The train wreck in Olympia is coming soon to the streets of Seattle, and right now, there is little to be done. Two budget versions will be reconciled behind closed doors. The senate budget is horrible. The house budget, meanwhile, is merely very bad. Neither contains much in the way of new revenue.
Both will continue the ongoing process of screwing the poor that began more than 30 years ago with the advent of neo-liberalism.
That’s a wonky word that relatively few of us understand. Economist David Harvey defines neo-liberalism as individual rights without social justice. It means deregulation, free markets and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, along with attacks on organized labor, a shredded human services safety net and the ongoing criminalization of the poor.
We’ll see how bad it can get, thanks to the current state budget, which cuts in half the Consolidated Homeless Grant, which funds emergency and domestic violence shelters. We could see the last shreds of benefits to the unemployable and disabled hacked to nearly nothing. There are deep cuts to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance estimates cuts in the senate budget will create at least another 20,500 homeless people over the next two years.
Here in Seattle, there are some hopeful developments, but these are overshadowed by the bloodletting in Olympia.
The Center City Roundtable, which has brought together police, business and tourism interests, human service providers, civil libertarians and others, has reached agreement that the human misery seen on the streets of Seattle is everybody’s issue and responsibility. The roundtable also agrees that we prefer real solutions to the political posturing and polarization of the past.
One possible solution could resemble DESC’s Crisis Solutions Center, which offers services to some of the neediest people. Then there’s the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which takes a new approach to vice crimes such as minor dealing and prostitution by offering connections to services in lieu of court involvement and incarceration.
Unfortunately, changes to Medicaid funding in the pending state budget will almost inevitably force Seattle’s HOSTprogram, the highly successful mental health homeless outreach service, to close its doors.
Despite Seattle’s enlightened efforts, developments in Olympia mean that our best local solutions will look like two steps forward and three steps back.
With Republicans in charge of the senate, the ideological showdown in Olympia leads to a continued attack on the poor, even with the leading business associations in Seattle on record that these attacks ultimately undermine business conditions.
Last month, interests as apparently divergent as Real Change and the Downtown Seattle Association signed a letter to Olympia that asked legislators to maintain and even expand funding for human service priorities. That’s promising.
The good news is that ideology of neo-liberalism is beginning to fray around the edges. Some nations, such as Iceland, are rejecting debt and austerity, and cities like Seattle are getting past our predictable ideological divisions to defend human services as an essential element to a thriving downtown.
A different logic, one that emphasizes shared responsibility and community, is beginning to emerge. But for now, it appears the worst is yet to come.