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Articles by Tim Harris

Your support puts belief into action

By Tim Harris | May 30, 2018

Adrian Aytch doesn’t like talking about his past. Before he found Real Change, there wasn’t a lot of love.

At eighteen, he aged out of foster care and became homeless. After a decade on the street, Adrian finally came indoors in 2007.

That’s when he found subsidized housing in a rehabilitated Single Room Occupancy hotel. Disability and medical benefits helped, but the healing was just beginning.

It took Real Change to get him out of his head and into community. ...

Director’s Corner: We throw people away, label them garbage and wonder why they’re not lining up for jobs

By Tim Harris | May 23, 2018

I recently found myself at a downtown luxury high-rise talking about homelessness. This, just days after the contentious Employee Hours Tax passed City Council unanimously to become law. With public dialogue at peak toxicity, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The condo that hosted the event bills itself as “among Seattle’s most exclusive addresses, “ with “unparalleled downtown luxury, offering everything … and more.” ...

Director’s Corner: Passage of the Employee Hours Tax is a step in the right direction

By Tim Harris | May 16, 2018

This week we anticipate that the homeless sweeps will come to Real Change. Last winter, an encampment arose between the two doorways that are the entrance to our vendor center, and over time it has only grown.

For an organization that has always stood up for the unsheltered, this presents a dilemma.

Our mission is to provide opportunity and a voice to low-income and homeless people while taking action for economic, social and racial justice. Our first responsibility in this is to provide a safe and welcoming space to the vendors of Real Change. ...

Director’s Corner: Jeff Bezos’ vision of unlimited growth comes at the expense of the rest of us

By Tim Harris | May 9, 2018

The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
— Gil Scott-Heron

What is it with insanely rich White guys? Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. Paul Allen’s got Stratolaunch. Elon Musk owns SpaceX. And Jeff Bezos is finding his own way off the planet with Blue Origin.

CNBC reports that “Jeff Bezos dreams of a world with a trillion people living in space. ...

Director’s Corner: Thank you for believing in Real Change

By Tim Harris | May 2, 2018

This issue of Real Change kicks off Reader Appreciation Week — which goes from May 2 through GiveBIG on May 9 — and gives our vendors an opportunity to show how much you mean to them.

The relationships between our vendors and readers have always been at the transformative heart of what Real Change does. When we survey our vendors, they always tell us the same thing: The conversations they have with readers, day in and day out, help them feel like they are part of the Real Change family. ...

Director’s Corner: A broken system produces broken people, not the other way around

By Tim Harris | April 18, 2018

About a half-dozen years ago, during Mayor Mike McGinn’s administration, I saw how even the most well-intentioned bureaucrats will screw up when it comes to homelessness.

One of the first things McGinn did was to form a task force on unsheltered homelessness. Mayor Ed Murray’s administration, four years later, followed suit. I was on each of these. ...

Director’s Corner: Seattle’s self-inflicted homeless encampment crisis

By Tim Harris | April 11, 2018

Call it an irony, but tragedy is the better word. As the city has pointlessly driven unsheltered people from pillar to post, Real Change has often said that if a homeless encampment has nowhere better to go, the campers should be left alone.

You can post a campsite for removal, remove the tents and throw away belongings, and yet, if there’s nowhere to go — no shelter or sanctioned encampments, much less housing — what happens next? ...

Director’s Corner: The Emerald City Resource Guide is a pocket-sized portal to change

By Tim Harris | April 4, 2018

Real Change has released the Emerald City Resource Guide, and we could not be more proud.

This durable and comprehensive pocket-sized booklet puts 132 slim pages of essential resources at the fingertips of homeless and very low-income people. New editions of the Emerald City Resource Guide will be published at least annually to keep services reliable and accurate. ...

Vendor Jen Tibbits wears a new high-visibility vest sponsored by UFCW 21, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), IAM District 751, SEIU 775, UAW 4121 and Unite-HERE Local 8. Photo by Jon Williams

Director’s Corner: The social costs of our strong economy have often been mostly borne by those who have the least

By Tim Harris | March 28, 2018

When we think about homelessness in Seattle, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Since 2010, average rents in the Seattle region have risen by 65 percent. Over that same period unsheltered homelessness in King County has nearly doubled, from a street count of 2,759 people in 2010 to the 2017 unsheltered count of 5,485. ...