Real Change News | Declaration of a State of Emergency in 2010

December 23, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 55

Feature

Declaration of a State of Emergency in 2010

On On Dec. 21, Real Change staff and volunteers helped to hand out almost 200 coats and numerous socks, boots, hats, gloves, sleeping bags and umbrellas to Real Change vendors and homeless people. The effort was part of “Suriving the Streets,” a winter survival gear drive sponsored by The Finish Company.

Photo by: Elliot Stoller , Contributing Photographer

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By and for Homeless People in Seattle & King County

Four years into Seattle/King County’s Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, our numbers are at an all-time high. Our shelters are overcrowded, noisy, at times infested with bed bugs and often consist of little more than a mat on a floor. We have no place to store our possessions and so must carry them with us. Pushed onto the street in the early morning hours, we are hidden from sight and forced to stay on the move. We are unwelcome in your public spaces, and are harassed by your police and private security when we stop to rest.

At least a third of us sleep outside, where we are subject to trespass and arrest. Our belongings are routinely stolen and destroyed by government workers who are “just doing their jobs.” When we camp in cars, we are targeted for citations and our vehicles are towed and impounded. When we come together to form safe, dignified communities, we are threatened with arrest and our supporters are bullied with threats and fines.

We die, on average, at 48 years of age. Nine of us have died by suicide so far over 2009.

We are the working poor who have been set up to fail. We experience low wages, work insecurity, lack of health care, overcrowded and unaffordable housing and unreliable transportation that leave us vulnerable to economic disaster.

We are the expendable, the dehumanized, the written-off and the devalued. We are the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill and the addicted. We are too poor, too uneducated, too old and too unemployable to matter. We are the human wreckage of a broken system that denies its responsibility and blames us for our existence.

IT SHOULDN’T BE LIKE THIS. Homeless people deserve and are entitled to the same protections as our housed brothers and sisters: a right to health and housing, freedom from violence and stereotyping, the ability to keep our families and loved ones together, and the tools to move ahead and thrive.

In 2010, worse will come. King County, at the close of this year, reduced human services funding by 46 percent. Youth shelter funding was eliminated. Food bank funding was slashed to zero at a time of record demand. The state budget crisis promises disaster. General Assistance for the Unemployable, the State Housing Trust Fund, drug treatment funding and Basic Health Care are all to be eliminated.

OUR STATE OF EMERGENCY MUST BE RECOGNIZED. The Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness is a fraud. The true causes of homelessness – rent increases, gentrification, evictions and the failure of the market to provide affordable housing – aren’t dealt with, measured or touched. For every unit of affordable housing produced under the plan, three to four have been lost to market forces.

Top leadership of the Plan has tokenized the participation of homeless people and has grown deaf to our pleas for safety, shelter, and community. The percentage of homeless people who are sheltered should be a plan benchmark.

We can no longer wait for the expanded survival services we need today while our “leaders” promise housing in the future.

HELP US TO SURVIVE & SOLVE HOMELESSNESS:
1. EXPAND SURVIVAL SERVICES. Since the Ten-Year Plan began, homelessness has increased while emergency shelter supply has held steady and funding for day centers has declined. Stop pretending and meet the need with clean, simple decent shelter.
2. SUPPORT SELF-HELP HOMELESS GROUPS (like SHARE). When we run our own shelters, we cost-effectively offer maximum dignity and community to residents. Stable city funding will help build community-wide solutions to meet the growing need.
3. PROVIDE A PERMANENT SITE FOR NICKELSVILLE. We need a site big enough for a non-moving eco village of up to 1,000. There are over 70 sites in Seattle that will work and only one is needed.
4. COMPLETE THE HOMELESS REMEMBRANCE PROJECT. Honor people who have died while homeless. The Tree of Life in Victor Steinbrueck Park and Leaves of Remembrance in sidewalks throughout King County will serve as reminders to us all that homeless lives have value.
5. STOP THE CRIMINALIZATION. Citations for trespass violations, panhandling, and sitting on sidewalks clog our courts and punish the poor with fines and jail time while denying us due process under law.
6. EXPAND TREATMENT. Drug and alcohol treatment services save lives and money. Punitive policies undermine public health goals and deepen the misery and isolation that often underlies addiction.
7. PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION. As downtown gentrification has pushed more services outside the Ride Free Area, access to bus transportation has become a barrier to overcoming homelessness. Homeless people should receive free bus passes.
8. SUPPORT AFFORDABLE HOUSING. Strategies to cost-effectively increase supply must be prioritized over big-ticket infrastructure projects and sports arenas. Encourage market solutions that don’t let excellent get in the way of good. We need housing. Now.

HOW TO GET THERE: Listen to homeless people! We call on our new leaders to govern with progressive values: compassion, justice and common sense. We call on our fellow citizens to act in solidarity with homeless people. We call on voters to insist that human needs come before floating bridges, sport stadiums and arts.

REAL CHANGE is Seattle’s 15-year-old street newspaper and a cross-class Organizing Project to unite people in working for social justice.
WHEEL (Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League) is an organizing effort of homeless and formerly homeless women.
SHARE (Seattle Housing and Resource Effort) is an organization of homeless and formerly homeless men and women working together to survive and solve homelessness.
NICKELSVILLE is presently a small organized encampment seeking to become an eco-village of up to 1,000 homeless men, women and families located on a permanent site with services.

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