Dioxin at Lora Lake: A Few Good Questions

CEHKC Director Bill Block gets ashed at last summer's Lora Lake faux civil disobedience.

Ah, Lora Lake. We hardly knew ye. Last summer's affordable housing flash point fizzled with barely a whimper last week when the Port Authority issued a press release written by King County Housing Authority (KCHA) declaring their mutual agreement that the much vaunted deal to save 162 units of affordable housing in Burien is now dead of poisoning.

There will be no autopsy. But read on. Someone needs to call the coroner to see if Lora might be revived.

Apparently, levels of dioxin were found in the soil that exceed current residential standards. Testing and soil clean-up were performed in 1987 by the State Department of Ecology before the now doomed apartments were built, but, as the press release explains, things change.

However, since that time, testing and clean-up standards have been made more stringent. Results of the recent environmental analysis revealed soil contamination of dioxins and other contaminants that exceed current standards for residential use.

Though remediation will still be necessary, the lower environmental standard required for industrial purposes means eventual redevelopment for an industrial use, rather than a residential use, likely remains financially feasible.

At this point, the "homeless advocates" involved collectively shrug, throw up their hands, heave a deep sigh, and say, "Dioxin. Watcha gonna do? Can't poison poor people can ya?"

Here's "homeless advocate" Sandy Brown, quoted in Jennifer Langston's recent Seattle PI article.

Sandy Brown, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church who led demonstrations and prayers to preserve the apartments, said he was disappointed with the outcome.

However, he agreed it doesn't make sense to spend scarce affordable housing dollars on cleaning up pollution.

But last year's controversy, he said, sent a clear message that government-owned housing serving lower-income residents shouldn't be bulldozed and not replaced.

"I think we're not going to see the same cavalier approach to (destroying) 160 units or so as we did in this case, so it's still a victory," Brown said.

Yo, Sandy. Way to grab victory from the jaws of defeat. I am totally inspired. Thanks for the prayers.

And intrigued at how similar your messaging is to Rhonda Rosenberg's at KCHA. Real Change reporter Cydney Gillis covered this story, and her notes contain a remarkably similar quote. "As a result of all this stuff that's happened, the Port has become more sensitized to the importance or regional need for affordable housing." The Lora Lake fight, she said "focused much-needed attention on the region’s loss of affordable housing."

It's nice to see so much agreement on the terms of surrender.

Should any of the fire breathing advocates who have apparently given up on this decide to take a closer look, here's a few questions they might ask.

According to a Port of Seattle press release issued last February to announce suspension of the deal pending further testing, samples were taken at depths of seven and fourteen feet. Soil mitigation, however, only occurs two feet down. This, presumably is what happened when the site was tested and cleaned in 1987 prior to original construction.

So, why the sudden interest in finding deeply buried contaminants? It just seems odd. I'm not a scientist, but looking around on-line, it seems like soil testing usually focuses on samples taken at much shallower depths.

Also, there's the needing to have it both ways issue.

When one decides to demolish an apartment building due to dioxin contamination, one runs the risk of a class action suit by former tenants. This issue was addressed by Rosenberg in Gillis' earlier Real Change piece when the deal was first suspended.

"... the housing authority does not believe its previous tenants, who were evicted in June, would have been exposed, as the contaminants are believed to be sealed under Lora Lake’s concrete-on-slab construction."

Let me ask a possibly naive question here. If the contaminants are sealed, and no one is exposed, then what's the problem? Unless, of course, you tear the place down.

So, why is the deal off again? Maybe I'm just shooting in the dark here, but it seems like these are questions worth asking. Serious activists don't always believe what they're told.

Burien's Very Excellent Deal

Wow. Lora Lake has been saved. Burien, a city where 81 percent of the housing stock is affordable to low-income families, as opposed to the the 46 percent King County average, will now have 162 more units of housing for moderate and low-income families. At some point, Seattle housing and homeless activists stopped beating up on Burien for being a bunch of poor-people-hating Troglodytes for having the audacity to follow their own hard won development plan and let the negotiators from King County do their thing.

And Burien got themselves what looks to be a pretty kick-ass deal.

King County Housing Authority will buy the Lora Lake development for an undisclosed fair market value. The County will also purchase two properties south of Lora Lake for development consistent with both Burien's comprehensive plan and a residential Lora Lake. The price there is, again, undisclosed. With another million tossed in as sweetener to support and expedite Burien's Transit Oriented Development project, gentlemen, we have a deal. Last August, the offer on the table from the county was $18 million. It'll be interesting to see where things landed.

There's still some final details to be worked out, but it looks like concerns on all sides were met. Renovations will be completed in time for an April 2008 move-in date for low and moderate income families. Nice work.

Given affordability trends in Seattle, we'll need all the outlying housing we can get. Less than an hour away, even in traffic, Burien's starting to look pretty good.

Maybe now we can bring our focus a little closer to home. Nick Licata's push for $75,000 in this year's budget to fund movement toward a rental housing inspection program, for example, is coming under intense fire from predictable quarters. I look forward to seeing the heavy hitters go to bat against the landlord lobby to score a real win for poor renters. The City Council, by the way, needs to hear your support for this.

Housing? What Housing? An Odyssey.

Over the past several months, activists in Seattle have moved heaven and earth to prevent Burien from demolishing 162 units of affordable family housing at Lora Lake. But what if the City of Seattle spent $11 million to buy 24 acres of property with 66 units of functioning affordable family housing, only to tear it all down for green space? And then no one seemed to notice or care?

This is the question I set out to answer when Wednesday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that a City Council Parks Committee hearing was scheduled that afternoon to approve a move to do just that.

I was doing about ten things when I got this email from Bob Young at the Seattle Times. "I can't help but wonder: an impressive campaign is mounted to preserve affordable housing near a runway, why not preserve affordable housing in a large city park, with peace, quiet, lots of greenery and clean air? Am I missing something?"

Good question. I read the article, and then I read it again, and again.

The deal would remove 66 "Capehart" duplexes and homes in a small Navy development that has housed military families in Seattle for nearly 50 years. Military families live in them today.

The proposal, which comes after 2 1/2 years of negotiating between Seattle and the Navy, raises mixed emotions. Park advocates are thrilled at the prospect of more green space, but others say the small homes could be better used as housing for displaced veterans.

But it is a separate plan -- to sell 26 elegant, historic houses that military families also are living in -- that is getting the most attention.

The Navy wants to sell those homes, and the city isn't interested in buying them. They could go to private owners.

How could something like this come out of nowhere and be heading for a City Council Hearing that same afternoon without so much as a peep from anyone?

I spoke to Sharon Chan at the Seattle Times.

Yes, the idea of the city paying $11 million to tear down 66 units of family housing to create more greenspace in Magnolia's Discovery Park is incomprehensible, and, no, I hadn't heard anything before this morning, and no, it didn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

What the fuck?

I drove home at noon. Nobody was on the road. It was like a post Labor Day neutron bomb had gone off. My four year-old was home sick, and I'd gone into work at seven so my wife Carolyn could go in the afternoon. Downtown to Shoreline in twenty minutes. It was a new record. Mica had been to the Doctor this morning. He thought it might be pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics.

She was sitting on the couch getting nebulized with Albuterol when Carolyn and I switched off. I nuked half an omelet and some hash browns from yesterday's breakfast and started calling people who might know something. Mica and I shared the leftovers while I Googled around on my laptop and found this from a little over a year ago ...

Prime property to be available -- with great view

After 40 years in Magnolia, the Fort Lawton Army Reserve Center is being closed, putting a rolling swath of land, several buildings and one of the best views in Seattle up for grabs by interested agencies and organizations.

The rare opportunity has sparked interest from groups that help the homeless, which will be given priority in acquiring the property. But the land offering also has been noticed by fans of Discovery Park, who see it as a chance to expand the park's open area, and by neighbors who worry that future uses could bring more traffic."

People who live in this area will be very interested in what happens to that property," said Heidi Carpine, who lives across the street from the reserve center. "All the owners have put in a lot of money into upgrading their houses; it has become a beautiful, safe neighborhood. I know everyone is going to be very alert to what is decided for that property.

The phone rang. It was John Fox at the Seattle Displacement Coalition getting back. He'd talked to Sharon at the Times too. He didn't know much more than I did. He remembered something about LIHI putting in a proposal, but for some reason it went nowhere. He couldn't go to the hearing. Yep. It was fucked. Seattle. What can you do?

I looked at the Council website. The Parks Committee is chaired by Dave Della and has Richard Conlin, Sally Clark, and Jan Drago. Not exactly our list of champions. I tried calling to see if there would be public testimony but no one at City Hall was picking up phones today.

I looked at Mica, who was happily taking bits of omelet off my fork as I fed her like she was a one-year-old. A sick kid is a good excuse to relive the baby years. "Do you want to go somewhere with daddy," I said? She nodded. She was looking pretty good. No fever. No coughing. I asked her again. She looked genuinely excited at the prospect.

I-5 was dead. We took it to James, parked in the Municipal Building garage, and were at City Council Chambers by five minutes of two. There were maybe twenty people there, and most of them for something else. Only three other people signed up to speak about Discovery Park, and one of them meant to sign a different sheet. Dave Della was the only Council member there.

Mica and I sat down next to a nice lady who had seen the article in the paper and was there out of curiosity. "Are you teaching her about civics?" she asked, smiling at Mica. "Yes," I said. "I think it's important for her to feel betrayed by democracy before she gets to be seven."

It was a conversation-stopper.

I was beginning to feel like the kid who showed to school on a snow day. Where the hell was everybody? I looked up to see Bill Block, the head of the Coalition to End Homelessness in King County.

We chatted as Mica sat on my lap, happy as a clam. He was there on a minor matter in his role as a Board member of Seattle Center. Bill didn't know anything about Discovery Park. "Haven't researched it," he said. He did his thing and was gone. It was soon my turn to speak. Mica walked up to the mike with me, holding my hand.

Dave Della stared.

"I can't believe this," I said. "We have an affordable housing problem in this city. We have a workforce housing problem in this city. And we're talking about spending $11 million to tear down 66 units of perfectly good housing, and nobody is here to testify. No one even seems to know. And you're the only council member here."

Della stared.

"And we're tearing it down to create more green space? In Discovery Park? Like more green space is our most pressing problem? And 26 units of officers housing, sitting in Discovery Park overlooking the Sound is going to a private developer for $16 million? Who do you have to know to get that deal? And the City says they're not interested? Why not? Maybe no one's here now, but you'll hear about this," I said.

"You'll hear about this?" I felt ridiculous before I even sat back down for having said something so completely cliché and, for all I know, untrue. Mica crawled into my lap. I didn't even use my whole two minutes.

Michael Ruby from Friends of Discovery Park rose and gave a gracious two minutes on how this was absolutely the right decision and the culmination of a wonderful process, and then asked to see me outside. Mica and I went. She was looking positively chipper about the whole thing.

Michael and I sat next to each other on a small bench in the foyer as he told me that he had been following this issue since 1954. He looked as though that may be true. He explained that the Friends of Discovery Park had once felt "exactly as I do now," but they'd examined the housing and found it to be on the verge of collapse. They'd sadly come to accept that reverting the land to green space was the best option for all. He hoped we'd get to talk again sometime.

I bought Mica a chocolate donut at the Muni building Starbucks, ate half of it myself, and wondered if I had slipped into some sort of bizarro-world, where affordable housing gets torn down for green space and no one notices or cares.

We drove home. I got hold of Sharon Lee at LIHI and asked her what the fuck? She said they'd put in a proposal to build housing on decommissioned Fort Lawton land in a partnership with United Tribes and Archdiocesan Housing Authority, and that the City was basically not returning her calls. After a confusing few minutes, we realized she was talking about administrative buildings on the east side of the park. I was talking about family housing out on the western tip. She didn't know anything about that.

"How can this be," I asked. "How can housing get torn down without anyone knowing. Without anyone getting a chance to preserve it. What the fuck?"

"I don't know," she said. "I have to go."

I called Sharon Chan to see what she'd figured out and ranted for awhile as her fingers clicked on the other end.

"How can this be," I asked.

"I have to go," she said.

Mica and I left to retrieve her twin sister from a first day at the new preschool a few blocks away. When I got back, I sat glued to my laptop while the girls performed water volume experiments on the kitchen floor which involved some cups and the refrigerator's filtered water spigot. It's their favorite appliance.

I found the 35-year Discovery Park Master Plan, last updated in 1986, which contained this paragraph.

It is essential that Capehart Housing site eventually become part of Discovery Park. This area is far within and very central to the interior of the Park. The housing is totally incompatible with the Park philosophy and the Long Range Development Plan. It is proposed that the housing ultimately be removed and the site converted to a meadow open space interspersed with thickets and coniferous forest.

Capehart housing is the 66 units, built in the early 60s, in which military families are now living. They will continue to live there until 2009, when American Eagle Communities — the ginormously-huge company that has the contract, among many, many others, to manage all decommissioned military properties in Washington State — will tear down the housing and deliver an empty lot in exchange for Seattle's $11 million.

That's part of the deal. American Eagle does the tear down while the ownership is in their hands. Clever.

It was basically a done deal more than three years ago. The officers housing, also handled by American Eagle, is being sold to a private company who is getting a sweet deal on fine turn of the century homes with a sweeping view of the Cascades and the Sound. One of these appears at the top of this post. There are thirteen of these, and thirteen senior NCO houses made of brick.

The whole lot of 26 has been appraised for $16 million. Historic Seattle, according to my new friend Michael Ruby, is interested, but can't come within spitting range of that price. The private company can.

The city says they're completely uninterested in the property. Someone's going to make a shit load of money. No one cares. They're too busy beating up on Burien to notice when right here, under our noses, an upscale neighborhood gets an enhanced amenity and private capital makes a killing, while housing — yet more housing — disappears off the map.

Lets Pick On Someone Our Own Size

Seattle, having distinguished itself for several years running as Forbes Magazine’s “Most Overpriced City in America,” has now made their top ten Least Affordable Real Estate Markets list as well. This should surprise no one.

In recent months, the attention of many has been held by the Lora Lake drama that has unfolded in Burien. An agreement reached several years ago with the Port of Seattle during negotiations over the Airport’s third runway slates the 162-units of affordable family housing for demolition to make way for commercial development. To housing advocates, Lora Lake has come to symbolize the three steps back that we take for every hard won step or two forward. For the City of Burien, in which the vast majority of housing is affordable, Lora Lake is about economic development and having the autonomy to plan their own city.

We need our neighboring communities to be our allies in the fight against homelessness. This is why, in the fight against Burien, even if we win, we lose. Our affordability problem is right here in Seattle, where those who profit excessively from the loss of affordability, for the most part, have not even been named. Outfits like Clise Properties, Touchstone Corporation, Harbor Properties, Vulcan Real Estate, Samis, and even outside investment corporations like The Blackstone Group use their enormous influence to drive development in Seattle, and are too seldom called upon to reconcile their profit-taking with our broader interests as a community.

But we're not seeing any interfaith vigils at their offices are we?

Have we made Burien our affordable housing whipping boy because it’s easier than taking on the rich and powerful right here in Seattle? We can make our problem Burien's, to their great resentment, or we can take a closer look at why they have enough affordable housing and we do not.

It's great to see people finally get worked up over something, and a little bureaucratic hardball never hurt anyone. But if we're going to take a fight all the way, let's be sure that it's the right fight. Burien, for many reasons, makes a convenient target that everyone from the church to the state can get behind. But that, in itself, should make us wonder what's really going on.

Radio Logorrhea

Rich Lang sobered me up yesterday just long enough to get me onto his weekly radio show Living Faith Now. The cocktail he gave me on the way over (black coffee, Methadone, and Demerol — it's an old Methodist trick) acted like a truth serum, and I babbled on the air like some sort of a snake handling Pentacostal.

There were a couple of moments of lucidity, but my preceding hell week and the insomnia that went with it turned the show into more of a monologue than a conversation, and there are times, when I listen to the recording, where I wish I'd just shut the fuck up.

I coherently discuss Real Change, and get in some great stuff about structural unemployment and homelessness, and I probably manage to piss off ninety-percent of my allies by talking about how Lora Lake is a diversion from the larger problem we have in Seattle, but I get all vague and spaced out when I try to recall why the left is pathetic on class and I ramble and repeat myself when I talk about the problem with Ten Year plans and why I hate Philip Mangano so much.

In all seriousness, it wasn't my finest hour. I wish I'd done more to prepare.

Rich, however, charitable soul that he is, seemed to think it was OK, and bills me as "one of Seattle's finest provocative minds." Well, provocative anyway.

You can stream the show from the website. Rich's line-up up of previous usual suspects also includes the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness' Bill Kirlin-Hackett, the effectively low-key Michael Ramos, the irrepressible Alice Woldt, and Cecile Andrews, who, to my great delight, seems to cross my path every twenty minutes or so these days.

By now, most Lora Lake watchers know that an injunction was issued yesterday that will probably prevent the demolition of Lora Lake until after a March hearing. This legal maneuver comes out of the little discussed King County Housing Authority eminent domain threat that was issued a few weeks ago. Sandy Brown of the Church Council is quoted in the PI saying, "When I heard, I couldn't help but jump for joy."

There's a visual. Sandy pogoing in his office like Joey Ramone in a suit.

Speaking of seventies punk icons, Carolyn and I are going to see Patti Smith at the Showbox tonight. To commemorate the occasion, I found this highly unlikely clip on YouTube: Patti Smith in 1979, on ABC's Kids are People Too, belting out Debbie Boone's You Light Up My life with Joe Brooks on Piano.

It's a little embarrassing, but she's very sweet as she answers questions from girls in the audience and talks about kids taking back Rock and Roll from the corporate exec's. This was the year that Todd Rundgren produced Wave, Patti's final album before her period of professional retirement. Wave featured the brilliant but then unnoticed Dancing Barefoot, which was described by Rolling Stone as,

her mystical ode to sexual rapture. "I think sex is one of the five highest sensations one can experience," she said in 1978. "A very high orgasm is a way of communion with our creator." She added that she masturbated to her own album cover photo, as well as to the Bible.

A Lora Lake elegy and a rock laureate

Jennifer Langston's Lora Lake elegy and awaiting the arrival of Patti. It's in the PI.

The Demolition Men Cometh

Today the Port of Seattle will meet to decide the fate of the Lora Lake apartments, and unless the moon turns to cheese Commissioners Bob Edwards and Alec Fisken will fail to carry the day and the Port will hold fast to their demolition decision.

An opinion piece by Port CEO Tay Yoshitani in Tuesday's PI sums up their reasoning succinctly.

• Burien fought the third runway tooth and nail, and in the course of things agreements were made. If the Port does not honor these, they will lose credibility.
• Seattle has an affordable housing problem and a condo conversion issue, but Burien does not. Most housing in Burien is affordable. This is not their problem.
  
• An agreement is an agreement. A contract is a contract.

King County Housing Authority has used both the carrot and the stick, offering $18 million to buy the property and threatening the use of eminent domain should that fail. Additional legal action has been brought in the form of a lawsuit from Citizens to Defend Affordable Housing. Seattle clergy almost committed civil disobedience, and SHARE/WHEEL actually did it and no one cared.

Seattle Housing Authority CEO Tom Tierney has also called upon the Port to preserve the units, but has also said that should they decide otherwise, they should take responsibility for the lost housing and rebuild elsewhere.

The Lutheran Public Policy Office sent out an alert that articulated this position a bit more fully:

Although LPPO has consistently advocated for the preservation of the Lora Lake apartments, political realities have made this option difficult to work out. Instead, LPPO and many others working on this issue are in favor of a $30 million package funded jointly by the Port, King County, and the King County Housing authority which would fund the building of replacement units for the 162 units of affordable housing which would disappear with the demolition of Lora Lake.

This position has been challenged by some, who point out the obvious: Were we to spend $30 million on housing AND keep the apartments, we'd be getting ahead and not just staying even. Who wants to spend $30 million to stay even?

It's been suggested that the strategy here is to offer the Port an alternative that is so unattractive, it makes reneging on Burien look great by comparison. Clever.

Too bad it won't work.

Lora Lake has shown us that Ten Year Plan targets for housing development can't end homelessness if we're losing units on the other end. The visual of perfectly good housing being torn down to make way for a big box retailer makes for great symbolism, and Burien and the Port Authority are, for politicians in Seattle, relatively safe targets.

Sooner or later, however, Lora Lake will be behind us, and we'll still have the same issue to contend with. And we'll have to face that the real problems, and the real targets, are right here in Seattle. Developers are making a killing at the expense of affordability, and our corporate liberal political class is, for the most part, too weak-kneed to get in their way.

Some real hardball has been played against the Port Authority and Burien to preserve this housing, but the 162 units in Burien are a drop in the bucket to the 3000 or so units lost locally to condo conversion.

House Speaker Frank Chopp, who allowed a condo conversion bill to die in committee last spring, has pledged his support for addressing this during next year's legislative session. We need to marshal the outrage we've mustered over events in Burien to ensure that this legislation offers a meaningful market intervention, and doesn't just settle for some relocation assistance that masquerades as a victory while the core problem remains untouched.

Class Warfare's a Bitch

This from The Stranger's SLOG. Creighton's email came three days after the premature declaration of victory at Lora Lake a few weeks back. When these guys push pack, they basically shove you through a plate glass window and then piss on you while you bleed.

The Port will vote on whether to demolish the Lora Lake Apartments this Thursday. While the Burien building has become an important symbol for the loss of affordable housing in the region, it's still just a symbol. The actual problem is much larger than the 162 units at stake here.

From: “Creighton, John” Creighton.J@portseattle.org
To: “Edwards, Bob” Edwards.B@portseattle.org
Sent: 7/27/2007 5:13pm
Subject: Lora Lake motion

Bob,

I want to touch base on our next meeting. I agree with Lloyd that your actions in bringing up the Lora Lake matter without notifying your colleagues (even Alec who supports your position) were disrespectful and contrary to any sense of collegiality or building trust with your fellow commissioners.

In the last two years, you have at different points criticized each one of your fellow commissioners for allegedly keeping information from you or blindsiding you. In my opinion, your actions are of an exponential magnitude worse than anything any other commissioner has done to blindside the commission in the last two years. Unlike other instances, your actions were blatantly premeditated to embarrass the Port and to embarrass your colleagues, all for selfish personal gain at our expense. If you truly had cared about building a coalition to save the Lora Lake apartments, you would have gone about it in a much different way.

Lloyd is a very patient, forgiving and tolerant soul, much more than I am. I want to assure you that I will be back in town on 8/9 and very much in full control of commission meetings. I am the chair of the commission, and will remain chair until replaced by a majority vote of my colleagues. Until that time, I am in charge of the meetings and will not tolerate any bullshit, neither from you or any other commissioner.

It will be my perogative as chair (1) whether we hear any sort of motion on Lora Lake, (2) in what form and language any such motion will take, and (3) whether or not we have any public testimony. If you object to any of that, you are free to form a coalition with 2 of your fellow commissioners to replace me as chair. If you are disruptive in the meeting, I will not be afraid to either gavel you down or take other action.

I hope that I am making myself crystal clear, but if not, I am happy to follow up with you in person.

I believe that your blatant political grandstanding has done a huge amount of damage to the Port at a time when we were moving beyond all the bullshit and scandal of the last half year. I am looking forward to January, when I hope that we will have a new commissioner in position 2 who has the maturity and the integrity to help move the port forward on the important issues of competitiveness that we really need to be focusing on. But, alas, that is the subject for a separate email.

Sincerely, John

The Definition of Insanity

On Tuesday, I went to a press conference at the Lora Lake Apartments in Burien, where, for once, the news was good. Representatives from King County, the Committee to End Homelessness, and the Church Council of Greater Seattle stood behind Port Commissioner Bob Edwards and offered a united front on the question of preserving affordable housing.

If Edwards can bring the other Port commissioners and the City of Burien around, there will be 162 fewer units of affordable family housing lost to market forces this year.

This region now has less rental housing available than two years ago. Over that time, 4,000 rental units were lost to condo conversion. Add another 3,000 for this year, and you have a market where vacancy rates are at a 20-year low, and rents are up by 10 percent or more.

One may visualize the housing market as a huge ladder, where more and more people are struggling to hold onto fewer rungs. When housing gets more expensive, those who have more resources but can’t afford to move higher begin to occupy the lower rungs. Those with the weakest grip fall off. Some landings are harder than others.

Market forces do not stand still for the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. As the years go ticking toward the number 10, it is plain that the King County goal of 950 new and upgraded housing units each year, without any real assist from the federal government, is somewhat beyond our reach.

This is a symptom of a larger problem.

For more than a decade, homeless advocacy has suffered from a pathetic absence of vision. The 20th anniversary of the McKinney-Vento Act, the landmark legislation that provides nearly all federal funding for homeless services, offers the perfect occasion to revisit basic assumptions.

While federal funding for housing has been cut by $52 billion since its 1979 peak, McKinney-Vento funding to mitigate homelessness has never been more than $1.5 billion annually. We win minor battles while we ignore the larger war.

But the war doesn’t ignore us.

The consensus statement released last week by national homeless advocates is a welcome breath of fresh air. There is explicit recognition that McKinney-Vento is necessary but not sufficient. There is a call for the feds to dramatically expand their role in providing housing. There is recognition that the attack on poor people's programs must be halted and reversed. The civil rights crisis that exists for homeless people is named for what it is, and there is a call for a wage-led strategy to reduce poverty.

At one time, advocates approached homelessness as an extreme symptom of the broader issue of poverty. We all instinctively know that extreme poverty and ridiculous excess do not mix. Homelessness in America is a sweeping indictment of the federal priorities that privilege the rich over the poor.

But one rarely hears homelessness discussed in these terms. Federal funding priorities place our focus on the chronic homeless: the mentally ill, addicted, and alcoholic homeless who, in less enlightened times, were known as “bums.” In other words, it’s not the system that’s seen as screwed up. It’s the people.

Advocates need to stop playing into the federally-driven strategy of divide and conquer. We must instead look more to our natural allies: kids, single parents, the elderly, the uninsured, and the disabled. Homelessness is mostly about low wages and high rents. It was true three decades ago, and it’s true now.

Our movement has little commitment to addressing race and poverty. We act as though the prison-industrial complex, which is also about structural unemployment, doesn’t even exist. The selective blindness of most white people in this regard is nearly unforgivable.

Meanwhile, the growth in family homelessness is accelerating. The answer to this is already starting to emerge from Washington. That would be, of course, the Ten Year Plan to address family homelessness.

I wish that were a joke.

Philip Mangano, President Bush’s point man on homelessness, likes to defend the narrowly focused 10-year plan strategies to end homelessness by saying the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing year after year when we know it doesn’t work.

That’s rich.

Federal policy on homelessness is designed to distract, stigmatize, and divide. McKinney-Vento in the absence of a broader federal anti-poverty and pro-housing strategy just sets us up to fail, and 10-year plans that narrowly focus on chronic homelessness while ignoring the structural realities of poverty and inequality are cut from the same cloth.

A Little Movement, A Lot of Spin

"It's a beautiful thing when someone changes his mind, said the Church Council's Sandy Brown at this morning's press conference. "Bob Edwards has changed his mind." Up to now, the Port Authority's response to calls to save 162 units of affordable family housing could be summed up in one or two words. Those would be "No," or "Fuck No," depending upon your interpretation. Today, that response became much more ambiguous.

While this is good news, we are still some distance from declaring victory. Today, Commissioner Bob Edwards will introduce a resolution to his fellow commissioners that opens the possibility for compromise. Should a majority agree, a proposal will be drafted for broader approval that "directs staff to explore compromise. This is not exactly the win we need, but it's a great start.

Edwards has shown admirable moral courage in taking this first step. The Port Authority has "come into the family," as King County Executive Ron Sims so graciously put it this morning, due to immense pressure from the County and the broader community. Like all development that happens at the expense of the poor and powerless, this is about money, opportunity, and power. We need to keep our guard up and the pressure on.

Civil Disobedience Like It Matters

OK. I know that I run the risk of offending friends here, but today I was at the Lamentation Service at Lora Lake apartments in Burien, and I just have to ask, "What the hell was that?"

Lora Lake is, of course, the 162 units of affordable family housing that are about to be destroyed by the Port Authority because they and the City of Burien have other plans for that piece of property. Last week, SHARE/WHEEL "occupied" the complex and nine people were arrested while ten supporters stood by to cheer them on. Today, about 15 clergy of various denominations held a lovely service, at the end of which ten people were going to do civil disobedience.

But apparently they changed their minds.

When I drove up, I saw about a dozen patrol cars with flashing lights parked on all sides of the fenced off neighboring lot. There were cops everywhere. But about fifteen minutes into the thing, they smartened up and went low profile. Cops got into their cars and hid behind barriers. The arrest wagon was out of sight around the corner.

The climactic moment arrived and we were all invited to lay hands on those who had decided to risk arrest. A nice touch. There was supposed to be some sort of cutting of a chain link fence with arrests to follow. Instead, they got the two most avuncular cops on the Burien police force to defuse the thing. We're talkin' Grandpa Walton here.

So the cops chat with Church Council leader Sandy Brown, and suddenly everyone's walking away. No one's looking very arrested to me and I'm having a tough time understanding what's just happened. The whole thing seemed to just fizzle.

I see Rev. Rich Lang walking away and I say, "So, are you arrested or what?" And he says, "I have no idea what's going on. Hey, take a new picture of me for my column. The one we're using is terrible." I take two. I'm wondering which one people like. My wife thinks the big smile makes him look like a doofus, but I like it. I prefer a Man-o-God with a sense of humor.

So then someone tells me that the police opted to simply escort them off the property, and to not make any arrests. Which is just weird. Once you've announced that ten people are there to get arrested and the TV cameras are out, there's only one thing that should stop you. That would be Bill Block's cel phone going off and him shouting, "Wait! It's the Commissioner! He's reconsidered!"

Which brings me back to my original question. "What the hell was that?"

If ever there was an issue that merited civil disobedience, it is this. For the Port Authority to tear down 162 perfectly good units of housing in the midst of a housing crisis is criminal.

Sadly, when people are planning demonstrations, they rarely say, "Quick, someone call Tim Harris! He'll know what to do!"

But maybe they should. I only have five arrests, but my wife has ten. Actually, what she said when I just asked was, "I got up into the double digits and kind of lost track."

I consider my crowning moment as an organizer to be the day that I found myself alone in a room with State Trooper, Statehouse Security, and Boston Police leadership, negotiating the terms of a major Boston Statehouse CD action. They set up a processing center for us in the basement. It was all very convenient.

My wife and I are unanimous in our opinion that recent events are well-intentioned, but that people could perhaps use a little technical assistance. So, assuming there will be a next time, I'd like to offer this brief primer on How To Commit Civil Disobedience.

Strength in Numbers
First of all, what was SHARE/WHEEL thinking when they showed up by themselves to occupy 162 units of family housing with NINE PEOPLE! There is a problem here with proportionality. I don't want to diminish anyone's risk-taking here, but lets get real. This doesn't communicate "We mean business." It says, "Swat me like I am an annoying fly." I hear people saying in outraged tones that the police showed up with fourteen cars to arrest nine people, and I think, well, duh. This is to be expected. They probably thought there would be a hell of a lot more of you. Had I been offered more than a dozen hours notice for either action, and known that others were on board as well, I'd have joined them. It's been a good fifteen years. The cause is right. I'm due. My hunch is that many others feel the same way. Where was the organizing?

Nonviolent CD 101
When you do Civil Disobedience, you say that moral laws trump human law. You say that some things are worth putting your body on the line for. You encourage others to step up their level of commitment to match yours. You are providing moral leadership that goes beyond words. You are drawing injustice out into the open for everyone to see. There are few people who have more community standing than middle-class clergy. You have privilege to spare. Unless you're at the School of the Americas, where the feds have taken to handing out lengthy prison sentences like candy, chances are that a CD arrest isn't going to put much of a dent in your credit rating or otherwise unduly inconvenience you. Our privilege is there to be used. This was a squandered opportunity.

Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More.
Breaking the law is serious, so act like it. This isn't some kind of game where we're play acting our parts. Things are at stake here. I don't know what kind of prep went into this, but from the way it fizzled after Sandy Brown talked to Grandpa Walton, I'd have to say, "probably not much." I mean, what the hell is that in Sandy's hand? An electrician's wire cutter? A hedge clipper? If you're planning on slicing your way through a chain link fence, I've got two words for you: bolt cutters! You need to think through the various scenarios and know what you're going to do when things get confusing, which leads me to ...

They Don't Want To Arrest You
Hello? "Ten Clergy Arrested In Protest of Housing Demolition." Is that a headline that the City of Burien wants in its morning papers? Not really. So, you might need to work at it a little bit. I remember one arrest at the Boston Statehouse where the police did not want to arrest us at all. I watched Sue Marsh, the 5'6, distinctly nonathletic policy analyst and lobbyist who ran the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, literally propel her body into a line of Boston cops who were standing between her and her goal, which was to get arrested. We had occasionally had our differences, but at that moment I loved Sue as much as I'd ever loved anyone else in my life. Nothing could have been more out of character for her, but she rose to the occasion because it mattered. She was heroic.

The Media Reports Conflict
There were three or four TV cameras there, but when I surfed around online tonight looking for the story, predictably, no appeared to have run with it. An outdoor sermon minus the civil disobedience is just an outdoor sermon: it may be spiritually uplifting, but it's not news.

Many good things were said today, and I was happy to hear them. The assembled clergy were in fine prophetic form and Amos and Isaiah and all those other guys were well represented. But we must also remember Matthew 10:16. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” We've got the harmless as doves part down, but the wise as serpents thing needs a lot more work.

The good news is that there's some major bureaucratic hard ball going on, with King County threatening to go all eminent domain on the Port of Seattle's ass. I have a press release that arrived in my email at 10:45 pm saying that King County and the Port of Seattle have a major announcement on Lora Lake for 10 AM tomorrow.

So maybe we win anyway. But lets not kid ourselves. This was lame.

One last thing. After I got back to my car, I pulled into a driveway to turn around and found myself face to face with someone's personal tank. What kind of people live in Burien anyway? I shot this photo out of my passenger window because, frankly, I was afraid to get out of the car. Who the hell owns their own tank? Can anyone buy one of these things?