Budget and Funding Sources

Department Overview

The Human Services Department (HSD) is one of the largest contributors to Seattle's safety net. We invest hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with more than 200 community-based organizations that support our neighbors and communities, and to direct services carried out by our own staff. These programs and services ensure Seattle residents have food and shelter, education and job opportunities, access to health care, opportunities to gain social and economic independence and success, and many more of life's basic necessities. HSD's Aging and Disability Services division also serves King County as the Area Agency on Aging. HSD is committed to working with the community to provide appropriate and culturally responsive services.

HSD’s work is funded by a variety of revenue sources, including federal, state, and inter-local grants, as well as the City’s General Fund, Sweetened Beverage Tax Fund, Short Term Rental tax revenues, and the Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

Budget Overview

**For more details, download HSD's Budget Overview prepared by the City Budget Office.

The 2025 Adopted and 2026 Endorsed Budget for the Human Services Department (HSD) is $384.9 million in 2025 and $387.5 million in 2026. This is a 12.9% increase in 2025 above HSD’s 2024 Adopted Budget and a 1% increase in 2026 above HSD’s 2025 Adopted Budget. The adopted budget prioritizes investments in the areas of addressing homelessness, advancing community safety, food and nutrition, and public health.

The General Fund revenue forecast for the City’s 2025 Adopted and 2026 Endorsed Budget budgets is insufficient to cover expected costs. While the 2025 Adopted and 2026 Endorsed Budget increases the Human Services Department’s overall General Fund budget compared to the 2024 Adopted Budget, some General Fund reductions were identified to mitigate this shortfall in revenues. Taken together the reductions strive to minimize the impact to direct service levels.

To support existing direct service providers, the adopted budget includes ongoing funding for inflationary increases for HSD’s service provider contracts in 2025 ($9.8 million) and an additional $7 million in 2026.

The adopted budget for the Human Services Department includes $138.9 million in 2025 and $141.7 million in 2026 for addressing homelessness, which equates to a 13% increase in 2025 compared to 2024 and an additional 2% increase in 2026. HSD’s homelessness budget is 72.5% of the citywide homelessness budget in 2025 ($191.4 million total) and 71% of the citywide homelessness budget in 2026 ($199.4 million in total).

For addressing homelessness, the adopted budget includes $3.2 million of new ongoing investments to sustain the City’s shelter capacity, $5.4 million to expand the City’s shelter capacity including $2.6 million for a new enhanced shelter in 2025 which will further expand in 2026 to provide additional behavior health services to those in need, $5 million in one-time funding for rental assistance, and $300k to expand the efforts of the City’s Unified Care Team for which HSD coordinates outreach and referrals to shelter for people experiencing homelessness. In addition to these investments, the 2025 Adopted Budget includes $4 million in one-time funding to support capital needs for a homeless youth and young adult center.

Starting in 2025, $11.5 million of funding for homelessness outreach and prevention services will be managed by the City’s Homelessness Division instead of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which has managed these services for the prior three years. After accounting for the operational change, the adopted budget adds funding for KCRHA in 2025 and 2026. It adds $5.9 million in 2025, equating to a total of $109.4 million for KCRHA in 2025, and adds an additional $5.3 million in 2026 for a total of $114.8 million for KCHRA in 2026.

HSD’s adopted budget advances community safety. HSD’s Supporting Safe Communities Budget Summary Level is $63.9 million in 2025 and $64.5 million in 2026; it includes investments managed by HSD’s Homelessness Division and investments managed by HSD’s Safe and Thriving Communities (STC) Division. STC manages the department’s investments in community safety and violence prevention programs. The 2025 Adopted and 2026 Endorsed Budget includes $8.15 million of new ongoing investments to support safe communities: $2 million for human trafficking, $4.25 million to address gun violence in schools and protect youth, and $1.9 million in ongoing funding to sustain the Third Avenue Project’s work conducting outreach and engagement along the Third Avenue corridor in the downtown core, previously funded with one-time funding. The 2025 Adopted Budget includes additional one-time funding for public safety enhancement services along Third Avenue and in the Chinatown International District bringing the total for these services in 2025 to $2.97 million and $2.4 million in 2026.

The proposed budget maintains existing investment levels in public health programming and streamlines the public health investments in HSD. It transfers $5.6M of preexisting public health related investments in HSD’s budget to the Public Health Budget Summary Level that were previously in other HSD Budget Summary Levels. The adopted budget adds investments for recovery support and expansion of the Mobile Integrated Health program, bringing HSD’s total investment in public health to $26.2 million in 2025.

Additionally, the adopted budget adds funding for food and nutrition programs and facilities. It adds a total of $1.75 million in 2025 and $1.25 million in 2026, bringing the total amount of funding in HSD’s budget for food and nutrition programs in 2025 to $25.8 million and to $25.7 million in 2026.