Seattle has already legalized a lot of housing and is opening new Link segments. It is still not building enough homes, not running enough treatment and shelter, and not giving buses the street. This is a production-and-capacity plan, not another values statement.

The scale, first. King County's 2026 point-in-time estimate is 18,365 people people homeless, 11,829 people of them unsheltered — up 21 percent from 2024. Shelter inventory fell to 5,269 beds beds. A King County household needs about $269,800 of income to buy the median home against a $157,100 median family income. Seattle permitted under 2,000 units (fewer than) units in 2025. Sound Transit's updated ST3 plan still has a 34.5 billion USD hole over 20 years. HUD — Seattle comprehensive housing market analysis, 2025 KCRHA — King County point-in-time count PubliCola — King County homelessness count

Socrata / data.seattle.gov

Source: City of Seattle operating budget (data.seattle.gov).

The city will spend about 7.31 billion USD on operations in 2026. That is enough money to choose. It is not enough money to do everything while protecting JumpStart, refusing a shelter tax, and waiting until 2027 for a housing task force. For why the current government is not running this sequence, see Why Seattle is not building the homes, buses, and treatment beds it already voted for.

1. Housing: pass the last upzone, then stop taxing starts

December 2025 gave Seattle HB 1110 middle housing and the One Seattle Plan's ~120,000-home / 158,000-job path to 2044. Seattle OPCD — One Seattle Plan That is legal capacity. Starts are a different variable. Filings are up in 2026; issuances are flat; completions are down about 25 percent. Roughly 8,000 units units sit near a building permit.

City, this year

• Pass Centers and Corridors without shrinking the maps. Five- and six-story apartments belong on streets that already have frequent buses.
• Enact a two-year Mandatory Housing Affordability discount for vested projects (on the order of the Foster 80 percent cut) with a foundation-inspection deadline, then rewrite the fee so it is collected at occupancy. MHA raised hundreds of millions over its life and almost nothing once starts died. PubliCola — Foster MHA holiday (September 2026)
• Put code-compliant middle housing and midrise on a published 90-day clock. Finish the state's "clear and objective" design-standard requirement; do not replace design review with a second discretionary board.
• Treat Seattle Social Housing as preservation plus a future new-build program. A few hundred acquired units a year are not a replacement for a 6,000–10,000-unit production year.

Olympia

• Extend the 2-10 condo warranty past 12-unit / four-story buildings so Seattle builds starter ownership, not only rentals.
• Cap stacked exactions (energy, trees, utilities, inclusionary fees) on a per-unit basis in urban growth areas.
• Preempt leftover local vetoes on middle housing: extra design review, parking minimums, owner-occupancy traps.

Washington, D.C.

• Raise the LIHTC 9 percent cap and the 4 percent bond volume cap, with an automatic basis boost in high-cost metros. Almost every income-restricted building in Seattle is a tax-credit deal.
• Write NEPA categorical exclusions for urban infill. One review when HUD and FTA both touch a site.
• Add Housing Choice Vouchers that track actual Seattle-area rents — and pair them with supply, or they are IOUs.

What not to do: freeze the remaining pipeline with rent control and no production deal. Count social-housing purchases as new homes. Wait for the Housing Production Task Force's September 2027 final report before moving MHA.

2. Transit: make the bus the network this term

King County Metro carried about 94.5 million rides in 2025. Weekday boardings were still rising into 2026. The agency's own evaluation asked for about 23,950 hours service hours just to hit on-time targets. The Seattle Transit Measure, which already buys on the order of 180,000 trips a year, expires in 2,027 (April). King County Metro 2025 System Evaluation

Link's 2 Line and the Federal Way extension are real. They are not a 2026–2030 mobility plan for Capitol Hill, Ballard, or Rainier Valley. Sound Transit should build the funded spine. The city should stop pretending a shortened Ballard stub is the program.

City and Metro

• Renew and enlarge STM before April 2027.
• Finish Denny Way, then repeat bus lanes, turn restrictions, and signal priority on the next 15 delay corridors. Route 8's PM-peak failure rate was the proof of concept.
• Turn on camera enforcement of bus lanes citywide. A painted lane without tickets is a parking lane.
• Buy 10-minute all-day frequency on RapidRide and the top 20 trunks. In 2025 Metro's crowding-hour need was zero; the constraint is delay.
• Pair service with actual safety at Third Avenue and Link stations. A reliable bus that people will not wait for is not a network.

Federal

• Score FTA Capital Investment Grants for curb-line bus-priority and BRT the way rail is scored. Madison's G Line already used a documented categorical exclusion; that should be the default, not a two-year worksheet.

3. Streets: treat illness, offer a bed, then keep the sidewalk

Split the population or you will buy the wrong thing.

• Newly homeless / economic. Most HMIS inflow. Prevention, shallow subsidies, and cheaper market rents from new supply. Do not put them in the chronic-care system.
• Chronic plus addiction or serious mental illness. About 33% of the PIT report a substance-use disorder and 27% report serious mental illness, with overlap. Permanent supportive housing plus on-site treatment. Housing First RCTs show large gains in housing stability. They do not show reliable abstinence or symptom remission. JECH — Housing First RCT meta-analysis (housing stability)
• Grave disability. Involuntary care under RCW 71.05 and Ricky's Law. This is a hospital-and-court problem. Licensed beds that cannot take patients because there is no ITA defender do not count.
• Predatory layer. Open-air dealing, standing stolen-goods markets, repeat retail theft. Prosecution and stay-away orders. This is a tiny share of homeless people and a large share of why a block fails.

Operating sequence

1. Build the exit: about 3,000 beds additional high-service beds in 24 months, not 960 beds. Mix tiny-house villages, motels, and a few large indoor sites. Every site has SUD, psychiatric, and housing-navigation staff on the clock.
2. Offer, then clear. Keep the Unified Care Team. Early outreach, storage, a real bed. After that, 72-hour removal is the default on parks, sidewalks, ramps, and trails. Grants Pass allows this. Doing it without a bed is theater; refusing to do it with a bed is a policy choice. CRS — Grants Pass v. Johnson (camping ordinances)
3. Two-door shelter: low-barrier tonight, recovery-oriented for people who want rules. One ideology in every building wastes both groups.
4. Treatment on demand: 24/7 withdrawal, same-week dual-diagnosis, assisted outpatient treatment after discharge. Measure time-to-bed.
5. Courts that match the beds. Fund King County ITA defense and prosecutors so UW, Navos, and community hospitals can run at licensed capacity.
6. Hold the block. No standing markets on Third Avenue. No open-air dealing at stations.

Olympia and D.C.

• Fund forensic and civil beds as separate inventories so Trueblood contempt fines stop eating the behavioral-health budget. The 350-bed Western State forensic hospital is not a 2026 tool.
• Repeal or waive the Medicaid IMD exclusion. Use 1115 waivers in the meantime. This is the largest federal reason Washington cannot staff civil wards.
• Do not rebuild King County's Continuum of Care around HUD's year-to-year Housing First / Treatment First notice. Keep PSH and recovery housing eligible. A district court vacated the 2026 NOFO; the First Circuit stayed that ruling in September 2026. Statute-level flexibility beats administration-by-NOFO.

FRED

Source: FRED — federal surplus or deficit as % of GDP.

Federal deficits do not prevent an IMD waiver. They do explain why Seattle should not wait for a national housing-and-hospital windfall before siting beds.

180-day scoreboard

Year-1/2 targets: 6,000+ units started; 3,000 cumulative high-service beds; unsheltered PIT down, not "slower growth"; trunk buses late less than 20 percent of trips; licensed civil and secure-detox beds at least 80 percent occupied because the courts exist; zero standing open-air markets.

Keep or kill

Bottom line

• Zoning was necessary. In 2026 it is not sufficient. Unstick the entitled pipeline and pass the remaining apartment maps.
• The bus is the network this term. Rail is a spine with a 34.5 billion USD hole. Sound Transit — ST3 affordability gap
• Shelter without treatment recycles people. Treatment without a bed is a speech. A camping rule without either is a sweep.
• Most of the hospital work is Olympia's and Congress's. Most of the starts, lanes, and siting are Seattle's, this year.

PIT and shelter-inventory figures: KCRHA 2026. Housing prices: HUD Seattle CHMA, June 2025. Permit collapse: city series as reported by The Urbanist. Seattle budget: data.seattle.gov 8u2j-imqx. ST3 gap: Sound Transit Board. This is general information, not legal, financial, or campaign advice.