Citizen Portal
Sign In

Spokane Valley council gives consensus to support regional ‘treatment‑first’ MOU on homelessness

Spokane Valley City Council · April 7, 2026

Loading...

AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

After a presentation by Chad Wendell, the council gave consensus to advance a nonbinding regional memorandum of understanding aligning municipalities with proposed HUD shifts toward a treatment‑first approach; the MOU is aspirational and does not create funding or legal obligations.

Chad Wendell presented a proposed regional memorandum of understanding (MOU) on April 7 that would signal Spokane Valley’s support for a shift toward a treatment‑first response to chronic homelessness and related substance‑use and mental‑health challenges.

Wendell said the MOU was developed voluntarily with a small group including the county sheriff, the prosecuting attorney and municipal leaders to signal regional cooperation with emerging U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidance. He described the MOU as aspirational and not legally or financially binding: “It’s just a pure agreement… there is no legal implications with it. There’s no funding tied to it,” Wendell said.

The presentation summarized HUD discussions about a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) that could shift scoring and funding allocations—reducing the guaranteed share for permanent housing and increasing emphasis on transitional housing, supportive services and treatment. Wendell and staff characterized the MOU as an alignment document to prepare regional partners for those potential changes and to encourage coordination on behavioral‑health responses.

Councilmembers asked for more specifics and said they expected the Safe and Healthy Task Force to return recommendations with operational detail. City staff and Wendell said further, more concrete recommendations will come from the task force work and additional outreach; council gave consensus to move the MOU forward to the next step of regional coordination.

Next steps: staff will circulate comparative materials and follow up with council; the Safe and Healthy Task Force is expected to deliver more detailed recommendations in May.