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Dear Real Change:
Successive issues of Real Change recently
featured two separate articles addressing homelessness.
Had they appeared simultaneously, the biggest problem
facing the homeless community would have become painfully
apparent: Our leaders can’t do math.
Reporter Cydney Gillis’ excellent article in your
May 2 issue, “Ending Homelessness on a Budget,”
relies upon DESC’s Bill Hobson and Bill Block, coordinator
of King County’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness,
in concluding that the “Countywide effort faces
[a] $25 million shortage in 2007 alone.” Without
focusing on any specific project, Gillis reports that
the official business plan budgets $82 million to meet
an overall target of 925 additional housing units in 2007,
not including another $7.5 million for mental health and
other essential services. Bottom line: At about $88,650
per unit, we don’t have nearly enough money to build
all the housing we need in just the second year of the
10-Year Plan.
In a separate Real Change opinion piece last
week, “If We Say No, How Can We Ask Anyone to
Say Yes?” [May 9], King County Executive Ron Sims
endorses the proposed DESC 50-unit homeless project
for the Columbia/Hillman City neighborhood on Rainier
Ave. S. Totally devoid of financial data, Mr. Sims instead
dismisses local opposition to the project as NIMBY attacks
based upon “ignorance and fear.”
Because the project cost isn’t even mentioned
in either piece, Real Change readers should
know that the total price tag for these 50 individual
units (tiny 320 square foot “efficiencies”)
is presently projected at over $15 million — more
than $300,000 per unit, exclusive of essential services
and maintenance, and more than THREE TIMES the amount
budgeted in the 10-Year Plan for needed housing. At
this rate, necessary housing would cost $278 million
to build in 2007 alone, not $82 million.
His surprising personal attack aside, Mr. Sims advances
excellent arguments why we must try to end homelessness.
Those same reasons mandate that anyone who truly cares
about our homeless brothers and sisters hold our leaders
on homelessness accountable: To do their homework, explore
all options — including a countywide homeless facility
siting policy — and make certain that we’re
getting the biggest bang for the taxpayer buck. For instance,
if New York City can provide supportive housing for a
homeless person from surplus rental stock at just $25,000
per year, why can’t Seattle/King County?
DESC’s warehouse-like facility has many problems
in addition to its exorbitant cost; that many residents
support a smaller, sounder facility belies Mr. Sims’s
charges of NIMBYism. But Mssrs. Hobson, Block, Sims —
and Mayor Nickels, too — must first answer a few
simple questions: Why do you support a budget-busting
project when the overall budget is already in trouble?
What will you say to the homeless people remaining on
our streets when finite resources have been exhausted,
squandered on ill-advised projects? Restating Mr. Sims’
own threshold question, non-rhetorically: If we can’t
say no to an improvident project like DESC’s proposed
$15 million Rainier Avenue facility, how can we ask anyone
to say yes to additional funding for the 10-Year Plan
itself?
Peter Holmes
Anne Sheeran
Mariana Quarnstrom
Note: DESC’s projected
development cost for the Rainier Valley building is
now $13 million, one quarter of which will provide space
for case management and other services. |
