Real Change News | Director’s Corner 10/29/09

October 29, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 47

Community & Editorial

Director’s Corner 10/29/09

by: Timothy Harris , Executive Director

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This January, someone will be inaugurated as the new mayor of Seattle. Homelessness will be a growing problem. Neither candidate has a history of engagement on poverty issues. Both admit that their learning curve is steep, and say they are in “listening mode,” going to “those who know best” to inform themselves on the issues. Encouraging words have been uttered, yet talk is cheap.

Homelessness is an issue of power. The Seattle Consensus is to prioritize the care and feeding of powerful interests on the assumption that this grows the revenue base, thus ensuring that a certain portion of the General Fund will be available to support human needs. It’s a paradigm that says yes to power and maybe to the powerless. The inevitable crunch never comes at a good time.

In recent years, the consensus has been extended to support the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. This package includes:

• A commitment to “affordable housing” as the answer to homelessness, no matter how inadequate and abstract the supply of said housing might be;

• A parallel refusal to expand emergency services such as shelter and daytime drop-in services, the theory being that the above referenced “housing” will lead to an attrition of emergency need and the eventual diversion of resources to “ending homelessness and not continuing to just manage the problem;”

• Implicit assent, mostly taking the form of cowardly silence by the heavy hitters, to repressive measures aimed at reducing visible poverty. These include sweeps of homeless campsites, plans to ticket panhandlers, legal harassment of Nickelsville and their supporters and the overall criminalization of poverty crime as a response to growing inequality;

• Smooth assurances that, despite ample evidence to the contrary, homelessness will see its end and political will is being built toward that end goal;

• Depoliticized and victim-blaming framing of poverty and homelessness that cynically dismisses questions of economic justice and support for civil rights in favor of maintaining lowest common denominator official consensus.
Unless the new mayor has the political courage to challenge the Seattle consensus and question the mythology of “Ending Homelessness,” little will change. Perhaps we all need to raise the bar a bit.

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