SEATTLE (AP) – King County plans to buy as many as a dozen hotels to permanently house hundreds of homeless people and provide them with services.

The initiative is called Health Through Housing.

It uses revenue from a .1% sales tax increase to develop a network of apartment-like shelters, with the goal of getting people out of tents, off of sidewalks, and into safe, clean homes.

The county hopes to eventually house 45%, or 2,000 people, out of its chronically homeless population of 4,500.

The goal for 2021 is to create housing units for 1,500 people countywide, in former hotels and nursing homes.

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