In a Wednesday Budget Committee meeting, staff briefed the City Council on the Mayor’s budget proposal for the first time this year. While members of the public and the budget chair continue to pick through the 744-page document, they seem to agree that at least one line-item needs to change: a measure to effectively cut pay for shelter workers, case managers, and other human service providers.
Current city law requires wages for those workers to increase at the rate of inflation, which was 8.7% in 2022. The Mayor wants to cap those wage increases at 4% for human service providers who contract with the City, which would require a change in the law. The proposal also seems insulting when compared to the size of the hiring bonuses the City dangled in front of cops.
“If we're serious about ending the homelessness crisis, we need to invest in this critical workforce, not give them what functionally amounts to a pay cut that's included in [the Mayor’s] proposal,” said Jesse Friedmann, the public policy director at YouthCare, during the committee's public comment period.
Many leaders of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, a group of advocates that run a campaign to raise wages for human service workers, flocked to the meeting to warn the council that this cap would negatively impact retention, making it more difficult to provide services to the people who rely on them.
The speakers said the sector already struggles to keep workers, largely because they are “behind the eight...
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