I was watching the Human Services Committee meeting on Seattle Channel last week when Councilmember Sally Bagshaw asked about right to shelter in Boston and New York and what’s in the way of Seattle doing that?
Nick Licata said, “Money. And priorities.”
Yes. And access to a time machine.
I was in Boston when the right to shelter ordinance passed. It was the late 1980s — the Me Decade.
Homelessness was on the steep, neoliberal ascent, and there, deep in the bluest of blue states, the stars aligned. Boston peoples’ Mayor Ray Flynn and archliberal Governor Michael Dukakis said there needed to be enough shelter for everyone, and so it became law.
Ray Flynn also started the Conference of Mayors so cities could unite to take on the feds, and Mike Dukakis took his shot at the biggest job of them all.
Long story short, Mike lost in a landslide, and Ray ended his hard-drinking political life as Ambassador to the Holy See; but on their way out, they left a legacy that still stands.
In Boston, the one-night-count number determines how much shelter is needed because the law that says that there has to be enough still stands.
I guess no one’s ever had the heart to openly repeal it.
But that was before California’s Proposition 2
and all the other Eymanesque, budget-killing initiatives distorted our priorities and made such compassion unthinkable.
That was before the gamblers crashed the economy and got us to pay for it.
That was before the budget cliffs and the austerity and the showdown in Olympia.
Today, no one is passing right-to-shelter laws.
Last week, I was driving down I-5 with my 10-year-olds, and one of them notices a hammock in the green space next to the highway: “Daddy, I saw a man in a hammock.”
I know, honey. There are people who live in the woods by the highway.
“Cool!”
No. Not cool.
Seven members of the Seattle City Council sent a letter to Mayor Mike McGinn saying that they think housing is the answer to homelessness, not tents.
That’s nice. And I would like to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream each night before bed and not gain weight.
Reality sucks.
The majority of Councilmembers don’t like the idea of people living in tents, especially in the winter.
Nobody does. But let’s remember the One Night Count, when they found 2,736 people outside after the shelters were full. That was in January. It was cold and wet. I bet these people would have liked to be in housing, but guess what? They were outside. Deal with it.
It takes three months or so for a homeless woman with little kids to get into housing. If you’re a 56-year-old man who is alone and half-broken but not otherwise causing any problems, you could be waiting a really long time before the city council’s good intentions get down to the specifics of you.
Meanwhile, the shelters are mostly awful, so you might want a tent. And a community of people who have your back.
The math here isn’t hard to grasp. For about every two shelter beds that are filled, someone else is sleeping outside. It’s a well-documented fact. There isn’t enough housing, not even for the people in shelter. It’s not easy to look at, but it’s true.
Meanwhile, poor people are themselves organizing solutions that offer safety and survival in the breach of public priorities gone wrong. If nothing else, we need to do no harm and get the hell out of their way.