Homelessness Problem in Seattle

If not there, then where?

Homelessness in the United States has reached epic proportions over the last two decades. Three major cities in this country - Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle have actually declared a "state of homeless emergency." In the US, there are 650,000 to 3.5 million Americans who are homeless at any given time. Almost half of these homeless are families with children. Seattle is known to be a socially and politically progressive city that has a wide variety of organizations that say they are directly addressing homelessness, yet homelessness has risen to unprecedented numbers since the failed Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness was started in 2005. Recently, I received an email newsletter from Seattle city councilmember, Tim Burgess asking my opinion regarding Council Bill 118794 which would establish a right for people experiencing homelessness to camp out in cars or in a tent in most public spaces within the city of Seattle. In the email newsletter, Burgess ask readers to consider the question of whether the city should allow this bill to pass into law or seek to address the issues that are at the core of homelessness. It was really a rhetorical question - at least in my opinion. Burgess goes on to discuss why he voted against the bill:

"The proposed ordinance is not the balanced approach the people of Seattle deserve, an approach that carefully weighs and balances compassion with our public health and safety obligations. This ordinance tips this balance decidedly away from our public health and safety responsibilities and will do nothing to move people from homelessness to safe and appropriate housing."

At first glance, I agreed with Burgess' analysis, but when I considered the problem from the perspective of the an actual homeless person it became quite clear to me that his analysis only addresses half the problem - and is really focusing upon homelessness from an administrative and public policy perspective. While I wholeheartedly agree with a solution that involves new and well thought out public policy, I also realize that the homeless are homeless right now. When the shelters are full, there is no other alternative except to sleep outside if you are homeless. I have worked with several organizations in Seattle who's focus is exclusively on public policy and I have yet to find anyone working in those organizations who had ever experienced homelessness themselves. That's puts them at a distinct disadvantage when thinking about solutions that go beyond public policy to the actual life and daily experiences of a homeless individual. I believe there is a dichotomy between solutions that address public policy and solutions that provide direct services to the homeless that has yet to be merged and homelessness will not be solved without that merger.

I can say from my own experience with being homeless, many of the programs that involve direct outreach to the homeless are limited to those individuals that HUD defines as "chronically homeless", i.e. those who have a visible and obvious mental condition such as schizophrenia, chronic depression, drug addiction, and a host of other mental challenges that make them appear to not want help getting off the streets. I can also say with 100% certainty that of all of the homeless persons I've spoken to, not a single one of them would remain on the streets if they could get and keep housing. The biggest complaint I've heard from most homeless guys who don't appear to seek social services is that the social services do not really help. What they are really saying is the social services they encounter do not go far enough. The truth is that there are no programs in Seattle that provide comprehensive, rap-around type services that include housing, mental health services, AND life skills training. There seems to be a public perception of homelessness (even among those providing homeless services) that  homeless people deserve some help, but not enough to actually get them healthy enough to become independent from all social services. That would be too much help, and God knows those homeless people should do some of the work themselves! Homeless people put in a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to find food, safe shelter, make appointments often with no money to get there, and plan how you are going to do it all over again the very next day.

Believe me, it takes organizational skills to find out which shelters provide food and at what time, and on what day, which DSHS office is not so crowded that you have to wait 2-3 hours to be seen for two minutes, what agency provides assistance with getting your ID card, where you are going to sleep if you don't get into a shelter that night, where you are going to shower, which agency gives out bus tokens, where you are going to eat the food you get from the food bank, how to get an Obama phone, where you are going to find a computer to look for work. And to put a sharp edge on this point I will also say that homeless people also have to always be on the look out for the police. They are routinely harassed for sitting, lying or sleeping in public spaces.

Many cities in Washington have in the past several years created city ordinances that criminalize being homeless. In many places in Seattle - especially downtown, the homeless are strictly targeted for pan-handling, sitting, standing, lying or sleeping in public spaces. The police will warn you first, as if it just happened to be your last day of being homeless and you will never need a place to sit, stand or sleep again, then if they see you doing that behavior again you get cited. If you miss your court date or cannot pay a fine levied upon you, the next time the police see you, you go to jail. This cycle of criminalization is perpetuated by these cruel and misguided ordinances, and many politicians believe it is the solution to the homeless problem as if removing the homeless from visible sight will solve homelessness.

Why do the Police hate the Black Lives Matter movement?

Let's begin with some hard facts about police brutality in the United States: from MIC.com website

In May, the Washington Post analyzed the 385 fatal police shootings in the United States that had occurred so far in 2015. The Post noted its number, which came out to two officer-involved shooting deaths per day, was more than twice the rate that the government had recorded over the past decade.
2. That same report found blacks to be killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities.
3. It also found that almost a quarter of those killed were identified as mentally ill by police or family members.
4. The youngest victims at the end of May, according to the Washington Post, were 16 years old (though at the time, nine ages were unknown).
5. Another Washington Post investigation from August found that black men — who constitute 6% of the nation's population — account for 40% of the 60 unarmed people who had been fatally shot by police by that time.
6. The Guardian's The Counted project, which crowdsources and reports on police deaths, analyzed the first half of 2015 to find that an average of three people were killed daily during that time. 
7. Mapping Police Violence found that black people living in Oklahoma were six times more likely to be killed by police than in Georgia.
8. It also found 98% of these events did not end with an officer being charged with a crime.
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In 2015 the police killed at least 246 black people in the U.S. In 2016 the police have killed 160 and counting. Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than whites. 30 percent of those blacks killed in 2016 were unarmed. Unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015.

To really understand police brutality and fatal shootings of black people, we need to understand the history of the relationship between the police and African Americans. This history directly relates to why modern-day police appear to find it so easy to take a black person's life. History tells us clearly that nearly everything that white people have done to other races involved the conquest of land, the taking of resources and the accumulation of wealth. No educated white person could argue this point. Back in the day they called it names like, "Manifest Destiny" or the Great Westward Expansion beginning with the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson from France for fifteen million dollars. For white people, it has ALWAYS been about wealth, power and the control of resources. Skip to the late 1800's right after the very first civil rights act was signed into law: 1865. As a result of the Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation, "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free" many whites simply ignored the proclamation and in their anger they started an epic campaign of lynching, murdering of black men, and rape of so many innocent African American women. All of this under the auspices of the various local police precincts in the South. The Ku Klux Klan operated during these times almost completely unhindered and was responsible for the murder of thousands and blacks while the police stood by and did nothing - and often helped the KKK in their killing sprees. Please see: Here for detailed information on this phenomenon.

Implicit Bias

Implicit bias studies have become popular of late because people are asking why. Why in a post-modern era are black men being brutalized, shot and killed by those who are supposed to "protect and serve" Our men in blue have a legacy of violence towards blacks that I believe is so ingrained that in situations that appear to be non-life threatening to everyone else (via webcam) can be a reason for a police officer to pull out his gun and start shooting. Add outdated training to that scenario and a black man usually ends up dead or shot several times. This is fact. A white police officer is still only a white man whose position gives him the power to kill when necessary. It would be absolutely idiotic to believe that a white guy in or out of a police uniform is somehow immune to what most other whites believe about blacks. We have given them this power and we should be able to hold them to a higher standard of behavior when it comes to fatal interactions with an unarmed civilian. Instead, the police are given the benefit of the doubt to the point that they are nearly always exonerated for any kind of excessive force, police brutality or fatal shooting of a civilian. A prime example of implicit bias is the police officer who recently shot a black man on the ground with his hands up in the air in surrender. When the man asked the police officer why he shot him, the officer answered, "I  don't know"

Why do we give them this kind of power, yet do not hold them responsible when they are wrong? Two reasons: First, most people are just scared. Scared of violent confrontations because they are not accustomed to them - especially whites. I know very few white guys who can actually handle themselves if they were to get into a physical confrontation. Moreover, I sincerely believe that most whites actually don't think black lives matter as much as white lives. In fact, it has been proven scientifically through research done by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt of Harvard University. This bias is clearly shown in our court system when black men get longer prison sentences than whites for the same crime with the same or similar criminal background! Most Americans think blacks are not being discriminated against in rental housing, buying a car, buying a home, getting insurance, yet study after study have show blacks are discriminated against in all of the above mentioned situations and more, like education where it has been proven that black youth get kicked out of school more than whites for the same type of behavior, are reprimanded more harshly for the same type of behavior exhibited by white youth. These are facts. Most white people's perception of blacks is skewed by the media portrayal of blacks being lazy, unmotivated, and violent, i.e. Black Rage.

 Let me answer the black rage question. Blacks, or any other normal individual would not have rage if what happened 400 years ago wasn't still happening. Not slavery obviously, but discrimination and latent racism. Now, whites, ask yourself this question: If someone brutally killed your parents and your entire family a long, long time ago would you be able to get over it after say... 60 or 70 years. You would at least be able to function normally on a daily basis, and chances are pretty good you would be able to move on by now and not let it keep you down. But what if that person lived next door to you and constantly verbally reminded you of what happened, people look at you funny in the store because they think you might lash out in rage at any moment, you see commercials on t.v. that remind you of it, you hear it on the radio, you keep getting reminded of how it happened and how much that person doesn't care that it happened because it was so long ago. That would make it extremely hard to forget, and definitely impossible to forgive. It might even affect your ability to do other things like work effectively, or study if you happen to be in school.

Compare the police force to the supreme court: courts conclusions changed over time because the justices are voted into office and their opinions can evolve based upon evolving public mores, congressional laws and changing interpretations of the constitution. Police are accountable to no one, are not voted into the position, have the power to kill, and bank of the average person's fear of violence to justify violence they administer. They have a history of hunting and killing black people - all they need is the media to keep creating images of blacks as dangerous and they can continue killing us in the name of public safety. That is why Black lives don't matter to the police!

Seattle's Failed 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness

Homeless man in Downtown Seattle, WA

To the average homeless person in Seattle, names like the King County Coalition on Homelessness, the Committee to End Homelessness, the Housing Trust Fund or the 10 year plan to end homelessness don't really mean anything.  The homeless aren't that concerned about anything outside of finding shelter and food and shelter for the day.  The politics involved in advocating for safety-net programs, the working poor, and the homeless are complicated. Lots of moving parts, but with no production. Seattle started it's ten year plan to end homeless in 2005. It is now 2016 and not only did the plan fail to end homelessness, Seattle actually has more homeless people than when the program started!

Decisions about what direction King county should take to address homelessness are made by people dressed in suits who drive nice cars and most likely would not even stop to give a homeless person spare change.  I suppose they think that they are already doing enough at work to help homeless people.  In King County and the rest of Washington State, we have a veritable "army" of professionals and service providers working on the homeless problem.

 Many of these professionals are compensated very well. Social service programs designed to assist the homeless abound in King County. If you ask a homeless person who is not a Washington native, why they came to Seattle, more often than not, they will tell you that they heard Seattle has one of the best social services programs in the country. As a previously homeless person, I can attest that King County has a lot of social and human service programs, but they are horribly disjointed. For example, the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) houses and treats chronically homeless people, but the way HUD defines "chronic" leaves a whole lot of people out in the cold that DESC will not help. Senator Mark Miloscia of Federal Way remembers that in 2005, as chair of the state House of Representatives’ housing committee, he passed legislation to dramatically increase spending for the homeless while requiring Washington’s counties and state government to create a plan that addressed the root causes of homelessness. The measurable goal of ESSHB 2163 was to cut homelessness in half by 2015.Ours was the first state to make this bold commitment. So what are the results after 10 years?

 

Homelessness has declined by about 35 percent statewide outside of King County. However, King County has seen homelessness spike by more than 15 percent — and now accounts for half of the homeless population in Washington. Local and state leaders have tragically lost control of an ever-deteriorating situation illustrated by the violent homeless battleground known as The Jungle. Other than ask for more money, government leaders are still clueless about what to do next.

 

The Allhome website , which is run by former Director of the King County Committee to End Homelessness, Mark Putnam noted that Homelessness is a crisis in King County. In 2015 alone, nearly 10,000 people are experiencing homelessness on a given day, and nearly 40 percent are unsheltered. People are homeless on average for more than 100 days, and they return to homelessness after being housed nearly 20 percent of the time. Racial disparities are stark, with Native Americans seven times more likely to experience homelessness than Whites, and African Americans five times more likely. As noted above, King County has a lot of very capable professionals working on ending homelessness, or as Allhome says: Make homelessness a rare, brief and one time experience. With all that is being done to end homelessness, it seems to me that San Francisco homeless advocate Paul Boden has is one of the few who has it right. He says it's not the homeless that need to be fixed, but the government. Paul believes housing should be a human right. He declares that nothing ends homelessness like a home. For him it is a social justice issue as sure as the right to vote.

Since the early 80's, under president Ronald Regan's new mandate to reduce federal spending, homelessness increased exponentially. In reality, he increased federal spending through the escalating military budget, all the while slashing funds for domestic programs that assisted working class Americans, particularly the poor. Reagan not only failed to recognize his own HUD Secretary, he failed to deal with the growing corruption scandal at the agency that resulted in the indictment and conviction of top Reagan administration officials for illegally targeting housing subsidies to politically connected developers. Fortunately for Reagan, the “HUD Scandal” wasn’t uncovered until he’d left office. Without a doubt, the biggest cause of homelessness is the federal government's abdication of it's responsibility to build public housing for the poor and working poor. In an article by Will Fischer and Barbara Sard of the Center for Budget and Priorities, the federal government spent $190 billion in 2015 to help Americans buy or rent homes, but little of that spending went to the families who struggle the most to afford housing.

The article points out that federal housing expenditures are unbalanced in two respects: they target a disproportionate share of subsidies on higher-income households and they favor homeownership over renting. It is a fact that there is a direct correlation between the Reagan administration's slashing of social and safety-net program funds in 1979 and the opening of thousands of homeless shelters across the country in 1983. So where should us homeless advocates focus our energy? Is Housing First the best way to house the homeless while HUD continues to slash funds for affordable housing? No. We should demand that the federal government start funding affordable housing at the same numbers it did before the Reagan administration started cutting affordable housing funding.






NPR Report on Homelessness in Seattle

The ONLY thing that will destroy Racism is Knowlege and Action

This documentary will open your eyes if you want them to be opened. Why open your eyes? Because racial bias still exists and is not only bad for blacks, but will never release any of us from it's negative affects unless we take affirmative steps to eliminate it. Most social and political conservatives believe we must have winners and losers in our society.  We must have leaders and followers. And by reason of a person's intelligence, experience and talent, these factors determine how far a person will go in life. We must have land owners, and those who work on the land. I see the reality of that concept because we live in a market driven economy within a capitalistic economic system. We cannot change our system - it has become too big. However, blacks deserve the chance to compete in that system.  This is the reason why affirmative action is not wrong. Blacks live in the legacy of inequality and rules that made that system still operate today - just in a more sophisticated way. Please watch this video, not to feel guilt, but to motivate yourself to take action.

Don't Blame me because I'm White

This interview of Lee Atwater is awfully revealing. This is our history and we cannot ignore it. If we don't learn from it, we are destined to repeat it. If you think these kinds of conversations are not happening now in our government by socially conservative politicians you are extremely naïve or just plain uninformed. If you are white, I am sure you are tired of being confronted with guilt and racism but guess what? So are us blacks. The only difference between us is that the effects of racism doesn't hurt you, but is killing us.

Lone Black Shooter Kills 5 Policement in Dallas Texas

Today I want to raise my voice (through this blog) and comment on the tragic events of the last few days in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Dallas. I don't know if these events indicate a 'tipping point' as Malcolm Gladwell would say, but what I do know is that no one is innocent here - not the lone shooter of the police in Dallas, and not the police either. None of us are innocent. This is OUR country. We built it. We live in it.  And WE all are responsible for protecting the hard-won freedoms that we enjoy every day.

America is a melting-pot of beautiful cultures, ideas, institutions, and people. It is incumbent upon us all to work together in a way that does not give any one group an unfair advantage over other groups based upon race, economic standing, or creed. Equal rights, and equity of opportunity are the hallmarks of what make this county the greatest on earth. Those ideals have always been challenged by splinter-groups who lurk in the dark corners of society. In America we give those darkened minds the right to state their case in the marketplace of ideas just like everyone else - not so in places like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Syria just to name a few. It is no mystery to me that many whites (according to Mr. Donald Trump) would like the US to "get back to the way things were" or they want to, "take our country back." They would deny immigrants the right to earn a living wage, they would allow the vestiges of our racist past (and present) to flourish once again, they would take away the single black mother's only hope of feeding and caring for the health of her kids by eliminating safety-net programs like TANF, affordable housing, or Medicaid benefits. If the tragedies of the past few days tell us anything, it is that racism, discrimination, and hate are simply unsustainable ideas because everything they create is negative and a net loss for the perpetrator and the victim.

As Americans, we have learned that the best way to fight a bad idea is to present a better idea, not to crush or inhibit any idea with which we disagree. Our political and social systems are designed to work for the masses generally, to not cause any one group to benefit more than everyone else. We must hold fast to what works for everyone, and aggressively discard ideas and laws that work for the few, but harm most everyone else. I believe we as a nation are better than what we just witnessed in Dallas...and in Minnesota... and in Louisiana. Our leaders have spoken up in protest to the reprehensible police brutality of young black men. However, the time for words is over. These recent events cry out for us to do more. We must take action now before, as President Obama said, "this becomes the new normal." In Chicago, this past Fourth of July, 64 people were shot and four fatally wounded. This year so far, there are 329 homicides in Chicago, more than New York and Los Angeles combined. Yet this is not considered as newsworthy as the death of 5 policemen at the hands of an angry and fed up black man. The only folks I know who can legally put a price on the value of human life are life insurance companies.

As I have grown older, I have come to understand and accept that my point of view is unique and not necessarily logical or reasonable to someone else. Social conservatives see the world through a lens that is completely different than my lens. But we must not let those differences of viewpoint degrade or prevent our conversations about race and class and equality. We will always have opposing opinions and that is okay because it is one of the things that make America so great. The dynamic that has kept us together as a nation is that we have always been willing to move a little to the left or right in our policies, laws and institutions. The polarization of the races is a natural reaction to events like what happened in Dallas. We tend to naturally go to our "safe" (separate) corners when events force us to witness hate crimes or obvious injustice. But we must not abandon the conversation that must occur to better understand each other. We must talk to each other. We must try to see the world from the point of view of the "other." Whites need to stop asking blacks to calm down. Blacks need to understand that most whites do not want to be racist, but they are living in an environment that supports and reinforces a white privilege that is very difficult for them to see. So does a person that experiences white privilege also experience the angst of racism? Hardly. But it is more complex than that. Because it is a well known fact that racism and discrimination are built-in to the social structure and systems of American society, it only makes sense that to not oppose institutional racism and directly benefit from white privilege is to promulgate racism tacitly. By doing nothing to oppose structural racism, while at the same time benefiting from it's effects, non-action becomes a definitive position in opposition to racial equality, which is the definition of a racist.

That is a hard pill to swallow for most whites. From their perspective, they are simply living their lives like everyone else. Yet we all live within the natural and artificial societal structures that make the world go 'round. If those structures are set up to give one group an advantage over another we cannot escape the inherent inequality it produces. The challenge for white people - and what makes it so difficult for them to take action is that any real action they take to eliminate racism is an action that takes something away from them. The hard lesson to be learned from Dallas is that the black man who shot those white police officers is simply a product of, and a reaction to racism and oppression. He wasn't crazy. Just fed up. Two wrongs do not make a right. And the police he killed were not individually wrong, but they were complicit in a system that is none the less killing blacks whether they (would) agree or acknowledge it or not! No one would blame a woman who kills an intruder in her home trying to rape her or kill one of her children. What white people don't understand about blacks is that we feel just like the woman protecting herself and her kids - only on a much larger scale. What's worse, is that we as a community feel helpless to save ourselves or our children. We as blacks know that only the best of us can sometimes elevate ourselves to a level some would call "successful" yet we see what most people would consider incompetent, stupid and unqualified whites elevated to positions of power and authority all the time. Identifying racism is not so elusive in such a context. It is quite plain to blacks and whites that a poor work ethic, or a dumb decision is easy to see, but what white person do you know who would stand up and say, "hey, the African American deserves that promotion more than the white guy". We blacks know that such inept behavior would only be tolerated coming from a white person as long as it doesn't become blatant and obviously destructive to the environment in which it exists. All other things being equal, that is racism resulting from white privilege.

Blacks and whites need to come together and continue to talk about racism and its affects upon the black community and the white community as well. However, it is not incumbent upon blacks to give whites a pass so they feel more comfortable coming to the table to talk. The affects of racism are so insidious and lethal that whites simply have to bear the brunt of the guilt they should rightly feel about what structural racism has produced since they created it. Whatever they feel, it does not compare to what blacks have been feeling for the last 250 years. But as I said earlier, the time for words is over. Action is what is needed and it appears now that some black people in this country are willing to take action that kills. That is a bad idea. It is a fight we cannot win, nor should we want to win that way. We must present a better idea. An idea that does not include injustice in the courts, that does not block opportunity, that does not include a young black man being shot by a police officer because that cop places no value on the life of a black man. It is a shame that whites have benefited from white privilege for so long that some don't even know what real equality for all even looks like. We must continue to speak to each other and together speak truth to power.