From June 15 – July 6, Seattle hosted six World Cup matches and was named by several outlets the number one 2026 FIFA host city. KCRHA’s focus during the international tournament was not on visitor experience, but instead on the safety of our unhoused community members, particularly those living near the site of the World Cup matches, Lumen Field.
KCRHA was directly involved in the weeks leading up to the first World Cup game through our work in Coordinated Entry (CE), the process of ensuring access points to Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), Rapid Re-Housing, and Transitional Housing are available to people experiencing a housing crisis. Our CE team collaborated with service providers in our area to get more people living outside in areas most impacted inside.
The goal of the CE World Cup plan – created by provider organizations Purpose. Dignity. Action. (PDA) and Evergreen Treatment Services (ETS)/REACH – was to place sheltered high-needs individuals in PSH, opening space in the shelter programs. KCRHA implemented referrals for people moving from shelters to permanent housing, leading to 59 total referrals for PSH and 16 people have moved into permanent housing. While this is not the standard Coordinated Entry process, the World Cup provided for a special set of circumstances in which we knew ahead of time that there would be a very large influx of people during a specific period of time and in a concentrated area of the city.
Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC)’s Star Center and Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI)’s Olympic Hills (run by PDA) also played a key role in the process, with clients from those shelter sites (which accommodate high acuity individuals) receiving priority in CE to make room for unhoused community members living near Lumen Field. The clients who moved out of Star Center and Olympic Hills were then moved into Permanent Supportive Housing, which combines permanent housing with supportive services such as case management, child care, mental health services, and more.
To read more about these collaborative efforts, check out the articles listed below:
