more than speed. They deserve solutions that actually work.