Calls for accountability, transparency as Pierce County amends homelessness plan

Yahoo

30-04-2025

Pierce County has begun the process of amending its Comprehensive Plan to End Homelessness, and it is getting an earful as it does.
On April 28, Pierce County Human Services hosted a community listening event at Sprinker Recreation Center. Roughly 75 people attended the event, the broad majority of which were representing local homeless outreach programs and service providers.
While folks from all corners of the county expressed commitment to addressing the homelessness crisis, many raised concerns about a lack of transparency and accountability within the county's response.
The Pierce County Council adopted the Comprehensive Plan to End Homelessness (CPEH) in March 2022 to serve as the official Homeless Housing Plan.
The current CPEH consists of goals designed to achieve 'functional zero' – a state where any person starting a new episode of homelessness has immediate access to shelter and permanent housing intervention.
At the beginning of the listening event, Devon Isakson, social services supervisor for Pierce County's homeless team, told attendees the county had the choice to either adopt an entirely new plan or amend the existing one — they chose the latter.
State law mandates that the county must update its CPEH by the end of this year.
During the event, attendees were asked to work together to discuss the county's goals to improve its homelessness-response system and to decide on how to prioritize its plans.
The seven goals, already decided by Human Services, were:
Create a unified homeless system which promotes equity, accountability and transparency.
Prevent homeless episodes whenever possible.
Prioritize assistance based on the greatest barriers to housing stability and greatest risk of harm, and ensure interventions are effective for all populations.
Ensure adjacent systems address needs of people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.
Meet immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness.
Seek to house everyone in a stable setting that meets their needs and expand the permanent housing system.
Those goals were a part of the CPEH passed in 2022, with the addition of a new goal: 'Strengthen the homeless service provider workforce.'
Human Services spokesperson Kari Moore told The News Tribune the new goal is now required by the state. The Washington State Department of Commerce dictates the housing and homelessness plan guidelines for local governments.
Pierce County's homeless response system is almost entirely dependent on nonprofit organizations that competitively apply for funding from the county. Many of those organizations rely on grant funding to operate on a year-to-year basis.
In the past year, service providers and officials have raised concerns about the lack of transparency in the process through which the county selects organizations to award funding, internal politics which create a perceived unfairness in that process, and delays in how that funding is distributed.
'We need to empower service providers,' Jessica Pair, co-founder of Family Promise of Pierce County, said during the listening event.
After spending nearly an hour discussing the goals and how to prioritize them, participants shared what they had discussed with county officials. Many people expressed the need for different elements to be prioritized within the county's homelessness-response system.
One group struggled to prioritize a collection of objectives, identifying all of them as equally urgent.
Among the priorities shared by several attendees was the need for accountability in how the county spends its funding and tracks its progress. Some street-outreach specialists said the county needs to be sure that contracted service providers are meeting the expectations and actually making progress towards the goals and objectives outlined by the county.
'Its pretty embarrassing when we are out in the field and homeless people are asking where the $17 million [in affordable housing investments] went,' Trisha Munson, outreach specialist with Common Street, told Human Services officials.
Others agreed the county's homelessness response needs to incorporate more feedback from individuals with experience living homeless.
'There is no one size fits all,' one participant said. 'We need to assess what they say they need. We need to talk to the people being served.'
Isakson said the April 28 listening session was part of a nearly year-long process of updating the CPEH. There will be additional events through which people can provide feedback, including on July 19 and another on Sept. 18.
People can also provide feedback online between April 24 - May 16 at www.piercecountywa.gov/homelessplan.