Councilmembers responded to questions about homelessness that the lawmakers will face this year
The 2015 Seattle City Council election was a major shakeup of the city’s elected leadership. It was the first election in Seattle’s new districts-based council, with seven of the nine seats reserved for people living in seven districts. One long-time incumbent was ousted, two retired and four newcomers were elected. With a majority of women and more people of color, Seattle can expect new things from this different council.
That new council is facing a homelessness crisis the magnitude of which the city has never seen before, so Real Change wanted to ask them how they plan to tackle it and where they stand on a few related issues.
Lisa Herbold
District 1 (West Seattle)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
I believe in having a goal of ending people’s homelessness, but I think the idea of addressing their immediate survival needs is something that needs to be tackled separately. If we had a natural emergency and there were 4,000 people sleeping outside, we would not say to those people, “We’ll get you inside when we get around to fixing your house.” We would be opening up our community centers, we would be making sure that people were safe. This is a natural disaster.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
I don’t know that I’m out there saying something needs to change. I need to get a handle on what they’re doing, and I’m feeling frustrated that the information that we’ve received has been incomplete. Give me the list of places that you’re removing because they’re dangerous. Then my question is, what are the criteria that you are using to prioritize them because of their danger. Is it danger to the people living in them or is it danger to the community?
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
I would support that possibility. The problem is not so much the lack of sites. The issue is more the lack of capacity that we’ve been able to develop in our nonprofit sector to run these camps. We’ve got SHARE/WHEEL and Nickelsville. That’s the only game in town and they can only manage so many sites.
Bruce Harrell
District 2 (Southeast Seattle)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
Changing the conversation. When people think of homelessness, they think, “Wow, why doesn’t that person just get a job?” They don’t realize the complexity of homelessness. I want our city to have a little more of an enlightened conversation as to why some people, unfortunately, are homeless. The conversation becomes less polarizing and more humane. That’s what I want to get done this year.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
If I see an area where’s there’s litter and garbage everywhere, it’s unclean and unsafe, and it’s just not an ideal location, and at the same time we are trying to create authorized encampments, I think we are well within our rights to try and house people in different areas. But I think we do it humanely. We could always improve how we remove and sweep. You see the council, myself included, really getting granular in terms of how notice should be posted and how we inventory the belongings. I hear horror stores that homeless individuals are experiencing when an area is swept that cause me great concern.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
That’s not my issue whether it’s residential or non-residential. I’m not opposed to them being in residential areas. For me the issue is not residential or non-residential, it’s very simply that they must be clean, they must be safe, they have to have access to transit, there has to be access to social services.
Kshama Sawant
District 3 (Central District)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
During the budget this past November, I proposed $10 million in emergency funding recommended by the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness to add 1,000 shelter beds.
Research shows for every $100 increase in median rent, there is a 15 percent increase in homelessness. Last year I urged the City Council to take a stand for the need for rent control, and we passed a resolution to repeal the ban on rent control.
Taxing the super-rich and big developers to fund affordable housing is necessary to end homelessness.
What we can win depends of the strength of mass movements. I will continue to advocate for the city to use its bonding capacity to build city-owned housing, and continue to strenuously support homeless activists. That is how we won city land and funding for encampments, and additional resources for shelter and services in every budget.
Do you agree with the city’s current sweeps procedures? If not, what would you change?
No. Sweeping homeless encampments is inhumane and often take away the only shelter from people that have nowhere else to go. To do so in the middle of winter during a homeless crisis is especially objectionable.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
Yes. I have talked to people who live all over the city who would be happy to welcome an encampment in their neighborhood. Most encampments hosted by religious institutions are already in residential neighborhoods. With sufficient discussion, I am confident regular people in Seattle will find ways to support these efforts.
Rob Johnson
District 4 (University District)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
If I have my druthers, we are going to be having a serious conversation about the housing levy this year. More money from the housing levy and directing that money in the ways that we think are going to be really proactive and helpful. I said very publicly on the campaign trail that I was interested in at least a doubling of the levy. I’m starting to believe that number isn’t enough.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
Why aren’t we — particularly with sites where we’re seeing three or more encampments or structures — when the city staffer or whoever it may be comes out to do observation, engaging right away with SPU [Seattle Public Utilities] to talk about providing garbage facilities at the site? Why aren’t we dropping off safe places for people to dispose of things?
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
Yes. One of the things that I’d said I wanted to make sure we were doing is allowing two things: One, making sure that we’ve got really good outreach to those tent encampments. The second piece for me is about transportation. Particularly if you’re siting an encampment even on a temporary basis and you don’t have reliable access to frequent transit service, that doesn’t seem like a good place. Let’s make sure that we’re siting those—if we’re going to site them in residential areas — in places where we’re going to have really great, frequent transit service so that people can get access to services.
Debora Juarez
District 5 (North Seattle)
What do you want to get done on homelessness this year?
There are three things I want to see done regarding homelessness:
1. More shelter and services in North Seattle; far too many services and shelter are centralized downtown.
2. I want to see people spending less time in shelter; we know the longer people are homeless the harder it is to find stability again. I want to see people moving back into housing as quickly as possible.
3. The only thing that is really going to make a dent in homelessness is more homes. We need more permanent affordable housing.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
I am glad outreach is happening; people can’t get help if they don’t know where to get it. I also like seeing people’s health and safety being prioritized … I don’t like the idea that people are just being shuffled around. We need to really be delivering on the services we say we are going to provide.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
It depends on the area and the population being served. There are many questions that need to be addressed to make sure the encampments are safe and successful. However, we need to recognize that homelessness happens to people all across the city from all different walks of life and at different points in people’s lives and we need to build services to support people. Segregation by income is inhumane and doesn’t reflect the values of a loving society.
Mike O’Brien
District 6 (Ballard, Crown Hill)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
It’s unacceptable that we’re creating so much wealth in this city, and we have thousands and thousands of folks living without shelter on any given night. It’s not who we are as a city, it’s not who we are as a country, and none of us should get used to it or comfortable with it. That needs to be something that we set forward every single day. So what do we do? We’re going to create more shelter beds with the money we allocated.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
At a bare minimum, they should be transparent about when and where they’re sweeping. Not just like, “We went out and posted it.” I want to know; I want the public to know.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
I do. What happened was, when we were passing the encampment legislation, we hadn’t done [State Environmental Policy Act (sepa)] review on the residential zones so we couldn’t amend it to include it. …
What we did instead was we asked the executive to go do sepa analysis on the residential areas. And he’s done that. He sent it back to us, he said, “Look, I still don’t support doing tent encampments in residential areas, but here’s the analysis you asked for.” Now, we can actually pass legislation if we want to open it up in residential areas. I would support that.
Sally Bagshaw
District 7 (Magnolia, Downtown)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
I want to provide more spaces for people to be inside, under roofs. Countywide I’d like to help create 1,000 more spaces for people to be. We need both temporary and permanent options.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
Sweeps no, outreach and services yes. I do not agree with shooing people before we have trained case managers who reach out to them, offering services and doing our best to find places for people to be in a healthy circumstance. I do agree with taking a public health approach to encampments, providing information, options, porta-potties and garbage removal in a managed and organized way.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
Yes. I have done this for years — having drafted legislation to allow this over a dozen years ago. Managed and organized encampments with an enforced code of conduct provides safe places to be for people, much better than living outside alone.
Tim Burgess
Position 8 (Citywide)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
I’d like to see the city government be more strategic and more purposeful in what we do about homelessness. If you look at other cities around the U.S., they seem to have been more successful in addressing unsheltered people in their cities. If you read the literature and talk to people, it turns out that more often than not they’re following a different model than we follow in Seattle. This approach to homelessness that’s referred to as housing first, which actually started in Seattle, where you get people into housing and then provide the services they need to advance … some other cities have taken that to scale, where we’ve tended to do that a bit but not do it as much as we probably should.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
There are unauthorized encampments in the city that create almost inherently public health and safety problems and I don’t believe the city should allow those to exist, so I’m generally supportive of the cleanups. But, we need to be able to offer them alternatives and to offer them services that they need as well.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
We do site them in residential areas today — multifamily areas and churches. I do not favor [allowing them in single-family zones]. Just like we don’t allow multifamily apartment buildings in single-family zones, we shouldn’t allow authorized encampments either. It’s about the intensity of use.
Lorena Gonzalez
Position 9 (Citywide)
What do you want to get done on homelessness in the next year?
The public discourse around homelessness is really important, and the city council has an obligation as policymakers to really set the tone for what the conversation should be. I’m really disheartened by a lot of the rhetoric we’re hearing within the city about “these homeless people.” It’s up to us as leaders within the city to change that tone and not just to speak with compassion but act with compassion in terms of our policymaking.
How do you feel about the city’s sweeps policy? What would you change about it?
I will, in my role as a city councilmember, be closely evaluating whether sweeps are necessary to accomplish the public health and public safety concerns that have been expressed by the executive and by the community. That is a critical question. When we hear in a briefing that only 40 percent of people being offered services are receiving services, that’s a concern. When we hear that the shelter and emergency shelter system are at capacity, that’s a concern.
Do you support allowing sanctioned tent encampments in residential areas?
Yes.