Ask a Seattleite what they consider homelessness, allow them to discuss for a minute, and—particularly in the event that they’re a Very Political Particular person—you can also make an excellent guess as to the place they stand on the town’s political spectrum.
Within the decade since metropolis and county leaders declared homelessness a civil emergency, attitudes have crystallized into camps with distinctive methods of speaking in regards to the disaster, who’s accountable, and what to do about it. Sadly for the left, our story isn’t working.
The brief model goes one thing like this: The basis reason for homelessness is a extreme scarcity of inexpensive housing, the results of neoliberal underinvestment in sponsored housing and an extended historical past of exclusionary zoning, intensified by Seattle’s tech increase. The answer is to fund housing, shelter, and providers at scale; sweeping individuals from one place to a different is merciless and ineffective.
There’s a number of fact in that little paragraph, however it has failed to carry the allegiance of the common Seattle voter. This could matter to us, for the sake of the almost 10,000 individuals residing exterior in King County and the numerous 1000’s extra sleeping in shelters or unstably housed; we’d like political energy to enact insurance policies that work. However the left ought to care for an additional purpose, too. Over the previous decade, homelessness has turn into a real wedge situation in Seattle politics. The failure of our strategy to this disaster has helped to elect leaders who are actually busy undermining different, undeniably fashionable progressive-left priorities, from staff’ rights to multimodal transportation to taxing the wealthy. Reclaiming this situation may imply reclaiming energy for the progressive left.
How We Misplaced
I watched this narrative ship run aground, and never as a mere witness. Some seven years in the past, I used to be pushing the left’s story on homelessness as a part of a coalition supporting the “head tax,” a modest enterprise tax that might have expanded inexpensive housing, shelter, and homeless providers. Huge enterprise teamed up with NIMBY varieties to kill the tax, and in so doing they instructed a really completely different story: The place we noticed inadequate assets, they denounced a do-nothing metropolis council squandering taxpayers’ cash whereas tents, needles, and crime proliferated within the parks and on the streets. With an energetic help from The Seattle Instances opinion part, their model prevailed, and the council repealed the tax barely a month after unanimously passing it into legislation. It was a disorienting expertise, to say the least.
The next 12 months, large enterprise tried arduous to make Seattle’s elections all about homelessness. Unhappily for them, they overreached. Huge-dollar marketing campaign spending, culminating in a splashy million from Amazon, launched a brand new theme: Did voters need a metropolis council purchased and paid for by our company overlords? The reply was no. Quickly after, probably the most progressive council in residing reminiscence handed a far bigger tax on large enterprise – the JumpStart Seattle payroll expense tax—within the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, committing the majority of the long-term spending to inexpensive housing.
Alas, the drama didn’t finish there. The company mind belief licked its wounds and regrouped round a brand new technique. In 2021, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce introduced that it might now not endorse or spend on candidates. As a substitute, it might give attention to points. First up? Homelessness. That 12 months companies spent large on a poll initiative referred to as Compassion Seattle.
Whereas Compassion Seattle promised to drive the town to get severe about its main disaster, the left noticed a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Language that sounded nice to most voters (compassion! housing and providers! tent-free parks!) threatened to enshrine sweeps within the metropolis’s constitution, some feared. Others smelled a ruse to polarize that 12 months’s elections, forcing candidates to take sides on the measure and casting progressive contenders in a foul gentle. The initiative was struck down in courtroom earlier than it reached the poll, however it nonetheless reverberated within the elections, and the left misplaced the races for mayor and metropolis legal professional, together with one among two citywide council seats.
Two years later, with homelessness nonetheless on voters’ minds, large enterprise and its centrist allies lastly obtained their council supermajority. Our councilmembers now surprise why we let individuals reject presents of shelter, and why we fund outreach to unsheltered homeless individuals in any respect; their signature legislative achievement up to now is banning individuals accused of sure drug or prostitution associated crimes from massive swaths of the town. And JumpStart? They revoked the dedication to a long-term spending plan centered on housing. Boy, did we lose.
What can we be taught from this saga? It’s tempting to argue that it doesn’t matter what the left mentioned or tried to do about homelessness. There are such a lot of the explanation why seen homelessness surged throughout the pandemic; even when native elected leaders did every little thing proper, they’d be susceptible accountable. Anyway, in 2021 and 2023 policing was the upper profile situation. And all points apart, a “kick the bastards out” vibe was virtually inevitable as voters strove to maneuver on from a traumatic few years. The highly effective opponents of Seattle’s progressive council had no scarcity of fodder; a backlash was overdetermined.
All this can be true. However, I’ve come to consider that there are some severe defects within the left’s strategy to the homelessness disaster. Even when smarter selections might not have prevented our current losses, they might assist us to carry energy the following time round — and to really make progress on this thorniest of social issues.
What We’re Mistaken About
The central weak point of the left narrative on homelessness is a behavior of deflection that makes it sound, at greatest, as if we’re in denial in regards to the grim actuality on the streets; at worst, like we embrace it. Medicine? Housed individuals use them too. Anyway, it’s widespread for individuals to get addicted after they turn into homeless. Trash? Truly, a number of it’s opportunistically dumped from passing automobiles. Bodily excretions? We want public restrooms. Shoplifting and crime? The claims are overblown. Anyway, homeless persons are extra typically the victims of crime than the perpetrators. Really feel unsafe? It’s all in your head, actually you simply don’t need to take a look at poverty.
It’s not that there’s no fact to those rejoinders. However they quantity to trivializing what anybody who spends a while strolling round Seattle’s streets can plainly observe: Individuals with acute psychological sickness whose conduct is disturbed and sometimes aggressive. Individuals utilizing medicine, typically incapacitated or handed out on the bottom. Individuals in dire want of medical care, struggling and in some instances slowly dying in public. And trash, and excrement, and damaged home windows.
I feel it’s potential to acknowledge these realities with out sensationalizing them á la “Seattle is Dying,” and with out demonizing or dehumanizing the people who find themselves struggling by way of them. After we don’t, or once we accomplish that utilizing solely probably the most euphemistic and sanitized language, we depart a void that’s too simply crammed by right-wing narratives and false options. These achieve traction as a result of a minimum of they’re pointing to what individuals see and proclaiming it unacceptable.
It’s true that homelessness is a housing drawback, and in a high-cost area like King County a missed paycheck or a health care provider’s invoice might be sufficient to tip somebody over the sting. However it’s additionally true that drug dependancy and psychological sickness typically precipitate the lack of housing, and that when somebody falls into that vortex, on a person stage, housing alone is probably not sufficient to tug them out. Most of us on the left do acknowledge this, however we are likely to downplay it and ignore a few of its implications.
When, for instance, it’s mentioned that homeless individuals reject presents of shelter, the widespread left reply (past declaring that shelters are persistently full) is a litany of probably the most cheap of causes: many shelters don’t accommodate {couples} or pets; there’s nowhere to retailer belongings; it’s important to arrive late and depart early. All true, and many individuals would gladly transfer into shelter or housing with out these limitations; that’s why tiny homes are fashionable. However it’s additionally true that some individuals’s causes are extra sophisticated and fewer positive to elicit sympathy. They might worry going by way of withdrawal and never need to disrupt the methods they’ve developed for acquiring and utilizing medicine. They might have paranoid delusions that make them keep away from shelters, or disruptive behaviors that get them kicked out.
Even when such instances are rarer than those we deflect to, the individuals for whom medicine or psychological sickness are vital components in staying exterior are typically extra seen and extra more likely to break legal guidelines and behave in ways in which make different individuals uncomfortable or afraid. After we’re squeamish about admitting this and have little to say about what to do about it, we open the door for punitive insurance policies and narratives that blame homeless individuals, portraying them as loafers who’re coddled by handouts and don’t need to comply with guidelines.
I’m not suggesting that the left chill out our insistence that inexpensive housing at scale is required to resolve the homelessness disaster. Too typically our perspective is one among bland assent that we do want extra voluntary psychological well being and dependancy remedy providers, coupled with assist for “hurt discount” methods like protected consumption websites. Sadly, this comes throughout as an unserious plan that may solely amplify the chaos. We additionally want to speak extra about psychological sickness and drug dependancy, and present ourselves to be the adults within the room with regards to options.
How We Can Win
So what can we do? If the left desires to win, we have to preach past the choir. The place higher to search out the common Seattle voter than within the remark part? “Left Leaning Patriot,” who wrote this response to a New York Instances article on homelessness, truly hails from Mercer Island, however I feel represents nicely the type of individual whose assist we will’t afford to lose:
“Homelessness is a really nuanced and multi-layered drawback and clearly there isn’t any one-size matches all answer. I need to be compassionate, however it’s fatiguing. It makes me unhappy to see the homeless camped out on metropolis streets and parks. It additionally angers me to see the homeless leaving piles of rubbish and feces on those self same streets and parks. I don’t like fearing for my security strolling the streets at night time after going to a restaurant or worrying if my automotive will probably be damaged into or vandalized. I do know many individuals are of their dire state of affairs on account of a foul state of affairs or just unhealthy luck. On the identical time, I do know there are individuals who don’t need “assist” and select to be on the streets, many typically victimizing others in the identical state of affairs by promoting medicine, trafficking intercourse, and so forth. Billions being spent with very restricted outcomes. Our society is damaged. I don’t have the reply, however one thing must be executed…”
Bingo. If this individual lived in West Seattle, they may have voted for Lisa Herbold in 2019, then Rob Saka in 2023. Queen Anne? Andrew Lewis, then Bob Kettle. Leschi? Possibly even Kshama Sawant, then Pleasure Hollingsworth. You get the drift. We had their vote, then we misplaced it. How can we win it again?
First, it’s not sufficient to say “cease the sweeps.” We have to supply a optimistic and practical plan for the way the individuals residing in tents within the park close to Left Leaning Patriot’s home are going to turn into stably sheltered or housed, releasing that area for its supposed makes use of. This could possibly be one thing just like the JustCARE program that PDA, REACH, ACRS and Chief Seattle Membership pioneered briefly throughout the pandemic, which succeeded in transferring chronically homeless individuals with advanced challenges into low-barrier housing by way of intensive and individualized outreach. (This strategy has continued within the state-level Encampment Decision Program, whose future funding is unsure.) It’s fantastic if this takes longer than a sweep, even for much longer. However it may possibly’t be postpone to some indefinite utopian future.
Second, we should be clear, in our phrases and within the options we name for, in regards to the diploma of ongoing assist that some individuals want. Even when remedy is out there for somebody in disaster, too typically they’re ejected per week or two later with no significant follow-up. It’s simple to do some hand-waving about “housing first,” which in precept is completely appropriate. However it’s turn into clear that almost all everlasting supportive housing, in its present type, isn’t arrange for the individuals with probably the most extreme challenges. And the fentanyl disaster has made every little thing exponentially worse. Individuals want a method to make use of medicine safely once they lapse with out discovering themselves homeless once more. Others want consideration and intervention earlier than conduct associated to psychological sickness will get them evicted. Even when somebody has targets for restoration or stability, a plan, motivation to pursue it, and folks supporting them, it’s a rocky street. It’s simple to hate on householders and enterprise homeowners who worry that shelter or supportive housing will carry medicine and dysfunction to their neighborhood. But when there’s not ample staffing and expert assist for residents who want it, their issues aren’t completely unfounded.
Lastly, we have to acknowledge that for a really small proportion of individuals, even this isn’t sufficient. They want long run psychiatric care in an institutional setting; for a number of, involuntary dedication stands out as the solely method to carry them off the streets. There are additionally a really small quantity whose behaviors are too harmful for a communal residing state of affairs. This needn’t be distinguished in our narrative, by any means, however we do want to have the ability to acknowledge it: each as a result of it’s true and since denying it undermines our credibility once we say, additionally really, that what the overwhelming majority of homeless individuals want is solely an inexpensive house.
Clearly, a neighborhood authorities like Seattle’s can’t do all of these items alone. It should require assets from the federal and state ranges and coordination between many presently disjointed techniques and organizations. However we on the left want to have the ability to inform this story, or one prefer it that really responds to individuals’s perceptions of the homelessness disaster as they stroll round our metropolis streets. And once we subsequent have political affect, we have to lend our assist to constructing no matter elements of this infrastructure we will, to reveal its effectiveness even when at a small scale.
Within the meantime, we should guarantee that these now in energy don’t get a move for his or her failures to meaningfully tackle the homelessness disaster. Again in 2021, I argued towards Compassion Seattle and, by way of my work within the Transit Riders Union, performed a job in booting it off the poll; now I ponder if that was a mistake. Had it handed, which it certainly would have, individuals could be asking extra questions in regards to the 2,000 new models of “emergency or everlasting housing with providers together with entry to behavioral well being providers and vital staffing to serve individuals with the very best boundaries” that the town was alleged to create inside a 12 months of its adoption, and which now-Mayor Harrell retained as a marketing campaign promise. And the initiative’s language on encampment removals, whereas obscure, arguably would have given unsheltered homeless individuals extra safety from arbitrary dislocation than they presently have. As it’s, it’s too simple for our mayor and council to move the buck and blame the dysfunctional King County Regional Homelessness Authority for the shortage of progress.
What’s Radical on Homelessness?
I can already hear one doubtless response from my fellow leftists: “Katie, you’re simply telling us to maneuver to the appropriate on homelessness! You’re changing into a cranky centrist in your center age.” However I don’t suppose that’s true.
If the foundation of homelessness is commodified housing, then crisis-level psychological sickness and drug use might be seen, likewise, as creatures of twenty first century capitalism. Psychosis and dependancy each feed on the alienation, isolation, and sense of meaninglessness which have adopted the creeping marketization of each side of social life. Poverty worsens each. And whereas the unhealthy previous days of long-stay psychiatric hospitals could also be more durable to romanticise than different elements of the twentieth century welfare state, their dismantling, the deinstitutionalization of their sufferers, and the failure to switch them with the promised community-based care are all a part of the identical story of neoliberal defunding and privatization.
Many leftists deeply mistrust the establishments — governments, housing and repair suppliers — which might be supposedly making an attempt to repair these crises, typically with good purpose. However there’s merely no method ahead that bypasses the state and the nonprofit sector; “mutual support,” or grassroots service provision, is nice however it’s a tiny band-aid. As leftists we should always see these establishments, not as enemies, however as vessels that may include the pursuits of the ruling courses, or the unconventional and humanistic ambitions of our actions — normally, advanced admixtures of each. They’re a terrain of wrestle, and its our job to construct them up as instruments fitted to our activity.
Leftists are rightly motivated by a want to uphold homeless individuals’s humanity, dignity, and company. However this turns into an odd type of libertarianism once we fail to acknowledge how psychological sickness and drug use can impair individuals’s means to make good choices for themselves and might lead individuals to behave in ways in which hurt themselves and others. We have to discover an strategy that grapples with this actuality, whereas additionally upholding individuals’s humanity, dignity and company. By telling the actual story of what’s wanted, and the assets it would take to do it proper, we will expose the hollowness of right-wing narratives that faux some “powerful love” is all that’s wanted to carry “service-resistant” individuals inside, and shove them by way of what Daniel Malone of DESC has memorably referred to as a “magical remedy carwash” that individuals emerge from cured and into gainful employment.
The left response to all this should finally be rooted in creating social circumstances — of fabric abundance, of significant work and relationships, of neighborhood — below which nobody is homeless and much fewer individuals turn into mentally unwell or hooked on medicine. However we additionally want higher solutions for the right here and now, each for the sake of the people who find themselves presently struggling on the streets, and so we will achieve and retain energy lengthy sufficient to make progress towards extra lasting change.
