King County seeks to buy hotels to house homeless

SEATTLE (AP) — King County plans to buy as many as a dozen hotels to permanently house hundreds of homeless people and provide them with services. The initiative is called Health Through Housing. It uses revenue from a .1% sales tax increase to develop a network of apartment-like shelters, with the goal of getting people out of tents, off of sidewalks, and into safe, clean homes. The county hopes to eventually house 45%, or 2,000 people, out of its chronically homeless population of 4,500. The goal for 2021 is to create housing units for 1,500 people countywide, in former hotels and nursing homes.