Spokane mayor declares emergency to speed shelter beds, eviction help as SNAP cuts loom

Mayor Lisa Brown declared a local emergency Tuesday to speed the city’s response to rising homelessness and potential SNAP benefit cuts tied to the federal government shutdown.

Brown said the declaration lets the city bypass longer contracting timelines to bring about 50 additional shelter beds online, speed eviction-prevention contracts and fund mobile medication-assisted-treatment teams that outreach workers and police can use to connect people directly to assessment and care. “So today, I am declaring an emergency so we can quickly get some additional pieces in place,” she said.

The move comes as the city opens a day-use navigation center and expands coordinated street-outreach teams in all four quadrants. Brown said the navigation center is “serving between 80 and a 100 people move through there daily,” and called the city’s nonprofit partners — including Compassion Addiction Treatment and Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington — critical to the effort.

Councilmember Lambton, who spoke after the mayor, warned of immediate food insecurity risks if federal SNAP benefits lapse. “Starting as soon as Saturday, as many as a 108,000 or about 1 in 5 of our community members in Spokane County will lose their supplemental food benefits from a federal program called SNAP,” Lambton said, and told listeners she would introduce a city resolution urging federal legislators to end the shutdown.

Lambton also noted legal and state-level responses to the pause in federal benefits, saying the Washington attorney general had filed a lawsuit and — according to Lambton — state assistance of $2,200,000 per week had been pledged to local food banks. The city framed those state and legal actions as helpful but said local resources and nonprofit capacity would be needed immediately.

Brown described the emergency as a way to speed use of primarily state funds and to get contracting and provider reimbursements in place quickly; she warned that some HUD-funded contracts cannot be reimbursed while the federal government is closed, creating payment uncertainty for existing providers. She said the city will meet early next week with law-enforcement leadership (Chief Paul) to detail the enforcement side of encampment-resolution and the ‘high-utilizer’ program that tracks people cycling through hospitals, jails and the streets.

On enforcement, Brown said the city expects to designate special enforcement areas downtown in coordination with its encampment resolution program — an approach she described as combining outreach, transitional-housing referrals and accountability for criminal behavior affecting people who are unhoused.

Asked where the additional 50 beds would be located, Brown said Dawn Kinder of Housing and Human Services is coordinating with existing providers and that several faith communities have offered small-scale scattered-site facilities, which the city prefers to leasing a large warehouse.

Council President Betsy Wilkerson thanked the mayor and urged citizens to help where they can, saying “government cannot solve this alone.” Brown encouraged donations at City Hall and via the Give Real Change fund, which the city said it would revive and rebrand to support homelessness work.

The mayor said outreach teams operate seven days a week while 311 currently handles reports on a daily model to about 6 p.m.; the administration said it hopes a federal earmark would allow 24/7 smart-response teams but that the earmark stalled when the federal budget moved to a continuing resolution.

Next steps: Brown said the city will finalize contracting details, sit down with law enforcement next week to refine enforcement policies, and proceed with the accelerated procurement and provider payments the emergency declaration is intended to enable.