Seattle spent millions to shelter people in hotel rooms. Then it stopped filling them
Update: 2025-10-07
Description
In the years following the pandemic, the city of Seattle leaned into a strategy to convert hotels into shelters. At one point, the Civic Hotel was full of residents. But later, many of the rooms sat empty, even though the City of Seattle was still paying the rent. KUOW investigative reporter Ashley Hiruko is here to tell us what happened. Her new story is co-published by ProPublica.
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