“You stand those policies up in place so that in a time of crisis, you make sure how decisions are made,” she said. “But from the outside, it looks like all that got pushed aside because of the crisis.”

The director of King County’s Department of Community and Human Services, Leo Flor, said at a King County Council hearing on the White Center housing site earlier this week that a formal equity impact review had not been conducted, but that the values embodied by the rules definitely were incorporated.

“The piece of paper, the tool? No,” Mr. Flor said. “The equity impact process and values? Absolutely.”

Mr. Flor said that extended discussions with the community, the usual forum in which such reviews take place, simply were not possible given the pace of the crisis and the crushing need to make decisions. “We did not have community engagement the way we normally would,” he said, suggesting that discussions would take place as the housing centers opened and issues arose.

He said county officials had to find a place to house people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus but had no place to go to avoid infecting other people. “We are developing facilities for people who do not have a home to go back to, either because they didn’t have a home in the first place, or because to go home would be unsafe to other people residing there,” Mr. Flor said.

Ms. Ralph said that she had not been forewarned about the county’s plans for her city, and only found out after being called by a resident who had heard that the county was planning to purchase the motel.

A court commissioner denied the city’s request last week for a temporary restraining order stopping the former Econo Lodge site from reopening as an isolation center, but an appeal was scheduled for next week in King County Superior Court.