Meet Olympia City Council candidate Wendy Carlson
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of interviews with candidates running for Olympia City Council. At the end of each interview, The Olympian asked every candidate two questions: what they pay in rent or mortgage, and if they could correctly state the median home sale price in Olympia, which is $430,000.
Wendy Carlson worked for 20 years as a parole officer for the Department of Corrections. While several openly gay men have served on Olympia’s City Council, Carlson would be the first openly gay woman to do so.
Carlson is one of two challengers seeking Olympia City Council Position 5, a seat now held by Lisa Parshley. Talauna Reed also is challenging Parshley, so the field of candidates will be narrowed in the Aug. 3 primary.
In an interview with The Olympian, Carlson said she would leverage her experience working with former prisoners to bring “accountability” to people living in homeless encampments, who she believes are being enabled by overly tolerant leadership.
“I think there are plenty of people in this community that are tired. They, like me, grew up in Olympia, and see that Olympia is at risk,” Carlson said.
Asked what elements of the criminal justice system she’d like to bring to city government, Carlson said she doesn’t like to think of her work as a parole officer as being part of the criminal justice system.
“While we were an arm of it, the beauty of my job was, you could violate a condition, that I have the opportunity to say, ‘I know that you’re really trying … I know you had a positive [urinalysis], but I know you’ve been going to meetings, to treatment, so let’s maybe up your AA meetings or your NA meetings or your mental health treatment, and get you back right on the track.’
“It wasn’t about punishing them,” Carlson said. “It was really about getting them to be part of our community.”
Carlson said she’d like to expand the use of court-mandated treatment programs she believes are working, such as drug court, mental health court, and community court.
Programs that are not working, according to Carlson: the county’s “scattered site” plan, which will spend up to $1 million to clean up camps and hire case managers to connect residents to services.
“What are you getting for that?” Carlson said. “You can’t just throw money at stuff and hope that it’s going to change what’s going on.”
Carlson claimed that “there are smaller cities in this nation that have curbed their homeless population with little to no money.” Asked for an example, Carlson said she read “several months ago” about a city called Gainesville, Illinois, but there is no city in Illinois with that name.
Here are some other answers Carlson gave to questions about her views on homelessness.
What does ‘accountability’ for people experiencing homelessness mean?
“I am very compassionate towards the homeless. I’ve worked with this population a lot in Seattle, they were on my caseload. While I’ve never been homeless, I understand the struggles that they go through. The accountability piece is: the hot topic is what has gone on on Deschutes Parkway — the debris and the litter that has gone on. Let’s make them part of the process of helping them keep their campsite clean. Getting them into a community court setting — that’s accountability.
What do you believe is the root cause of homelessness?
“I think most of it, we have vets that are homeless, families that are down on their luck, we have addicts, we have mentally ill — there’s a whole array, and it’s not a catch-all answer.”
What do you pay in rent/mortgage?
Carlson owns her home outright.
What is the median home sale price in Olympia?
“Well they just came out with the number, and I want to say it was $420,000 or $430,000.”
This story was originally published May 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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