Seattle Forward

Finally, an Opportunity to Create a Compassionate, Person-Centered Plan of Action on Homelessness and Tent Encampments

It's time to establish a plan of action to address the continuing crisis of unsheltered homelessness and tent encampments in Seattle. Charter Amendment 29 does exactly this and you can help it qualify for the November election.

 

Nearly six years ago the city and county governments declared homelessness an emergency, yet the crisis rages on with approximately 3,700 people living outside in parks, playgrounds, sports fields, and on sidewalks and streets. What’s more, there is no plan in place to eliminate the need for people to sleep outside; the encampments have essentially become permanent. Charter Amendment 29 establishes a compassionate, person-centered plan to bring people indoors by expanding access to urgently needed behavioral health treatment services for mental health and substance use disorders and creating new emergency housing units.

 

Charter Amendment 29 petitions are now available for registered Seattle voters’ signature. We need 33,060 valid signatures by June 25th to qualify for the November ballot. You can help us reach this goal.

Build More Tiny Homes

The most recent estimate of the number of people living unsheltered in Seattle was 3,738. These are homeless individuals, many with health or substance use challenges, that need a better, warmer and safer place to stay.

 

Last week a friend invited me to visit a warehouse in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood where an assembly line is constructing tiny homes to provide safer and more secure housing for homeless individuals.

 

Here’s what I found amazing about this operation.

 

Sound Foundations NW runs the assembly line with just one paid employee, Barb Oliver, director of operations. All of the construction workers are volunteers from community and church groups, service clubs, and individuals who show up to help.

 

The tiny homes are about 100 square feet in size, have a lockable front door, two windows, heavy-duty insulation, and electricity. They are small, for sure, but so much better than living in a tent in a park, on a sidewalk, or in a vehicle.

 

Because all construction labor is by volunteers — you don’t need specialized skills, they have tasks for everyone — the cost of a tiny home is only about $3,800 for materials and they’re built to last 20 years. (More volunteer builders are needed; click here to sign up. You can see how the tiny homes are built for yourself by clicking here.)

 

Tiny homes are effective in transitioning people out of homelessness. A recent report showed that 34% of tiny home residents eventually moved to permanent housing. That’s a success rate better than more expensive forms of emergency shelter (23%).

 

I was so impressed by the tiny home assembly line I quickly made a donation to support the work. You can, too. It’s a way to become directly involved in addressing the crisis of homelessness in Seattle.

 

Sound Foundations NW accepts donations through the Low Income Housing Institute, one of the organizations which uses the tiny homes and provides case management services to their residents. You can donate here. Be sure to select Sound Foundations NW in the drop-down donation category/designation menu.

 

All donations go toward building materials and supplies — 100%. Here are some examples of how your dollars can do good work:

 

$135 pays for tiny home flooring materials.

 

$180 buys a 5-gallon bucket of paint.

 

$215 buys the two windows.

 

$300 buys insulation.

 

$665 buys the lumber for the frame.

 

$3,800 pays for one complete tiny home. Any donation amount will be greatly appreciated.

 

Tiny homes are not a permanent solution to homelessness, but they are a safe, secure and warm alternative to living outside.

 

Let’s do our part to provide the materials the volunteers will put to excellent use. It’s a step in addressing the encampments that have disrupted our parks, sidewalks and other public spaces.

 

I hope you will join me in supporting Sound Foundations Northwest. Let me know if you do.

Tent Encampments Are Here to Stay Unless . . .

The tents, dilapidated vehicles, and piles of trash you see in almost every Seattle neighborhood have become an enduring fixture. So has the human suffering.

We should quickly prioritize addressing these tent encampments and follow the lead of other cities that have successfully tackled this issue. Since 2015, when the mayor declared a homelessness emergency, we have spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars — and there are success stories to tell — but, tragically, there is no comprehensive plan to remove these illegal encampments or to help those living in them. Not now. Not any time this year or next. Not in five years. They are essentially permanent.

That’s because the City Council’s preferred approach has been one of tolerance and accommodation, evidenced by their elimination last fall, despite Mayor Jenny Durkan’s strong objection, of the Navigation Teams — outreach workers paired with police officers — that successfully nudged people in encampments to accept shelter and social services.

The City Council’s laissez faire approach furthers the terrible damage of substance abuse and mental health disorders for the majority of encampment dwellers. It’s also an approach that denies the public access to

Seattle Needs A Vision Reset . . . Quickly

Seattle needs a vision reset.

The mayor is not seeking re-election. The school superintendent has resigned. The police chief was pushed aside by the city council. The coronavirus pandemic has left us isolated. Downtown is desolate. Where and how we work is being transformed. Many essential workers are struggling mightily to keep up and pay the bills. Our infrastructure systems are inadequately maintained. First responders are overloaded and stretched thin. Campers have taken over many of our parks, greenspaces and sidewalks, preventing others from accessing them safely. Ideological and political divides are pushing us further and further into our dogmatic corners. Herein, opportunity presents itself.  

The urban theorist Richard Florida argues cities and surrounding regions will thrive as we move beyond the pandemic, just as they have following previous calamities: “Covid-19 is a once-in-a-century catastrophe, but it also hands us a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild communities to be

Do You Want Tent Encampments Almost Everywhere in Seattle?

A shorter version of this article was first published in The Seattle Times earlier this afternoon.

 

Three Seattle City Council members — Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Kshama Sawant — want to permit tent encampments almost everywhere citywide.

 

This ill-conceived, very dangerous legislation (Council Bill 119796) would effectively allow camping across Seattle — including on sidewalks (if campers leave a 4-foot accessible pathway), planting strips, parks, open spaces and industrial lands.

 

Astonishingly, the council members even want to block police officers from removing encampments when someone calls police seeking removal of campers.

 

Bill Gates Warned Us. Will We Finally Heed His Advice

While we are hunkered down at home, I’ve been thinking about why our country wasn’t at all prepared for this respiratory pandemic that is sweeping the globe.

 

Not being prepared is going to cost us a lot in human and economic costs. We've already seen how very painful and disruptive the coronavirus is going to be; it will be even more so if we minimize the counsel of scientists and public health experts.

 

Last night, I watched Bill Gates as he was interviewed by Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN. I learned that Gates warned us five years ago, in April 2015, that the United States—frankly, the whole world—was not prepared at all for a respiratory virus like we are experiencing today.

 

Here’s Bill Gates issuing his warning back in 2015 and his 5-step solution. The video runs just over 8 minutes. It's worth the time, for certain.

During last night’s CNN interview, Gates acknowledged that none of his 2015 recommendations have been fully implemented.

 

Why is this? Why is it so difficult for us to implement systems that will protect us?

 

In Gates’ analysis, the closest system to the public health response capability he has advocated is the military—they train, stage war games, have reserves that can be quickly mobilized, use technology wisely, and are constantly assessing system weaknesses and threats to our national security. Gates would like our public health system to do the same.

 

I guess we shouldn't be surprised at system failures. They are all around us, especially in government systems (or lack of them). Take the threat of climate change. Our response has been piecemeal, scattered, and inadequate. Take poverty. We have designed multiple programs to eliminate poverty, and spent billions, yet intergenerational poverty persists and families wanting help must navigate a confusing system labyrinth that most of us would give up on very quickly. Take education. We have failed to prepare many of our children for today's global economy, especially black and brown children, and education inequality rages on. Take criminal justice. We have been very slow to adopt reforms that could bring less crime and less punishment. Take homelessness. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in our region in recent years to solve the crisis of unsheltered people and yet haven't seemed to have made a dent.

 

On top of these failures—and, I'm sure, there are many others—we have allowed what I call a "peanut butter philosophy of politics" to reign supreme, causing great harm to the common good. This "peanut butter" style of governing spreads resources too thin, placing emphasis on keeping everyone happy and diluting any opposition to a given approach or program. So, rather than investing deeply to achieve significant change, we spread our investments—like thinly spreading peanut butter—across multiple programs and organizations, lessening the overall impact. Instead, we should carefully follow the science of what works, invest deeply in those proven approaches, and achieve much greater impact.

 

Here's an example. We know from nearly 50 years of academic research that high-quality preschool for three- and four-year old children can change a child's life outcomes—better education attainment, better health, higher earning power when entering the adult workforce, less criminal justice system involvement. We all would welcome these positive outcomes. Yet, in Washington state we invest only about 1 percent of our state budget in early learning programs. Washington ranks in the lower third of states in access to quality early learning programs. (Former State Representative Ruth Kagi and I wrote about the all important birth-to-five years in this piece in the Puget Sound Business Journal.)

 

Researchers at the University of Chicago, and others, have documented that investing in high-quality early learning efforts is the most important and best investment we can make for our children. Last year, these same researchers documented that these investments can eliminate intergenerational poverty. Who wouldn't want these outcomes? And, yet, we don't make the level of investment that's needed. That's because competing demands obscure our focus on achieving the greatest impact, so we invest thinly—spreading the peanut butter—and allow inequity to march on.

 

The challenge of spreading the peanut butter isn't about right and wrong, good ideas or bad. It's about the rigor of investing to achieve the greatest return, being keenly focused on the desired outcomes, and having the ability to say "no" to other good but less effective ideas. It's about elected leaders leading and insisting on accountability.

 

Bill Gates recognized a problem many years ago that we are now living through. He suggested practical steps to get ready. We didn't act as we should have. Let's not do the same with the other pressing social and political problems staring us in the face, especially those where we know what to do but can't seem to act effectively.

University District Rezone Adopted by Council

Tuesday afternoon, the Council unanimously approved the U District rezone which is part of the city government’s effort to increase density and housing affordability in our urban centers and villages, such as the U District. I voted in favor of this legislation for the following reasons:

Creating More Affordable Housing: The Right and Wrong Way

UPDATE to the post below: On Wednesday, the Council's Budget Committee voted 7-2 (Juarez and myself opposed) to use debt financing of $29 million dollars to build affordable housing in the city. As I argue below, this is a very bad decision. The Council will take a final vote on this matter on Monday, November 21 at 2 p.m.

Seattle city government is on a path to create 20,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years, the biggest surge in the supply of affordable housing we’ve ever seen in Seattle.

To accomplish this ambitious goal, we placed a measure on the August 2016 ballot that renewed and doubled the city’s affordable housing tax levy. Seattle voters approved this tax increase by 71 percent, a strong affirmation of Seattle’s commitment to caring for our most vulnerable neighbors. This tax will raise $290,000,000 for rental housing development and preservation, home-ownership assistance, homelessness prevention, and housing stability services. 

We adopted new laws that require every builder of commercial office space and multi-family housing (e.g. apartments, condominiums) to directly contribute funds to building affordable housing or to build units on their own. This mandatory affordable housing requirement is unprecedented for Seattle.

Homeless Encampments: A Better Solution

Last night, I joined Mayor Murray, and Councilmembers Bagshaw and Juarez in announcing a much better solution to the challenges of ad hoc camp sites popping up across Seattle.

Here’s a very brief outline of what we announced:

1. City government will open up to four new authorized encampments similar to those already operating in Ballard, Interbay and at Othello in southeast Seattle. At least one of these encampments will be managed as a low-barrier facility, meaning individuals will not be automatically excluded because of chemical addiction, mental health issues or other typical barriers. While not a perfect solution, these organized and well-managed encampments are much better than ad hoc encampments in our parks, greenbelts or city sidewalks.
   
   
2. City government will increase street outreach and improve our approach. Outreach teams will prioritize moving people off the street and to safe indoor locations, including emergency shelter, rapid re-housing services, and permanent housing.
3. Ad hoc camp removal protocols will be changed to reflect a triage approach. Camp sites in parks or on sidewalks will still not be allowed and will be subject to immediate removal, as will sites where violence and serious criminal behavior is occurring. Other sites will only be removed if shelter or housing services are offered and declined. This triaging reflects a humane and balanced approach that allows us to appropriately address public health and safety concerns while recognizing that some ad hoc camping is likely to continue until the city addresses the necessary long-term fixes to our homelessness response.
4. Focus on housing first, a practical approach that began in Seattle many years ago that acknowledges that the best first step is to get people housed with minimal conditions or barriers. King County, United Way, All Home and city government have agreed to new strategic principles that emphasize the housing-first approach. Everything we do should be focused on moving people from the street into a warm, safe place.

The Mayor has indicated that he will provide more specific details to Council next week.

Homeless Encampments: An Update

It has been four weeks since my colleagues’ introduced legislation that would create a right to camp on public property throughout the city. I opposed introduction of this legislation.

This photograph was taken last Friday at University Playground on Northeast 50th Street. This particular park includes a children's playground, a tennis court and a sports field. This is not uncommon in city parks and playgrounds.

In this update, I want tell you what’s happened since, why it is so important for the people of Seattle to remain keenly engaged in the discussion, and efforts to change this legislation. This update gives my perspective on three important issues surrounding this proposed new law.

1. How this legislation will impact you, your family, and neighbors.
    
2. The elephant in the room that’s being ignored.
    
3. A much better solution.

The Impact on You, Your Family and Neighbors

As introduced on September 6, the proposed law establishes a new right to camp on public property across Seattle, including in our parks and greenbelts, and on sidewalks and planting strips. The law mandates that city government make public spaces available for camping in tents or vehicles. It creates complicated rules and processes that must be followed before anyone can be removed from a camping site. If anyone is removed, the city government must provide “adequate and accessible” long-term housing. Finally, if any of this process is violated, the proposed law establishes a $250 penalty per violation to be paid to the individual camper by city taxpayers.
 
Needless to say, this new law is not the balanced approach we all deserve, an approach that weighs and balances compassion with our public health and safety