Councilmember Rivera failed to question erroneous data provided by King County Regional Homelessness Authority

Fact Check: The Renton Clarion Hotel has accepted vouchers for hotel rooms to assist homeless residents; while most Renton officials and news media sources were aware of this, King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is supposed to be the overarching coordinator of homeless response, was not.

In my previous entry, I explained that Council Member Carmen Rivera wrote an op-ed to the Renton Reporter claiming I was misleading when I said the Red Lion hotel was no longer available to host travelers. (The Red Lion hotel is uninhabitable right now, and I was obviously honest about that.). She’s promoting the conversion of the Econo Lodge to a homeless services shelter, so this is a timely issue right now.

Fenced out. Renton’s once bustling Red Lion hotel, convention center, and restaurant is boarded up and costing King County $330,000 per month as they try to figure out what to do with the damaged property.

Today, I’m going to describe many other errors in her article.

Ironically, in her op-ed she says “We have also seen a decline in journalistic integrity, including fact-checking and vetting sources,.”  Then she fails to vet and fact-check her one-and-only source.

Councilmember Rivera writes:  Anne Martens from King County Regional Homeless Authority (KCRHA) promptly responded to my email inquiry, stating “we do not know where Randy Corman got his numbers, as he did not ask us,” and provided a list of hotels programs funded through KCRHA: Reclaim Snoqualmie Valley (voucher-based, Sno Valley only has one shelter), Angeline’s in Seattle (ran by YWCA, voucher-based, women only, and closing at end of year), Civic Hotel in Seattle, Kings Inn in Seattle (closed), New Bethlehem in Kirkland (partial hotel), and Congregations for the Homeless in Bellevue (voucher-based). The only Health Through Housing building in Renton is the Sidney Wilson House, which is permanent supportive housing with 107 units available for accommodation.

But Ms. Martens is only sharing hotels that KCRHA is running, not all of the Renton hotels converted to homeless services by county agencies.   In a similar letter to the one she sent  Councilmember Rivera, Ms. Martens responded to a request for hotel voucher data from Diane Dobson, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.  I have Ms. Dobson’s letter because Ms. Martens’ response to Ms. Dobson oddly referred to my blog, so Ms. Dobson thought I should have it.  A quick review of this letter reveals Ms. Martens does not know comprehensively, or is not saying, which hotels in Renton have been taken out of service for shelter use.  She doesn’t mention the Red Lion or the Clarion Inn, two of the three hotels in Renton known for this.

If Councilmember Rivera had done basic due-diligence,  she would have spotted the errors.  Ms. Rivera was attempting to disprove my simple supposition that two Renton hotels had been taken out of service and converted to shelters, and one was taken partially out of traveler service for the voucher program.  I had listed the hotels, listed room counts, divided by all the rooms in all the major hotels in Renton, and concluded that 22% of rooms had been taken out of service.  I verified which hotels were taken out of service through personal observation, contacting sources like the Mayor and Chamber of Commerce, and watching media footage.  Councilmember Rivera’s one source, Anne Martens, instead apparently used a spreadsheet with errors in it.  In her letter to Diane Dobson she says: “It occurred to me that you might be following up on a recent article in the Renton Reporter and on Randy Corman’s blog.  We do not know where Randy Corman got his numbers, as he did not ask us.”  I’m not impressed by Ms. Martens’s reading comprehension, as it is clear how I got my numbers.

Renton’s former hotels are being managed by multiple differing county-wide agencies, and even though KCRHA claims to be the overarching umbrella organization bringing everything together, KCRHA does not seem to know which hotels are involved, or understand the numbers.

At least four Renton hotels have served as shelters, under four different organizations.  King County Facilities is managing the derelict Red Lion, paying $330,00 per month and keeping it boarded up and fenced off.  King County’s Health through Housing Program  purchased the Extended Stay.  The Lived Experience Coalition has distributed vouchers for the Clarion Inn and the Econo Lodge.  And lastly KCRHA is partnered with REBLX, the owner of the Inn at Lake Washington/Econo Lodge, and would make that hotel into a shelter for homeless Burien residents if Renton allowed it.

In Ms. Martens’ FOI response, she only mentions the Extended Stay, and the Inn at Lake Washington (Econo Lodge,) and says Renton’s Inn at Lake Washington was the only Renton hotel used by the Lived Experience Coalition (LEC).  This is in error, as Renton Clarion Inn was known for accepting these vouchers, and was featured on TV news reports as the LEC abruptly ran out of funding, before getting more emergency funding, last April.

This April 17 news report , featuring this segment at the Renton Clarion Inn, shows the Clarion Inn was an LEC hotel, even if KCRHA didn’t know that.

Ms. Martens’ exact words in her FOI response were:

Not KCRHA funded (both closed – these were the LEC hotels)
Inn at Lake Washington in Renton
Kent Quality Inn

In summary, Councilmember Carmen Rivera readily accepted Anne Martens’ misleading KCRHA undercount of Renton hotels, and quickly came to the conclusion that it would be fair for Renton to provide more hotel space.  Councilmember Rivera accepted the erroneous and incomplete data so readily and completely that she was willing to write an op-ed piece calling me a liar, even though the actual data is simple to find, self-evident, and was linked to the blog she was criticizing.

Renton residents must ask themselves if they want to support council members that demonstrate they are so easily fooled by a single errant letter from an outside agency.  Our Renton elected officials need to check and double-check their facts, especially when the economic future of our city is at stake, as will be the case if we run short of hotel rooms.

While Carmen Rivera signed this op-ed, it reads like an election hit piece from the Kim Khanh-Van campaign desperately attempting to slow my momentum from telling the truth to our residents.  As I said in yesterday’s entry, Kim-Khanh Van voted against Renton having any local control regarding the placement, size, or operation of homeless service providers.

Renton continues to lead the way for affordable housing, and we are not getting the credit we deserve for this work.  In my next entry in this series I will show how Council Member Rivera and KCRHA tried to downplay Renton’s contributions, dismissing or ignoring major achievements by our city and our housing authority.

The incomplete and inaccurate response Ms. Martens provided to Diane Dobson’s FOI request can be found here.