I Thought Journalism Meant Asking Questions?

Tonight I was looking for coverage of Real Change's fourth protest encampment at City in the last year, and found this odd story on KOMO. "The City of Seattle says that police and social workers will be out tonight helping the homeless find a warm place to stay, but some of the homeless are protesting. Bryan? Why the protest?"

Bizarrely, tonight the KOMO story transcription renders this on their website as "And some of the homeless are smirking"

Pop Quiz #1: Is this a.) A simple transcription error? b.) Someone who's bored, getting high on the job, and pissed that they make $9 an hour? or c.) An intentional editorial comment by someone who knows that no one really reads these things and even fewer people care? Answer: We'll never know, but I'm thinking some combination of b and c.

The story continues. "Well, you know, Mary, normally, City Hall Park is just filled with the homeless. But not tonight! It's too cold! The city says that's because they're keeping three emergency shelters open, at City Hall, the Frye Hotel, and out at the Seattle Center. But guess what? The homeless say Thats ... Not ... Enough!"

Bryan Johnson moves from his dramatic intro to a three second B-roll of some tents while he says there are people at City Hall protesting the homeless sweeps. He then gets Real Change staffer Natalie Novak to say there's at least 2,361 outside of the shelters and to repeat after him, "471 ain't goin' ta do it!"

I've watched this thing three times, and I honestly can't tell whether reporter Bryan Johnson thinks we're a bunch of whiners or that we have a legitimate beef. What I do know is that his story obediently followed both the lead and the frame that the city helpfully provided.

I know this for at least two reasons. The first is that every time Real Change does a protest encampment, the City issues a preemptive press release to instruct the media on what to report. The other is that as soon as I saw the number "471" materialize out of nowhere, I thought "City Press Release!" I looked up December 16, and there it was, just in time.

NEWS ADVISORY
SUBJECT: City Keeps Emergency Shelters Open During Cold Snap
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 12/16/2008 4:30:00 PM	FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Alex Fryer (206) 684-8358

City Keeps Emergency Shelters Open During Cold Snap

SEATTLE – As freezing temperatures continue, the city of Seattle is keeping two severe weather overnight shelters and one “overflow” shelter for homeless people open through the duration of the cold snap. Given current weather forecasts, this means the shelters will remain open through Friday, Dec. 19, and potentially into next week.

Shelters, jails, hospitals, the Crisis Clinic and Operation Nightwatch notify homeless of the additional services. In addition, Seattle police officers in a van equipped with blankets approach homeless people and ask them if they need shelter for the night and help them with transportation as needed.

Since the first day of operation through Monday, a total of 471 people have stayed at these shelters.

“We will continue to provide emergency beds as needed, to make sure our city’s most vulnerable have a warm place to stay during these icy nights,” said Mayor Greg Nickels. “We urge the homeless to keep safe and take advantage of the services we are offering.”

Beginning on Friday, Dec. 12, the city opened severe weather shelters at City Hall and the Frye Hotel. On Saturday, Dec. 13, the city opened an additional overflow shelter at Seattle Center.

• The co-ed City Hall shelter is located on Fourth Avenue between James and Cherry Streets. Shelter doors open at 9 p.m. People seeking shelter should arrive no earlier than 8:30 p.m. Capacity is 75 people.

• The women-only shelter is located at the Frye Hotel at Third Avenue and Yesler Street and can be accessed through the Women’s Referral Center, located at 2030 Third Avenue between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Capacity is 25 people.

• The overflow severe weather shelter is located at Seattle Center Pavilion B and is open at 9 p.m. Capacity is 75 people.

During the day, Seattle residents can find warm, public space at Parks Department community centers, the Seattle Center and libraries. The Greenwood Senior Center is also opening its doors at 525 N. Greenwood Ave. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to anyone who needs a respite from the cold.

City of Seattle severe weather shelters open in the event of two or more days of heavy rain, or when the temperatures reach 32 degrees or colder or when snow is on the ground.

People in need of emergency shelter should call the community service hotline at 2-1-1.

Get the Nickels Newsletter and the mayor’s inside view on transportation, public safety, economic opportunity and healthy communities at mayor.seattle.gov

- 30 -

A close reading offers much to admire. Note for example, how the phrase "since the first day of operation" is employed to discourage anyone from doing the math. The answer is 471 people served over 4 days. Nightwatch was still turning people away on Friday night, so the city finally kicked up and opened Seattle Center. That detail gets sort of buried. Note also that it takes two consecutive nights of heavy rain for the severe weather shelters to open. The homeless are tough. They can easily handle one night of being cold and wet. They're not really like us. Also, the shelters don't open unless the temperature drops to 32 degrees. Not 33 degrees. People line up, watching the doors, hoping it's cold enough. When it isn't, they wander off, just like they've got nowhere to go.

Pop Quiz #2: In a 35 degree temperature, how hard does the wind have to blow to produce a below freezing wind chill? Answer: According to the National Weather Service, just 5 mph.

Pop Quiz #3: If 471 different people compete for the 625 total number of opportunities over the whole of 4 nights to sleep on a severe weather indoor mat, how many of these people got to stay inside for a second of the four nights? Answer: 154

Extra Credit: Where, then, did these people go on the other 2 nights? Answer: Who cares?

So they did not actually serve "a total of 471 people." As we see, that number doesn't make sense, which is why they obfuscate the math. I'm thinking that 471 is the total number of mats-on-the-floor severe weather accommodations provided over the 4 days, at a bit under 120 people served per night. 471 people served just sounds more impressive. The cold precision of the number offers the illusion of truth and accuracy.

The last city press release on homelessness was nearly two months ago, so today, which happened to be the day of the City Hall protest, we were clearly due. The last, issued on October 30, was More Housing for Chronically Homeless. In typical City of Seattle/Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness fashion, the release doesn't actually say there is more housing. It says there was an announcement of a funding partnership to secure a site, so that when the money to build this housing is raised, there will be a place to put it. The release doesn't actually say when the housing will be completed. I'm guessing around 5-6 years from now.

Pop Quiz #4: If a homeless person is 3-4 more times more at risk of death than the general population, and a "chronically homeless" person runs even an greater risk of death, how many of any random set of 60 chronically homeless people that were alive on October 30, 2008, will be dead by the time this housing is actually built? Answer: Too many.

Anyway, I digress. Those of you who share my fascination with city press strategy and the running dog lackeys of the fifth estate who lap it up will love, love, love, this media analysis of Seattle's homeless sweeps, released this week by a multi-disciplinary team of academics at the University of Washington. They find that the City of Seattle — lovable, liberal, Seattle — has deliberately created a "discourse of filth and contagion" to justify the elimination of homeless campsites, and the media has willingly and consistently followed their lead. There's some good news in there too, but you need to read more than halfway through to find it. Most reporters won't get that far.

Pop Quiz #5: If you define a person as less than human, and equate them with disease and filth, what can you get away with doing to them? Answer: You don't want to go there.

The Shell Game

The city line on homeless shelter for displaced campers is becoming slightly more clear under pressure. The interactive video above, however, still adequately demonstrates the basic theory, especially at the more advanced level. Those who are displaced by encampment clearances will be privileged to a bed for so long as they need it, say city spokespeople. Should the numbers of those seeking these beds expand beyond the number of beds set aside, then more shall be provided.

What's wrong with this picture? For starters, Operation Nightwatch is regularly turning people away at the end of the night with a blanket and a bus ticket, and the bad weather hasn't hit yet. The theory is that shelter for sweeps victims will not displace other beds, but the reality has been less clear. A recent story by Linda Brill on King5 flatly contradicts that claim.

Even if it were true, why shouldn't NightWatch be able to refer their turn-aways to this newly expandable to order shelter system? Should emergency shelter be a contest, where the prize of a mat on a floor goes to the swift, compliant, and officially messed with?

Are the mats on the floor til 5 am that these people are being offered a golden ticket to the gilded promise of Housing First? Doubt it.

A look at the 2007 Safe Harbors Report, which summarizes information from Homeless Management Information System data for the first six months of that year, tells us a lot about what we already know. The numbers are mostly a testimony to how deeply fucked it is that we're micro-obsessing over obvious data, and that the homeless biz is mostly about fixing broken people, with little more than empty words being done about the broken system.

37% of single homeless people and 48% of homeless family members are African American, compared with 6% of the overall population. The 2008 one night count shows an even more dismal picture in that regard, with the percentage of African American homeless going up, and the overall representation of Blacks in King County going down. Dying canaries in a decaying empire, where inequality just keeps rising faster.

Representation of homeless women is rising as well, but that hasn't been news for awhile either.. Vets are represented by roughly double their numbers in the overall population at 19%. They get screwed. Etcetera.



Those homeless who came from outside of King County are counted at 25% for single adults and at 20% for families. The city, under fire for the inadequacy of emergency shelter in Seattle, is making much of this right now. A recent press release from the Mayor plays to Seattle's put-upon taxpayers by inflating that number to 46%. It's a lie. Tax payers should be a lot more worried about Paul Allen, or the downtown luxury condo developers who are about to bilk the public out of subsidizing a world-class amenity, so their air-people future tenants will have a properly spruced up Market to buy their fresh fish, bread, and flowers.

Oddly, the city claims to be pulling their numbers from the same set of data. They limit the the universe to shelter in Seattle, so 9% is added by the non-Seattle King County homeless flocking to our fair city, but that still leaves a big gap that I don't understand.

I'm always impressed by how these people — who claim to live and die by the neutral arbiter of scientific data — consistently manipulate the numbers to suit their political ends. As the saying goes, there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.

So here's a good question. Safe Harbors asks questions about age, race, gender, vet status, where people came from, and more. All very useful. The not inconsiderable cost might be better spent for services, but, hey, it's nice to know. But here's what they don't document. How many people are the shelters turning away?

One would think this would be a useful bit of information to have.

I've always been a little amazed at how blithely the question of why this information isn't collected is dismissed. Common responses are that shelters lack resources to do this sort of documentation, and that there are insurmountable methodology issues.

Well crap, at least we could try. Even Safe Harbors has big gaps in the methodology. Approximate would be better than nothing.

One can't assume that the folks showing up at Nightwatch are anywhere near the whole story. Nor are the handful of people who stick around the encampments to get in line for services. Funding of survival services in Seattle is pathetically inadequate. Campsite clearances in the face of this forces the issue, and all they're offering is sleight of hand, misdirects, and pie in the sky while homeless people die.

Homeless Sweeps As Media Spectacle

I got a call from a reporter yesterday asking whether we were doing anything to protest today's sweeps of lower Queen Anne over by Kinnear Park. The Mayors office has alerted the media that they'll be doing sweeps in this area from 7:30-10 am. Oddly, we didn't get the press release. Despite repeated requests, they've neglected to add Real Change to their press list for these sorts of notifications. They apparently prefer their media supine.

Lower Queen Anne is where this odyssey began for us. Last fall, crews went through this area destroying tents and throwing out belongings without posting notice, but left mountains of trash behind. This was repeatedly referred to by the Mayor's staff as a "botched" clean-up, but there was no mistake. The trash was left on purpose. It made a great visual for the press tours conducted since then by Parks Department and the Mayor's Human Services staff.

"Look at the garbage. Over here, we have condoms. Homeless sex. Icky. And look at all the beer bottles. Being homeless is one big party at taxpayer expense. And, oh god, what is that? I think I'm going to be sick. They poop too!"

I did the tour myself a few months ago. CR Douglas at the Seattle Channel invited me along. There wasn't much they could do or say to stop me from coming. His was one of the more critical takes. The City prefers it when the media just prints their press releases, and if Nickels understands anything, it's the importance of rewarding loyalty. Douglas got Human Services head Patricia McInturff in his studio and valiantly tried to pin her down on the question of where people are supposed to go. More than 2600 people counted outside last January, with 20 new beds added to accommodate those cleared from the greenbelts. A second grader can see through the math.

But McInturff wasn't having it. "Seattle has a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness," she kept saying. It's a ten year plan, not a two year plan. Blah, blah, blah." City talking points are designed to evade inconvenient questions such as his. He got nowhere.

There's a conveniently located vitamin supplement store where they always invite press to meet for the tour. We know this through our frequent public disclosure requests, which have resulted in reams of paper in our office that detail the inner workings of the Nickels media machine. When I was waiting, I had a nice chat with the built guy who runs the jock fuel outlet. He said the campers didn't bother him at all. They keep an eye out and clean his parking lot. His experience was of responsible people maintaining good neighbor relations. He wouldn't talk to CR on camera.

Today's show sweeps are, in all probability, the opening propaganda shot that marks a return to a more aggressive schedule of clearances. "Look," they'll say. "Icky. What else are we to do? And look! Notices! Outreach! We're consistent. We're humane. We're kinder and gentler."

Then they'll steamroll forward, secure in the knowledge that once the story's been covered on their terms, they've got a good window during which the sweeps will once again be yesterday's news.

Meanwhile, Operation Nightwatch is turning people out into the night with just a bus ticket and a blanket in record numbers.

This is where we get to the Big Lie. The one about the sweeps being OK because we're ending homelessness. We're not. It's getting worse. There are more shelter turn-aways than ever. One Night Count numbers are on the ascent. More people are dying.

We won't be out protesting tomorrow's sweeps. We're too busy organizing to kick the Mayor's ass on June 8-9 when we hold Camp4Unity, our third and largest encampment yet at City Hall. There will be time to get to know each other and build the relationships that sustain and deepen a movement. There will be a memorial service for the dead. Strong statements will be made. Groundwork will be laid. We are gathering force.

Download the flier PDF here, and the handbills here. Spread the word. The real trash is on the 7th floor of City Hall, and he wears a big empty suit.