From Newsgroup: alt.law-enforcement

from Seattle Times

WerCOre failing the homeless; canrCOt we do better?

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Danny Westneat Seattle Times columnist

Two years ago, numbers came out showing Seattle and King County were
rCLstark outliersrCY in the severity of the homelessness crisis here.

Those were the words of Brookings Institution researchers, who had
studied cities around the U.S. and concluded Seattle was simply doing
the worst with the hardest cases.

We struggled more than any city outside Los Angeles in dealing with unsheltered homelessness rCo that is, people living outside in greenbelts,
in cars or under bridges, lacking even emergency shelter.

The 2026 survey came out this past week. ItrCOs even more shocking, as it shows SeattlerCOs stark outlier status only getting starker.

Most cities around the nation are seeing some progress, many with actual declines in their homelessness populations. We are nearly alone in going
in the wrong direction.

Total homelessness here was up by 9%. Worse, those living outside in the
worst conditions soared 21%. Countywide, the total number living on the streets has surged 54% in the past four years.

Meanwhile all over America, unsheltered homelessness is falling. It fell
3% nationwide in 2025. In counts this winter and spring, it was down 11%
in San Diego, off 17% in Miami and declined by 20% in Honolulu. In San Francisco, unsheltered homelessness fell 22% to the lowest levels in
that city in 15 years.

To see what an outlier Seattle has become, take Boston. During its count
this year, Boston could find just 118 individuals living outside in the elements. Seattle-King County reported one hundred times that many, with 11,829 living on the streets.

In Boston, only 3% of all homeless people are outside with no roof over
their heads. Here, 64% now are.

ItrCOs colder in Boston, so people have life and death incentives there to come inside. But the point is that Boston provides places for them to
come inside to, while we in large part do not.

In fact the amount of emergency shelter here fell. Seattle-King County incredibly lost 689 units of shelter last year, about 11% of the total.
In the teeth of a rising crisis, we inexplicably stumbled backward.

The picture that emerges is appalling. I think people generally know
that the homelessness response in the Seattle area is not working. But
the extent to which we are failing, while others are making some
progress, is more glaring than ever.

Maybe we should try something different?

I didnrCOt hear anybody suggest new directions after the report came out. There was a lot of clucking about how complicated homelessness is,
especially in a pricey place like Seattle. What we really need to do,
some said, is keep doing what werCOre doing, only do more of it.

This doesnrCOt hold up. All six other cities cited above have more
expensive rent than Seattle, according to the recent rankings on ApartmentAdvisor. (Seattle ranks as the 15th most expensive city for a
median 1-bedroom apartment.)

What these cities all did coming out of the pandemic wasnrCOt that complicated. They stood up more shelter. And then used carrots and
sticks to cajole and coerce people to go into it.

San Francisco is our Big Brother city, so letrCOs look at them. The City
by the Bay had an arguably worse homelessness crisis than Seattle, along
with an equally hideous substance abuse and mental health epidemic
playing out daily on its streets.

So the city stood up crisis centers rCo including ones where police or
rescue crews can detain people involuntarily to start treatment. They
call these rCLlocked beds.rCY They also added 470 homeless shelter beds that have sobriety requirements or a specific focus on drug treatment.

To crack down on RV encampments, San Francisco put in a two-hour parking limit. Harsh, right? But they paired that stick with rapid rehousing subsidies, a vehicle buyback program, and special parking permits
granted only in return for accepting counselor interventions. So far
theyrCOve gotten 162 people out of the RV encampments into shelter or
housing and bought out 114 RVs. The number of large vehicles camped on
San Francisco streets has dropped 42% in a year, the mayorrCOs office reported.

ThererCOs more, but the overall gist is: No, you canrCOt sleep on the
streets anymore. You can sleep in these shelters. Then we can work on
trying to move you into a more permanent situation.

San Francisco has succeeded in reducing its hardest-case street
population by more than 1,000, to the lowest level since 2011. San FranciscorCOs overall homeless population also dropped, albeit by only 4%.
So they have work to do. But itrCOs better, and safer, than people
roughing it out under bridges.

In that same period, Seattle-King CountyrCOs street population grew by 2,000.

Even Los Angeles, long the unfortunate king of unsheltered homelessness,
has reduced it by 17% in recent years (L.A.rCOs 2026 count isnrCOt out yet).

Seattle has made its biggest strides in building affordable housing,
including permanent supportive units with services for people straight
off the streets. But it takes years to build apartments, so that was
never going to happen fast enough to also be the crisis response.

In the meantime, this whole past decade of essentially allowing people
to camp all over the city while simultaneously not putting up much
emergency shelter has been a humanitarian disaster. The data is clear
what a stark outlier it has made us.

Can we pivot?

To accompany this new data, the King County Regional Homelessness
Authority put out a news release titled rCLWhy does homelessness continue
to increase in King County?rCY It basically blames how expensive it is
here. That surely contributes, but no city is more expensive than San Francisco rCo and they have managed to change this trajectory.

SeattlerCOs new mayor, Katie Wilson, has a goal of standing up 1,000 new
units of shelter this year, which by itself would be a big change. So
thatrCOs hopeful. Getting rid of the wasteful Homelessness Authority would
be another strong step, but political leaders seem set to drag that out
in a series of audits and process meetings.

The good news is, the most hazardous forms of street homelessness
finally are in retreat just about everywhere.

Unfortunately, itrCOs everywhere else.

Seattle should cast off its trailblazing progressive pride and just copy
these other cities. Can we do it?

Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com. Danny Westneat, a metro news columnist at The Seattle Times since 2004, takes an opinionated look at
the Puget Sound regionrCOs news, people and politics.
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