I’ve spent years working instantly with Seattle’s homeless inhabitants, not learning them from college workplaces, or analyzing information units from a cushty distance, however on the streets, within the encampments, doing street-level engagement and intervention. After I learn yet one more opinion piece (“Homelessness in Seattle: We can’t unsee it,” Dec. 28, 2025) attributing our homelessness disaster primarily to housing prices, I’ve to ask: Are we actually going to proceed trusting consultants and researchers over what our personal eyes inform us?
The December piece by Walter Hatch follows a well-recognized sample in academia: Begin with a conclusion, on this case, that “it’s a housing drawback,” then discover information to help it. Nevertheless, these of us engaged on the bottom are conscious of a important proven fact that these analyses constantly overlook: There’s a basic distinction between the “disaster inhabitants” residing in seen squalor on our streets and people who’re the working poor — couch-surfing, residing with household or fighting roommates to afford hire.
We can not conflate these populations. They aren’t the identical.
Stroll by any encampment in Seattle. What you see shouldn’t be a set of people that merely can’t afford first and final month’s hire. What you see, what all of us see, is the devastating proof of extreme psychological well being crises and, way more generally, lively drug dependancy. The refuse, the chaos, shouldn’t be created by financial hardship. That is the seen manifestation of untreated dependancy and severe psychiatric sickness.
Right here’s what I do know from doing this work: People who find themselves briefly down on their luck don’t reside like this. They aren’t accumulating their belongings from dumpsters and road corners. They aren’t stealing to feed their dependancy. And crucially, they settle for housing when it’s provided and transfer on with their lives. I’ve seen it occur numerous occasions. These people exist, however they don’t seem to be those creating the humanitarian disaster that’s intrinsically tied to the crime we see on our streets right now.
Hatch and others argue that the folks in these encampments merely want housing. However this essentially misunderstands the disaster. The Seattle Instances has reported extensively on how inexpensive housing models sit vacant — 1000’s of them, as a result of the folks residing in encampments can not or won’t transfer into them with out addressing their underlying points first. This implies going to therapy for his or her substance use or psychological well being situation, then coming into restoration housing whereas additionally engaged on job navigation to in the end attain self-sufficiency.
When market-rate flats now price roughly the identical as “inexpensive” housing, and occupancy charges in inexpensive models hover round 60%, we have now clear proof that lack of obtainable housing shouldn’t be the first barrier.
The housing-first mannequin operates on the idea that offering shelter with wraparound providers provides folks battling dependancy and psychological sickness the very best probability at restoration. Nevertheless, what advocates fail to acknowledge is a important flaw: these providers usually are not obligatory. Residents obtain free housing with no requirement to interact in therapy, successfully trapping them in cycles of dependancy relatively than breaking them.
The truth is stark: It’s almost not possible to get clear and sober when the fox is guarding the henhouse. When housing applications place folks with numerous and extreme disabilities below one roof, together with folks actively utilizing medicine, their sellers, and codependent utilizing companions, the atmosphere turns into poisonous to restoration. Your drug supplier might reside down the corridor. Your utilizing buddy is your next-door neighbor. The very folks and behaviors it’s worthwhile to escape to heal are actually your everlasting roommates.
This explains why we don’t see higher outcomes regardless of well-intentioned efforts and important funding. Congregate housing fashions for this inhabitants, with out obligatory therapy necessities, re-create the dysfunction of encampments indoors. Restoration requires separation from triggers, accountability and construction, none of which these preparations present.
Maybe as a substitute of housing-first, an options-first method represents the mandatory compromise as policymakers think about fund distribution. This mannequin would supply a number of pathways: housing with obligatory therapy for these able to commit, stand-alone therapy applications and conventional low-barrier housing for individuals who refuse providers. By acknowledging that one dimension doesn’t match all and that housing alone can not remedy dependancy, we’d lastly see the outcomes our most susceptible populations desperately want and our communities deserve.
