The 2018 legislative session made significant progress in addressing the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in the state. The bills covered the spectrum from funding local programs supporting homelessness and affordable housing, to closing a loophole in the Housing and Essential Needs program that maintains assistance to recipients at a substantial risk of becoming homeless, to supporting local governments through diversion center pilots and mental health responders. For individuals falling through this net, the Legislature made additional supports to state run mental health programs.

Mental health field responders

One of our priorities going into the session was to encourage the state to help cities who are stepping up to address behavioral health challenges in their communities. A centerpiece of that work was passed by the Legislature in the creation of the mental health field responder pilot program. The idea is to help city police departments hire and utilize mental health professionals in partnership with their police, so that we can get people connected with services and care rather than defaulting into the criminal justice system. HB 2892 provides $1 million to fund at least eight grants per fiscal year to support this effort.

Homelessness response

Another priority this year was to increase and stabilize funding for local homelessness response efforts. The primary funding source at the state level, the document recording fee, has historically been subject to periodic sunsetting which left the programs dependent on those fees unable to do effective planning because there was always uncertainty that the funds would be available. In addition to removing the sunset, we convinced the Legislature to increase the fee by $22 in E2SHB 1570 – which provides an additional $54 million per biennium to support local homeless housing programs and plans.

Housing and essential needs

A sleeper candidate for the best bill of the year, SHB 2667 fixes a quirk in the law where recipients of housing support through the Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) program because they were temporarily disabled would lose that housing support when their disability became permanent and they moved to the Aged, Blind and Disabled program. This was unnecessarily creating homelessness in our communities out of a group of people we had already successfully stabilized. It made no sense. We are very grateful that the Legislature came through with this correction.

Diversion funding

AWC was supportive of a pilot approach pushed by Snohomish County that was provided a grant of $800,000 to create a criminal justice diversion center. We are hopeful that this model will be successful and that we can replicate it in other regions of the state. The model is a short term placement/shelter with a coordinated delivery network of integrated behavioral health services, law-enforcement, and the judicial system to serve low-level offenders with behavioral health issues and substance abuse issues.

Mental health investments

Significant investments in the mental health system were made this year, including the following highlights:

• $69.3 million provided to county behavioral health organizations for community enhancements;
• $25.3 million in behavioral community capacity funding;
• $46.4 million funding for Trueblood fines;
• $1.7 million for assisted outpatient treatment;
• $14.4 million for opioid treatment and overdose prevention; and
• $15.5 million to fully fund the Institute of Mental Disease (IMD) waiver.