Issues
- Prioritize Public Safety
- Focus on What Works to Solve Homelessness
- Support Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment
Prioritize Public Safety
Public safety should be a number one priority for every governmental entity. Seattle lacks adequate community police personnel to support a skyrocketing population and widespread public safety issues that affect our sheltered and unsheltered populations. Our members have personally experienced threatening and assaultive conduct in business districts in broad daylight, but been unable to get any response due to the lack of community service officers available. Our current level of staffing is far below that of other cities of similar size and population. City public officials have been aware of this personnel shortage since 2013, but have not acted. We recommend the city prioritize public safety and honor its duty to hire and train an adequate community service staff to deter, prevent and respond to criminal complaints. With adequate staffing, community service officers can also engage with communities to build better relations.
Focus on What Works to Solve Homelessness
There has been a rapid explosion in homelessness and tent encampments springing up throughout our city parks, trails, greenspaces and public spaces here in Seattle and King County. While homelessness is increasing rapidly here, it has been decreasing on a national basis (HUD reports). We are spending much more on homelessness than other cities of similar size and populations. There is a lack of transparency and accountability for public funds spent. Yet, the City and County keep asking for more regressive taxes that are driving seniors on fixed incomes and the middle class out.
SOS supports the Pathways Home recommendations that call for Seattle to take decisive action to end homelessness. Tent, tiny sheds, and vehicle dwelling are not recommended solutions.
Three recent papers by the California Law Review, a PhD student at the University of California Berkeley, and Seattle University School of Law caution that thinking of sanctioned encampments as a type of ‘transitional micro-housing’ can be a slippery slope to a general lowering of the standard of affordable housing (Loftus-Farren, 2011) (Herring, 2015) (Junejo, Skinner, & and Rankin, 2016). There is a “growing concern that the new forms of legal encampment constitute a quick-fix, low-cost solution to the immediate problem of relieving homelessness that largely ignores the more fundamental problem of ensuring decent housing for all citizens“ (Herring, 2015).
SOS believes this is a regional problem and that Seattle should be focusing on a regional solution. Seattle, as the major metropolitan area, should act as a hub, but we should not simply be shouldering the vast majority of this burden for the rest of the state. According to the King County 2017 Point In Time Count, Seattle hosts 70% of the unsheltered homeless in King County and 76% of the sheltered homeless, while the city has only 33% of the King County population.
Homelessness Knowledge Base
Seattle Pathways Home – Seattle’s person centered plan to support people experiencing homelessness.
Seattle Homelessness Response – Seattle government information page.
Seattle Navigation Team – Composition, approach, data and evaluation.
Poppe Report – National expert’s recommendations to make homeless rare, brief, and one-time.
Bussing homeless people to/from Seattle
Future Laboratories and the Corporation for Supportive Housing Report – King County and Seattle paid the consultants a combined $157,000 to outline a county wide coordinated authority, which would replace All Home (below).
King County All Home – King County plan. It has no authority or budget.
King County One Table – an attempt to create and fund a regional plan.
King County Regional Affordable Housing Task Force – stakeholder group to identify and prioritize regional level affordable housing strategies to be implemented by 2024.
King County 2017 Point in Time (PIT) Count
King County 2018 Point in Time (PIT) Count
King County Landlord Liaison Program https://www.housingconnector.com/
Washington State Dept of Commerce Homelessness – State resources and reports
WA State DOC 2017 Housing Affordability Response Team (HART) Recommendations
US Interagency Council on Homelessness – Federal response to homelessness
Home, Together – The strategic plan adopted by the US Interagency Council for Fiscal Years 2018-2022.
US HUD Exchange CoC Program – The Continuum of Care (CoC) Program is designed to promote communitywide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness; provide funding for efforts by nonprofit providers, and State and local governments to quickly rehouse homeless individuals and families while minimizing the trauma and dislocation caused to homeless individuals, families, and communities by homelessness; promote access to and effect utilization of mainstream programs by homeless individuals and families; and optimize self-sufficiency among individuals and families experiencing homelessness
Research
National Alliance to End Homelessness – National Advocacy Group
What is Working in Other Places:
The importance of using real time data in effective solutions.
Marysville, WA combines zero tolerance with coordinated services.
Connecticut lowered the homeless rate by 24% using regional plans and solutions.
Housing First in Medicine Hat, Canada – Slow, deliberate and effective.
San Diego has FEMA type tent shelters. A great way to get people off the streets and connect them to services, but they still need affordable housing for permanent exits.
Homelessness is a Tragedy the US can Afford to Fix – Bloomberg
Built for Zero – Committed communities ending chronic and veteran homelessness
Support Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment
First responders say that up to 90% of people in Seattle’s unsanctioned encampments suffer from substance addiction. This epidemic also affects the sheltered population.
We support the King County Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Drug Task Force on many of the recommendations that came out in their Final Report in September 2016, but we do not support drug consumption sites, sometimes referred to as Safe Injection Sites or Community Health Engagement Locations.
Our coalition supports evidence-based nationally recognized prevention and treatment pathways, including treatment on demand, medication assisted treatment and harm reduction, including needle exchanges and expanded distribution of Naloxone.
We strongly oppose the drug consumption sites the City of Seattle and King County have referred to as Safe Injection Sites or Community Health Engagement Locations. We do not believe the science is evidence based. We are not prepared to handle increased populations of users moving here, or increased crime around these sites. Seattle and King County should support Recovery and Prevention, which is significantly underfunded and not Addiction.
We are skeptical of the data generated from InSite in Vancouver, Canada. The studies coming out of InSite have been prepared by the advocates who lobbied to open the sites. These sites have a very poor record of leading anyone out of addiction.
We do not want to see our tax dollars diverted away from prevention and treatment.