The real story of the One Night Count is the direct causal relationship between lack of revenue at the state level, cuts in critical services for poor people and the 21 percent increase in people found sleeping out on the streets this year.
The constant barrage of opposition to increasing government revenue — aka taxation — is decimating the safety net for our most vulnerable people and directly exacerbating economic inequality. Last month, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy once again ranked Washington as having the most unfair tax system in the country, where people at the bottom of the scale pay the greatest percent of their income in taxes, while people at the top hardly pay anything.
Washington is also one of nine states that does not currently have a capital-gains tax. Capital gains are income from the sale of stocks and other assets and are taxed at a much lower rate than income from wages. This disproportionately benefits the wealthy, whose income comes primarily from wealth, not earnings. In fact, according to a 2011 Congressional Research Service report, “changes in [taxation of] capital gains and dividends were the largest contributor to the increase in the overall income inequality.”
In his recently released budget, Governor Jay Inslee has proposed initiating a 7 percent tax on capital gains. This modest tax proposal would affect less than 1 percent of the wealthiest taxpayers, yet would raise an estimated $800 million in the 2017 budget year. Hopefully, Inslee’s proposal will force a desperately needed conversation about revenue.
As part of that conversation, we need to make sure that we put real people’s lives at the forefront of legislators’ minds. That’s why the day after the One Night Count, which showed 3,772 people outside without shelter, Real Change brought together city leaders, community members and vendors on the steps of Seattle City Hall to ring a gong for every one of those outside. On Jan. 28, we helped organize a similar event in Olympia, in partnership with the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance and the Committee to End Homelessness in King County.
The official title of the Olympia action was “Ring Out for Revenue.” The goal: To send a clarion call to legislators that homeless lives matter and that policy measures that increase revenue are needed to curb the ever-increasing numbers of poor people living outside.
First Lady Trudy Inslee struck the gong first at the revenue event, followed by the governor, many other officials, community allies and Real Change vendors.
One of the vendors was Lisa Sawyer, Real Change’s current Vendor Advocacy and Organizing Intern and a graduate of Washington Low Income Housing Alliance’s Emerging Advocates Program. She shook hands with the governor and told me that the whole experience in Olympia was deeply empowering for her.
Another vendor at the event, Susan Russell, said: “It was a necessary experience. The legislators are majority white, middle class people, and they have a visual view of what they think a homeless person looks like. But homelessness has no face. There are people, like me, who have lost good jobs or who turned to homelessness because of an unexpected health care crisis. There are so many facets of homelessness.”
Susan believes the gong ringing makes a real difference because “people need to understand that so many people are suffering and dying. … Without the stories of actual people, it’s outta sight, outta mind.”
With a flagship newspaper that tells the truth about issues of race and class and a fleet of 300 vendors who put a human face on homelessness, Real Change makes sure that injustice is never “outta sight, outta mind.” If you weren’t able to ring the gong for revenue, there will be plenty of other opportunities to take action for economic justice. For starters, you might consider participating in Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day on Feb. 17 in Olympia. You can also contact your lawmakers during the current legislative session to speak up for proposals that raise revenue and provide a basic safety net so that our most vulnerable citizens can have a better future.