What to do about the housing and homelessness crisis in Seattle continues to be a contentious and 
difficult, yet pervasive, issue for our city. With the cold, harsh winter weather fully upon on us, it continues to be a hot topic, but it seems most people are relying on politicians and government agencies to come up with a solution. The recent news of Nickelsville moving into Wallingford has brought that conversation and debate to a hyper-local level, stirring up strong emotions, fears, judgments, and accusations on both sides of the NIMBY vs. YIMBY camps.
But while the armchair activists, HALA haters, and NIMBY naysayers pontificate from their warm, comfy homes and high-tech devices, little is being done by our politicians to alleviate the dire situation of the almost 12,000 homeless people, most living on the cold, wet grass in thin nylon tents and sleeping bags, or worse—the stereotypical cardboard box on the icy cold pavement under a small entryway or alcove. Seeing as how our city government seems to be failing miserably, and the problem is getting worse, it may take a more grassroots, community effort to tackle this monumental epidemic.
And, in fact, there are some local efforts underway to help house the homeless. As reported by Valerie Schloredt in Yes! Magazine last month, one couple in Beacon Hill was the first to offer their backyard to a new program called the BLOCK Project, which has a mission of turning NIMBYs into YIMBYs—quite literally—by building a backyard tiny house on every (willing) Seattle city block for a (well-vetted) homeless individual. The BLOCK Project is an offshoot of Facing Homelessness, a project started by architect Rex Hohlbein to bring dignity and compassion to the homeless by sharing their stories and photos online.
I was happy, but not surprised, to discover that there are some compassionate folks right here in our own neighborhood who are also taking a grassroots approach to finding ways of helping neighbors in need. I recently met up with two Wallingford women who have taken matters into their own hands: Genevieve, who experienced firsthand the indignity that the homeless face on a daily basis and did her best to help a homeless Native American woman who was critically ill and desperately needed medical attention (and a warm bed to sleep in); and Virginia, who takes a more preventative/proactive approach by offering rooms in her home, on a temporary basis, to those folks in dire housing situations or community members needing time or space to plan safe housing.
Below is Genevieve’s story; Virginia’s story will follow in the next week or two. Both women hope that their stories will inspire others to take action, and perhaps even start a formal network of neighbors willing to offer temporary housing, supplies, or other support to help bridge the gap between the houseless and the housed.
What I Learned Last Summer
I met Angie (not her real name) in Meridian Park last summer. In fact, I met two Native American couples, a Caucasian couple, and three single men there. They were all in their thirties to early fifties and had all lived outside for some time. Over the summer, I got to know most of them, as my super-friendly spaniel pulled me along to deliver them kisses. Time and again, they talked wistfully about their lives and families before—when they had homes. It’s difficult to have a conversation with a homeless person when your circumstances are so different from theirs. Once, I asked Angie what time she went to bed. She looked at me like I was a child. “When it gets dark,” she said. After a few months of conversations, I realized how much I had to learn about her and myself.
People who live on the street become accustomed to being treated with disdain and verbal attacks. I experienced it myself from park workers, mothers pushing strollers, and school children, who assumed I was homeless too. It made me realize that unconscious bigotry against the poor and homeless is something we rarely think about. We may assume that they deserve their present situation because of character flaws, unwillingness to work, or ignorant choices made. Sadly, I found that it is often estrangement from family and friends that accounts for their homelessness, particularly after a life-changing event that leaves them without resources.
By the end of the summer, I could see that Angie was not doing well. In fact, she was dying—there on the cold cement base of the park gazebo. Over a week I took her to a women’s day shelter and to appointments with her doctors and social workers, all of whom were working hard but not finding her a suitable placement. She was too sick for a shelter but not acutely sick enough for the emergency room or respite center. Finally, after staying with me for four days, I had to give her up to Harborview so she could get treatment for her painful, unrelenting liver disease. I had wanted to spare her the indignity of the pipeline for the poor, which volleys people between the ER and shelters only when they meet the designated qualifications.
As I drove her to the ER, she told me that they would probably release her after three days. I couldn’t believe it, but she was right. She could barely walk with her walker and small bag of belongings when they gave her a bus ticket to the Downtown Emergency Shelter. There, she was able to get a bed-bug-ridden bed (not just the typical mattress), for she could not even get in and out of a bed without help. One of her social workers told me she was surprised I got her into a shelter at all.
After a week at the shelter, Angie collapsed and was sent back to Harborview. Four days later she was dead. Her hospice nurse told me that Angie’s deceased mother had visited her several times as she drifted in and out of consciousness. I was glad to hear that because she admired her mother so much and wanted to be more like her—a strong Native American woman who worked hard, always took care of herself and her family—and didn’t drink.
What did I learn? I learned how hard it is for homeless people to get help here. Many programs and shelters don’t accept couples. The couples I met did not want to leave their partners, who were their only source of physical and emotional support. I learned how privileged I was to have a home that provides me the physical and psychological security that I take for granted. But mostly, I learned how terrible it was to live without self-respect and human dignity, which is constantly being taken away with every bypasser’s scowl and untroubled verbal abuse.
In a December 8, 2017, article in The Guardian, Maia Szalavitz reports on academic studies linking violence and murder with inequality and the (usually male) perpetrator’s sense of being “dissed.” When you’re at the bottom, “matters of respect and disrespect loom disproportionately” large. The United States is now the most unequal society among Western developed countries. For the sake of the unsheltered and for our own sake, we can’t ignore this any longer. At least I won’t—for the sake of Angie and my friends at Meridian Park.
—Gen McCoy
I don’t think we need be divided into NIMBYs and YIMBYs. In fact that kind of binary approach is why Seattle has become a magnet for addicts and dealers, and a last resort for people with serious mental illness. You’ll note that I haven’t mentioned the word “homeless” yet, because homelessness is not the primary cause of this highly complex issue. The increase in homelessness has less to do with median home prices and more to do with using real estate as a crowbar to pry open policy and guilt while developers enjoy permitting they shouldn’t (expensive condos with no parking isn’t solving homelessness or anything other than nice spots for Amazon couples to fill).
We can’t treat addiction and health crises with real estate solutions, any more than we can cure cancer with aerospace innovation. Job 1 should be making Seattle highly unattractive to heroin dealers and their clientele. Job 2 should be finding adequate resources for the mentally and physically ill. Job 3, far down the list, should be housing solutions for the homeless who don’t have more immediate life-threatening concerns.
A succession of mayors have ignored or exacerbated the underlying causes of homelessness and then used it as a political scalpel and a moral cudgel. Stop. Take a deep breath. Treat the disease, not the symptom.
I would go as far as to say there should be two homelessness task forces – one addiction/crime/health focused, and a second (and this is where you’ll get mad at me) that deals with “real” homelessness and property/rent/real estate issues.
And none of this goes away until the incredibly efficient, easy and cheap heroin infrastructure is nuked from orbit by the SPD with the help of the city government.
“I don’t think we need be divided into NIMBYs and YIMBYs.”
Agreed. And it’s not even true. There are many people who are opposed to HALA who are very compassionate with regards to the homeless, and Genevieve’s one of them. And you’re right that it’s an addiction problem. The HALA pushers just say it’s a housing cost problem to shame us into accepting their agenda.
Seattle is not a magnet for addicts and dealers, and housing problem isn’t a drug problem. The worst drug problems in the US are in Appalachian states, places with no homeless problems. Seattle got serious homeless problem, but surely no drug issues anywhere close to West Virginia.
You think this is about drugs, simply because the housing problem will always hurt those at the bottom first, and the drug users are obviously at the bottom. You won’t cure homelessness even if there are no drug problems. If you want to “treat the disease and not the symptom”, you are looking at the wrong disease.
A good thing to do on a personal level is to open your home up to someone that needs a place to stay. That’s been our non-armchair approach to helping out.
As for policy, I think it’s worth considering that cities like baltimore and detroit are paying good money to tear down unoccupied housing. Every city is like a bathtub of cash with an open drain. You need companies to turn the spigot on and bring the cash in, it gets swirled around by local businesses, then it flows out through the steady drain of external merchandise, taxes, and services. Tech to date has been clustering in overpriced “creative class” cities like Seattle, causing our bathtubs to overflow. Meanwhile, cities in places like the rust belt are empty of cash and their states end up voting Trump in frustration. I hope Amazon HQ2 goes to a place that needs it.
Thank you for your measured response to this article, Frankie. The snarky comments about armchair activists, Hala haters etc. struck me as completely unnecessary and particularly corrosive.
My brother was homeless: a hopeless 50 year polysubstance abuser who died painfully and tragically in 2015 from the ravages of liver failure as a result of his alcohol, heroin, methamphetamine, crack, and whatever else abuse. He had no teeth, weighed maybe 130 pounds on a 6 foot frame, had lice, bedbugs, MRSA, and all the other ugly chronic conditions that afflict the long term addicted/homeless.I have written about him on this blog previously, when he was still alive. He was evicted from public housing in 2011 because of his bad behavior, not because he could not or would not pay his rent.
Never would I encourage any one of my neighbors to house my brother or any other mentally ill and/or addicted person. Frankie has done a good job of separating out some of the deeply systemic and complex issues that complicate the homeless picture here.
Your article will draw some well deserved responses, especially your comments about NIMBY and YIMBY. It really spoiled a lot of your thoughtful points. It was nice of you to help this person.
I think I know who you mean, if she was also outside of QFC, usually reading a book, has a husband and a little dog. I have provided many meals for them when they wanted them. Complex issue, homelessness. Walkinroun has a great point. There are good reasons to pause before sharing your home with an unknown homeless person. Heck, when we were housesharing on Bagley, we interviewed and accepted a woman who was just finishing her PhD at UW who seemed ok, until we came home at midnight (evening shift at UWMC) She also used heroin, cocaine which we did not know. We came home to five unknown men had keys to our house. We did not know. Sharing your home is complex, especially when you live alone, are female and elderly.
iowagirl,
I know the woman you mentioned but she is not “Angie.” BTW I was not sharing my home with “an unknown homeless person.” I knew her; I would not take just anyone into my house. Your example shows just how little you can know about someone who seems to be trustable. One thing I didn’t mention in my story is that I was scared the first night she stayed here and I didn’t know exactly why. She was way too sick to threaten me in any way.
Next day I was fine. I realized that I was uncomfortable for I had never before shared my space with a person who was not middle class. I knew her life and some of her values were radically different from mine. She had spent time in jail as so many homeless have, usually for short periods for getting drunk or rowdy. I knew also she had no one but me then.
As I talked to her over the next three days we discovered we had many things in common — liked TV shows like Golden Girls and Antiques Road Show, a great interest in Native American History, even politics, etc. In fact, I came to believe that we could be genuine friends, despite our differences, and regretted that we didn’t have more time together. I miss her.
Thank you for posting.
The thing that ought to transcend debates about HALA or whatever is the puny cost of shelter by right relative to Seattle’s wealth. The Times covered this during the mayoral race. New York City (due to the state constitution and a lawsuit) funds “shelter by right.” At 10X our population, they have the same number of unsheltered people. In NYC, this costs $1B a year.
If I read the article right, cutting our unsheltered population down to somewhere between 1/10 of what it is and 0 would cost $81M (…that’s million) – $20M in current spend + additional $60M.
It’s appalling and heartbreaking we haven’t just done this already.
Article: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/cary-moon-supports-a-right-to-shelter-for-the-homeless-what-does-that-mean-for-seattle/
Bryan, in a recent conversation with a homeless expert, they reminded me that we can build a shelter room for every homeless person in the city and we’d still have “hundreds” of people living on the street because those people don’t want to have any rules that might impede their substance use. Hundreds are better than thousands, to be sure…but I also think it doesn’t beggar credibility to think that other folks will come here when they hear we’re housing everyone. When does the largesse dry up?
“When does the largesse dry up?”
Not anytime soon, apparently. The size of Seattle’s government has exploded in recent years, (Thanks, Ed!) and nearly half of it’s 13,000 employees get paid over $100K a year (many earn far more than that) What do you suppose the odds are of Sawant and Mike O’Brien proposing a head tax or an income tax on those rich bureaucrats?
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/seattle-went-on-a-government-spending-spree-with-a-deluge-of-taxes-six-figure-pay-and-officials-eager-to-do-more/
New York City makes it work – just do whatever they are doing – it’s a heck of a lot easier for literally tens millions of people to get to New York from the Boston-DC corridor vs “somewhere else” to Seattle,, and NY hasn’t been overwhelmed by an influx of homeless folks.
“New York City makes it work – just do whatever they are doing…”
I agree, we should. Many cities have voluntary relocation programs, and NYC busses and flies more of it’s homeless out of their city than any other city in the country. They even fly them to foreign countries, not a bad deal! Airline tickets aren’t cheap, but it’s totally worth the expense when you consider we’re spending at least $16K to $20K per homeless person here in Seattle. Cities in California and other west coast states have been bussing their problems up to Seattle for a long time. And Hawaii has been known to fly their homeless here.
Maybe it’s time we return to sender.
Notion of enabling people to get to family or potential job sounds good..
Implementation by most cities…seems like its crap.
But NYC spends $500k out of $1.1B on relocation:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study
Interesting article. What is that $1.1B figure you cited about? I didn’t see it in the article. It seems that 500K is money well spent, and if I was NYC I’d spend a lot more, specially considering your example of San Fran:
“San Francisco has one of the largest homeless populations in America, and it is an expensive problem to have. Once the cost of policing and medical services is taken into account, each chronically homeless person is estimated to cost the city $80,000 annually. Bus tickets cost a few hundred dollars….
Over the last 12 years, San Francisco’s homeless population has grown from around 6,200 to just over 7,600, according to the city’s counts. During that period, a small number of people in other cities have been given free tickets to relocate to San Francisco. A far larger number – more than 10,500 homeless people – have been moved out of San Francisco on buses.”
My god, Eighty. Thousand. Dollars! If that’s what each chronically homeless person cost them, imagine what they’d be spending if they didn’t have the bussing program.
$1.1B was in the Times article linked aboive
That is exactly right. Comb through newspaper articles where ‘homeless’ people have been interviewed and admitted turning down offers of housing by various organizations because they “didn’t want to follow the rules” at places that don’t let them shoot up and drink all day on their premises, get in fights and run their illegal chop shops.
I cannot wrap my brain around this whole issue. From the homeless guy who apparently lives on stone Way N who occasionally screams and yells at passerbys from his lawn chair.. to the people who camp out in front of QFC to the man there yesterday, standing , who walked up to asking for rmonery( kind of scary– called agressive panhandling by police) to who is really helpless to how can I be safe as a woman alone just wanting to walk down my street where I pay a lot in rent to wanting to park my car in a parking lot and not have to run into the street to get otu of the way of a panhandler. Who do we help? how can we help people and also feel safe? Who would I bring into my apartment?
From my experience and reading, a precipitating factor of homelessness starts with the break down of the pre-homeless person’s support system — family and friends. Overworked social workers do all they can to get their caseload into suitable housing. But, unfortunately, housing is only the beginning.
Imagine yourself assigned to a housing situation where you know no one among the homeless you’re housed with. I know that those homeless who don’t do drugs look down on those who do and would rather avoid them. Thus they camp. But they are all thrown together, when the agencies can find housing for them, apparently with little time to consider whether a community can be created.
The homeless community has plenty of reason to distrust each other. That’s why they feel grateful if they can establish even one trusted relationship. They are inclined to stay with those whom they know and trust and some of those are people who do not encourage the best behaviors. I am trying to establish trusting relationships with a few homeless I know.
Like many of us (I know from the students II teach) they need regular supervision, that is, someone they have to answer to to make sure they get to their doctor’s or a court apt. If we had volunteers, like those who volunteer to be big brothers and sisters, and who would “adopt” one or two of them, I think that would help a lot. Many of them just need to know that someone cares.
This can work only on a small, informal scale, I believe. So the more volunteers we have the more progress I think we can make.
Some of these are simply problems one lives with when individualism is advocated. In some culture it’s normal to take in troubled third cousins or friends to live with you, and in the US it’s not abnormal for parents to shut out grown son. The social stigma for an adult to not being able to support oneself fully is also very strong. That means culturally the support system for everybody in the US is weak. Culturally, Seattle is even more so. The fact that high percentage of people in the area were not born in the area also makes it worse.
Take the homeless person that died in Meridian Park recently for example, and you can see all that. He’s away from family here by himself, without the stable job he was looking for. And the problem is that once the situation get worst to a certain degree, it’s very hard coming back, and recovery would be very hard work.
The random act of kindness from strangers really can only help those only need a small amount of help, hence Cathy’s question about how do we even know where to apply that. Solutions need to be more systematic, but the same culture that “helped” many people falling into despair is also preventing from solutions from implemented.
Good points, TJ. Obviously, the real source of the problem is poverty and poverty wages. Many American companies are sitting on mountains of money, a large part of it overseas so that they don’t have to pay American corporate tax rates. Apple and Google are two of these. Until our tax code that privileges the wealthy changes, I don’t see much improving. What I’m really advocating is treating the homeless with some dignity. Treating them as human beings, not animals. If you get to know their names and talk with them a little, that might raise their spirits. An understanding of the structural nature of poverty and that they are not solely responsible for their condition will go far. Our oligarchic, and yes I’ll even say, corrupt federal government is primarily to blame, in my view. But the ethic of “rugged individualism,” which is mostly a myth, also makes Americans feel uniquely responsible for their homelessness.
@Berta – “Obviously, the real source of the problem is”…I’m afraid there is no one obvious source of homelessness. Choosing one over another for whatever reason – agenda, ignorance, what have you – only postpones a broad improvement. The sourceS of the problem are: income inequality, opioid and substance addiction, mental illness and, often, a lethal cocktail of all the above. These must all be addressed in a synchronized, metrics-driven, evidence-based means, with adequate national, state, county and city funding. Until then, we’re just spending hundreds of millions to tread water, at very best.
We need a residential mental health hospital in western King County so that people can get help while reestablishing connections with friends and family.