We previously pinpointed the cause of the homelessness crisis in King County. The county added more than 700,000 residents over the past 30 years but woefully failed to keep pace by expanding housing supply. Research clearly shows that local jurisdictions with a massive shortfall in housing end up with large-scale homelessness.
But we haven’t yet proposed solutions. Does the fact that King County has a large, long-term housing shortfall mean we can solve homelessness in King County merely by building more housing? No. The problem is now far too complicated. We aim here to explain why, and to offer a starting point for solutions to a complex problem. More than anything else, we need political leadership that can devise a coherent plan and carry it out.
A lasting solution will, of course, include new housing. Lots of it, especially the affordable kind. But housing alone won’t be sufficient. Why? The short answer is that the chronically homeless, defined as those who have been unhoused for a year or more, usually need more than just four walls and a door that locks. These individuals (about 6,400 in King County, or about one-third of the homeless population here, according to the latest headcount often suffer from trauma, mental illness and/or substance abuse. Sleeping outside for a prolonged period, which is extraordinarily stressful, can exacerbate such vulnerabilities. In many cases, it can even create them.
Our community needs to do more to keep housing-insecure members from becoming homeless in the first place by expanding the housing supply and providing rent assistance to those facing eviction for non-payment, and then help the unhoused get into housing before they experience even greater trauma. Finally, we must identify all of the region’s chronically homeless individuals by name, document their different vulnerabilities, and provide them with both shelter and appropriate services. To solve this crisis, we must be intentional and we must be deliberate.
A well-coordinated “housing first” system can succeed. Unlike several other local jurisdictions across America that have experienced remarkable success, Seattle/King County has never followed such an approach. One could call ours a chaotic and redundant “nonprofits first” program in which more than 150 non-governmental organizations scramble for government contracts without a coherent plan of action or any serious results-focused system of accountability. The current approach is expensive and ineffective. It is not working.
We know this because, despite the significant amount of tax dollars spent, the homeless population here keeps growing. Worse, the number of rough sleepers, or unsheltered homeless people, is growing even faster – by 21% over the past two years. Many of these folks are chronically homeless, which means their needs are dire and becoming more serious over time.
A working system would recognize the diversity of the region’s homeless population and treat individuals differently to refer them appropriately. For example, sober campers (and there are many such out there) should never be pushed into low-barrier shelters, where they will be tempted by drug users. They need housing, and perhaps friends or peer counselors. A sense of community. Drug addicts should be placed in shelters with caseworkers trained in rehab. But they too need community. The mentally ill should go to shelters with access to professionals who can prescribe medicine, therapy, and (yes) community. Predators, on the other hand, should go to jail.
Through our volunteer work (Walter with the Ballard Community Task Force on Homelessness and Hunger; Mark with Anything Helps), we have met and helped hundreds of rough sleepers who fall into these different categories. Let us introduce you to a few.
Mike, a mechanic from California who doesn’t use drugs –- except the prescription kind to deal with high blood pressure and a bad heart. He was sleeping on a bench on the Magnolia side of the Ballard locks when we met him; he had no interest in moving into a shelter with folks he calls “trouble.” A member of the Ballard task force was able to get Mike into permanent housing with very low rent. He is happier now than he has been in years but still worries (for good reason) about his heart.
Then there’s Stuart. He is a proud, African-American man with bipolar disorder. Sometimes he is the sweetest, maybe even the smartest guy in the room; other times, he is impossibly angry. He belongs in a shelter with caseworkers who can refer him to Sound Health to treat his condition.
And there’s DJ, a young, white addict. He had been a construction worker in rural Pierce County, but suffered chronic muscle pain and struggled to pay medical bills. He eventually lost his rental housing, became homeless and turned to fentanyl and meth. He belongs in rehab, and then in a shelter that can help him stay on track.
Finally, there’s the self-proclaimed “Mayor of Fred Meyer.” He has lived, off and on, in a camp behind the Ballard store. He is a dealer who sends scrawny young men off to construction sites and elsewhere to steal copper wire for drug cash, and who trades fentanyl and meth for sex with women. He belongs in jail.
If it weren’t for the region’s shortage of transitional and permanent housing, these individuals might never have become homeless. They probably would have lived in the low-rent apartment buildings, flophouses, SRO hotels, trailer parks of the past. But those are mostly gone as the region has become more affluent and less tolerant of slum-like conditions. We will never fix the crisis here until we replenish our housing stock by upzoning, relaxing restrictions on new construction, and increasing subsidies for those who supply low-income units. We also must maintain the affordable units that already exist. But all this work could take decades.
In the meantime, we have to provide targeted services to the chronically homeless. The longer they sleep outside, the more they will become unstable, sick, profoundly vulnerable and (for taxpayers) expensive to help.
Mayor Katie Wilson’s shelter expansion program, designed to add 1,000 additional beds each year of her term, will certainly help move chronically homeless folks off the street. It will, at least for a while, provide greater stability, an opportunity for many to think about the future rather than just daily survival. But as one unhoused resident of Ballard recently wrote, it won’t fix Seattle’s problem. The mayor’s program “should be the beginning, not the plan itself,” argues Jeremy Wolff, who sleeps in his vehicle. “Build the beds, please. But build the system too: shared intake, live availability, by-name coordination, placement by fit and public accountability for whether people stay housed. Effort matters most when everyone is pointed at the same goal: ending homelessness.”
Unlike Seattle/King County, where we seem to be heading backwards, several other jurisdictions are moving forward.
- In Milwaukee, a well-coordinated “housing first” plan reduced homelessness there by 42% in the decade from 2015 to 2025. There was an even bigger drop (92%) in the unsheltered homeless population. City and county officials have added shelter beds and permanent housing, but also a variety of treatment programs targeted at substance abusers and those with mental illness. Most importantly, they have designed a working plan that all parties, public and private, must follow.
- Denver, too, has shown the way. Since 2023, when Mayor Mike Johnston declared a homelessness emergency, he has used a “housing first” plan to reduce overall homelessness by 12% and unsheltered homelessness by 64%. He has expanded housing options, reducing restrictions on new construction, converting empty hotels into shelters and (for a while) even created sanctioned encampments. Drug addicts and mentally ill campers are steered into appropriate programs. Denver is hoping to sustain its progress by offering rent-assistance to residents at risk of becoming homeless, and by providing temporary subsidies for the newly homeless.
The city’s Department of Housing Stability (HOST) carefully oversees its “All In Mile High” program to reduce homelessness. Denver providers who are accountable to the city meet twice a month as the Homeless Leadership Council. “We are aiming for synergy,” said Jessica Ehinger, CEO of the Colorado Village Collaborative, a major provider. - Although it has regressed a bit in the past year or so, Houston has blazed a similar trail, reducing homelessness by 60% in the past 15 years by pursuing a well-coordinated “housing first” plan. It established a centralized system, called “The Way Home,” under which all providers and service organizations had to operate. They relied on shared data to move people from the streets, to shelters, to permanent housing.
The common denominator in all three successful jurisdictions is political will expressed through committed leadership. “Beyond the Bridge,” an eye-opening documentary, shows how “housing first” can and does work. It highlights local jurisdictions that have devised workable plans that not only fill the housing gap but target appropriate services to disparate groups in the diverse homeless community. It shows how these jurisdictions have required providers to follow clear guidelines or lose contracts.
Then consider Seattle/King County, the home of what we call a “nonprofits first” approach. Over the past six years, local politicians have entrusted its “system” to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, even as many of them (including the Seattle Mayor and King County Executive) served passively on its governing board. When KCRHA spun its wheels early on, local pols began to use it as a political punching bag to avoid responsibility for their own leadership failures. No one has really been in charge.
In the lurch, dozens of nonprofits compete for government contracts. Some like Plymouth Housing and the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) have become giant operations that pay their leaders far more than the City of Seattle pays its mayor and more than King County pays its executive. Earlier this year, an audit of KCRHA found that it could not account for perhaps $13 million in public funds. As a result, the city and county will stop funding the authority in January.
It’s a chaotic jungle out there
For example, there is no central clearinghouse for information on the region’s thousands of homeless individuals and their distinctive problems and needs. Part of this is due to privacy concerns. But another part is due to the deep fragmentation sewn into our “nonprofits first” approach. For example, LIHI uses the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to keep track of its clients. But it acknowledged to us that it doesn’t share any client-specific data with other non-profit providers or with local government, including KCRHA. In other words, the “network” isn’t networked.
So this area’s homeless individuals are mostly on their own, wandering from caseworker to caseworker, from one provider to the next, re-explaining their conditions, hoping to get ID, medicine, counseling, drug treatment, food stamps, disability benefits, or whatever they might need (especially housing). Repeating themselves. Getting frustrated. Mostly giving up.
Even in our (ill-named) “Coordinated Entry Program,” the local form of a national program that is designed to help cities and counties move homeless individuals and families on the list into available housing, providers often don’t “buy in” to the program due to distrust. So there is little or no coordination. A KCRHA staffer expressed this frustration in an evaluation: “It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, where if folks don’t believe in the system, they don’t participate in the system, they start putting their time and energy elsewhere, and therefore they undermine the system to where it’s less likely to be something that they support.”
More than a decade after the Seattle mayor and the King County executive declared a homelessness crisis, the Puget Sound region –- unlike Milwaukee, Denver and Houston –- still doesn’t have a coherent plan to respond. More concretely, Mayor Wilson only very recently (eight months after taking office) named a permanent director of Seattle’s Office of Housing, and she still hasn’t replaced her chief policy strategist on homelessness. (Mark Ellerbrook, deputy director of city operations, is now supposed to “manage” this portfolio. But he is laser focused on the city’s effort to reclaim homelessness service contracts from KCRHA. In other words, he is managing our chaotic “nonprofits first” approach.)
We conferred with Jon Grant before he was pushed out of his role as the mayor’s “homelessness czar,” presumably because he ruffled too many feathers on the City Council. And we asked: When will the mayor develop a coherent governing plan for solving Seattle’s most vexing problem? “We expect to look at that sometime next year,” he told us. “Right now, we’re just focusing on expanding shelter.”
Tick tick tick.
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Very interesting remarks about Plymouth Housing and the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI).
The obvious retort to your observation
—….”pay their leaders far more than the City of Seattle pays its mayor and more than King County pays its executive…” —
might be that real estate developers can make a lot of money and the skill set — whether it’s nonprofit real estate or for-profit real estate — is very similar and that the executives at those two organizations could easily be paid far more than the Mayor and King County executive if they were out into the for-profit market.
Nevertheless, it’s too bad there isn’t some enterprising research-oriented journalist to look into those two organizations and their leadership to find out how they did it. The story might simply be that they did a damn good job at exploiting a system… Or maybe that the system is flawed? I don’t know but I’d be curious to find out.
Thanks for your thoughts on the job market for real estate developers. Really good point that helps explain the high salaries for Sharon Lee (LIHI), and Karen Lee (Plymouth). Given their experience and skills, they could command high salaries elsewhere.
I was in Chicago last week (for 5 days). Nice to travel somewhere other than the west coast. Holy smokes, what breath of fresh air! Also… took a side trip to Milwaukee for a day. All told… I saw… ONE tent. Yes, there were some folks in-need (downtown; both cities) but that’s to be expected. But there was not a proliferation of “homeless” people. Why? Also… virtually NO GRAFFITI and overall much cleaner — in both cities and on the major freeways/arterials (which were almost totally devoid of litter with ZERO graffiti). I guess it’s just not a “thing” in that part of the country? Or… maybe they deal with it via severe consequences? Why do we tolerate it? The roadway pavement in the Chicago areas was in very good shape (freeways and in-city) — seemingly much better than what we have here. Plus… no “blown-up guardrails” everywhere — which seems to be a Puget Sound area disease (stoned drivers, lazy WSDOT, lazy SDOT, or a combination of all three). We’re so smug. But in reality, we need to wake-up — make sensible choices and try harder with better leadership.
Maybe the answer
(why the difference in amount of graffiti here and compared to Chicago)
is that maybe the homeless in Seattle are so much more literate and attuned to the written word?
After all what is graffiti except the expression of a thought or concept in language? Perhaps we should be proud! Maybe what you are characterizing as a problem is actually a feature!
(I’m joking.)
I have to say that I was amazed by the quality of graffiti in Eureka, Ca.
I came back to Seattle with an idea for a Seattle Graffiti Grading Commission.
So much of our graffiti is abysmal!
Like FFF – -.
And then, there’s a tiny portion of true artistry!
We could, as a city, and as community, encourage artists and encourage would be artists.
I keep thinking of the phrase ‘ practice more at home’.
I also keep thinking that if I go out there and start grading graffiti and painting over bad stuff, I’d be arrested.
Because we’re Seattle.
Although Chicago does follow a fairly aggressive anti-graffiti policy, it isn’t more punitive than Seattle in its approach to homelessness. (Mayor Brandon Johnson is VERY progressive.) On homelessness, the major difference between Chicago and other cities with large homeless populations is twofold: 1) Chicago (like Philly, Detroit, Houston, Denver, Milwaukee, Miami, etc) has managed to keep pace with demand for housing (in other words, it has not had a massive supply shortfall like Seattle, NYC, Boston, SF, LA); and 2) it has stood up a large number of shelter beds.
I think if you try to live outdoors, winter will be significantly less survivable in those areas. Could be a factor.
Agree. Living on the street in Chicago winter will kill you quickly. Chicago will never have a winter homelessness problem like temperate Seattle.
Weather doesn’t explain the variation in levels of homelessness in different localities. Both NYC and Boston have very high levels of homelessness, despite their very cold winters. We don’t *see* as much homelessness in NYC and Boston because those cities have created a lot of shelter space for unhoused people. (The unhoused there tend to spend the night in shelters.) Chicago — like some warmer cities (including Miami and Houston) — doesn’t have a homelessness crisis because it doesn’t have a massive shortfall in housing. Cities like Seattle have a homelessness crisis because they do have a protracted, serious housing shortage.
Two things in this piece deserve pushback.
First, the substance use numbers are almost certainly too low. That’s because nearly every figure quoted in the homelessness field comes from self-reporting, which means a person answering a survey question from an outreach worker. Anyone who has dealt with a loved one with addiction knows that denial is a thing, and it’s exacerbated if someone being interviewed thinks the services are dependent upon a “socially correct” answer.
Validation studies that check self-report against urinalysis or hair testing routinely find that self-report captures around half of actual use. People underreport for obvious reasons. They fear losing a placement, losing custody of a child, or losing a benefit.
So when a count says a third of the population has a substance use problem, the working assumption should be closer to twice that, i.e., 66%-75%. This matches the city’s own finding in the wake of the opioid crisis that more than 80% of encampments cleared showed signs of needles and addiction and use.
That changes the plan. If most of the chronically homeless population is addicted, we need a TREATMENT FIRST approach. Washington has few secure withdrawal beds, a psychiatric bed shortage, and a competency backlog that consumes state hospital capacity. A plan that routes people to treatment without a bed count and a capital number is a sorting scheme.
Importantly, the stakeholders which matter are not just those who are addicted. The stakeholders include families, employers, renters, taxpayers and the surrounding community.
Second, the article’s own success stories used enforcement, and the piece leaves that part out. Houston’s model is not only shared data and unified protocols. Houston decommissions encampments! During their dramatic drop, Houston officials denied encampment setups.
Outreach worked a site, everyone gets a real offer, the site closes, and it stays closed. Denver did the same thing. All In Mile High paired hotel conversions with encampment resolutions, and Denver’s camping ban survived a repeal attempt at the ballot. Milwaukee cleared its large encampments as it housed people. In all three cities, someone was willing to say “no, you cannot do that here,” and to mean it the next week. That sentence is what makes the offer credible. Without it, the offer is a suggestion, and the by-name registry the authors want becomes a tidier waiting list.
I’ll just hit a couple points in this very long comment. Sure, needles will show up in almost every camp. That doesn’t imply that everyone there is using drugs. Second, Milwaukee didn’t just clear the camps for good, it had enough housing or shelter for the entire camp. In Seattle, they clear 30 people, but only every had 2 shelter beds to offer. Look at the population in Ballard, getting sloshed back and forth up and down Leary every 2 weeks. The same people. They are not getting offered shelter. The exception was the recent pallet shelter in Interbay. When that opened, they did get a bunch of folks off the streets in Ballard, in August.
That’s a very odd way of dealing with data — just double the official estimates because it feels right. You back this up by misrepresenting ex-City Attorney Pete Holmes’ brief in the Purdue Pharma case. Looking to secure damages for Seattle, he wrote that cops and other city workers report that “80% of the homeless individuals they encounter in challenging encampments have substance abuse disorders.” Note that these are people in “challenging encampments,” not all unsheltered homeless folks. I’ve found a large number of folks on the street who abuse alchol and drugs; many of them began doing so AFTER they ended up homeless. DJ’s story is not unusual.
On your point about Houston. The ban on public camping has been used quite sparingly. In fact, HPD advised its officers not to arrest or ticket anyone UNLESS they were offered and refused shelter. Punishment has not been a central feature of Houston’s response to homelessness. Expanding housing and providing coordinated services was the key.
I didn’t just make it up. Several studies show substance use self reports underreport by about half.
For instance, a large Zurich cohort of ~1,000 young adults (mean age ~21) compared past-3-month self-reports with 3 cm hair toxicology.
Self-reports underestimated prevalence of most illicit and non-medical prescription substances by 30–60%. The average hair-to-self-report detection ratio was 1.50. The authors explicitly recommend adjusting self-report estimates upward and state that, in a population like theirs, respondents underreport by about 50% on average. Underreporting was more common when hair concentrations were low. 
A follow-up on the same cohort at ages 20 and 24 found similar, often worsening, underreporting for MDMA, cocaine, ketamine, and codeine (roughly 30–70% of hair-positive cases denied use, depending on substance and wave).
Among arrestees (ADAM-type studies), overall agreement looks high because most people test negative. Among those who do test positive, admission rates are much lower: often ~45% for cocaine and ~41% for heroin—meaning self-report would miss more than half of users of those drugs. Marijuana admission is typically higher.
For those who would like to read some of the studies which show the common-sense conclusion that self-reporting undercounts by about half, here are a few:
The “about half” figure is a useful rule of thumb for some drugs and samples, not a universal constant; cannabis is usually reported more accurately, and results vary by population, setting, and recall window. Generally, the more powerful the addictive substance, the more significant the underreporting. Thus we could conclude that, say, fentanyl addiction or meth addiction would be understated even more.
Studies that most directly support ~50% underreporting
Steinhoff, A., Shanahan, L., Bechtiger, L., Zimmermann, J., Ribeaud, D., Eisner, M. P., Baumgartner, M. R., & Quednow, B. B. (2023). When substance use is underreported: Comparing self-reports and hair toxicology in an urban cohort of young adults. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 62(7), 791–804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2022.11.011
Self-reports underestimated prevalence of most illicit and non-medical substances by 30–60% versus hair tests; average hair/self-report detection ratio was 1.50. Authors note that in a comparable population, respondents underreport by about 50% on average.
Hunt, D. E., Kling, R., Almozlino, Y., Jalbert, S., Chapman, M. T., & Rhodes, W. (2015). Telling the truth about drug use: How much does it matter? Journal of Drug Issues, 45(3), 314–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042615589406
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) data: among those who tested positive, congruence (admit use) was 45% for cocaine and 41% for heroin—i.e., self-report would underestimate use of those drugs by more than half. Marijuana congruence was much higher (~84%). They also cite the SAMHSA validation study finding only 39% of marijuana-positive general-population respondents admitted use.
Magura, S., & Kang, S.-Y. (1996). Validity of self-reported drug use in high risk populations: A meta-analytical review. Substance Use & Misuse, 31(9), 1131–1153. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089609063969
Meta-analysis of 24 studies (1985+) comparing self-report with urine or hair. Positive self-reports were given by only 42% of subjects who had a positive biological test (median conditional kappa = .42). Underreporting of that magnitude would seriously bias prevalence and outcome estimates.
Harrison, L. D., Martin, S. S., Enev, T., & Harrington, D. (2007). Comparing drug testing and self-report of drug use among youths and young adults in the general population (DHHS Publication No. SMA 07-4249, Methodology Series M-7). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies.
NSDUH validity study (ages 12–25). Among those with a positive test, admission of use was low for several drugs; later reviews of these data note that only ~21% of cocaine-positive respondents reported past-30-day cocaine use, and ~39% of marijuana-positive respondents admitted use in some analyses.
Closely related findings (often more than, or approaching, a factor of two)
Fendrich, M., Johnson, T. P., Sudman, S., Wislar, J. S., & Spiehler, V. (1999). Validity of drug use reporting in a high-risk community sample: A comparison of cocaine and heroin survey reports with hair tests. American Journal of Epidemiology, 149(10), 955–962. (Often cited: recent cocaine prevalence rose from 4.2% by self-report to 11.6% with biospecimens.)
Morral, A. R., McCaffrey, D., & Iguchi, M. Y. (2000). Hardcore drug users claim to be occasional users: Drug use frequency underreporting. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 57(3), 193–202.
Methadone clients reporting “occasional” heroin use: after adjustment for urinalysis, 51% met the “hardcore” frequency definition.
Boniface, S., & Shelton, N. (2013). How is alcohol consumption affected if we account for under-reporting? A hypothetical scenario. European Journal of Public Health, 23(6), 1076–1081. (Self-reported consumption typically accounts for only 40–60% of alcohol sales.)
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Why is this so important to understand? Because it matters to know what true addiction rates really are, in charting an effective course forward. It’s not meant to be pejorative. Addiction is likely 70% or higher in the homeless community, which suggests that treatment should be well-funded, and we need an answer for when people say “no, I refuse to move, and also refuse treatment.” It also suggests something about whether “barrier free” approaches will even be effective for a significant percentage of the population unless coupled with mandatory treatment or testing.
In my experience, homeless people refuse treatment when the reasons for their drug abuse are not addressed. If they know they will be treated and become “un-addicted”, but they will not be given safe shelter or housing, and they have no prospect for employment or financial support, then the treatment will seem pointless, and they will refuse. The solution is to provide a more complete remediation: safe, secure shelter, permanent housing, drug treatment, psychological counseling, job training. In some cases, the person needs permanent supportive housing, care for mental illness. Each person will need some subset of these services.
This is why mandatory drug treatment doesn’t work. If that’s all we do, then we’re not addressing the reason for the drug abuse in the first place.
I don’t see anyone suggesting ONLY mandatory drug treatment. I do see people arguing that:
(a) the levels of addiction are much higher in the homeless population than are acknowledged and it’s time we are honest about it in our analysis and response,
(b) given high rates of addiction, a low-barrier, “drugs are allowed” approach is likely to fail (and has),
(c) a workable solution needs to take into account the reasonable needs of ALL stakeholders,
The working solutions usually include some kind of enforcement, and “no, you cannot do that here.” San Francisco is a prime example of a turnaround in the correct direction.
California spent $24 billion on homelessness and housing over five years, with very little coordination or requirements. Progressives chided anyone who questioned this approach as being “uncompassionate.” But critics were correct. The state auditor found that three of the five main programs lacked the data to show whether they worked at all. Nearly a third of people leaving the state’s primary housing program had an “unknown” destination. That is a serious failure of stewardship, and it explains why public patience ran out.
For a solution to work, it also has to address the reasonable needs of taxpayers, shopkeepers, employers, families and people just wanting to be able to safely use the places they pay for. And I’m sorry, but enforcement needs to be part of the solution; a loosely supervised, mostly voluntary approach is unlikely to do anyone much good, other than the NGOs.
I appreciate the very comprehensive analysis and recommendations of Walter and Mark. But what’s concerning about the comments is how they plainly demonstrate we can’t agree on the problem, much less the solution. Each faction is pursuing their own solution, a situation that leads to waste of money, political battling and no end in sight for the homeless.
Thanks, Mike. Homelessness, like climate change, gun violence and novel viruses, does indeed inspire a lot of opinions. Sadly, though, most folks have opinions based on social media commentary and videos, not on actual research. They have been taught to believe the problem (the cause of homelessness) is drugs or maybe mental health or maybe political ideology or racism or poverty or weather, etc etc. But the research overwhelmingly shows that none of these individual or environmental factors EXPLAINS the different levels of homelessness in different places. What explains the extremely high levels homelessness in Seattle (and several other U.S. jurisdictions)? A protracted and severe housing supply shortage.
Likewise, there are different views about how to respond. For example, the Trump administration, like We Heart Seattle, is pushing a “treatment first” approach to homelessness that emphasizes locking up unhoused people (which HUD equates with “drug users”) and/or forcing them into rehab. There is very little empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of this approach. The major metropolitan areas that have managed to curb homelessness in the U.S. and Europe have tended to use a highly-coordinated and data-driven “housing first” approach, which is backed by researchers and clinicians because it offers stability for people who are focused only on surviving day-to-day and thus struggle to make helpful decisions about the future. Seattle/King Co says it follows “housing first,” but Mark and I have found that our regional approach is incoherent, even chaotic, and driven primarily by nonprofits that operate in silos, without proper coordination.
Sorry, I guess I am beginning to relitigate our case here. It’s just that there are VERY LOUD voices diagnosing the problem and offering solutions without ever having read any of the scholarly literature, and without ever spending much time with homeless people. (Andrea Suarez, to her credit, does spend time with homeless people. But then she also asks her many social media followers to ritually burn books written by leading experts on homelessness. Book burning, in my view, is beyond werid. It’s scary.) Mark and I adopted positions in our first and second PA pieces on homelessness that reflect far more than a “faction.” Just as the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, experts on gun violence, and epidemologists do not represent “factions” in their fields.
Andrea likes to call me an “academic,” which is true. But I don’t just read the literature; like her, I also spend a lot of time in the field. And I do it for free.
Very welcome analysis of the “homeless” problem.
Are you familiar with Kevin Dahlgren’s substack “Truth on the Streets”?
Most recent edition: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKLcMbzZhfhngsMKRDSNRCmNDzcGRPwlBgFQDkxQkkMKjtcppSZtqXmFnNZpcgKNLtRb
Through your personal experience you and Kevin both point up how ineffective uncoordinated bureaucracy has been at solving any aspect of this very complex situation.
The things you all are pointing out so eloquently seem so obvious. Why is it so hard to find leaders to deal with this?
I realize how naive this request sounds but it’s what I keep coming back to and would love to support some course of action that would actually work for all parties involved.
Hey Steve. Yes, I am familiar with Kevin Dahlgren. He was the first president of the board at We Heart Seattle, an organization that is disliked by many of the unhoused folks I work with. They claim that WHS throws away the belongings of campers during their much-publicized “camp cleanups,” and that videographers associated with WHS like Kevin D, Jonathan Choe (“Discovery Institute,” the org challenging the theory of evolution, and the org promoting a “lock ’em up” approach to homelessness; plus an influencer aligned with “Turning Point USA,” Charlie and now Erika Kirk’s far right org) and Andrea Suarez (WHS founder and ED) go out of their way to film drug users and/or the mentally ill in moments of crisis to demonize and even dehumanize all unhoused people. I don’t subscribe to all of this criticism. My org (The Ballard Task Force on Homelessness) sometimes works with WHS because Andrea does indeed help find housing and rehab services for some homeless folks. What I find troubling is the use of video, too often taken without the permission of the people being recorded, that doubles as anti-homeless propaganda and personal or non-profit fund-raising. Kevin, in particular, has a spotty record. He has been convicted of identity theft and theft of personal property. The Oregon Ethics Commission has fined him for violating state law when he worked in homeless services for the city of Gresham. I know he continues to serve as an influencer, but I personally wouldn’t trust him. YMMV
https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/ethics-commission-fines-homelessness-influencer-over-state-violations/
There seems to be a lot of unclear transitions here. The Mayor of Fred Meyer belongs in jail, OK, but … permanently? Please be real – what’s the solution?
DJ needs rehab and then a shelter. What are the odds that he makes it out of rehab in good shape? He’s been using fentanyl and probably the worst meth that can be found. Maybe 1 out of 10 DJs are going to successfully follow that path? 1 out of 20? What to do the 90% who aren’t? Can you even require them to enter that program, and stay with it? What to do with those who don’t – I don’t know, let’s say 70%? Same with Proud Stuart, shelter for life?
I don’t have any answers (well, I do, but no one would take it seriously), but to trust in a solution, we need to see it account for the full term, not just the beginning.
“… providers often don’t “buy in” to the [Coordinated Entry Program] due to distrust” – why distrust? Is there a solution for that?
A core pathology of Seattle’s non-profit problem, is that they go through the council. The organization then becomes a client of the council members who feed them, and are sure to turn out for campaign assistance. I’m sure the councilmembers aren’t consciously recruiting campaign help with city funds, but the effect is the same.
I’d like to pass along an anecdote related to the non-profit organization WHEEL from when our congregation was hosting a community.
WHEEL uses a self-governing model and is focused on only one-goal, which is to provide a safe-place for women to sleep out of the elements. As a consequence, WHEEL has very low costs which is primarily associated with modest rent to churches. With a self-governance model, there are no hired staff to monitor and administer each shelter. The other primary cost goes towards purchase of subsidized bus tickets for its clients to travel to social service appointments.
The City of Seattle though in its grants requires WHEEL to prove the effectiveness of its program in moving clients into stable housing. BUT that is not what WHEEL does. It only does overnight housing. That particular reporting requirement creates the need for an administrative staff and levels of bureaucracy that then means grants do not go as far.
Now multiple that data collection and tracking requirement by every housing NGO and every grant that the NGO’s apply for. The political mandate to produce data driven outcomes adds to the bureaucracy which means less funds are expended at point of contact to homeless individuals. Bloat and inefficiency.
One WHEEL client that I spoke to stated that she didn’t want the full services that other shelters provided. She did not want to be caught in the dependency trap that would keep her from becoming self-sufficient.
I would also add a caveat that there were women in the WHEEL program that were incapable of self-care and needed the more extensive services that other housing providers gave. The WHEEL model didn’t work here because of their inability to make decisions for themselves.
Thanks, Jeffrey, for this thoughtful comment.
Wheel (like Share, which often collaborates as Share-Wheel) provides an important service. Self-governed camps create a sense of belonging, and empower those residents. I have worked closely with Share-Wheel and residents at TC3 and TC4.
But there are two problems.
1) Those camps are high barrier. As you found, they GENERALLY exclude drug users and those with serious mental illness — which leaves those homeless folks out in the chaotic, uncoordinated jungle of unsheltered homelessness to try and fend for themselves. Which, as you noted, they typically cannot do. I share your concern about “dependency.” But when people are suffering from so much trauma (leading to mental illness, drug use or whatever), they almost inevitably become dependent. The goal should be to help people get back up on their feet and become independent.
2) The Share-Wheel model encourages some to stay in sanctioned camps too long. For some, the sense of belonging is so refershing, so welcome (after perhaps years of trauma and isolation) that they decide not to try and reintegrate into mainstream society. I think our goal should be not only to provide community, but to provide a pathway to reintegration. And that requires accountability (which requires data and more).
I do want to touch on a few things that I think are important.
We have to build trust. Homeless people have different stories and different problems. If we don’t build trust, they are much less likely to accept help or services of any kind. The streets are by no means safe, but they have a better idea of what to expect, and some homeless have built communities and trust.
We also have to take these existing communities into mind. Not as the only consideration, but as one of the considerations. Will splitting a community apart to address different individuals symptoms of homelessness actually cause these individuals to have more trouble with getting closer to self sustainability?
We also should look at the successes and failures of harm reduction and seriously consider using some of these approaches for some of these people.
And as much as I see a great benefit to having an accessible list of these individuals and different unique struggles they face so we can address them accurately and effectively across different organizations, we need a way to keep this information confidential. This information could be very detrimental in the wrong hands so we need to protect these individuals. Something similar to HIPAA, but easier to implement.
If we build trust, respect communities, and protect privacy, I think we will have one building block that could really help these people and this process.
I have live in Seattle for 70 years. I have noticed the incredible change that has taken place. The increase in the number of gigantic apartment complexes is mind boggling yet people can’t afford one. It occurs to me a really simple solution would be to build a communal living situation. Not tiny houses but a complex with units that are just a room with a bathroom. A communal kitchen for all to use. I have friends in Germany who told me about the complexes they have there for people to live in safety. Each complex would have a landlord who would oversee the rentals as well as keeping the complex organized. For that service they would get free rent.
I have rented and lived in these circumstances and found it to worked very well. It seems like a simple solution to a problem. It definitely would take some organization as well as financing.
Granted this is only a solution for homeless people who are not addicted or mentally ill. But it certainly would help those who are on the cusp.
I’ve inspected several of these small efficiency dwelling unit buildings. They provide units of less than 200 SF (a standard parking space used to be 20′ X 10′), with a shower stall/toilet, sink in the living area, furnished with a bed and mini-fridge. Shared kitchen on each floor with 2 ranges. Rooms rent for $1000/month. Sort of a modern age SRO. However, they don’t have elevators. The city put higher requirements on these kinds of units, and of course the virtual ban on evictions is difficult when dealing with the tenants who sometimes turn up for this kind of housing. The owners aren’t building any more of them.