King County will buy hotels to permanently house 1,600 homeless people

[transcendentalhobo]

Apparently this is old news, but I just read a little bit about it but a lot of what I'm finding is behind paywalls for the most part. Someone shared an article on a signal thread I'm on about the current situation. For those unfamiliar, King County, Washington is where Seattle is.

King County will buy hotels to permanently house 1,600 homeless people - https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/may/11/king-county-will-buy-hotels-to-permanently-house-1/

 

[Coywolf]

I was just up there for quite a while. Housing alone won't fix the houselessness issue. The fent epidemic up there is  insane . Almost every single homebum was smoking fent, and no one I talked to wanted to do anything about it.

there has to be mandatory treatment requirements/proof of enrollment in treatment/sobriety of hard drugs in order to get into said housing if you have a history of being an addict/aren't one.

I am not into addiction shaming, or the conservative mandatory treatment bullshit, but the fent epidemic is a different monster, especially when you add in the Tranq crap that's going on.

If they want people to  stay housed, and not just fuck up/burn down/use in housing, and end up back on the street, there has to be state or community sponsored rehab clinics opened, where people can go to for a chance to get clean and get state/community housing.

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but if yer out here and see the absolute dumpster fire that is the fent/meth/tranq epidemic that is going on, you may see my point.

i get it. Housing first. But not to further your addiction. There are a ton of houseless kids/families/victims of abuse that could make better use of that housing.

Either way, this is good. More housing is good. But it won't solve the issue if we don't solve the mental health/drug epidemic along with it.

 

[transcendentalhobo]

I was just up there for quite a while. Housing alone won't fix the houselessness issue. The fent epidemic up there is  insane . Almost every single homebum was smoking fent, and no one I talked to wanted to do anything about it.

there has to be mandatory treatment requirements/proof of enrollment in treatment/sobriety of hard drugs in order to get into said housing if you have a history of being an addict/aren't one.

I am not into addiction shaming, or the conservative mandatory treatment bullshit, but the fent epidemic is a different monster, especially when you add in the Tranq crap that's going on.

If they want people to  stay housed, and not just fuck up/burn down/use in housing, and end up back on the street, there has to be state or community sponsored rehab clinics opened, where people can go to for a chance to get clean and get state/community housing.

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but if yer out here and see the absolute dumpster fire that is the fent/meth/tranq epidemic that is going on, you may see my point.

i get it. Housing first. But not to further your addiction. There are a ton of houseless kids/families/victims of abuse that could make better use of that housing.

Either way, this is good. More housing is good. But it won't solve the issue if we don't solve the mental health/drug epidemic along with it.

It would be a shame if you got voted down. The fent is all over Olympia and Tucson also, and part of why I left both, the last two cities I lived in. It's a mess for real, and the first article I found (albeit, just the lead, then it faded into pay wall) featured a client who died of an overdose in her new apartment.

Just, even sober I've experienced straight up homelessness, and remain just a few paychecks away from the streets, so I'm interested in housing first situations.

 

[MetalBryan]

I appreciate having this discussion here on StP from time to time with folks who I believe can truly understand this issue.

I've volunteered/worked with this at-risk population (not strictly homeless but also the adjacent low-income) and this topic is infuriating. Folks who haven't been homeless (like a lot of us) or at least invested time and emotional energy into helping them tend to see the issue as black & white.

The reason folks see this as a black & white issue is that compassion costs money and there's no money to be made from being compassionate. So, you either are compassionate and can't implement practical, humane solutions because everyone else sees the world as a zero-sum game with no need for a safety net beyond family/tribe.

@Coywolf you are right - we can't do a damn thing about any of the issues surrounding homelessness until we get all of the working poor, kids, victims off the street first. This is my black & white take I guess. If we can't at least do that, at least to me, there's no point in having any discussions. You can either try to do what little any individual can by engaging, trying to help, and possibly compromising your safety or lock yourself up in the suburbs not daring to venture out of your house/car/workplace.

 

[transcendentalhobo]

I appreciate having this discussion here on StP from time to time with folks who I believe can truly understand this issue.

I've volunteered/worked with this at-risk population (not strictly homeless but also the adjacent low-income) and this topic is infuriating. Folks who haven't been homeless (like a lot of us) or at least invested time and emotional energy into helping them tend to see the issue as black & white.

The reason folks see this as a black & white issue is that compassion costs money and there's no money to be made from being compassionate. So, you either are compassionate and can't implement practical, humane solutions because everyone else sees the world as a zero-sum game with no need for a safety net beyond family/tribe.

@Coywolf you are right - we can't do a damn thing about any of the issues surrounding homelessness until we get all of the working poor, kids, victims off the street first. This is my black & white take I guess. If we can't at least do that, at least to me, there's no point in having any discussions. You can either try to do what little any individual can by engaging, trying to help, and possibly compromising your safety or lock yourself up in the suburbs not daring to venture out of your house/car/workplace.

Thanks for replying, it would be cool if @Glass Roads weighed in on this. One of my last few days in Oly last month we kicked it for a day and had some good conversation about the pros and cons of service projects in general and harm reduction in particular. We got side tracked once or twice as I was trying to tell him every possible thing that I could think that would be helpful to someone trying to move to Oly in 2023 (and somehow forgot to go to where the salmon were swimming upstream?!) in just one day.

I just realized your from KC(MO I'm assuming without leaving the thread?). I'm in Chicago now and was thinking about going to St. Louis and KCMO next, but that might not be until October or November?

 

[Glass Roads]

From my experience helping in groups like Food Not Bombs (though I don't have any actual experience being homeless, so grain of salt here), It would seem that there are a number of factors that can make some one homeless.

I think the main factor being that you don't have the friend/family support that a lot of people have. Could be because your friends/family just doesn't have the funds or resources to help ya in hard times, could be because your family is toxic and being around them is worse for you than being homeless, could be because an addiction has caused ya to burn every bridge, could be because severe mental health issues have made getting help difficult to do, or it could be some combination of these things.

I'd have to agree with @Coywolf that in my experience it seems that a large portion of the homeless population in cities seem to be hit hard with addiction, and it's a reasonable concern as to whether free housing will help fix that issue or enable it.

But in my opinion, telling someone that they will only get free housing if they go into treatment is just as naive as giving someone housing for free and expecting that to solve the problem. I think many on this forum have met people on a personal level that are so in the grips of addiction that they would sleep outside if it meant they could keep getting said drug. And while yeah someone on hard drugs might ruin the housing or further their addiction in free housing, they will keep using if homeless and will cause other issues outside of the free housing. I think your just moving around the issue.

Free housing first would help all homeless to some extent. Somebody in just financial dire straights could get back on their feet, and somebody with mental health or addiction struggles could have clearer thinking when they aren't worried about their stuff being stolen, worry about being assaulted, and where they are going to shit/piss. (Once again this is just my opinion developed through talking and helping to some extent, and I am fortunate/privileged enough to have had no real threat of being homeless on my life.)

Though I strongly believe that any real reform direct harm reduction efforts have to include presenting the options for recovery or helping to make that possible for those who can't just afford to go to rehab.

I recently visited a harm reduction group that gives out safe supplies. While I see where they were coming from and the benefit of what they do, I was very disappointed that they had next to no resources for people who would like to stop. While I understand that pressuring people to stop would make them hesitant to come and get assistance or safe supplies, how difficult would it be to have a sign saying you have resources for people trying to quit and just have photocopied lists of different resources in the area? But then again, I am not the one doing the work, so I guess who the hell am I to judge how they go about it? Just seems like a missing piece of multiple harm reduction groups I've checked out.

Anyways, that's my 5 cents.

 

[Beegod Santana]

Free housing is nice, but it's just a bandaid. We need public shower facillities, bans on investment groups buying up all the residental properities, actual rent controls, free public campgrounds and treatment that has actually been proven to work. So much "outreach" is just some yuppie getting paid $120k a year to pass out tooth paste and pb&j in a park a few times a week. The homeless industrial complex is very real.

A real unpopular opinion of mine is that if you have to get narcaned you should immediately be sent to 30 days of cold water therapy. It's been proven to work, and worked on morphine addicts for 100 yrs before Bill W and his cronies created the modern recovery scam.

 

[Marticus]

The primary cause of homelessness is the fact that rent costs waaay more than shitty jobs pay. When you have more low-income people than low-rent apartments you have a homelessness problem. And the people with the biggest problems - addiction and mental illness - are the most likely to end up homeless. We've always had addiction and mental illness in this country, but we haven't had a homelessness crisis until the 1980s. That's when Reagan slashed public housing, flop houses shut down, mental hospitals closed, and the economy shifted from well-paid union jobs to low-paid service jobs.

We've tried the forcing people to get clean to prove they were "ready for housing." But it didn't work. It's really damn hard to overcome an addiction, and the vast majority of addicts just said fuck it, this shitty transitional housing isn't worth being sober. That's why the idea of giving people housing first came about. But the housing has to come with the availability of treatment for it to work. People relax when they're not worried about getting evicted for using, and then they have the head space to consider going to the NA meeting they're walking past in the lobby every day.

Housing first works, but it has to be done right - housing with optional treatment. Requiring treatment didn't work back in the day when alcoholic homebums were just drinking Mad Dog. It sure is hell isn't going to work for fent.

 

[Coywolf]

Free housing is nice, but it's just a bandaid. We need public shower facillities, bans on investment groups buying up all the residental properities, actual rent controls, free public campgrounds and treatment that has actually been proven to work. So much "outreach" is just some yuppie getting paid $120k a year to pass out tooth paste and pb&j in a park a few times a week. The homeless industrial complex is very real.

A real unpopular opinion of mine is that if you have to get narcaned you should immediately be sent to 30 days of cold water therapy. It's been proven to work, and worked on morphine addicts for 100 yrs before Bill W and his cronies created the modern recovery scam.

Very much agreed.

A real unpopular opinion of mine is that if you have to get narcaned you should immediately be sent to 30 days of cold water therapy. It's been proven to work, and worked on morphine addicts for 100 yrs before Bill W and his cronies created the modern recovery scam.

I 100% agree with this. Along with legalizing drugs, which would stop, or severely restrict his fent/Tranq shit that's happening. I do not believe that because you have an addiction, the rest of society has to suffer because of it.

Not saying addicts aren't suffering, they are, but at the end of the day, it's THEIR choice to stop. They have to choose that. Treatment is is only proven to work on people that want to stop.

Tweakers and fent addicts have fucked up so many resources that non-addicted houseless people used to have access to (public restrooms, soup kitchens, public spaces, community opinion/trust, etc) that I'm extremely jaded by the entire issue.

 

[Beegod Santana]

Tweakers and fent addicts have fucked up so many resources that non-addicted houseless people used to have access to (public restrooms, soup kitchens, public spaces, community opinion/trust, etc) that I'm extremely jaded by the entire issue.

I am also in the "extremely jaded" camp. It's weird, back in the day when I'd hear dirty kids go on about how the state was terrified of them for challenging social norms I always thought it was a little ridiculous. Like, we're a nuisance, not a threat. These days I really wonder though. While obviously drug cartels are also to blame, the current situation couldn't be happening without the consent of the state. Hard to organize anyone on the street level if literally everyone is totally fried fom meth, fet and church sandwiches. I can remember people getting the shit kicked outta them in downtown LA for blatantly shooting up on the steet back in the day. We really need to get back to that.

 

[transcendentalhobo]

I can remember people getting the shit kicked outta them in downtown LA for blatantly shooting up on the steet back in the day. We really need to get back to that.

I don't think that will be helpful, but I'm curious, when was back in the day for you in LA? I've kicked it in Whittier, South El Monte, etc. circa 2007-'13 a bit, but never much in LA. Some of my first Traveler Friends were really talking it up circa 1997 but I didn't hit The Road for a few years.

 

[Beegod Santana]

I don't think that will be helpful, but I'm curious, when was back in the day for you in LA? I've kicked it in Whittier, South El Monte, etc. circa 2007-'13 a bit, but never much in LA. Some of my first Traveler Friends were really talking it up circa 1997 but I didn't hit The Road for a few years.

Mostly 05-10. I've never thought much of LA, but Venice beach was always a good spot to make $ passing through. In PDX all the junkies used to be kept downtown, I remember kids getting chased off Hawthrone back around the same time for shooting up in broad daylight. In SF I saw some people get brutally beat for trying to sell pills in GGP multiple times. I could go on and on... I miss when kids actually had a sense of keeping their own community safe.

 

[KatesAnchor]

One of my last few days in Oly last month we kicked it for a day and had some good conversation about the pros and cons of service projects in general and harm reduction in particular.

I'd love to hear some of the pro & con points if you remember them. I live in Seattle and really amped up my mutual aid involvement this year. I couriered some harm reduction downtown just a few hours ago. Certainly I can understand trying to foster the interest to quit for folks alongside harm reduction -- I've had to own up and deal with addiction myself more than once -- but if there were other topics, I'd love to know if you got the time. Sounds like you know a thing or two about it. Cheers.

 

[japanarchist]

I was just up there for quite a while. Housing alone won't fix the houselessness issue. The fent epidemic up there is  insane . Almost every single homebum was smoking fent, and no one I talked to wanted to do anything about it.

there has to be mandatory treatment requirements/proof of enrollment in treatment/sobriety of hard drugs in order to get into said housing if you have a history of being an addict/aren't one.

I am not into addiction shaming, or the conservative mandatory treatment bullshit, but the fent epidemic is a different monster, especially when you add in the Tranq crap that's going on.

If they want people to  stay housed, and not just fuck up/burn down/use in housing, and end up back on the street, there has to be state or community sponsored rehab clinics opened, where people can go to for a chance to get clean and get state/community housing.

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but if yer out here and see the absolute dumpster fire that is the fent/meth/tranq epidemic that is going on, you may see my point.

i get it. Housing first. But not to further your addiction. There are a ton of houseless kids/families/victims of abuse that could make better use of that housing.

Either way, this is good. More housing is good. But it won't solve the issue if we don't solve the mental health/drug epidemic along with it.

100% agree. I’ve seen the same thing here in Portland and seen people struggle with fent here that really need multiple types of support but housing alone wont solve the root issues.

 

[transcendentalhobo]

I'd love to hear some of the pro & con points if you remember them. I live in Seattle and really amped up my mutual aid involvement this year. I couriered some harm reduction downtown just a few hours ago. Certainly I can understand trying to foster the interest to quit for folks alongside harm reduction -- I've had to own up and deal with addiction myself more than once -- but if there were other topics, I'd love to know if you got the time. Sounds like you know a thing or two about it. Cheers.

Sure, I mean, I'll write for myself, I think what @Glass Roads wrote above is basically what he was saying.

I think harm reduction is good for a stop gap measure. I carry the narcan nasal spray with me, and when I used to volunteer for the Long Haul Infoshop the last year or two I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area I kept the narcan you had to inject in my mail cubby. It can save lives, and needle exchanges can also. Those are the pros. But the cons? I think everyone here has articulated them well above, even if in harsher terms than I would use.

I feel like it's a bit of a lose, lose situation. I recently spent like two and half months trying to support someone kicking fent, but all they really wanted to do was stop using it daily and it turned my life into a living hell. Thursday I'm going to start going to 12 step meetings again, even though I've been sober for over four years because I just don't want to be around people that are using anymore.

Sorry if this is more than a tangent than an answer to your question! Just before I started my last job in Oly back last year I shadowed a friend from Food Not Bombs at the Emma Goldman Youth & Homeless Outreach (EGY HOP) doing needle exchange, handing out food and coffee, etc. but it was pretty depressing to see what sort of shape a lot of the people were in. Specifically someone I'm 99.9% sure I met spanging in front of a cafe who I only recognized because their teeth were fairly unique looking, had really been devastated in a pretty short amount of time. It was depressing. When I started working again, I decided to not finish my training at EGY HOP, though I would still go by late sometimes to see if they had any left overs, and I'd give them stuff like cups and sugar when I got sort of a ton of both for free. So I don't know the best way forward, basically I think everything has pros and cons.

 

[Beegod Santana]

I think harm reduction is great, and advocate for more of it. With a lot of cities the only exchanges and services are downtown which naturally gets you a concentration of junkies in one spot. Every municipality should have at least one location where people can get rigs, narcan and other items that protect general health no questions asked.

I know cold water therapy sounds harsh, but I really think it could save lots of lives. There was kid who got narcaned right in front of my spot a few months ago. 1 hr after causing a scene, he was walking around town, joking about it like it was no big deal. 2 days later I hear his girlfriend fell out and died and he had to be narcaned again. I've talked to EMT's around here and they all say there's multiple people in town who've been narcaned well over 10 times. At some point there needs to be some deterrent, and I really think 30 days of either just being sober or getting dunked in a tank of cold water if you have bad with drawls would be a good one. No criminal record or anything, just "if we find you dying on the street and bring you back to life, you gotta be clean for 30 days and it won't be fun."

 

[transcendentalhobo]

Mostly 05-10. I've never thought much of LA, but Venice beach was always a good spot to make $ passing through. In PDX all the junkies used to be kept downtown, I remember kids getting chased off Hawthrone back around the same time for shooting up in broad daylight. In SF I saw some people get brutally beat for trying to sell pills in GGP multiple times. I could go on and on... I miss when kids actually had a sense of keeping their own community safe.

Ah. Venice wasn't much on my radar back then, I feel like Hollywood was where my friends kicked it in the '90s before I was Traveling. Heard some great stories, but I showed up like a decade late on that scene. I've only been to Venice Beach once, about 3AM when I had a 12 hour layover for Amtrak San Diego-->Tucson. Visited the Krishna Temple in the morning, but all I got was a small sweet.

I was hanging out in PDX 2005-'07. I did work trade at the Portland Hawthorne Hostel for room and some board, and was pretty involved with Food Not Bombs, especially in Col. Summers Park. I wonder if we crossed paths then?

Blew through GGP in 2002 with a friend from high school and college, but didn't really land there until 2013 when I hitched from Tucson to Oly via SF. All I really remember from '02 was seeing a really gnarly dog fight my Road Dawg was 110% sure was an intentional thing, and he was piiiiiiiiised. But there were 20 dudes around the dogs (and for what it's worth, I think it was... "just" out of control dog drama) and we were just kicking it with each other ad maybe 10 or 20 years younger than a lot of those dudes. Homeless Youth Alliance was rad when it had a space in '13. Hardly Strictly in 2015 was a time.

 

[Beegod Santana]

I was hanging out in PDX 2005-'07. I did work trade at the Portland Hawthorne Hostel for room and some board, and was pretty involved with Food Not Bombs, especially in Col. Summers Park. I wonder if we crossed paths then?

Ah yes, that was the FnB at 20thE and Belmont right? I frequented that meetup in the winter / spring of 07 when I was staying at a flop around 30th. I remember we pissed off a bunch of people one time by trying to give away a bunch of beer my friends made but got shut down cause it wasn't vegan or some shit. I also used to try to donate bags from the pdx sandwich co to varying reception for pretty much the same reason. Whatever, I applauded what they do, semantics aside, although I remember their morals seemed to go the window when someone found a ben and jerry's haul.

You weren't the kid who showed up at the Hawthorne hostel with a typewriter strapped to his pack by any chance?

 

[transcendentalhobo]

20th and Belmont reads right. Where ever Monday Fun Day summer 2015 was happening, I don't think it lasted much longer than that, though I think it was still serving twice a week back then. Heh, yeah, reads right. In 2005 that FNB was going three days a week but one day a week the kids were so hardcore into veganism they wouldn't even distro bread from the Daily Grind because it had honey in it. None of the days used garlic because one person, Satya, wouldn't eat garlic. I try to eat three cloves a day raw myself!

At least one of the kids who started doing Overlook Park FNB in North the next year, cooking at Liberty Hall, called them Hippies Not Bombs, and I remember one of them saying something like, "I don't even trust someone who doesn't eat garlic." But yeah, by the fall of '06 I was sick of their crap and took a good long break. By the time I was back in 2015 there was almost 100% turn over. Satya was still on the scene though!

Oh, ha, no. My brief Love affair with type writers was completely confined to Olympia 2015. Though I still kind of want to get my hands on a manual. I'm so sad that place closed! I applied for a position as a desk clerk in 2019 and maybe could have got it but was vibed out of my housing situation before the manager called me back. Blessing in disguise as I had a pretty epic spring and summer in Eugene then Humboldt, etc.

 

[transcendentalhobo]

And thanks everyone who's been participating in this thread. These are a few hot button issues, but I think this has been a good conversation. I hope I don't jinx us by writing that!