Neither incumbent Bruce Harrell nor challenger Katie Wilson will fix what’s broken in our response to homelessness. Despite Seattle funding half of the King County Regional Homeless Authority’s $200M budget this year, both mayoral candidates insist that the city has little say in how that money is directed.
That’s not shared governance, that’s writing a blank check.
Bruce Harrell, who campaigned in 2021 as a moderate, became anything but. With a nearly full-time PMS (Progressivist-Marxist-Socialist) political consultant working on taxpayers’ dollars, Bruce veered left. His approach to homelessness manifests as a construction project.
Forget incremental steps to get people back on track, Bruce favors “Permanent Supportive Housing”. That means putting seriously challenged homeless people in their own private, poorly managed housing unit without the healthcare they sorely need at a price tag of $1.5M per person. “Permanent Supportive Housing” is fat-contract construction projects masquerading as help for the homeless.
Placing troubled people in housing with others just like them and no way out except in a body bag insists on grouping “like objects” together as if that works for chronically distressed humans. No recovery, no interventions for behavioral issues associated with fentanyl and meth addiction, schizophrenia, or other mental illnesses. Nada.
Meanwhile, those people get busy destroying the units they’re given and driving out neighbors who don’t want to live around crime and chaos. Drug dealers set up shop next door or nearby. What could go wrong?
Some people die behind their locked doors, while others live in squalor. Some keep a tent on the street despite having a new home, so they can run their “businesses” if you know what I mean.
There is no big-government utopian bromide, but still, PMS politicians, their feeding trough of non-profits, and their radical activists persist. Can we please band together to put this in check?
The City of Seattle is broke, and so is King County and the State of Washington. Tourists won’t save us. PMS pseudo-solutions open spigots of public money only to make problems worse. These politicians always want a new program because they claim that we’re just a ballot-initiated tax increase away from nirvana. But we’re not, and we desperately need a leader grounded in reality.
The PMS approach to homelessness sells in Seattle because we’re full of callow, malevolent benevolence. People can’t be bothered to do their homework. They vote for whoever The Stranger, The Seattle Times, the parasitic boot-licking organizations they support, or the Democratic Party says they should.
Katie Wilson, a radical leftist activist, wishes to raise taxes for 4000 more units of emergency housing and shelter units. Think neo-sweeps that warehouse the wounded in hotels (that they ruin) rather than helping them. It’s a clever way to hide homelessness, but it’s not a solution. Good money for the landlords who lease the buildings to them until their properties have been destroyed.
The cost of one “Permanent Supportive Housing Unit” could fund three sanctioned encampments for 100 people for a year (a proven affordable strategy), or intensive residential recovery pathways for 50 people (also a proven affordable strategy).
Permanent Supportive Housing is not the community-based residential mental health facilities we need. Minimum-wage “wrap around services” are not professional, comprehensive treatment. Housing is not recovery.
So, this time we have two PMS candidates for Seattle Mayor; one who fooled us once and one who wants to. That’s a lost cause, but still, we have one clear choice in each of the citywide councilmember races.
Support for Permanent Supportive Housing is the hallmark of Position 8 PMS incumbent Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. She proposed $12B of it when she worked for the pie-in-the-sky KCRHA. Her challenger, Rachel Savage, touts proven solutions. Let’s hope Rachel prevails.
In the Position 9 race, incumbent Sara Nelson embraces recovery pathways, her PMS challenger, Dionne Foster, is Permanent Supportive Housing all the way. Please support Sara Nelson.
Our city needs common-sense leaders and an electorate that has matured enough to recognize them. When Seattle voters outgrow their adolescent crush on failed PMS ideas, our city will thrive and prosper.
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