Supportive Housing
To DESC, supportive housing means much more than a building with services. The design of the facility, staffing patterns, program values and ways of interacting with residents all combine to create a program that helps people succeed over the long term.
Most DESC housing residents live with challenges that would seem overwhelming or 
insurmountable to the average person: mental illness, drug and alcohol addictions, physical or developmental disabilities, and extreme poverty. To increase their opportunitities for success, residents in each of our housing sites have access to supportive services 24/7:
- State-licensed mental health and substance use disorder treatment
- Onsite health care services
- Daily meals and weekly outings to food banks
- Case management and payee services
- Medication monitoring
- Weekly community-building activities
DESC entered the supportive housing arena in 1994 with the opening of The Union, a 52-unit building located in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. This project marked the expansion of our mission from managing homelessness to actually ending the homelessness of our community’s most vulnerable people. Today, DESC owns and manages more than 1,100 units of supportive housing throughout Seattle.
DESC Supportive Housing is built upon the Housing First Philosophy. Learn more about Housing First.
Projects in Development
Current Supportive Housing
- The Estelle
- Interbay Place
- Cottage Grove Commons
- Aurora House
- Canaday House
- Rainier House
- 1811 Eastlake
- Evans House
- Kerner-Scott House
- Lyon Building
- The Morrison
- The Union Hotel
Scattered Site Housing: DESC has housing subsidies which case managers use to place their clients into rental properties throughout Seattle. What makes this model work is the integration of DESC’s case management services to provide the necessary support for people to succeed and stabilize.
Prior to June 2016, DESC managed applicants for our Supportive Housing projects by prioritizing them according to the DESC Vulnerability Assessment Tool (VAT) score. Starting in June 2016, all housing referrals to DESC will be centralized through King County’s Coordinated Entry system as part of King County’s implementation of Coordinated Entry for All (CEA). The VI-SPDAT has been selected as the common assessment and triage tool, and housing placements will be allocated based on individual’s VI-SPDAT score.