Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson to announce homeless crisis plan

Happening today, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson plans to announce a new way to take on the city's homeless crisis. And Sean Chittin is live at City Hall with more on the other cities that the mayor may borrow this strategy from. Sean, good morning. Bill, that's right. What we know so far from the mayor is that she says this is going to be a highly targeted plan that will significantly reduce the homeless population in Seattle and do so in a way that reallocates existing resources. Now, this all comes after the mayor took office this year at the beginning of 2026 and revealed a pretty ambitious plan to try and take on the issue of homelessness by having 1,000 new shelter beds added by the end of this year. The proposal hopes to fast-track shelter development and expand sites, but then that changed to 960 beds total by the end of next year. Mayor Wilson's new city budget proposal has more than $500 million to achieve that goal and provide services to combat homelessness. Today's announcement will come around 11 years since Seattle made an emergency declaration for its homeless crisis. Since then, the number of unhoused people have grown year over year. Now, looking at the two cities the mayor has mentioned as places to take successful ideas from, We know that back in March, Houston announced a Superhub Transition Center. That's a partnership between the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It opened in June and hopes to hold up to 320 people at a time and transition 1,000 people each year into permanent housing and employment. Now, Denver reports it's moved more than 2,500 people indoors in 2024. That's while providing access to support services. And Denver says that they accomplished this by removing hundreds of blocks of encampments around the city and then now focuses on trying to connect people still on the streets before they can join or start a new encampment. And we will wait to see what the mayor specifically announces at that event scheduled for 10 a.m. here at City Hall. Live in Seattle, Sean Chittin, Fox 13 News.