The City of Tacoma is weighing whether to join a countywide effort that Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello is calling a “Unified Regional Approach” (URA), which would coordinate all homelessness services within the county.
“For too long, like so many communities up and down the West Coast, homelessness has been getting worse,” Mello said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “Especially through the pandemic, we’ve seen more and more people fall into homelessness. So this is an urgent problem; it’s an urgent crisis, and the problem with homelessness, too, is the face of homelessness is changing, especially over the past handful of years. Folks who are becoming homeless are actually older adults, folks fleeing domestic violence, and people with families, so folks with kids.”
KIRO host Gee Scott asked whether the plan, which involves cities including Tacoma, Lakewood, University Place, Gig Harbor and Fife, is a done deal…