HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-15-2020 - County - Declaration of Youn-Jung Kim 1
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DECLARATION OF YOUN-JUNG KIM - 1
Daniel T. Satterberg, Prosecuting Attorney
CIVIL DIVISION
W400King County Courthouse
516 Third Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98104
(206) 477-1120 / FAX (206) 296-0191
BEFORE THE CITY OF RENTON
COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
In re the matter of the appeal by
Renton Hotel Investors, LLC,
Downtown Emergency Service Center,
King County,
Appellants.
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Case No. CODE20-000321
DECLARATION OF
YOUN-JUNG KIM
YOUN-JUNG KIM, hereby declares under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State
of Washington that the following is true and correct:
1. I am a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the King County Prosecutor’s Office
and make this declaration on behalf of Appellant King County.
2. Attached as Exhibit A to this declaration is a true and correct copy of the King
County Proviso Report, dated May 21, 2020.
3. Attached as Exhibit B to this declaration is a true and correct copy of King County
Superior Court Judge Ketu Shah’s Order Denying Motion for Preliminary Injunction in City of
Kent v. King County, Cause No. 20-2-058572 KNT.
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DECLARATION OF YOUN-JUNG KIM - 2
Daniel T. Satterberg, Prosecuting Attorney
CIVIL DIVISION
W400King County Courthouse
516 Third Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98104
(206) 477-1120 / FAX (206) 296-0191
SIGNED this 15th day of July, 2020 at Seattle, Washington.
YOUN-JUNG KIM, WSBA #23516
Proviso Response
May 21, 2020
Exhibit A
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Contents
I. PROVISO TEXT ............................................................................................................................................ 3
II. BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Quick, Collective Action to Slow the Spread of COVID-19 in King County ................................................ 4
Three Strategies to Slow the Spread for People without a Home ............................................................ 4
Strategy 1: Reinforcing the Existing Shelter System to Help People Avoid Becoming Ill ....................... 5
Strategy 2: Creating and Operating an Isolation & Quarantine System ............................................... 7
Strategy Three: Creating and Operating Short-Term, Emergency Capacity to Prevent Overwhelming
Hospitals during Periods of Peak Illness ................................................................................................ 7
III. REPORT REQUIREMENTS........................................................................................................................ 10
Requirement 1: rationale for choosing the Renton hotel as a county COVID-19 shelter
deintensification site .............................................................................................................................. 10
Equity and Social Justice Review ......................................................................................................... 11
Assessing the Effectiveness of the Renton Hotel ................................................................................ 11
Working With and Supporting the City of Renton .............................................................................. 12
Requirement two: rationale for extension of the license agreements term or new agreement to
occupy the Renton Red Lion motel beyond the current term .............................................................. 13
IV. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 14
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I. PROVISO TEXT
Ordinance 19103, Section 19, Facilities Management Internal Service, Proviso P4, amending the 2019-20
Biennial Budget Ordinance 18835, Section 126:1
Contingent on the executive's decision to extend the term of the April 2, 2020 License Agreement
between King County and Renton Hotel Investor, LLC ("the license agreement") as provided in section 3
of the license agreement or enter into a new agreement to occupy the Renton Red Lion motel located
on South Grady Way beyond the current license agreement term, of this appropriation, $1,200,000 shall
not be expended or encumbered until the executive transmits a report related to capital project
1138678, DES LTLF RENTON RED LION and a motion that approves the report, and a motion approving
the report is passed by the council. The motion should reference the subject matter, the proviso's
ordinance, ordinance section and proviso number in both the title and body of the motion.
The report shall include, but not be limited to the: (1) rationale for choosing the Renton Red Lion motel
located on South Grady Way as a county COVID-19 isolation and quarantine, assessment and recovery
and shelter deintensification site; and (2) rationale for any extension of the license agreement's term or
entering into a new agreement to occupy the Renton Red Lion motel located on South Grady Way to
extend beyond the current term to be used as a county COVID-19 isolation and quarantine, assessment
and recovery and shelter deintensification site.
The executive must file the report and motion required by this proviso at least thirty days before
entering into any extension of the license agreement's term or entering into a new agreement to occupy
the Renton Red Lion motel located on South Grady Way, in the form of an electronic copy with the clerk
of the council, who shall retain the original and provide an electronic copy to all councilmembers, the
council chief of staff and the lead staff for the budget and fiscal management committee and the
committee of the whole, or their successors.
1 Ordinance 19103, Section 18, Facilities Management Internal Service, Proviso P4, amending 2019-2020 Biennial
Budget Ordinance 18835, Section 126.
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II. BACKGROUND
Quick, Collective Action to Slow the Spread of COVID-19 in King County
At least 90,340 people in the United States have died from COVID-19 as of May 19th, 2020.2 The national
death toll so far has accrued in less than three months since the first reported death on February 28,
2020. That first death occurred in King County. 3 There are few precedents in recent history for such
sudden and large-scale lethality. For Example, the Vietnam War took nearly two decades to claim
58,220 American lives.4 COVID-19 is on-track to double that figure in the first half of 2020.5 Other
diseases cause large numbers of death in the United States, but recent analysis in the Journal of the
American Medical Association finds that COVID-19 is at least ten times deadlier than the seasonal flu.6
Furthermore, the World Health Organization states that there are currently no drugs licensed for the
treatment or prevention of COVID-19.7
COVID-19 poses a sudden and significant threat to livelihoods in addition to lives. At the time of this
report’s writing, the national unemployment rate exceeds 14 percent8, a rate not seen in the United
States since the 1930s.9 For comparison, unemployment peaked near 10 percent during the great
recession that started in 2008.10
Without knowing how the novel corona virus would affect local communities or the nation—and acting
on public health guidance and observation of other countries’ experiences with COVID-19—the King
County Executive proclaimed a County Emergency on March 1, 2020. The County Council affirmed the
proclamation on March 3, 2020. Since then, the collective action of King County’s residents, institutions,
businesses, and governments has slowed the spread of COVID-19 in King County and preserved local
hospital capacity for those who need it. While all success is fragile and reversible against a novel virus
for which there is no vaccine or proven treatment, King County has so far avoided higher rates of death
seen in some other communities and regions in the United States. As of May 20, 2020, 530 King County
residents’ deaths are attributed to COVID-19.11
Three Strategies to Slow the Spread for People without a Home
Early observations of the novel corona virus indicated—and subsequent observations support—that
some factors strongly correlate with an individual’s risk of contracting and dying from COVID-
2 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
3 Recent research indicates that COVID-19 may have circulated and caused at least two deaths in California earlier
than February 28, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/coronavirus-first-united-states-death.html
4 https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics
5 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html#anchor_1587397564229
6 Faust JS, del Rio C. Assessment of Deaths From COVID-19 and From Seasonal Influenza. JAMA Intern Med.
Published online May 14, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.2306 Link to JAMA website here.
7 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters
8 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
9 https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/05/is-the-unemployment-rate-now-higher-than-it-was-in.html
10 https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2012/recession/pdf/recession_bls_spotlight.pdf
11 Public Health—Seattle & King County maintains COVID-19 Data Dashboards online which can be found here.
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19.12 These factors include age, race and ethnicity13, the presence of certain underlying health
conditions, and the ability and resources to implement public health guidance about social distancing
and hygiene.14 Data further indicate that persons in whom multiple risk factors intersect are particularly
vulnerable.
Older adults living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities were the earliest group to
demonstrate particular vulnerability.15 Analysis also indicated that other persons living in congregate
settings such as shelters were likely vulnerable to rapid spread of the disease. This is not only because
congregate living conditions enable disease transmission, but also because persons living in shelters are
disproportionately persons of color, older than average, experience higher rates of underlying health
conditions, and are by definition without a safe place in which to observe social distancing and best
practices of hygiene.16
King County is focusing on three strategies to slow the spread of COVID-19 amongst the entire
community. These strategies are driven by the public health principle that all persons’ health is
interdependent and the recognition that persons experiencing homelessness and others who cannot
not safely isolate or quarantine in a home of their own would be among the most affected by COVID-19,
while having the least power to prevent or control the disease’s effects.17 The strategies are:
Strategy 1: Reinforcing the Existing Shelter System to Help People Avoid Becoming Ill
This essential strategy, recommended by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), emphasizes informing
and equipping service providers in congregate settings to enforce public health guidance on social
distancing, hygiene, and isolation within existing facilities, to help prevent illness rather than solely
mitigating it.18 19
This strategy’s early efforts included increasing space between shelter beds to at least six feet; issuing
individual hotel vouchers for exceptionally vulnerable shelter residents; and otherwise “deintensifying”
congregate shelters by opening new and temporary congregate spaces. At the outset, King County and
the City of Seattle undertook action in coordination to provide immediate reinforcement for the shelter
system. More recently, this strategy has also included moving entire congregate shelters into leased
12 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/assessing-risk-factors.html
13 https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/05/01/new-analysis-shows-pronounced-racial-inequities-
among-covid-19-cases-hospitalizations-and-deaths/
14 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/homelessness.html
15 https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/05/13/protecting-residents-in-long-term-care-facilities-
progress-and-challenges/
16 Demographics of persons experiencing homelessness in King County are available at http://allhomekc.org/data-
overview/.
17 Additional information, pictures, and videos describing COVID-19 emergency response activities is available at
https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/community-human-services/COVID/shelter-response.aspx.
18 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6917e2.htm
19 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/homeless-shelters/plan-prepare-respond.html
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hotels in Bellevue, Renton, SeaTac, and Seattle to decrease the risk of disease transmission and prevent
as many vulnerable persons as possible from becoming ill in the first place.20
Early data, outlined below, indicate that efforts to prevent wide-spread illness within the unhoused
population are beginning to work. Every individual death is a tragedy, and efforts to-date appear to have
made fragile progress in slowing the spread of COVID-19 and limiting more severe losses of life.
The data in the following graphs and tables summarize the effects of COVID-19 on King County’s overall
unhoused population. While the focus of this report is on interventions to promote the health of
unhoused persons living in congregate shelters, the overview in the graphs below include data on
persons experiencing homelessness who live unsheltered, in congregate shelters, or who live in certain
supportive housing settings.21
20 The use of one such leased hotel in Renton to deintensify a shelter and prevent illness in its residents is the focus
of this report.
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Strike Team: The Strike Team provides support to Public Health’s Communicable Disease and Epidemiology team in
case investigation of a person living homeless with a lab confirmed COVID -19 positive case. The team, which
includes medical personnel, partners with homeless service agencies and programs where a person with a
confirmed case of COVID-19 had visited or utilized services during their infectious period.
Homeless Health Field Assessment, Support and Technical (FAST) Teams: FAST teams provide onsite assessment,
support and technical assistance to homeless and supportive housing programs responding to COVID -19, including
meeting sanitation and infection control guidelines, supply needs, and procedures for handling suspected cases.
Teams may include a nurse, behavioral health specialist, environmental health specialist and/or an outreach
worker. The team is providing proactive preventative supports to providers.
Strategy 2: Creating and Operating an Isolation & Quarantine System
This strategy centers on quickly identifying persons who are or who may be ill and providing them with a
safe and supported place in which to isolate if they have a COVID-19 diagnosis or quarantine if they
suspect they have COVID-19. King County operates isolation and quarantine (I/Q) facilities in Seattle,
Issaquah, and Kent. King County enabled Harborview Medical Center to create a temporary I/Q facility in
the county-operated Harborview Hall Shelter by temporarily moving the entire shelter community from
Harborview Hall to a temporary shelter in a Seattle Housing Authority-owned records warehouse in
Seattle. An additional I/Q facility is ready in White Center, but conditions have not yet warranted that
facility’s use. As of May 20, 2020, 360 King County residents have stayed in King County I/Q facilities,
protecting the county’s collective health by providing a safe alternative so that persons are not living
and sleeping while contagious or possibly contagious in shelters or homes with other vulnerable
persons.
Strategy Three: Creating and Operating Short-Term, Emergency Capacity to Prevent
Overwhelming Hospitals during Periods of Peak Illness
This strategy creates and operates large-scale emergency capacity to test and provide care in facilities
known as assessment and recovery centers (AC/RC). Three first of their kind AC/RC facilities were
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constructed by King County in Shoreline, Bellevue (“Eastgate”), and Seattle (“SoDo’).22 The County
developed this strategy given the documented experiences of other countries such as Italy23, since
repeated within the United States in other regions like New York City24, in which a surge in COVID-19
illness overwhelms hospital capacity. To date, only the Shoreline AC/RC has seen patients, although the
Eastgate AC/RC is now fully constructed, and the SoDo AC/RC is nearly complete.
Cumulatively, the strategies described in this report have to date produced twenty-three new (by
construction or use) facilities deployed across King County as outlined in the following table and map.
Regional Distribution of 23 COVID-19 Emergency Response Facilities
City Reinforce/Deintensify Existing
Shelter System
Isolation and
Quarantine
Assessment &
Recovery
Seattle • KC Airport Expansion
Shelter
• Interbay Shelter (originally a
recovery center)
• Lower Queen Anne Hotel
• South Lake Union Hotel
• Fir Street Expansion Shelter
• Eagle Village mini-expansion
• Harbor Island (not in use)
• City of Seattle-Operated
Shelter Expansions:
o Garfield
o Miller
o Exhibition
o Fisher
o Lake Union
o Bitter Lake
• Aurora I/Q
• Harborview Hall
I/Q
SoDo AC/RC (not
currently in use)
Bellevue Bellevue Women’s Hotel Eastgate AC/RC (not
currently in use)
Shoreline Shoreline AC/RC
Issaquah Issaquah I/Q
Kent Kent I/Q
Renton Renton Hotel
SeaTac SeaTac Hotel
White Center
(unincorporated)
Top Hat I/Q (not
currently in use)
Individual hotel vouchers are also deployed in significant numbers in Redmond and Seattle as private
hotel room rentals, although not parts of formal sites.
22 This strategy also included the creation of an additional Recovery Center in the Interbay neighborhood of Seattle.
That facility, now complete, has since been converted to use as a deintensification facility.
23 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coronavirus-health-care.html
24 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html
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III. REPORT REQUIREMENTS
Requirement 1: rationale for choosing the Renton hotel as a County COVID-19 shelter
deintensification site
At this time, given the lack of a vaccine, the most effective strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 is to
keep people from contracting it in the first place. As described above, the earliest tactics to keep people
from becoming ill involved seeking larger congregate spaces in which shelter residents could establish at
least six feet of distance between beds.
One such effort was the use of the King County Airport Arrivals Hall to deintensify the St. Martin de
Porres shelter for men over age 55. Early operations of the KC Airport shelter demonstrated that rapid
spread of the virus remains possible even in congregate settings with six feet of distance between beds.
Although detailed and conclusive epidemiological study of the KC Airport shelter is not available, King
County Public Health staff and shelter provider staff concluded after observing initial operations that the
combination of vulnerable residents and a congregate setting—even though spread further apart—still
left residents at risk of rapid transmission among a particularly vulnerable population.
In addition to learning from the operations of the KC Airport shelter, King County staff and shelter
operators continued to identify shelters where the risk of rapid disease spread was elevated because of
typical client characteristics, the shelter’s physical conditions, or the provider’s access to sufficient
staffing. Building off of initial successes of individual hotel vouchers for extremely vulnerable shelter
residents25, staff from Public Health-Seattle and King County (PHSKC), the Department of Community
and Human Services (DCHS), and the Facilities Management Division (FMD) collaborated to identify high-
risk congregate shelters and available hotels into which the existing shelter operators could transition
shelter residents. Other regions have adopted similar approaches to use high-vacancy hotels to provide
safer, single room settings as alternatives to less safe congregate shelters.26 The purpose of providing
single-room settings like hotels with a bathroom in each room27 is to approximate for vulnerable shelter
residents the type of individual housing settings that have begun to prove effective (i.e. “flatten the
curve”) throughout King County for people with the resources to observe state and local Stay Home-Stay
Healthy orders in a home of their own.
There are now five hotels across the county being used to provide single-room settings to residents of
high-risk shelters. The initial round of acquiring deintensification hotel space focused on increasing the
safety and health for three high-risk shelter resident groups by identifying hotels that were willing to
enter in lease agreements with King County to house shelter residents for sufficient duration and at
acceptable cost. The three initial high-risk shelter groupings were DESC’s Main and Queen Anne
congregate shelters, Catholic Community Services’ church-based congregate shelters in Renton, Kent
and Federal Way, and The Sophia Way women’s shelter based in Bellevue.
The Sophia Way negotiated its own lease with a hotel of sufficient size in Bellevue. King County FMD
staff explored possible hotel leases for DESC and CCS, ultimately identifying willing and appropriate
hotels in SeaTac and Renton. At the time, FMD was unable to identify other cost and size-appropriate
25 Described in Background section under Strategy 1.
26 https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/homeless-shelter-coronavirus-testing-hotel-rooms-
healthcare/610000/
27 https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/Non -Congregate-Approaches-to-Sheltering-for-COVID-19-
Homeless-Response.pdf
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hotels in other locations, although there was a second option in SeaTac. After considering shelter
population size against the size of the available hotels, King County staff established leases and service
provider agreements for a 200-room hotel in Renton to increase safety and health for residents from
DESC’s Main and Queen Anne congregate shelters and for a 100-room hotel in SeaTac to increase safety
and health for residents of Catholic Community Service’s church-based congregate shelters in Renton,
Kent, and Federal Way. In a subsequent round of hotel leases to increase safety and health for residents
of high-risk congregate shelters, King County staff secured lease agreements for hotels in Seattle’s
Lower Queen Anne and South Lake Union neighborhoods for use in deintensifying the remainder of
Catholic Community Service’s St. Martin de Porres Shelter and the Salvation Army’s congregate shelters
in King County’s Administration Building and King County’s overnight shelter at 4th and Jefferson in
Seattle. The lease of the hotel in Renton is the focus of this report.
Equity and Social Justice Review
King County’s Office of Equity and Social Justice partnered with Headwater People to create an Equity
Impact Awareness Tool to guide and support King County Facilities and Maintenance Division in
reviewing and recommending potential sites for COVID-19 quarantine and recovery.
The Equity Impact Awareness Tool aims to identify communities that are, due to historical inequities and
underinvestment, extremely vulnerable to prolonged hardship with less resources to recover in an
economic crisis. These are not the only considerations in reviewing sites, however these questions
highlight structural risks in the county by race, economics, and age. The intention of this tool is to ensure
King County decision makers are aware of the potential for further negative impact to the county’s most
vulnerable low income communities and/or communities of color. It is important to note that this Equity
Impact Awareness Tool was developed to assist King County during the COVID-19 crisis, where rapid
responses are required. This tool does not replace Equity Impact assessment tools that include robust,
inclusive community engagement processes.
As shown in the Equity Impact Awareness Tool, the highest possible total for each area throughout the
county is 8 points, indicating areas with the highest risk for prolonged impact with the least amount of
resources to recover. The city of Renton scores on the lower end of compound risk score for prolonged
impact at 2 of 8, with the least amount of resources to recover score of 3 of 8.
The equity review, using the Equity Tool, supports the use of the Renton hotel as one of 23 COVID-19
emergency response facilities across King County to serve county residents experiencing homelessness,
with subject matter experts recognizing homeless individuals as among the most severely and
persistently marginalized members of the King County community.
Assessing the Effectiveness of the Renton Hotel
Within the context of an unprecedented public health emergency in which the nation and world have
seen hundreds of thousands of persons perish and millions of persons become ill, the movement of
county residents from high-risk congregate shelters to the hotel in Renton has succeeded so far in the
community-wide goal to slow the spread of COVID-19. There have been approximately 200 COVID-19
tests administered at the hotel in Renton; to date there has not been a single positive test among the
hotel residents, while there have been upward of 184 COVID cases associated with homeless service
facilities.
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In addition to success in slowing the spread of COVID-19, protecting the health of the shelter’s residents
as well as the broader King County community, DESC staff report significant transformations in shelter
residents. DESC, a licensed provider of Medicaid-funded behavioral health services, reports that the
need for behavioral health interventions are decreased by nearly half as compared to the Morrison
facility. Similarly, emergency services calls are decreased by more than half as compared to the
Morrison facility. Shelter staff report that client access to bathrooms, beds, private space, and the
dignity attendant to those basic resources, has in several cases led to physical transformations of some
clients, to the extent where DESC staff have not physically recognized their clients despite long-standing
service relationships. While these initial reports are anecdotal over what has been only weeks of initial
operations, the reports are promising indicators of success for a group of shelter clients that have for
years been difficult to serve well in the DESC Main Shelter on 3rd Avenue, across from the King County
Courthouse.
Working With and Supporting the City of Renton
Renton is an essential partner, not only in the regional fight to slow the spread of COVID-19, but also in
the regional effort to combat homelessness. As evidence of this strong partnership, a Renton City
Councilmember occupies one of the Governing Committee seats for the newly formed King County
Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA). The KCRHA’s success in combatting an, until now,
intractable regional problem will depend upon the strong partnerships and shared efforts that the
COVID-19 emergency response to allows King County and Renton to reinforce.
While the hotel in Renton has to date succeeded in meeting its goal of promoting public health by
reducing the risk to vulnerable shelter residents who do not otherwise have a home in which to follow
public health guidance, the County recognizes that the hotel has also had impacts for the City of Renton.
Among the actions taken by the County to support Renton include:
• Granting the city’s request for additional support for the Renton Ecumenical Association of
Churches (REACH), a local homelessness services provider, with DCHS providing up to $47,000 in
additional funding for REACH operations, staff, and programming.
• Engaging in ongoing work sessions with DESC and leaders from Renton’s City Manager’s office,
Fire and Police services, and Human Services office to collaboratively address operational
matters. Among the operational improvement topics that this work group has taken on are a
goal to reduce unnecessary calls to Renton’s emergency response system, to supplement onsite
security if additional security is necessary, to refine protocols for emergency response to the
facility to ensure safety for responders, shelter guests, and staff, and to routinize
communications protocols between shelter staff, local emergency responders, and other local
stakeholders.
• Negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding to memorialize agreements about the current
and future use of the Renton hotel.
In addition, King County authorized $500,000 in mitigation funds for cities to recover documented costs
related to the County's isolation and quarantine sites, assessment and recovery sites and shelter
deintensification sites.
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Requirement two: rationale for extension of the license agreements term or new
agreement to occupy the Renton Red Lion motel beyond the current term
As King County, DESC, and the City of Renton continue to improve operations at the hotel, identify and
mitigate impacts to the community, and strengthen collaboration and partnership around both the
COVID-19 emergency response and the longer-term homelessness emergency response, the underlying
context and conditions of the COVID-19 public health Emergency remain unchanged. Federal, State,
and County declarations and proclamations of emergency remain in effect. Numbers of persons who
are ill and who die from COVID-19 continue to increase, although the slower pace at which local
numbers are growing is due to the collective “stay home, stay healthy” efforts of King County residents,
institutions, businesses, and governments to flatten the curve.
The underlying medical facts are also unchanged: 1) persons experiencing homelessness, who
disproportionately exhibit multiple risk factors for COVID-19 illness, remain particularly vulnerable to
becoming ill with the virus; 2) there is not yet a vaccine to prevent transmission; and, 3) widespread
natural immunity nor a cure for the disease have been identified. Some other regions of the world and
the nation where communities have relaxed public health restrictions have experienced resurgences of
disease spread, although it is not within the scope or competence of this analysis to attempt to
characterize or evaluate whether, when, or under what conditions a community should alter public
health guidance or conditions. The risk factors of the congregate shelters that previously sheltered the
hotel in Renton’s residents also remain unchanged.
While the set of conditions of disease lethality, lack of effective vaccination or cure, and high risk of
transmission in congregate settings remains intact, the promising signs of supporting shelter residents
and staff are growing. DESC staff report that shelter residents who have struggled for years with even
basic hygiene at the former DESC Main shelter on Seattle’s Third Avenue across the King County
Courthouse are able to regularly bathe and sleep. Two shelter residents have gained employment since
stabilizing at the Hotel. DESC reports that several residents have begun jogging, a positive indicator of
wellness and self-support.
Although use of emergency services in Renton has increased since before the use of the hotel in Renton
as a shelter, the overall use of emergency services to serve the very same shelter population has
reduced significantly since the move. DCHS, FMD, and PHSKC remain committed to collaborating with
DESC and the City of Renton to drive down impacts to Renton and to mitigating those impacts as
possible where they do occur.
In summary, the rationale for continuing use of the hotel in Renton is as follows:
• The unprecedented public health emergency remains in effect, posing a continued and
immediate threat to the health and life of persons who are particularly vulnerable to the virus;
• Congregate shelters remain higher risk settings than those settings with individual rooms that
afford persons the ability to implement public health guidance of “stay home, slow the
spread”;28
• The County does not currently have access to an equally safe or better alternative location in
which to serve the current shelter residents during this public health emergency period;
28 https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19.aspx
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• The hotel is to date succeeding beyond initial expectations at not only slowing the spread of
COVID-19 but at preventing its detectable introduction into the resident population at the hotel;
• King County will continue to actively support and partner with DESC and the City of Renton to
identify, reduce, and mitigate effects of the shelter upon the surrounding community while
preserving the health of shelter residents who will otherwise be at increased risk of illness or
death; and
• The entire region’s individual, social, and public health—and the region’s ability to restore
economic and social activity—depends upon the region’s collective capacity to keep slowing
the spread of COVID-19, to prevent wherever possible the loss of human life and health, and to
strengthen partnerships and shared purpose until the underlying medical realities of the disease
change such that the threat to individual and collective health and our shared economy is
substantially reduced.
IV. CONCLUSION
COVID-19 continues to present a public health emergency whose sudden appearance, swift impact,
and severe lethality are without recent precedent. Unless fatality trends change quickly, COVID-19
will not only soon double the more than 58,000 American deaths from the Vietnam War, but will
soon approach the more than 128,000 American deaths from the Korean War. In the severity of its
economic impact, the most recent comparison for current levels of unemployment is the Great
Depression nearly a century ago. COVID-19’s impacts to health, life, and enterprise have accrued in
less than three months since the first identified American death in late February 2020. In the face of
COVID-19’s swift toll, King County’s residents, institutions, businesses and governments have taken
bold action to “flatten the curve,” but success to date is fragile and reversible.
King County has undertaken an intensive effort to identify and mitigate the risks to county residents
living in congregate settings, including shelter. This effort reflects an equity-based analysis, finding
that few communities in King County exhibit a more pronounced intersection of racial-ethnic
disproportionality, lack of access to basic resources, inability to implement public health guidance,
stigmatization of their existence, and vulnerability to COVID-19 than the county residents who are
unhoused. Because the County’s unhoused residents are among the most affected by policy
decisions about whether, where, and how to support them in slowing the spread of COVID-19, DCHS
has focused on identifying solutions for persons experiencing homelessness—particularly those
living in congregate shelters—during the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is also true that each of the County’s 23 COVID-19 emergency response facilities impacts the
communities in which they are situated. In Renton, DCHS and FMD are committed to partnering
with DESC, the City of Renton, and the surrounding community to identify impacts and to support
solutions to prevent, reduce, and mitigate those impacts. These ongoing efforts will supplement and
build upon initial steps that DCHS has already undertaken to increase fiscal support for Renton’s
REACH organization and initial efforts to reduce effects upon Renton’s emergency response system.
Renton is an essential partner in the region’s effective response to COVID-19 and in the region’s
response to the longer-standing challenge of reducing homelessness.
While the emergency conditions and equity analysis supporting the initial decision to locate one of
the County’s twenty-three COVID-19 emergency response facilities at the hotel in Renton remain
intact, King County is eager to identify longer-term solutions that better meet the needs of all
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County residents. Working in partnership with DESC, the City of Renton, the local community and
the broader region, PHSKC, DCHS, and FMD will continue to seek and assess opportunities to
provide safe housing in sustainable, long-term locations that provide for residents’ safety during and
after the current COVID-19 emergency. King County also recognizes that while the COVID-19
emergency proclamation provides a temporary regime for siting emergency facilities, any long-term
solution that will be durable beyond a period of emergency must respect and work within all local
regulatory, zoning, and permitting systems.
Additionally, King County commits to continuing consistent engagement with the City of Renton to
finalize and execute a Memorandum of Understanding and to collaborate on long-term planning to
address future potential use of the hotel in Renton, as well as the broader issue of homelessness
services in Renton. These activities will include:
• Regular meetings regarding emergent business/emergency response concerns to ensure
continued improvement of hotel operations and reductions of community impacts,
• Ongoing consideration of appropriate funding for REACH based on monitoring data to
understand changes in Renton’s unhoused population, and
• Ongoing consideration and refinement of equity-based decision making to ensure King
County and Renton are identifying and centering the impacts, concerns, and solutions for
the persons most impacted by future action, inaction, and changes in operations for the
deintensification hotel in Renton.
Exhibit B