Seattle Steroids Abuse Receives National Attention

With the economy in flames, the launch of Nickelsville looming, and organizers in Ballard looking to establish safe zones for the growing numbers of car campers, the notion that anyone is "ending homelessness" through better use of data and smarter deployment of resources is becoming more ludicrous by the day.

Today brings a bit of reality to the mix from the Associated Press' Evelyn Nievens. Her story, In hard times, tent cities rise across the country, has centered the nation's attention, for a few days anyway, upon the obvious.

Nievens' reporting made headlines everywhere from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to USA Today to MSNBC and the Huffington Post and several hundred newspapers and blogs in between.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.

Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening.

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore. and Seattle.

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood. In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless - such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.

In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled.

"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question. We're still trying to get to that."

In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up - in remote places to avoid police sweeps.

"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else - on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.

Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps - acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."

Cool. We're organizing, and HUD is working on getting around to looking at the problem. Real solutions can't be far off.

Ever do a vanity Google? I just did. Googling the exact phrase "What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else - on steroids," said Tim Harris receives 1,010 matches just now. Sweet.

I'm Not Paranoid. I'm Just Right.

Sometimes, one prefers to be wrong.

I was on the phone yesterday with Paul Boden in San Francisco talking about how activists in other communities are dealing with the criminalization of survival. Paul came up from the streets to spend seventeen years as ED of that city's Coalition on Homelessness and currently heads the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a grassroots organizer's coalition that brings homeless activists together from LA to Seattle. I speculated on why, despite Seattle's aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments over the past year, so few actual citations have been issued.

"Here's my paranoid vision of the future," I said. "I'm looking deep into my crystal ball, and I see the City using the recurrent encampment clause of the sweeps protocols to define every major camping area as defacto no-go zones by late-fall. That's the priority for now. Their focus is on aggressive continuous sweeps of encampments, and quickly triggering the gloves-off loophole so that the rights offered by the protocols become irrelevant. For now, since most people leave once clearance notices are posted, they don't really need to issue citations. The citations will be their tool once the gloves are off. They'll just go into the permanently posted areas without offering any notice, issue citations to whoever they find and trash their stuff. That's the next phase."

"You're not paranoid," said Paul. "You're just right. That was the pattern in Portland, Oakland, and other places. It's how they do it. You're not paranoid. You're right."

The painting above, The Clairvoyant, is by Brazilian artist Marcelo Halmenschlager.

Bad Road Ahead

Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project flew up from San Francisco last week to be here for our encampment at City Hall. WRAP is a west coast coalition of homeless activists, and between us, we’ve seen it all.

The day after the protest, which drew more than 150 people overnight and at least 50 others to leaflet during the day, Paul looked at me and said, “You guys are headed down the same ugly road as San Francisco and LA.”

Much as I’d like to think otherwise, he’s right. While city spokespeople describe how their new policy addresses advocates’ concerns by providing 48-hours notice, storage, outreach, and shelter, not one single homeless advocate, service provider, or homeless person I’ve talked to believes this to be true.

This intransigence — this rock solid commitment to a policy that is both inhumane and immoral — is a measure of what’s at stake.

This isn’t rocket social science. Big money is riding on downtown condos. Overbuilding and economic downturn have added to the fear. Those who buy — often several years ahead of the opening — have been sold on safety. Visible poverty makes people nervous. The City responds with sweeps, and dresses these up in the rhetoric of compassion.

It’s a well-worn script. Google “homeless sweeps” and aside from Seattle you’ll see San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Contra Costa County, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Fresno, and even Covington, KY. That’s just in the first 30 hits.

And the official line is always the same:

"This is a humanitarian approach," said Cynthia Belon, director of Contra Costa County's homeless program. "It's far more effective to give someone a place in a shelter and an appointment for them to get help."

But here’s the rub. The shelters are full and services are stretched to the breaking point. A long and ugly road stretches before us, not headed anywhere good.

Ten Tents My Ass

These north and south partial views of the City Hall encampment last week, shot at night by Doug McKeehan when most people were inside their tents sleeping, give a sense of how many people braved the steady rain to participate in the overnight portion of the event. Organizers counted 48 tents plus various plastic-wrapped sleeping bags and cardboard boxes. They estimate that 150-175 people stayed overnight, and at least 50 additional participants helped with daytime visibility protests. Sharon Chan of the Seattle Times dropped by at 5:30 for the dinner and reported ten tents in her story the next day.

When Sharon called me at home for a quote, she asked how many would be staying the night. We'd been seeing huge interest and feeling real momentum, but most people who planned on staying hadn't officially committed. So, basically, I had no idea. "Two-hundred," I confidently replied.

"We're sending a photographer, but if I get there and see twenty people, there won't be a story," she said.

So I guess we dodged that bullet.

Her story was notable in that human services Director Patricia McInturff said she "doesn't like the term 'sweeps.'"

"They're unauthorized encampments," she said. "The city has been cleaning up unauthorized encampments for 20 years. I think the new protocol is a giant step forward" with its inclusion of outreach, storage options and additional shelter.

Well, Patricia, if the City hadn't accelerated the pace by a factor of maybe twenty, and if the outreach, storage, and shelter you refer to had some reality to them, then you'd be right.

But as things are, you're a lying sack of shit and we're not stupid. They're sweeps. We know it. You know it. For once in your life, just tell the truth. Preferably, before you retire.

It takes a lot of people to pull something like this off. Operation Sack Lunch took care of the evening meal and helped with hospitality. The Real Change staff and Rachael and Natalie in particular put in heroic efforts during the preceding weeks. Board member David Bloom rounded up the ecumenical meal servers. Real Change vendors were there in force and helped spread the word, and whole bunches of RCOP members took leadership in the weeks and days leading up to the protest. Paul Boden from WRAP flew up from San Francisco and lent a hand as a seasoned pro over Thursday and Friday (Rachael handed him the press calls). And then there was the woman who dropped off a box of tangerines and wished us the best and all the others like her who did their small part.

In short, people pulled together and pulled it off. Last December, when we promised we'd be back, there were less than fifty of us overnight. This time, there were more than one-hundred-fifty. We're building power. The City's lies don't fool us, and we're not going away any time soon.

When Bureaucrats Attack ...

Paul Boden took off with my car this morning. I gave him the key, along with my blow-up air pad and sleeping bag. He wasn't sure he could manage the straight shot down Aurora and the left on 2nd to get to the Real Change office, but this is a guy who once spent two years hitching around Europe on no money. I had faith.

As for me, both my kids are sick with fevers and me along with them. Paul and a couple hundred others are sleeping out at City Hall tonight, but my sorry ass is here in bed. I probably wouldn't be much good anyway. I tried calling a reporter back today and it took me five minutes to remember my own phone number.

Paul is the ED of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a left-coast collaboration of grassroots homeless advocacy organizations who all face similar issues: local gentrification, rising homelessness, and municipalities that have gone on the attack against the visible poor. He's up from San Francisco to see the Seattle situation for himself.

Until recently, Seattle had the decency to be out of step with regional trends on screwing the poor, but we're learning fast. The great thing about WRAP is that we know what to expect. Everything we're seeing here has happened before in places like San Francisco and LA. But they're the vanguard. These cities have attained a level of meanness to which Seattle can only aspire.

This morning — as I sat assessing whether my racing heart and labored breathing should keep me from standing around in the rain and staying up all night at City Hall Plaza — Paul was on the phone to his people. Today's Chronicle ran an attack piece on the Coalition on Homelessness there.

Had the meddlesome San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness' Citation Defense Program not insisted on adding the burden of proof to the city's prosecution of James Allen Hill, writes columnist CW Nevius, the 38-year-old homeless man would have received the services he needs and would not have inconveniently overdosed on heroin in the city library.

Hill was a hard case, what is known in some circles around here as a "frequent flyer." He was cited at least fifteen times in less than half as many months for open container and public drunkenness. He once peed right on a police car. SFCOH, apparently got the last of these citations dismissed as well as several others. They have this wacky theory that homeless people who are ticketed by cops should have due process, and have an 89% success rate of getting charges dismissed.

"Services" is one of this slippery words that means something other than what you might think. It's like when Human Services head Patricia McInturff says the City of Seattle will hold onto and return people's "personal property" when they do sweeps of homeless campsites. To most of us, that would mean their stuff, including their survival gear. But to the City, it simply means identification, military papers, prescriptions, eyeglasses, and perhaps photos, so long as they've thought to attach contact information to these items.

Likewise, in San Francisco, "services" is much more likely to mean a spot in a shelter or a drop-in center than treatment, mental health counseling, or help getting a place. Access to these things lag far behind demand, even for those whom the court requires to get help.

But while services are a bit of an illusion, the citations are real, and so are the bench warrants and fines that pile up when they're ignored. So SFCOH and a similar group in LA have organized a legal line of defense. And for this they, and their funding, are under attack.

Apparently, Hill actually accepted services in one of the citations that attorneys settled. Nevius knew this, but it didn't fit in his man-dead-due-to-meddlesome-advocates frame. Facts are inconvenient things.

Often cases like Hill's never even make it to court. The district attorney's office says that is because homeless advocate attorneys drag out the process as long as possible, creating a paper bottleneck in the courts with "burden of proof" legal requests. There are so many steps and appeals that any misstep can result in a dismissal, which the DA's office says is why hundreds of "quality of life"' infractions are thrown out.

To illustrate, Assistant District Attorney Paul Henderson went through court records and found six cases in which Hill was represented in court by Homeless Coalition attorneys. In what has become a familiar refrain, those attorneys got three of the cases dismissed before they came to trial.

In the other three active cases, prosecutors had offered to drop the charges if Hill agreed to go into treatment for his alcohol problem, Henderson said.

"In other words, we were saying, we don't want to prosecute him, fine him, or send him to jail, but he's got to go to services. And he's got to show us proof that he's gone," he said.

The offer was declined as Hill's attorneys fought the citations. They were still fighting them when he died.

"There's a really good chance we could have saved this guy's life," said Dariush Kayhan, the city's homeless coordinator.

Dariush Kayhan was just hired at $169K to run San Francisco's homeless services for the City. That's before benefits. It takes a lot of money to live in the Bay Area, but it takes even more to ensure loyalty.

The James Hill story doesn't add up.

Fifteen citations. The Coalition took on six of them and won half. That leaves twelve other opportunities since last August for the City to get James Hill the "services" he needed.

Here's the thing that I've noticed. The more cities say they've committed to "no longer managing homelessness" and are committed to "ending homelessness in 10 years," the greater their hostility toward the advocates who might have a different idea as to how this should be done. And the more sophisticated and less honest their management of homelessness becomes.

It's happening everywhere. The bureaucrats, threatened by the advocates, have placed themselves in charge. The package comes with a commitment to affordable housing that they wave around like an invisibility cloak to hide it's sheer inadequacy. Since "housing and not shelter is the answer to homelessness," there is a slow but sure attrition in emergency shelter options. And then there is the increased repression of the visible poor.

In the twenty years since Mayor Giuliani became the darling of New York by "cleaning up" Times Square, the methods have become more sophisticated and cloaked in the language of compassion.

There is greatly increased police attention supplemented by private security hired by the local Business Improvement District.

There is an emphasis upon issuing citations that turn into bench warrants and other forms of criminal charges.

Laws are passed against activities, such as sleeping, in which the poor are likely to engage.

And there are campsite clearances, performed for the good of those who have nowhere else to go.

And the human services community, with some exceptions, is cowed into submission.

At some point, they go after the advocates themselves. Most service providers are restrained by the fact that their funding comes from the city. Those who stand up are eventually subjected to delegitimation tactics, mean-spirited press attacks, and whisper campaigns directed toward major funders.

In other words, it's war. War on the poor. And war on those who side with them.

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.

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.

Raining on Philip Mangano's Rock & Roll Tour

There is an alternative to the Philip Mangano Rock & Roll circus. Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project calls bullshit on federal housing policy and plugs the Without Housing report (2:08 Mins).

We Don't Need Your Pity

The politics of fundraising off of pity (1:20 mins). Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library.

We're Not Quite Seen Equally

Paul Boden talks about homeless people being used by well-intentioned advocates. Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (1:32 mins).

Paul Boden Can't Sell StreetSheet for Shit

The story in thirty-three seconds. No lesson drawn. No moral attached.

Nothing to Lose

More Paul Boden at the Ballard Public Library. Here he talks about the WRAP Report on twenty-five years of federal housing policy, and says that grassroots people who give a shit will outlast the NAEH. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has yet to respond to the WRAP data (2:14 min.).

An Expert on Panhandling

Who died and made Mangano the fucking expert?

Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (1:09 mins).

Something's Happening in Our System That's Wrong

Paul Boden talks about coming up from the streets in the Tenderloin in the early 80s. Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (2:08 mins).

Part of a Community

The homeless label isn't helping us. Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (1:26 mins).

Charity is Not the Answer to Poverty

Paul Boden advances a common-sense argument for socialism. Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (56 secs).

Food, Clothing, Shelter

Be careful of what you ask for. Western Regional Advocacy Project ED Paul Boden, May 16, 2007, Ballard Public Library (1:08 mins).

Talkin' Trash in Ballard

WRAP Executive Director Paul Boden gave a talk last night at the Ballard library, sponsored by Real Change and our friends at Trinity United Methodist Church and Sustainable Ballard.

I think I've found the one other person on earth who hates Philip Mangano as much as I do. Boden doesn't like Mayor Newsom much either, and privately describes him as a kind of smiley Kennedy-wanna-be who fucks over homeless people.

The Western Regional Advocacy Project this year released Without Home, a critique of federal housing policy that documents how more than 25 years of federal funding trends for affordable housing have created the contemporary crisis of homelessness and near-homelessness.

WRAP is a west coast homeless empowerment organizer's coalition (see blog) that is working to build a bottom up alternative to business-as-usual. Boden started the organization last year after eighteen years as ED of the San Fransisco Coalition on Homelessness.

Boden will discuss Federal homeless and housing policy today with members of the Seattle King County Coalition for the Homeless immediately following the group's monthly meeting.

Paul said stuff that needs to be said and a bunch of people pretty much seemed to agree. We gave away about 30 pounds of WRAP reports before we ran out. I videotaped things, but the download cord got left at the office. So you have to wait, like I do. I'll get something up soon.

WRAP Member organizations:

• Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (B.O.S.S.), Berkeley, CA
• Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco (COHSF)
• Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN)
• Real Change, Seattle, WA
• Sisters Of The Road, Portland, OR
• Street Spirit, Oakland, CA

Counting the Homeless with Philip Mangano

NPR's Scott Simon did a softball interview with Bush administration homelessness czar Philip Mangano last Saturday on Weekend Edition, and Phil offered a genially upbeat litany of distortions and half truths as he assured us that the "business focused, results oriented" Ten Year Plan strategies are succeeding in ending homelessness. It was disappointing to hear Simon, who is certainly capable of doing a tough interview, defer to Mangano as if he were the reincarnation of Mother Theresa.

Simon sets the stage for Mangano's rap by parroting the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness line that ten percent of the homeless draw fifty percent of the emergency shelter resources, and that the magic bullet to ending homelessness lies in relentlessly focusing our attention on the toughest cases.

The rebuttal to this gets pretty deep into the weeds, which is part of why Mangano's oversimplification works so well. The short version is that the studies upon which this is based exclude several key groups, like families with children. The Ten Tear Plan model also assumes a static reality, which is just weird. For a good overview and critique, see NPACH's Q&A on chronic homelessness.

What I find so maddening about Mangano is how successful he's been in sidelining any discussion of structural poverty in relation to the problem of homelessness. By focusing national attention on the most dysfunctional and stereotypically "homeless" ten percent of the two million or more who are without housing, he has managed to deflect attention from the many ways in which federal policy creates poverty while effectively placing ninety-five percent of the responsibility for a solution on the localities.

He uses the terms chronic homeless, street homeless, and homeless interchangeably, so when he talks about these huge "reductions" that are taking place, any normal person would assume he's talking about homelessness in general. Thus, the illusion is established that major progress has been made when the reality is far less encouraging.

In Portland, for example, Mangano says homelessness has decreased by 70%. Without going into the complexities of the count, let's just say that this is an extremely contested number. The City of Portland claims a 39% decrease. Portland's Street Roots says they're not convinced.

The 2006 Conference of Mayors report says that requests for family shelter in that city actually rose. Outside the city, these rosy reports of ending homelessness turn positively grim. Some advocates claim that rural homelessness in Oregon is up by as much as 300%.

San Fransisco, another of Mangano's successes with a 38% decrease, reports a rise in family requests for shelter as well. Overall, says the Conference of Mayors, homelessness is up by six percent, nearly a third of family requests for shelter go unmet, and the average length of an episode of homelessness is now at eight months, the longest on record.

A recent internal fight within the our own Committee to End Homelessness in King County might shed some light. While some parties within CEHKC, based on the last two years' counts, wanted to report similar declines in homelessness, others argued that changes in the timing and methodology of the annual one night count rendered comparisons less than entirely meaningful. This point of view eventually prevailed.

Something that goes unsaid in all this counting and recounting is that most cities are employing liberal use of the stick right along side the Housing First carrot. Portland, LA, San Fransisco, and a host of other cities have become decidedly less hospitable, and this decreases the numbers as well. LA, for example, sends their police out every two weeks to roust sleeping homeless people under the guise of getting an accurate count. The numbers in LA's skid row have declined sharply.

Over the last three years in San Fransisco, says the Mayor's press release, "1,864 homeless persons left San Francisco to be reunited with friends or family members in other parts of the country through the City's Homeward Bound Program." This is otherwise known as the one-way bus ticket out of town. Long-time San Fransisco advocate Paul Boden reports that his city now counts these as housing placements.

So as Mangano goes around crowing his mission accomplished message, I'm thinking I've heard it before, and it wasn't true then either.

I'm just thankful that he didn't go into his "I'm from Massachusetts and an abolitionist, and Republicans ended slavery and they'll end homelessness too" rap. That just might have sent me right over the edge.