Men’s winter shelter to get more beds, increased hours
The King County Men’s Winter Response Shelter, which provides emergency overnight shelter during Seattle’s coldest months, is expanding this year in more ways than one.
On Jan. 14, Mayor Ed Murray announced that the city of Seattle would provide funds to increase the number of beds from 50 to 100, and the King County Council followed suit by approving the funds to increase shelter hours from 9.5 to 11 hours each night.
The shelter is housed in the King County Administration Building, 500 Fourth Ave., and provides seasonal shelter for men 18 and older. Staffed by the Salvation Army, it typically offers services for six months of the year, opening doors in October and closing them in April.
The city currently funds 1,700 shelter beds, each serving an average of six people per year. The additional city funding was announced alongside Murray’s decision to allow three tent encampments in Seattle at a time and is part of his Emergency Task Force on Unsheltered Homelessness.
“With current shelters at capacity, we must fund additional beds immediately,” Murray said in a statement.
The county council bill, meanwhile, was sponsored by Councilmember Joe McDermott and provides $53,000 to increase the shelter’s hours in addition to the $117,000 pledged by the city to increase capacity. The shelter will open at 7 p.m. instead of 8:30 p.m. and continue to close at 6 a.m. each morning until April 15.
The county council unanimously passed the bill on Jan. 26 as an emergency ordinance on the coattails of the annual One Night Count, which revealed a 21 percent increase over last year of homeless people in King County; 3,772 people were found without shelter between 2 and 5 a.m. on Jan. 23.
In the county meeting, McDermott called the legislation a “much-needed change to prevent people from having to stand outside in a cold, dark and wet Pacific Northwest winter, waiting for the shelter to open.”
Providing supplemental funding for the men’s shelter is nothing new — for the past several years, the county council has approved legislation to increase capacity or operating hours, or both.