Data & Results

No matter where it operates, the goal is the same: improve public safety by supporting people who commit crimes born out of poverty to achieve stability and pursue self-identified goals, such as recovery, housing, work, or schooling.

The University District has a concentration of high-need individuals, many of whom face barriers to accessing supportive resources because of their unaddressed behavioral health issues. However, LEAD’s consistent presence in the area and that of our case management partners, REACH, demonstrates the program’s responsiveness to the needs of our clients and the community.

LEAD utilizes Aurora's limited resources and works with partners like Aurora Commons to receive referrals and work with LEAD clients to figure out what people need in order to gain a foothold on their path to stability and help implement a plan to stability.

In Ballard, LEAD's work in 2023 has centered on the many LEAD clients that live in the Ballard area, as well as on the multi-organizational neighborhood case conference. This case conference includes the Ballard Alliance, the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle City Attorney's Office, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, and DESC.

The Chinatown-International District (CID) community has long-cited ongoing public safety issues such as illicit commercial activity in Little Saigon, issues related to large encampments forming in unactivated spaces, and other behaviors driven by unmet needs and/or unaddressed behavioral health issues. LEAD's project management has remained in close contact with community partners in order to track these myriad public safety concerns, both in order to operationalize responses with current LEAD resources and also to track and contribute to conversations about what additional tools, such as a milieu outreach/safety team presence, might be required.

In East Precinct, the LEAD program's notable successes have involved building and maintaining a robust relationship with SPD, wherein social workers collaborate closely with officers on the ground in order to identify, locate, and work with folks in need of community based care. This collaboration has resulted in a number of new LEAD clients whose behavior was garnering law enforcement interactions and who otherwise might have ended up in jail.

After years of meeting, talking, and planning with South Seattle community stakeholders, LEAD partners finally identified funding, via congressionally directed spending and the Recovery Navigator Program, that will allow the program to open up services to South Seattle and Rainier Valley.

In Quarter 1 of 2023, to increase referrals in the SODO neighborhood, LEAD's project management team began to work more closely with community stakeholders, such as the SODO Business Improvement Area and law enforcement, to gather input about SODO's key issues and dynamics. Moving forward, LEAD project management will work to establish more regular frameworks for community feedback, so that the program can more effectively respond to public safety concerns and provide wraparound care for current LEAD clients.

Based on community feedback, LEAD learned that there was a perceived reduction in crimes and that community members felt safer and more comfortable walking around. LEAD's recent focus in West Seattle stretches back to a project in 2022, which involved a condemned apartment building and a number of people living in it who were set to be evicted without a plan. Realizing that many of the people living in the building were people who experienced chronic homelessness, LEAD service providers collaborated with the building owners, community, SPD, the Seattle City Attorney's Office, and brought more than 20 individuals indoors and into long­term case management.

In the University District, LEAD's work in 2023 has centered on the many LEAD clients that live in the University District area, as well as on the multi­organizational neighborhood case conference. This case conference includes the Li-District Partnership, the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle City Attorney's Office, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, and DESC.