C.R. Douglas Gets It

C.R. Douglas at Seattle Inside/Out has been following the sweeps issue for a long time, and he's getting a little pissed off. Early last summer he made me giddy by pressing then Human Services Director Patricia McInturff on where homeless people are supposed to go until she started to twitch. More recently, During Douglas' monthly Ask the Mayor show, Nickels claimed that the people staying at Nickelsville were all political activists who had homes to which they could return. Douglas was obviously taken aback by the Mayor's claim. One expects politicians to distort and lie, but this was way beyond the pale and seems to have put Douglas over the edge. This week's edition of Seattle Inside/Out is his answer.

Douglas goes out on the street to show how bad things are, and then brings Human Services Director Alan Painter, Committee to End Homelessness in King County ED Bill Block, Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness ED Alison Eisinger, and Operation NightWatch Director Rick Reynolds into the studio to get some answers. On a scale of 1-10 this show is an 11.

As Painter recites the city talking points in response to Douglas' questions, he looks as though he might be seated on a tack. It's a painful display. Douglas wanted SKCCH Director Alison Eisinger to just flat out say she supports Nickelsville as a solution, but for whatever reason, she couldn't go there. This left it up to Rick Reynolds, who admirably rises to the occasion by humanizing the problem and calling for something better. "Why do we continue to have persistent tenting situations if the need is being met? … It's a band-aid, but how many of us have never needed a band-aid?" He is riveting. Even Bill Block goes a little off the plantation, but not dangerously so. He mostly sticks to his talking points.

The Mayor's script is seriously lacking in credibility. Maybe it's time to try something else.

Managing The Data

For 28 years, the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness (SKCCH) and Operation Nightwatch have conducted the nation’s longest running and most community-driven annual count of persons experiencing homelessness. This year’s count involved 900 volunteers in conducting a physical street tally of unsheltered homeless people in the early morning hours of a freezing January night. There were 2,631.

Numbers are inherently political. At a time when HUD claims that Ten Year Plans to End Homelessness have reduced chronic homelessness nationwide by 30% — despite rising housing costs, widening inequality, and a relentless assault on federal programs that serve the poor, Seattle’s news this year that street homelessness was up by 15% was especially unwelcome. That number rises to 18% when limited to areas in Seattle that align across the 2007 and 2008 counts.

Nobody wants to see the numbers of homeless people in Seattle rise. This is not news to celebrate. Nor is this news to bury or deny.

Since the creation of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, funding for the One Night Count has come through that body. This arrangement has helped fund staffing for SKCCH. The report used to be produced in Word Perfect. Now, it is a glossy, professionally designed 20-pager.

This support comes at a potential cost. CEHKC has a well-defined interest in showing progress. The count, as opposed to growing homelessness, is viewed by some as a problem to be fixed. At a recent Interagency Council meeting of CEHKC, Director Bill Block clearly indicated that he wants more control over the published report and even the count itself.

SKCCH, he said, puts too much "spin" on the numbers. This from the man who routinely states that the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is on track by counting units "in the pipeline" when the internal documents clearly state that 10YP goals are being missed by half.

This is a case of politics potentially getting in the way of truth. We prefer things the other way around. The take-over of the One Night Count wouldn’t happen without a fight, and we here at Real Change know whose side we’re on.

The 10 Year Plan To End Homelessness Works!

Latest Report from Rick Reynolds at Nightwatch

I came back from the bars last night -- it was 11:45, there were still four women in our shelter dispatch center; two looked like candidates for a nursing home. They could barely walk. Sick enough to require attention, but not sick enough for our messed up health care system.

These two struggled to simply get out the door and to the bus stop. The survival plan for the night was to ride the Metro 174 bus all night. Apparently you can get a transfer that is good all night.

219 served. 18 women turned away into the night with just a blanket. 24 men with no place to go. This is nuts. God help us.


An Official Response from Seattle's Mayor Greg Nickels

Buses are are not an appropriate place for people to spend the night. Seattle is committed to ending homelessness, and has formed a partnership of city and county, human services providers, private charity, and business leaders to take an outcomes-based approach to ending the problem instead of just managing it with shelter and emergency services. Housing with services, not shelter, is the answer to ending homelessness.

It's a ten year plan, not a two year plan. We know we have a ways to go. The 1811 Eastlake project has already saved $2.5 million in emergency services costs by providing housing with services to chronically homeless street alcoholics. Plymouth Housing, $3.5 million commitment, blah, blah, blah. This proves the Ten Year Plan is on track and working. The City of Seattle already spends more than $40 million annually on homelessness and housing. Seattle is a regional and national leader on this issue.

If you would like to know more about how Seattle is ending homelessness, please call Bill Block at the Committee to End Homelessness, and he'll utter more or less the same words while we manipulate our massive, um, amounts of data, and continue to throw away people's survival gear to drive the bums out of town. Or, you could just fuck off directly. Thanks for sharing!

Studies in Surrealism

We were going to have a big thing at City Hall yesterday, but we called it off. Over the few weeks we had to organize — and with the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless Conference beginning today — turn out just wasn't going to be impressive. And we are tired. We decided instead to focus on gathering strength. So today, we felt like we needed to show the flag. There was a meeting of Tim Burgess' Public Safety and Human Services Committee at two with a ten minute window for public testimony. The rally would of been at noon. We decided to show up with donut shaped helium balloons dressed up as the loopholes in the policy and to leaflet with mock camping citations.

As Rachael and Natalie left Real Change to walk to city hall, the loophole balloons — which were fatter and had smaller holes than we'd imagined — looked like a brightly colored bouquet of hemorrhoids floating down Second Ave.

There was a motley crew of about a dozen RCOPers there when the hearing started. Most of us were of the certifiably poor persuasion, had been fighting these sweeps for months, and weren't in a mood for any shit. Before the hearing, we stopped to drop off a "letter" signed by the delegation. I think this was Anitra's idea, inspired by her years with SHARE/WHEEL. Ten people sign a leaflet, and you drop it off to the Mayor's receptionist just as if anyone gave a shit. I didn't sign it, but going up to the Mayor's sounded like fun.

As we came off the seventh floor elevator and turned right, we were greeted by an official photo of Greg looking ten years younger and 80 pounds lighter. "Look," I said too loudly. "A picture of Greg when he wasn't fat." Our poorly dressed crowd milled amusedly. The receptionist faked intense concern with her computer monitor.

I never noticed what a fortess Greg's office is before. I've continued to visualize the old City Hall office, even though I had lunch with him once here. The view is OK, but the furniture's utilitarian. It's like a waiting area in a really nice prison. There's a receptionist behind glass. I presume it's bullet proof. There was a security guard hanging around behind her. No one was getting past the sterile lobby with the view without permission.

We organized ourselves to decide who was going to hand over the signed leaflet. Or they did. I wasn't paying much attention. I heard Natalie ask whether The Mayor was available. She was informed he was not.

"Hmmm," she said. "It sure seems like he's gone a lot."



We did a group photo. It was the best part of the visit. Then it was off to the hearing room. Earlier, we'd decided that Seattle's City Hall, like our space needle, is based on a 1950s futurist aesthetic. It's a great setting for a cheap sci-fi movie, where all the pod people are well-paid slaves to the Vulcan overlords..

We all signed up to testify, assuming that with ten minutes for testimony, we'd be asked to have one or two people speak for the group. Tim Burgess came out to say hi and we shook hands. The light off his high bald forehead was preternaturally bright. My mind grew instantly curious. Is this extreme exfoliation? Does he wax the goddamn thing? Why are rich people always so shiny? I thought about asking, but didn't want to ruin the warm vibe.

This, clearly, is a cheap shot. For myself, it was the Mother of all Bad Hair Days. The thing on top of my head had died sometime last week and was beginning to smell.

There was only one person who wasn't us there to testify. Burgess, Herrell, and Licata were in attendance. The other guy went first. He was wearing a bright lycra biking get-up that showed his deeply cut narcissist pecs to maximum advantage.

"Here is my proposal for what to do with all the drug dealers," he said. "I believe it offers the best use of our tax dollars. The first time, someone is arrested for dealing, see if he's doing it for drugs or to make a profit, and if it's for drugs, offer treatment. The second time, they can get treatment again. The third time, give them a choice between jail and a hundred bucks and a bus ticket out of town. The fourth time, euthanization. This is the best way to leverage tax dollars. This problem is costing beau coup money."

Wow. The moron knows French. He's new to the downtown Shangri-la and just realized he'd be even better off if all the fucked up poor were dead. Thanks for sharing.

Then it was our turn. Tim Burgess allowed everyone a turn, and then asked if anyone who wasn't signed wanted to speak. I wasn't planning on it, but the invitation was there.

My voice was shaky. I was surprised how mad I was. We're all so sick of pointing out the obvious and getting the big brush off from unaccountable power. I was also running on a few hours' sleep. I felt like a big exposed nerve.

"Protocols that are supposed to exist, at least in part, to offer protection and services to campers, but exclude the majority of those campers from protection with huge loopholes, are illegitimate. Protocols on homeless camping that were formed without consulting those most affected, homeless people, and stonewalled advocates from policy formation, are illegitimate."

That was all. Others had said plenty. Anitra said the Ten Year Plan, which doesn't track affordable housing loss or deal with the obvious reality of increasing homelessness is a mockery of the idea of ending homelessness. A woman I don't know said that lots of people she knows are homeless, and they could do a better job of running things than the people up front. Mike Smith, who is basically the Steven Hawking of poor people's organizing, rolled his chair up to say he doesn't understand how the City can chase people around when there isn't enough housing or shelter. Ray Murphy said these people aren't criminals, but they're being criminalized. Revel spoke of the convoluted logic employed to support "a radical trend by government to make homelessness less visible." Others spoke as well. I'm ADHD. Sometimes I drift.

How many ADHD people does it take to screw in a light bulb? I dunno. How many? Do you think the Mariners will make it to the playoffs.

Burgess graciously thanked us for our testimony, and then everyone went off to deliver the hemorrhoids while I remained to watch Acting Human Services Director Alan Painter and some other City employees brief the committee on the Strategic Investment Plan. This is the document that outlines funding priorities. It's all very outcomes based, as is the trend.

If you don't have a Masters in public administration, forget about keeping up with this crowd.

Disturbingly, Burgess asked Painter whether Human Service providers would have to wait until September to learn about cuts to their budgets, or whether some earlier notice could be given to allow more time to explore the richly available alternatives?

Painter patiently explained that advocates were well aware of the City's budget projections, and would be making their case as to why their programs should remain a priority. Score one for Alan.

At another point Burgess asked why we only have aggregate data on homeless usage of services. We should be able, he said, to individually track their successes and failures. Both Painter and Licata tried to explain the long history on this locally, but Burgess remained convinced that truth lies in drilling ever inward into greater mountains of data.

Wouldn't want to look outward would we? No. Instead we'll put the fucked up poor under a microscope where we can examine each and every poor decision in excruciating detail. Commissions will be convened to examine the data.

Licata said something about the invasion of poor people's privacy at a level the middle-class would never stand for and asked where the evidence was that the need for emergency shelter is at all shrinking. "Is there a means to assess the larger picture?"

What an intriguing idea. I love Nick for raising the point, but tracking affordable housing loss and growing misery isn't really scientific enough for this crowd. Governing Board people like Blake Nordstrom, as Bill Block never tires of saying, want to see hard data and bottom line outcomes. And they're not interested in hearing a bunch of commie shit about growing inequality, deepening poverty, and speculation-driven affordable housing loss.

But Bill never says that last part.

After this fascinating briefing of the clueless new Instant-Fucking-Expert on all things homeless (who just became the CEHKC's newest Governing Board member), we were treated to Painter, Bill Block, and the Office of Housing's Bill Rumpf and their "the Ten Year Plan is working" floor show.

Housing First is working, Bill said, because 1,450 new units have been created since the Plan began three years ago, and "an equal number" is in the pipeline.

How reassuring. The 950 units produced annually goal is on track with 50 units to spare. Never mind that half these 1,450 units were "in the pipeline" before the plan ever began and the state of the other 1,450 units now in this "pipeline" is murky at best.

The looseness of these numbers should make a tough business guy like Blake Nordstrom cringe in shame. For people who have such a hard on for data, this sort of vagueness is unbecoming at best.

But if the housing goals are being met, the cuts to shelter will come. That's the logic of the plan. Take from here and put it there because there ain't shit, really, coming from anywhere else.

I've heard enough of Bill's Ten Year Plan rap to almost be able to give it myself. I found it frightening that his brief of Ten Year Plan goals and strategy to the new human services chair and latest member of his governing board differed insubstantially from what he'd say to a group of church folks or college students. Maybe he's assuming Burgess didn't read his Governing Board welcome packet.

There was some obligatory genuflection to the 1811 Eastlake program that, with its 75 units for chronic alcoholics, is the big success that proves the plan is working, and the briefing drew to a tedious close.

Afterwards, it struck me that worlds had collided that day, only to bounce off of each other harmlessly. We got our fifteen minutes. And then the shiny people who run things in a vacuum reassured themselves that everything is fine, and that we are, in fact, totally loony tunes, taking "easy pot shots," as Burgess once put it, at a reality we don't understand.

"I'm fine with it," said Councilman Tim Burgess, who heads the council's Public Safety, Human Services & Education Committee. "I understand those objections but ... it reflects a balance between providing services and shelter while also maintaining the safety of our neighborhoods."

"To suggest that these protocols are some draconian measure to get at the homeless or something like that is just not correct," he said.

"It's easy to take shots at this encampment policy and lose sight of the fact that, from an overall perspective, Seattle does more to help the homeless and prevent homelessness than any city in the region. And, frankly, I'm quite proud of that."

There are unspoken rules that allow this parallel universe of bureaucratized planning to burble happily along, impervious to the growing misery in our streets, and I haven't figured them out yet. It has something to do with embracing an artificially circumscribed logic and hanging on to your mantra for dear life. As long as other powerful people embrace the same logic, you'll always be among friends.

Our testimony had approximately the impact of an errant nerf ball, but I'm glad we came. It's good to know what you're up against.

The Herons Come Home To Roost

One of our Real Change vendors once told me how she loves selling the paper in Magnolia. "All of the people are beautiful," she said. I asked what she meant and she gave me poetry. "All the men have pink skin and white hair and the most beautiful shoes you can imagine."

And, apparently, they don't want homeless people around. They might scare away the Blue Heron.

The eruption in Magnolia reported in last Saturday's Post-Intelligencer by Sanjay Bhatt isn't a surprise to us. Real Change's Cyd Gillis reported on the first of four neighborhood planning meetings concerning proposals for homeless housing at Fort Lawton three weeks prior, and the reaction wasn't much different then.

Along with neighborhood concerns over housing for Native elders and families who had experienced domestic violence coming out of transitional housing — could Girl Scouts, they asked, be assured safety while selling cookies door to door— Gillis reported that the various proposals on the table were moving past the selection process toward finalization.

United All Tribes ambitiously proposed a mixed-income housing development that includes a Native American College and 169 units of permanent housing for homeless seniors, families and single adults. DESC's proposal would have put 75 units of housing there for chronically homeless people. The watered down mix the City seems to now favor would work with United All Tribes and the YWCA to create a range of affordable housing that includes at least 66 units of housing for homeless elders and families who are leaving transitional housing.

The choice of 66 is interesting in itself. This is the number of Capehart Housing units that will revert to Discovery Park green space sometime after the last military family moves out in 2009. Councilmembers Peter Steinbrueck and Sally Clark strengthened some wimpy language in the final Capehart acquisition deal last September to ensure one-to-one replacement of the doomed housing.

Bhatt's article had numerous lovely details.

At one community meeting, some residents wondered whether homeless housing at the fort would attract wife-beaters, sex offenders and crack addicts. They rolled their eyes when city officials asserted that such housing increases property values. They worried about the impact on schools and scoffed at the idea of homeless people shopping at the closest grocery — which sells pheasant-and-rosemary pâté for $9.99 and ground coffee for up to $18 a pound.

"We're the ones who live here, and we want to have a nice, safe neighborhood to live in," Donald Raz, a King County deputy prosecutor and Magnolia resident, said later.

Like most affluent neighborhoods in Seattle, Magnolia doesn't have any housing for homeless people mainly because land is too expensive for social-service agencies to buy.

The quotes from Block and Quinn were especially interesting.

"What is it that makes homeless people different enough that they don't 'fit' in that neighborhood?" asks Bill Block, project director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, a coalition of agencies, businesses and churches. "Affluent people become homeless."

I suppose they ocassionally do. But mostly, in this economy, they become more affluent. I'm guessing that Bill's attempt to sell formerly homeless people as being just like the exfoliated folk of Magnolia went over about like a dead baby joke at a baptism. Is economic diversity so threatening we need to pretend it doesn't exist?

But the Buried Treasure Quote of the Week Award goes to Quinn.

"Fundamentally they [federal officials] understand that with homeless housing, you can't have so much out there that you can't sell the fair-market value housing," said Adrienne Quinn, director of Seattle's Office of Housing. "We're trying to achieve that balance," she said.

Did she really just say that? Did someone dose her Dasani with sodium pentathol? I mean, this is extraordinary.

Perhaps what she meant was that federal officials would not knowingly undermine property values by overly imposing homeless housing on any one community. But this is also a refreshingly honest take on the laws of supply and demand. If you provide too much housing for poor people, it undermines the market scarcity that drives up cost (or viewed from the other side, profit). It seems odd that anyone could believe we're anywhere near that point, but I guess one can never be too careful..

Is anyone surprised that Magnolia, which has fewer poor people and lower rates of charitable giving than most any neighborhood in the city, is afraid of the homeless? Given the City's recent media litany regarding homeless criminality on City public lands, we should expect reactions like theirs everywhere.

You can't stigmatize homeless people as drug addicted vectors of disease and moral decay on one day, and on the next say they're just like the top income-quintile folk of Magnolia. The cognitive dissonance will make people's heads explode.

The recent City propaganda campaign around homeless camping exploits fear that is there for the taking. Homeless people, in much of the middle-class imagination, symbolize much more than an implied absence of housing affordability. Peter Marcuse's landmark Neutralizing Homelessness essay dwells on this point. "The homeless are alienation incarnate," he says, and disturb our sense of the appropriately public and private.

Timothy Gibson, in Securing the Spectacular City, expands upon Marcuse's observation.

The spectacle of homeless citizens attending to themselves in public is disturbing in its own right. In other words, when the homeless are forced to attend to their private needs in parks, alleys, and sidewalks, public spaces begin to take on aspects of "home:" they now become places to sleep, to drink, to make love, to use the toilet, and so on. In modern bourgeois societies, this is activity "out of place." This activity inverts the distinction between public and private spaces that is fundamental to middle-class notions of citizenship and propriety. Such activities can therefore signal to urban residents the "order of things" has been unraveled—that is this place at least, things are falling apart. ...

For many urban residents, the homeless have thus become something of an urban "indicator species" for social disorder, "diagnostic of the presumed ill-health" of urban life and the need to gain control and rationalize urban public space.

The City didn't invent fear of homeless people as Other. In their quest to turn downtown Seattle into a squeaky clean vision of urban living — something akin to an upscale suburban mall but with better food and more atmosphere — they just used the tools at hand. When Magnolia gives in to irrational fear regarding potential strangers in their midst, it's a case of the Blue Herons coming home to roost.

My Date With Bill

I was a little nervous about being on the same panel as Bill Block the other night. I hadn't seen him since last November. We talked about the sweeps then. We were off the record. Real Change had just broken the story that the City had secretly launched a gloves off program of homeless sweeps before the summer and had no protocols to guide them. The City Council was blindsided, and so, said Bill, was he. I believed him. I still do. The look of shock and dismay on his face as I described what had been happening couldn't have been faked, not even by a good lawyer.

Then the Committee to End Homelessness in King County had nothing to say. The issue was consistently blocked from getting on their agenda, and the fight was left to those of us who have less immediate clout. Maybe some kind of back channel pressure happened. Who the hell knows? They're the one's ending homelessness, not me. I don't sit in those meetings.

But there was never any public statement. They were absent from the long list of agencies that signed onto RCOP's statement of principle. No one attended the hearing on their behalf. City Council wasn't hearing from them. And so forth. They went dark. I don't know why.

It struck me as cowardly.

So then I started making fun of him. Cruelty is the essence of humor. I noted that his single statement to the press — "The proposal covers a number of key components that concerned advocates" — was a lawyerly non-statement that said nothing. I ran a poll asking whose side he was on. I accused him of eating brie in a tree while homeless people go to jail with no bail and the Ten Year Plan fails. And so forth.

And knowing that Bill is a thin skinned kind of guy who isn't used to getting shit from people, I knew he'd be pissed. He totally chewed me out over Sock Puppet Rebellion last year.

I was a little afraid of seeing him.

I decided to take my time getting to Seattle University and show up when the panel started. I arrived with twenty-five minutes to spare and got a cup of coffee. I sat on a wall and smoked a cigarette. At about ten of I headed over. It was just around the corner. Bill passed me going the other way to deal with his parking. He smiled and waved. I waved back and went in.

During the panel Bill said he hoped I could see that there is a place in the movement to end homelessness for people like him who can ask for $10 million to build housing. I said I'd happily concede the point. We moved on.

During the break before the Q&A I got a handful of Hershey's kisses from the snack table and put one next to Bill as I went by to my seat. "Here. I gave you a kiss."

"I get lots of kisses from my dog."

Good one. This is part of why I actually like the guy. He's funny.

The panel proceeded without bloodshed. Bill was genuine and focused. He talked about systemic causes. So did I. He advocated reform and I advocated revolution. I think I'm just more unstable than he is.

Afterwards, he said that it doesn't help build the movement I want when I mock people. There was a brief stare down and we let it drop. I couldn't muster the words to say what I was thinking.

Later, I wondered if he was right.

The question behind the question is whether we have enough in common to even be in the same movement. And the question behind that is whether the Ten Year Plan is more about amelioration or co-optation.

In recent years, I've become quite critical of a focus on chronic homelessness that seems much about narrowing definitions, reducing distressing sights of visible poverty, and stigmatizing the poor by focusing entirely on their dysfunctions in a well-intentioned way.

I suspect that this might do more damage than good, particularly when it functions as a screen for policies that are just plain repressive. Mayor Nickels sweeps homeless encampments, but he supports ending homelessness and Housing First, so we're all supposed to shut up and applaud.

And then there's the question of where the line is. I've never been especially good at that. I'm east coast, and Seattle has easily offended sensibilities.

One of my early mentors was an acerbic guy named Jim Stewart in Cambridge. He was a Mitch Snyder lieutenant who appreciated the power of ridicule as a tactic. The best thing he ever did was a flier that retaliated against some screw-the-poor maneuver by House Speaker Tommy Finneran by making fun of his bad comb over. It was signed Committee Concerned for the Ultimate Disposition of Tommy Finneran's Immortal Soul.

I don't know if it had any effect. Probably not, but it was really funny. Jim always landed good quotes. He wasn't boring.

And I hate being boring.

But maybe Bill is right. Maybe we are part of the same movement. And maybe we're not. I really don't know. It's not an easy question.

Boston urban minister Kip Tiernan was fond of quoting theologian Walter Bruggeman, who said "Situations of cultural acceptance breed accommodating complacency.

Bill does not accept homelessness. He works his ass off towards its demise. He is not complacent. The accommodating part is where things get less clear.

You could fill a few hundred Columbia Towers with what I don't know. Maybe he rates the benefit of the doubt.

One of the things I try to do with this blog is to think aloud in a fairly unfiltered way. There is so much that we're afraid to say to each other. I've pretty much adopted the fuck it I'm saying what I think approach, and it's mostly worked for me. I find that others are thinking the same things.

But it's hard for me to know where the line is. Was it wrong of me, for example, to say that Patricia McInturff is a lying sack of shit? I don't know. I really don't. It felt true at the time.

There's a case to be made either way.

There are no regrets, on the other hand, over the United to Extend Homelessness spoof flier incident. That needed to be said. Nor do I regret the voice mail I posted from Sandy Brown. If someone's going to throw around power, they have to expect to have it thrown back at them once in a while.

Someone confided to me at the time that when a grenade like that is thrown, there's more room to maneuver in after the smoke clears. I think that's right. The parameters of what gets discussed are broadened. Humor is a weapon.

I'm going to have to keep thinking about this one.

The Mayor is Bad. Homeless People Are Sad.

Last night, I wrote this as a comment on the Extending Homelessness post from earlier this week. I was trying to explain why this blog isn't treating CEHKC and United Way as the allies they could and should be. I could of included the Church Council in that list, but for the sake of simplicity didn't. I tried to put the problem in terms that even a first grader could understand. This morning I decided this was too fun to hide away in the comments.

The City's homeless sweeps strategy is part of an ugly national trend, and if ever there was a time to stand with the poor, this is it. While some of us have organized like crazy and put ourselves and our organizations on the line, these institutional players on homelessness in this city have had little or nothing to say. This 1941 image from Dr. Seuss Goes To War; The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, while a tad heavy-handed in this case, was too good to resist.

Bill and Jon are famous homeless helpers. They are on TV and in the news. Everybody loves Bill and Jon.

Bill and Jon know the Mayor. The Mayor is a bad man. See Bill and Jon shake the Mayor's hand. Bill and Jon want to eat ice cream with the Mayor.

See the Mayor do a very bad thing. See the Mayor take blankets from homeless people. The Mayor does not let homeless people sleep. Homeless people are mad.

See them go to jail. See them have no bail. See the Ten Year Plan fail.

The Mayor is bad. Homeless people are sad.

Where are Bill and Jon? Are they under a rock? Did they go for a walk?

Where are Bill and Jon? Are they in a tree? Are they eating brie?

Homeless people are mad. The Mayor is bad. Bill and Jon eat brie in a tree.

Bill and Jon shake the Mayor's hand. Bill and Jon eat ice cream with the Mayor.

Homeless people are mad. The Mayor is bad.

Where are Bill and Jon? Bill and Jon eat brie in a tree. Bill and Jon go for a walk. Bill and Jon are under a rock.

Bill and Jon eat ice cream with the Mayor. Homeless people have been had. We are mad.

Extending Homelessness

I cleaned my desktop icons last week and came across this. It made me all nostalgic and got me thinking about what these players all have in common.

Last October, I took a PDF of some things coming up into Photoshop and rewrote the parts that spoke to me, and then republished a document that looked much like the original. Most people thought it was great and had a laugh. But these people freaked.

This is the Terrible Thing I did that caused my Board President to quit, caused three tables of United Way people to NOT ATTEND our Annual Breakfast a few days later (they paid), and had Sandy Brown half a hair from threatening legal action?

All on the same day.

The fire the Out-of-Control founders-diseased asshole faction was also well represented that day in the comments section of the Sandy Brown post.

I posted Sandy Brown's voice mail demanding that I remove the Church Council logo from an already widely distributed image. Some people said that was unethical. A breach of some sort of implied confidentiality. I think some people just don't like surprises, and would rather I have more "discretion."

The love is basically gone with United Way as well. They used to at least talk about giving us money. Now, even Vince barely returns my calls.

Street Roots down in Portland's feelin' the love from their United Way. If Vince got me $60K, I'd of at least called him before I put out the flier. It's enough to make you think twice.

But I can't even get these guys to buy an ad. When we went activist a few years back, they ran scared.

None of these guys have had a damn thing to say about the Seattle homeless sweeps unless they're for it. This is a bad thing, because they are the institutional players, and the City knows that if they're on board they can do whatever they want, because the rest of us, when it comes right down to it, don't really matter all that much.

Bill is scrupulously avoidant of the sweeps issue. As is United Way. The Interfaith Task Force is on the right side and has helped with the organizing, but the Church Council has gone dark, unless you count Bill and Sandy's bland neutralities to the press about the City being on the right track.

"What's being proposed is a big step in the right direction. I'm glad to see that the city is responding out of a sense of humanity toward people who are in encampments," said the Rev. Sandy Brown, executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. He and several other advocates for the homeless were briefed Thursday on the protocol by city officials.

Brown's main concerns were that the city have outreach workers available to notify and refer homeless campers, and that shelter beds be available for those losing their campsite.

That's actually not a bad position to have, if you back it up with negotiation, transparency, oversight, and action. But none of these guys are getting involved in anything like that.

At the briefing referred to above, advocates were told that their role in shaping policy would be limited to participation in public comment. Apparently, that's OK with United Way, CEHKC, and Church Council, because their participation in and support for efforts to oppose the sweeps has been Zero. They and the City, so far as it appears, are on the same page.

They shouldn't get to just go dark. They should either declare their support for the city's policy, or come on board with those of us who want a real discussion of what it would take to address homelessness in Seattle.

Then, at least, we'd know what's what. They have important, complicated, and powerful relationships to maintain. We understand. It's a powerful feeling, we imagine, being on the inside.

Who's Side is Bill On?

I think I've watched the City Inside/Out episode focusing on homelessness in Seattle about five times now because I can't get over the fact that Committee to End Homelessness in King County Director Bill Block managed to go on a show devoted entirely to the homeless encampment issue with Human Services head Patricia McInturff and not have a word to say on the topic.

But I have a correction to make. Up till now, I've been saying that Block has been silent on this issue. That's not true. I recently remembered that he was quoted in a PI story on the release of the draft protocols.

"The proposal covers a number of key components that concerned advocates," opined our leading homeless advocate. This is a classically neutral non-statement. Could he possibly have been more lawyerly?

"The proposal covers a number of key components that concerned advocates." Let's parse this slightly, since it won't hold up to much more. The verb-tenses, for example, are interesting. Covers is present, and concerned is past. Are we to draw from this that these concerns have been met? I haven't talked to a single advocate who thinks so, but Bill isn't saying. He's only implying.

So why does this matter? I mean, we all know that Bill needs to walk a line to keep the access to funding open. But where that line is matters. When the major institutional players can't or won't challenge the City when the chips are down, the Mayor thinks he can just ride the riff-raff out. The bet here is that power conferred by power can be taken away, and power that isn't can be safely ignored.

We need to build a different kind of power that is less beholden and afraid.

It's not that this issue doesn't come before the CEHKC. Real Change vendor Michael Garcia sits on the Governing Board. He fought to get this on the agenda at a recent quarterly meeting and was shut down and ignored. If there was any ambiguity as to his token status before, this clarified it for him.

From what I hear, United Way Director Jon Fine can be relied on to forcefully assert the encampment issue's irrelevance to CEHKC whenever it arises.

Which isn't surprising. United Way thinks they own homelessness in this town and have a $25 million fundraising campaign that depends upon results for it's success. The metrics here are less than complicated. Numbers going down good. Numbers going up bad. Campsite clearances, and other measures such as no parking from 2-5 a.m. signs in known car camp areas and Park Rangers with a mandate to harass, should bring those numbers down. So you won't hear a peep out of them. Or, by extension, Bill "currently on vacation in France" Block.

He also said this: "The ultimate solution is to create enough housing and services so we don't have to face that issue. That's the hardest part for everybody."

News flash Bill: We do have to face this issue, because there isn't enough housing and services and people are suffering in ways that few of us can begin to understand. Is there something I'm missing?

Whose interests are being protected here? Clearly United Way's. Probably the Mayor's. I'm guessing that the business interests approve.

But raising money to house chronically homeless people and building a sort of a consensus for homeless mitigation among the government, business and institutional non-profit elite isn't the same thing as being a homeless advocate. For that you need a grassroots strategy that builds for power and listens to the poor.

Bill's a politically connected fundraiser and perhaps one of the few people in the City who can manage the institutional contradictions and inside politics of CEHKC. But he's not a homeless advocate. To do that, you need to pay more attention to the "homeless" part.

Which brings us to this week's poll. What does it mean that the Committee to End Homelessness in King County is sitting out the worst thing to happen to homeless people in Seattle since Mark Sidran? Who's side is Bill on? The Mayor's? Or homeless people's? Both? Neither? As always, vote at top right. Multiple choices are allowed.

The people have spoken. Of 23 respondents, one felt Bill is a "homeless advocate" in the sense that he actually sides with homeless people. 43% said he is on the Mayor's side, which would make him a Mayor's advocate, and another 43% felt he was on neither side, which would make him no kind of advocate at all, and more of a careful bureaucrat. Just 13% said he straddles some sort of middle ground, in which he represents both homeless people's interest and the Mayor's. That would be hard.

City Inside/Out

CR Douglas' City Inside/Out episode on homelessness this week is worth seeing. We did a Lower Queen Anne greenbelt Parks Department tour that he uses as the set-up for a panel interview with Human Services press flak Patricia McInturff, Operation Nightwatch Director Rev. Rick Reynolds, and Committee to End Homelessness in King County honcho Bill Block. McInturff artfully ducks Douglas' pointed questioning on shelter capacity and does her level best to make City policy look reasonable. Reynolds, in his diplomatic way, doesn't buy it. Block gets defensive about Ten Year Plan success, delivers his Housing First rap, and, as always, has nothing to say on the encampment clearance issue. A lot of average people on the street seem mostly critical of how homelessness is being handled. I seem pissed off ("I think the city needs to have a policy that actually helps people instead of deepening their misery.") and sleep deprived, which is about right. I'm also fighting a cold. If you look at the KOMO interview I did in my office later that day, my voice is a good octave lower than normal. I kind of growl. When I apologized to the anchor later she said, "I've never met you, so I thought that was just how you talk."

As CR and I strolled through the greenbelt with the parks crew, we saw around a dozen structures that varied widely in terms of overall squalor. There were a few patches of appalling mountains of trash (mostly empty tobacco pouches and beer cans), and other spots where camp sites were clean and had thoughtful divisions of function. We ran into around three actual campers. The one who had the most to say is on film talking to CR through the wall of his tent.

This is the same tour that Nicole Brodeur got a few months ago, and then Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times, just prior to their first hateful editorial in favor of the Mayor's policy. I've spoken to a City Councilor who did the tour as well. Patricia mumbles something about the trash still being there because of difficult logistics or something. That's bullshit. It's a museum piece. They've preserved the most trash heaped camp in the City to show off to the press as representative, and they've even let people keep living there. Even as CR sees through this, he still can't resist the dramatic footage. That's why it works.

Time to Stop Being So Damn Nice

The Mayor’s new draft policy on homeless clearances has been released, and there’s only one way to say this. It’s an atrocity, pure and simple.

From the moment the Mayor’s office was called on their secret campsite clearance policy last October, their response has been characterized by contempt for process, continued secrecy, and commitment to aggressive clearances. Meanwhile, they fed a mostly willing media scare stories about homeless criminality to stigmatize and smear this City’s most vulnerable.

Existing laws are sufficient to identify and prosecute criminal behavior that truly poses a public threat. This policy isn’t about that. This is about eliminating visible poverty through a systematic campaign of harassment and criminalization.

The Mayor’s policy extends the parks exclusion ordinance — which was designed as a tool to ensure that public parks remain family friendly — to all public property throughout the city, no matter how urban or remote. Groundwork is laid to deputize any city department or their delegated authority with the power to issue progressively onerous citations based on no more than suspicion of illegal activity, which is defined to include sleeping.

Homeless advocates were promised inclusion in the drafting of a “consistent and compassionate” City policy toward homeless campers. Instead, we were stonewalled and offered two weeks “comment period” on a draft policy that is anything but.

There is no legislative process or any other real opportunity for the public deliberation that this sweeping change in public policy deserves.

A public hearing has been scheduled for January 28th, at 6:00 pm at Seattle Center’s Rainier Room. I just checked the PI story that announced this hearing, and see that they're listing the time as 7:30. And yet the HSD website has the original time.

So which is it? 6, or 7:30? Who the hell knows! We're going with 6:00.

Meanwhile, if you read the article you'll see that hack journalist John Iwasaki was so busy uncritically sucking up the city line that he neglects to mention the key component of the proposed policy change: the extension of the parks exclusion ordinances authority to ticket and arrest those who sleep outside at night to every scrap of public land in the city.

He probably didn't even read the thing. I mean, 20 pages. Who has the time? Better to just ask Patricia what to write.

And listen to the fearless "homeless advocates" whom the City has embraced as our representatives:

"What's being proposed is a big step in the right direction. I'm glad to see that the city is responding out of a sense of humanity toward people who are in encampments," said the Rev. Sandy Brown, executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. ... The proposal covers a number of key components that concerned advocates, said Bill Block, director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County.

Long-time homeless organizer Paul Boden said once that when it's more important for you to be at the table than to stand your ground and say what needs to be said, it's time to leave the table.

But maybe these guys were selectively quoted as being more supportive than they are. Hacks will do that to you.

At this point I wouldn't talk to the PI's John Iwasaki if he were the last journalist at the last daily in Seattle. Not that he's ever called me.

While it is critical to pack the hearing, nobody should be under the illusion that this alone is going to stop this Mayor. We need to aggressively and creatively fight back. Call 441-3247 x202 or email organizer@realchangenews.org for more information.

Seriously Solipsistic

Let's navel gaze, shall we? You might notice the addition at the top right of this blog. No, not the stupid little poll. Above that. Yes, there. IT REALLY IS ALL ABOUT ME! It's official.

Events of the past week have led to numerous discussions regarding my identity relative to that of the guy who works at Real Change. Can I still be me, or have I collapsed irretrievably into he? Is blogging as myself even possible? Fortunately for blog readers everywhere, the answer is yes.

The alternative is truly sad to contemplate.

Here's a pathetic example of a guy trying to blog while hemmed in by institutional identity. This is someone who, in real life, is funny and has decent politics, interesting opinions, and all of the quirks and flaws that go along with being human. But you wouldn't know it because he's blogging on the United Way website. If there is a hell in this world, this must be it. I say, "Free Vince!" I want tortured ambivalence. I want that wild, devil may care, Matulionis sense of humor to spill freely forth. Unleash him! Freeee-dom!

Here's someone else, blogging in full on institutional garb. Sandy, at least, has an interesting job. He gets to have opinions on everything. But he's soooo serious. He's like an ecumenical Tin Man the day after a rain storm. A YouTube video on herding cats is about as wild as he gets. I'll bet if you get a few cosmopolitans into this guy he's a laugh riot, but we'll never know. Sandy can't drink and blog. At least he's easy to talk to. His phone number is listed right up top.

Bill Block, being of the lawyerly persuasion, has the good sense to avoid blogging altogether. He is a very smart man.

When I first started this thing last February, it was as a discipline. I wanted to reclaim my identity as a writer from the nonprofit administrator drone I had become. The commitment was to write everyday. This got me thinking about things in new ways. And the more I thought, the more I understood. And the more I understood, the angrier I became. I developed a thinking problem.

This spilled over into everything.

I decided that the world doesn't really need any more safe opinions. We need to ask questions, I think, that are as dangerous as the times in which we live. As the answers become apparent, we need to have the courage to follow where they lead.

And that's what this is about.

I have a job. The guy who works there has a personae that is professional and appropriate, sort of. He balances what he has to say against various institutional interests and imperatives and operates with a certain amount of polish. Over at Real Change, there's a super-ego in charge. Here at Apesma's Lament, it's all about the id.

And today, this will be a committee of one ..."

The Seattle Channel video of Wednesday's Parks, Education, Libraries and Labor Committee Hearing is on line, and it's amusing on numerous levels. Dave Della opens the hearing by noting that none of the other committee members are present. Then Irene Wall testifies on the irony of the city destroying housing to create more Green Space in Discovery Park while destroying green space in Phinny Ridge by ramming a big parking parking garage through at The Zoo over neighborhood objection, and then another speaker highlights the city's bogus manufacturing of consent for the project. Looks like natural allies to me.

Then, at 12:20 into the video, the hearing briefly turns to the matter of bringing on a new board member at Seattle Center, and Bill Block eloquently testifies to the suitability of said appointment before getting the hell out of there while Twin B and I play patty-cake just behind his head.

At 21:00, I lumber to the microphone while holding her hand, and deliver a speech that differs slightly from the one I posted from memory in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Mike Ruby then addresses the import of this "rather momentous moment," and is followed by Discovery Park Advisory Council's Heidi Carpi, who describes the years of fending off "good causes" who have vied for this space. Then Patricia Stambor addresses my comments, by saying that while she "appreciates most" of my work, the city should keep the complete unsuitability of this property for homeless habitation in mind "when dealing with his opinions."

This is a remarkable rhetorical feat, in that it is a deft dual deployment of the "Seattle Straw Man" tactic. By "most of my work," she's probably referring to the Kate Elston PI article of a few weeks previous, in which I'm portrayed as having a "support your local crack trade" position on panhandling that I don't actually hold. Then she goes on to offer a vision of homeless people being dropped into Discovery Park — shopping carts and all — to forage for berries along with the raccoons.

I never said this housing should be set aside for homeless people. I said affordable and workforce housing. I know that Magnolia doesn't want homeless people as neighbors, but do they freak out at the prospect of teachers, cops, and firefighters living among them as well, drinking their Francesca wine out of cartons and slaughtering the adverbial form every chance they get?

See? I can use that tactic too. It's easy and it's fun. Anyway, watch the video. The testimony and presentation that follows is a good quick tutorial on the issue.

The Turnip Gets His Say (Sort Of)

My sock puppet post seems to have hit a nerve. Wes was telling me recently that he's never seen Bill Block get mad. Well, I have. I think the secret is to compare him to a turnip. Bill emailed to say I'm more interested in having a colorful blog than in checking my facts.

I do hate to be dull.

There are a few corrections to be made. The handout and PowerPoint were created by Leadership Tomorrow for anyone who intends to speak on behalf of CEHKC, and not for the benefit of the Consumer Advisory Council (CAC) alone. It's in beta stage. SHARE/WHEEL didn't hear it that way, but as Anitra so delicately put it, "When you're getting fucked all the time, you develop a habit of expecting to be fucked." So maybe Bill should clarify with them as well, so they can stop holding strategy meetings about how they're going to metaphorically kick his ass.

I'm also informed that there are two CAC reps on the Interagency Council, which turns out to be true. Out of 38 seats. Filled mostly by high level government bureaucrats and senior staff from the largest human services and housing agencies in King County.

Bill says the CAC is being empowered.

He has offered, for example, to get some board training for them. I'm not really sure that this addresses the issue.

SHARE/WHEEL, I'm informed, is the only organization that has actually been allowed to have organizational representation on the CAC, and they fought for that tooth and nail. All other homeless and formerly homeless people are instructed to leave their affiliations at the door. They are on the CAC as individuals.

I wonder if that's true also for, say, Paul Lambros, the ED of Plymouth Housing, or Adrienne Quinn from the Office of Housing. Or City Attorney Tom Carr. I sort of doubt it. I mean, how would that work?

Anitra says it's pretty easy to be intimidated if "you don't know that you have 300 people standing behind you." I'm sure that's true. I mean, the other people at the table come from more privileged classes, make about ten times as much money as you do, and can talk insider jargon that you don't really understand without even knowing they're doing it. And there you are. You're outnumbered about twelve to one, and you've been informed that you don't represent anyone but yourself.

Here's the other thing. When I asked Bill about the Governing Board handpicking their representative from the Consumer Advisory Committee, his response was that no one else gets to choose their representation. That very "powerful" organizations wanted on and were refused. To me, this misunderstands the point.

The person Real Change nominated to the CAC, for example, is a recovering addict and a felon with limited formal education. He is staying clean, dealing with major health issues, and working toward his dream of one day holding a job in the field of waste management. Everyday life for him borders on the heroic.

He sells Real Change for a living. To pretend for a moment that this guy is on an even playing field with people like Greg Nickels or Paul Lambros or Tom Carr is just fucking sick.

It seems to me that there are two ways one could go about building "consumer" representation into the coalition. One would be to understand the vastly different relationships that people have to power, and attempt to compensate by encouraging genuine empowerment along the lines that SHARE/WHEEL has achieved in their representation. The other is to tokenize and to call that empowerment.

Rachael and I met with Bill shortly after he took this job to talk about homeless representation. If you want homeless people's ideas to really inform this process, we advised, forget about putting individuals in the position of representing "the homeless." Hold forums. Do surveys. Get real feedback about how the issue is viewed from a broad spectrum of those most affected and analyze those results for meaning.

But that's not the route they chose to go. I wonder why?

I don't think Bill Block is the issue here. There aren't many people who could hold together a coalition of county and city officials, high level career human service administrators, housing developers, business people, faith community advocates, and foundation heavyweights.

Let's face it. Most of these people aren't all that interested in what homeless people think. They already have their own ideas, and these have to do with their own self-interest. Lets remember our Niebuhr here. Individuals behave morally. Institutions act upon their self-interest. This is a coalition of institutions. This homeless inclusion stuff is ten percent reality and ninety percent useful fiction.

Are we such children that we don't understand this?

I don't believe for a moment that homeless people are an authentic part of CEHKC. Power sets the agenda and dictates the terms of inclusion. SHARE/WHEEL has some ability to push back, and those who have power don't like that a bit. It hasn't been that long since the city basically went to the mat in a failed attempt to defund the opposition.

Or have we forgotten that already? Somehow, I doubt that SHARE/WHEEL has.

The Sock Puppet Rebellion

The Consumer Advisory Council (CAC) of the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is going ape-shit this week because, with all due respect and I say this as a friend, Bill Block sometimes has the political sensitivity of a turnip.

First, a little background. The Committee to End Homelessness in King County has three main groups that meet. There's the mucky-muck Governing Board, which has a few rich business people, some top level human services administrators, a handful of electeds, a United Way President, and a former Governor. They make the decisions. Then you have the Interagency Council. Other than homeless people themselves, these people have the most knowledge and experience because they work in it everyday. They advise the Governing Board, but mostly lack the means to hold them accountable. Then there's the Consumer Advisory Council, made up of those who have actually been homeless. No one has to listen to them at all, but everyone agrees they're an important part of the plan.

Listening to the voice of the homeless is a key piece of Ten Year Planning efforts everywhere. Philip Mangano does it all the time. It lends an aura of saintliness, which he finds useful in numerous situations.

But having a voice and having power are different things entirely. More on that later.

You may have noticed that I used the phrase "the homeless" just now. That was wrong of me. I know this because I've been working in this issue for twenty years and realize that some people find that phraseology to be objectifying and prefer the term "homeless people," or the more cumbersome, "those experiencing homelessness." I also know it because it's in the 15 page handout Bill Block gave members of the Consumer Advisory Council to help them talk about this issue.

The CAC has been feeling kind of stabby over their obviously tokenistic role for awhile. They have no defined relationship, for example, to the Interagency Council, which is where, supposedly, recommendations get formed. Until a few months ago, they had no representation on the Governing Board either. They meet with Bill, and Bill conveys their concerns.

The CAC decided awhile ago that this arrangement lacked a certain, shall we say, formality, and the Governing Board responded by selecting a formerly homeless person to represent them. This person had everything she needed to be effective in this role except any real relationship to the CAC. So that just pissed them off more.

So then the Governing Board said, "OK, we can handle two consumer representatives on our 24 person board. We hand picked the first one. Send us three choices, and we'll hand pick another from those. If we don't like any of the choices, you'll have to send us more candidates from which to hand pick."

That was the deal. The CAC, ingrates that they are, have rebelled against the colonial overlords to insist on choosing their own representative. Dr. Wes Browning, who is probably smarter than anyone on the Governing Board except for Ron Sims, who is really fucking smart, is smart enough to be mostly amused by all of this, but also pissed enough to want to quit the CAC if CEHKC doesn't stop treating them like the total tokens that they probably are.

But that's not why people are freaking out. Apparently, a homeless speakers bureau is forming out of the CAC, and Bill Block helpfully provided them 15 pages of talking points, along with a CEHKC PowerPoint that he'd like them to use. This is where the turnip analogy comes up.

When Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project was here recently, he told a story about when he was homeless and some advocates invited him to speak at a rally. He talked to his friends, and prepared for his big moment. When it was time, he was handed his speech.

This is sort of like that. But it's worse. Because in his turnipy way, Bill has managed to piss off not only the CAC, but also SHARE and WHEEL, who run the Tent City encampments as well as numerous other homeless self-managed shelters. Here's sample Question and Answer #2 (out of 24). This being a blog and not a book, I won't get into a critique of the whole handout.

Q: Tent city isn't a long-term solution. Why is this?

A: The purpose of the plan is to change from just providing shelter to providing long-term housing. There won't be a necessity for shelters or tent cities when the plan succeeds. I should also note that, in context, the tent cities are only a small fraction of the shelter beds in our system. The two tent cities only house 150-200 people (of 2,500 in the shelter system). So in some ways tent city is not really about shelter. What tent city has accomplished is educating communities that homeless people not just "are like us," they are us. Community members have the opportunity to realize that the people living in tent cities are moms, dads, and grandmas just like us. There is extensive testimony from people who have recognized that people who have become homeless are not a different "species." Viewing homeless people as neighbors has been a productive part of tent city.

So, if you're wondering what's wrong with this, it's not the "people who are experiencing homelessness are people too" rap that starts about half way through. The part that has people doing the war dance is the denial that Tent City is anything other than a public education campaign.

Here's the thing. If CEHKC was listening to homeless people at all, they'd know that when planners talk about closing shelters, it freaks people out. That's because there is presently a 2:1 ration of people needing shelter to available beds, and little to no evidence that homelessness is actually being reduced.

People who stay at Tent City do not regard themselves as props. They are people who would otherwise not be sheltered at all. This is especially true in this Brave New 10YP World in which no new shelter is politically possible.

But that's not in the script, is it?

In other news, here's something from yesterday's Seattle Times.

Isaac Palmer, 62, was apparently inside a sleeping bag concealed by blackberry bushes in South Seattle when he was run over by a state Department of Transportation (DOT) contract worker. The King County Medical Examiner's Office said Tuesday that the death was caused by tractor-mounted brush-clearing machinery. ...

After striking Palmer, the subcontractor saw his body roll out of the blackberry brambles toward an access road, according to a Seattle police report. Palmer died almost immediately after the 11:40 a.m. Saturday accident, the report said.

"Everybody believed the site was clear," East said, adding that the area is popular with transients. "This person had crawled into a sleeping bag and burrowed his way amongst the blackberry bushes. He wasn't visible to anybody."

In the days before the accident, police, DOT employees and contract crews were in the area working and advising transients about the upcoming work, East said. They were told to abide by the no-trespassing signs and leave the DOT-owned area.

The League of Women Voters and Me

Last night, I was on a League of Women Voters panel discussing the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. My co-panelists were three members of the CEHKC governing board (Bill Block, Doreen Cato, and Sheila Sebron) and the former Mayor of Kirkland.

Leading up to the panel, I'd been rather conflicted. On the one hand, I want to publicly support the Ten Year Plan. It's a good thing that people want to end homelessness. It's a good thing that the plan has created momentum and has raised expectations. It's a good thing to build housing that gets people off the streets.

On the other hand, I've come to view the Federal Government's Ten Year plan strategy as a means of defining the issue in politically neutral terms and severing homelessness from the broader movement against poverty. The NAEH/US Interagency Council on Homelessness approach exemplifies each of the tactics that Peter Marcuse points out in his landmark Neutralizing Homelessness analysis: Denial of the scope of the problem, narrow specialization, stigmatization through it's focus on chronic homelessness, and isolation of the issue from any broader discussion of poverty.

Additionally, I believe that the federal strategy seeks to devolve responsibility for the issue to the private sector — to churches in particular — and return us to the days when poor relief was largely the province of the faithful.

So, how to be supportive, but authentic at the same time?

As it turns out, it wasn't all that hard. I said we'd heard a lot about the cost-benefit analysis for ending homelessness, but what we really need is a who benefits analysis, and went on to talk about the housing market, structural unemployment, and supply side-economics.

Then I talked about what an asshole Bush's homelessness czar Philip Mangano is for going around saying that homelessness is decreasing, when the 2006 Conference of Mayors report says homelessness is up by six percent, twenty-nine percent of homeless families get turned away from shelter, and that the average length of an episode of homelessness — eight months — is at its longest ever.

I brought up growing inequality and economic vulnerability, and talked about how you can't build power to move an issue by asking people to act on someone else's behalf. You need to address people's own self-interest in limiting inequality and connect that to homelessness.

I said that the lesson of the state legislative session was that, in the absence of a real grassroots strategy, you can make progress only up to the point where it begins to interfere with the ability of well-funded and powerful interests to make a buck off of poverty.

You can't end homelessness without taking on poverty, I said, and you can't take on poverty without organizing for power. And you can't organize for power without appealing to people's own self-interest.

The great thing was that everyone else on the panel, to one degree or another, seemed to agree. What's fascinating about the whole Ten Year Plan phenomenon is that the feds — by raising expectations and then doing so little to deliver — may be sowing the seeds of revolt. The other interesting thing is that there is nothing monolithic about it. It is a multi-layered effort composed of numerous constituencies who all have their own motivations.

Tonight, there seemed to be a real possibility of reconnecting the issues of homelessness and poverty. To me, that is very encouraging news. The Seattle Channel was there, so I'll link the footage of the panel once it comes online.