March 9, 2006

By Timothy Harris
RC Executive Director

Call it a paradox. In March of 2005, city and county officials, religious and business leaders, social service providers, and private philanthropy released a plan to put everyone on the same page toward an audacious goal: ending homelessness in King County within 10 years. 365 days later, thanks largely to a series of missteps by the City of Seattle, divisions run deeper than ever.

Some setbacks were entirely predictable. The Bush administration’s commitment to ending homelessness, if it ever had substance, has become a cruel joke. Token increases in Homeless Assistance and other housing-related programs are utterly undermined by other cuts to Housing and Urban Development and a new refusal to prioritize those who need survival assistance most.

Worse, the infamous Christmas budget offered deep cuts to programs that serve the poor to fund tax breaks for the rich. While Bush’s faith-based initiative may funnel new resources to his politically hungry evangelical base, there is little reason to believe that poverty itself faces any sort of structural challenge anytime soon.

Given this political reality, local solutions, for now, are all we have. Happily, momentum around the Ten Year Plan has resulted in some significant wins. Last year, for example, saw a more than 20 percent expansion of the State Housing Trust Fund and an increase in other support for ending homelessness. While the latest state legislative session has been more of a disappointment, we are still likely to see a major win on housing, as well as a reduction in youth homelessness led by important changes to state foster care.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning. Nearly every other county in Washington state has a 10-year plan as well. There is potential here for a powerful coalition to leverage new state resources. Should the more than 200 other cities that have framed plans of their own get organized, we might have the beginnings of a truly national anti-poverty movement. While nobody’s holding their breath, it could happen.

That’s the good news. At the City level, the picture becomes a good deal more dismal.

SHARE, the self-managed shelter program serving about 300 homeless people, is about to lose their City funding over a refusal to participate in the now-required Safe Harbors data collection system. Additionally, shelters run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center and the Archdiocesan Housing Authority have lost funding as well. The last City budget moved $325,000 from programs offering basic survival services to those providing transitional housing to clients who are far easier to serve.

DESC Director Bill Hobson describes this shift as “unilateral and precipitous.” When the justification came wrapped in the Ten Year Plan, key partners like King County and United Way pushed back hard, and more funding for basic shelter was found. It will probably take a third round of funding before the Mayor’s new promise of no net loss of shelter is realized.

Why did this happen? Call it the dark side of metrics. When funding becomes based on results, and no priorities have been set, the tough cases inevitably lose. If they’re not in the shelters, they’re not in the database. Poof, they disappear.

There is another issue as well. SHARE/WHEEL’s Tent City strategy has created more urgency around homelessness — both in Seattle and the East Side — than all the task force meetings of the past three years combined. The defunding of this organization cripples an important critical voice on this issue.

In contrast, the role carved out for homeless people within the Coalition to End Homelessness in King County — with quarterly advisory meetings and no formal power — reeks of tokenism. Requests by the homeless advisory council for a more meaningful role must be seriously addressed.

Conflict avoidance is a poor foundation for coalition-building. Most communities that have 10-year plans have prioritized ending chronic homelessness. King County, in contrast, says they’ll do it all. While this sounds like a higher bar, it’s probably just political laziness.

Hard decisions have to be made about where priorities lie, and that means airing and resolving disagreements. CEHKC Director Bill Block agrees. “You have to decide what it is you want to produce, and that involves making policy choices.” The Achilles heel of the CEHKC is that their process, up to now, has not tackled the tough issues. In a process made up of insiders, no one wants to suggest that one agency’s program is more essential than another’s.

If the Ten Year Plan is going to succeed, priorities will have to be set. Some say that recent actions by the City have forced this issue. Over the next year, we’ll see what has been learned. n

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