Deal reached on handling Tri-Cities homeless, veterans, disability services
Tri-City leaders have come to a tentative agreement to continue vital services for families, veterans and people at risk of homelessness through next summer.
The new contract will allow Benton County to continue running human services for the Tri-Cities area while Franklin County gets its own department up and running.
The agreement comes after a month of negotiating to prevent an immediate breakup of services. Benton County has administered programs for the area for decades.
The Benton County Human Services office runs a variety of programs including homelessness prevention, developmental disability services and a veterans services office.
Benton County Commissioner Michael Alvarez said during their Tuesday meeting that the agreement would help ensure continuity of services over the next eight months.
“The number one thing is we did it because we didn’t want to interrupt services,” Alvarez said.
He said the second key factor was ensuring Franklin County had enough time to get an office up and running and begin an orderly transition process, without cutting off needed services to key residents of both counties.
The interim agreement will keep these programs running through June 30, 2026.
Franklin County leaders approved their portion last week.
Transition process
While Franklin County leaders have said they plan to continue most services, they have opted out of funding for the Homeless Housing Program.
That service helps support programs such as emergency shelters, low income housing assistance and rental assistance vouchers.
Because the only emergency shelter in the area, Tri-City Union Gospel Mission in Pasco, is privately run, that funding largely goes to homelessness prevention and helping get people into housing.
It’s paid for through a $183 recording fee when getting certain documents from the county, like a deed.
When Franklin County exits the agreement they will no longer keep 30% of the fee for their homeless and affordable housing programs.
The Department of Commerce said in a letter the county will need to send back 99% of the fee, keeping the remaining 1% to cover the cost of collection.
Most of the grants under these programs require a human services office to help anyone who comes in, regardless of their home address.
It’s unclear at this time whether Commerce officials will reimburse Benton County for the cost of continuing to help Franklin residents with the services.
Right now demand for the services is at a roughly 70-30 split, according to Benton County.
The current veterans service office is in Pasco, but serves both counties. Franklin already has started the process of hiring its own veterans service officer.
Developmental disability services are contracted to several local organizations across the Tri-Cities.
Why are they splitting up?
In recent months the counties have come to an impasse over splitting legal liability for shared services.
The conversation first come up earlier this year when Benton County moved to renew their juvenile services agreement, updating it to reflect that while Benton owns and runs the juvenile facility, Franklin County has long been a partner.
Franklin County leaders see this more as a straight-forward contractor situation and don’t feel they should be legally responsible for lawsuits originating in Benton County.
Money also has been a big concern, as both counties look to tighten budgets. After negotiating on cost sharing, they were able to reach this interim agreement, but it appears the legal liability issue has seen no progress.
That could put other key bicounty partnerships in danger. Both counties are in the process of reviewing contracts to see if it makes sense to continue joint operations in more than a dozen areas, ranging from the health department to human services and transit.
