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Normandy Park mayor tells Kent council data show resource exhaustion and drug harms correlate with rising homelessness
Summary
Mayor Eric Zimmerman presented epidemiological analysis showing a large growth in Washington’s chronic homelessness and a surge in households with nearly zero income in King County; he argued policymakers should address multiple root causes including behavioral health, not housing alone.
Normandy Park Mayor Eric Zimmerman told the Kent City Council Committee of the Whole on Feb. 3 that statewide and King County data show multiple, overlapping causes for the surge in homelessness — with resource exhaustion and increases in risky drug use among the most significant factors.
"One of the leading things ... is resource exhaustion," Zimmerman said, describing the moment when households have exhausted monetary and social supports and become vulnerable to housing loss. He cited the state count of chronic homelessness rising from about 2,500 in 2014 to 13,000 in 2024 — "an increase of 418%" — and said point-in-time counts and survey methods have limits but still reveal large, alarming trends.
Zimmerman summarized his team’s analysis of household incomes in King County, saying an unusually large number of households now report nearly zero income. "It makes the entire 30% AMI income band look like income is collapsing," he said, noting that the number of households earning nearly zero in King County tripled to roughly 33,000 at peak. He argued that many of those households have a mathematical impossibility of making rent given current rents.
Zimmerman also presented federal and state public-health metrics tying behavioral-health trends to homelessness. He highlighted sharp increases in methamphetamine and fentanyl-related emergency visits and overdose deaths in Washington since about 2018 and said the growth of those metrics shows a magnitude and timing similar to the growth in chronic homelessness. "The trends are almost the same line," he said of drug poisoning deaths and indicators of drug use.
He repeatedly cautioned against single-issue policy responses. "If you say only that [it's] housing costs, then I think that creates risk," Zimmerman said. He urged council members to consider multi-pronged investments that include housing, behavioral health, and economic supports, and to scrutinize data and methodological assumptions before drawing policy conclusions.
Council members asked about data accuracy, per-capita adjustments, and whether state policy and legal changes could be causal. Zimmerman said methodological shifts affect counts but that per-capita measures control for population growth; he also said some policy choices may have contributed but emphasized that the data show strong associations rather than definitive causation.
The presentation included an executive-summary handout and a longer report Zimmerman said he could share with the council. The workshop closed after a brief Q&A and the council scheduled a later council meeting.
