City of Olympia’s survey illuminates misconceptions as well as residents’ opinions

Conversation about a recent City of Olympia community survey has mostly focused on one number: 87 percent of survey participants reported that they are dissatisfied with the city’s responses to homelessness.

But here’s another important number: 69 percent of survey participants disagreed with a statement that Olympia “residents can access affordable and stable housing.”

In spite of that supermajority recognition of a shortage of affordable housing, a question that offered a list of possible responses to homelessness omitted increasing the supply of affordable housing as a possible remedy.

Instead, the options offered included mental health treatment, preventing and removing campsites, more supportive housing, substance abuse treatment, prohibiting and responding to open fires, pollution and waste accumulation, and identifying locations for homeless services outside of downtown.

That list perplexes us. According to local homeless service providers, supportive housing — that is, housing with social services staff that can help residents with mental health, substance abuse, and other challenges — is needed by fewer than half of unhoused people. The list of options implies a set of stereotypes that disturbs us. There are plenty of relatively healthy homeless people who just can’t pay the rent.

To be fair, the survey does link housing and homelessness in other ways, and shows strong public support for a variety of measures to increase affordable housing. And an open-ended question about homelessness shows that survey participants already “tie homelessness to a web of other topics, including crime and public safety or mental health or substance abuse resources.” So the stereotypes were there before the survey perpetuated them.

But while addiction, mental illness and other disabilities are real, they neither define the root causes of rising homelessness nor point to its most important remedy, which is more affordable housing and more housing options.

The survey report says “While increasing housing supply will be beneficial in the long run, it’s not likely to have an impact on the crisis we’re currently experiencing.” We think this statement is wrong in two ways.

First, there very persuasive data from the Washington state Department of Commerce that show the increases in homelessness since 2013 are caused by low vacancy rates and rising rents, not increases in mental illness, addiction or other factors.

Second, calling today’s level of homelessness a “current crisis” is a mistake; it’s a crisis that will continue for as long as low income people are priced out of housing.

The core of the problem is that the private sector is simply not building enough housing to meet demand, and particularly not enough small, affordable units. Ted Kelleher, Housing Unit Assistance Managing Director at the Washington state Department of Commerce, believes the most expedient solution is more housing vouchers — federal and state subsidies that limit the rent low-income people pay to 30 percent of their income. Currently only 1 in 4 low-income households that qualify for federal vouchers ever receive one.

We can only hope that President Biden and our congressional representatives include full funding for federal housing vouchers in their $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill, and then get that bill passed.

An increase in federal funding for permanent supportive housing would be helpful too. Homeless service providers remind us that the longer people are homeless, the more their condition deteriorates, and the more likely they will end up needing this higher-cost help. We have a backlog of unmet need for it because so many people have been homeless for far too long.

We disagree with the survey participants who are dissatisfied with the city’s work to combat homelessness. Olympia leaders and staff have done far more than most cities to reduce homelessness, to provide humanitarian assistance to those stuck in it, and to reduce its impact on downtown safety. Olympia voters helped by passing a measure to tax ourselves to create the Home Fund, which is helping finance a new 24-hour shelter and permanent supportive housing complex that will open later this year.

But even the best a city government can do will never be enough, because city governments can’t solve the crisis of rising rents and too little affordable housing. Nor can they create better mental health services, or undo the traumas that send too many people into downward spirals of despair.

We suspect that many survey respondents have unrealistic expectations about what a city government can do. That’s a communications problem the city is working to solve.

We also hope that this fall’s city council races will help advance a more informed discussion about what it will take to end the misery of homelessness.