The Seattle City Council will introduce a resolution this afternoon that gives the council three months to review Mayor Mike McGinn's proposal to semi-permanently house homeless people on SODO's Sunny Jim Peanut Factory site—and several alternative plans to serve Seattle's homeless population—before crafting legislation sometime after July 31.

Critics suggest the council is simply procrastinating. "It’s a little bit clueless given the timing," says Reverend Bill Kirlin-Hackett, director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness. "This is a series of seemingly meaningless statements that could’ve been said last October. All their agenda items are being worked on currently."

The alternatives the council will be exploring include: renovating Fire Station 39 as a new shelter; working to use more church facilities as shelter space; purchasing a motel for transitional housing; providing more rental assistance vouchers; considering an encampment site, as the Mayor's Citizen Review Panel did last year; or changing the city's existing shelter contracts to address "shortcomings."

The resolution—and the time line—is maddening to anyone working to find shelter for hundreds of homeless people. The council is rehashing legwork that's already been done by proactive homeless advocacy organizations and the mayor's office over the past year (and beyond). Meanwhile, they're burying a proposal that's packaged and ready to go.

And the council's resolution doesn't guarantee that any of these items will actually be funded.

Instead, it directs the council to explore using the $300,000 insurance settlement the city received for the Sunny Jim Peanut factory (which burned to the ground last summer) to rehab the Sunny Jim site for a homeless encampment, as McGinn has proposed, or "to allow some of these funds to be used for other one-time homeless service needs; or if all or some of these funds should be reserved for other priority purposes in light of continuing concerns about the City's financial situation in 2011."

Like I said, maddening.

But there is a sliver of a silver lining to this otherwise meaningless resolution: It gives homeless advocates a legislative platform from which to lobby city council members. Up until now, the conversation on how to meet the needs of Seattle's homeless population has taken place outside the bounds of council chambers—that is, outside the bounds of legislation. In a statement released today, council member Licata said that he hopes that “through the use of some portion of the proceeds from the Sunny Jim settlement the Council will be able to act more quickly. The work program in the resolution allows for that possibility.”

Finally, the council is resolving to explore the issue one fuzzy time line at a time. Hurrah for that.