The good news is that we are ending homelessness and, at great effort and expense, federal officials have assembled the data to prove it.
The 2011 national One Night Count results claim an “across-the-board drop in homelessness,” with an overall reduction of 2.1 percent. Progress slowed a bit in 2012, with an overall decline of just .4 percent.
Let’s say we average those two years for a combined reduction of 1.25 percent per year. If that reduction held steady each year, the 633,782 homeless people counted on one night in 2012 could all be in housing about 93 years from now.
I don’t know if I’d call that the right track. But they do.
Even these sad numbers are not to be believed. Here in Seattle, for example, last year’s count rose by 5 percent. This is typical. In cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, homeless numbers have mostly risen. The 2011 numbers saw a 6 percent average increase. In 2012, the numbers were up 7 percent.
So now, the success story is that the federal government is here to offer Seattle some advice.
Last week, executive director of United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Barbara Poppe, otherwise known as the national homelessness czar, warned Mayor Mike McGinn and the city council away from sanctioned encampments.
Her letter said encampments “generate risks for their inhabitants related to safety, health, and sanitation” and that the costs associated with “trying to ensure the well-being” of tent dwellers is better spent on “lasting housing and service solutions.”
She goes on to congratulate Seattle on our “pioneering” work to end homelessness and our “wealth of high-performing non-profit providers,” and mentions how our success at garnering federal support has been tied to our “housing-focused” work to end homelessness.
In other words: Nice federal funding you got there. Hate to see anything happen to it.
Poppe says City Council President Sally Clark’s proposal to close down Nickelsville by throwing $500,000 at the people who live there is a “sound step,” leading to a “lasting solution.”
A lasting solution? Really?
As Councilmember Mike O’Brien has said, “If we could house 100 homeless people for $500,000, we’d have ended homelessness by now.”
Meanwhile, consensus among Olympia’s legislators is to screw the poor, and the fight is mostly over how hard. The senate Republican majority wants budget cuts that could result in more than 20,000 new homeless people over the next two years.
In the other Washington, poor-bashing also abounds. Legislators there recently failed to pass a farm bill because Republicans went to the mat over slashing food stamps. The bill died of gridlock. Compared to the slow-motion train wreck of sequestration, this latest failure of government was almost thoughtful.
What scares Poppe and others, I think, is not that people surviving in tents won’t get services. That happens all the time, and no letters of protest from the feds are forthcoming.
What scares them is that all this unmet need could exist right out in the open, where anyone who cares to look can see that our system is seriously broken. If they can paper that over with just $500,000, I’d call that money well spent. But my guess is they can’t.