To address homelessness, people must support solutions -- including a county home fund
We wrote recently about the alliance between the city of Olympia, Thurston County and Providence St. Peter Hospital to relocate 18 of the 40 or so RVs parked along Ensign Road to a temporary site at the corner of Martin Way and Carpenter. That would be enough to empty the section of the road nearest to the emergency room, and restore fast access for incoming ambulances.
Planners of this move did their best to address community concerns: Barriers would be placed to prevent future parking on the part of the road near the emergency entrance. The temporary site would be fenced, gated, and staffed 24/7. The RV-dwellers to be chosen for the move would be the elderly, the COVID-vulnerable, and the most orderly of the current Ensign Road RV residents.
Opposition to the interim plan was vocal and overwhelming. And now it is likely to be completely derailed by the expectation that opponents will file appeals that could delay it for several months.
A longer term plan aims to secure a much larger space on Franz Anderson Road that could accommodate all of the RVs. Planners hope to have it available in six months, but even that seems doubtful. It is also sure to have many vocal opponents.
A recent public meeting about the city of Olympia’s proposal to move its “mitigation site” — a city-run camp, now furnished with wooden micro-shelters rather than tents, from its downtown location to a larger site off Plum and Union streets — met a similar wall of hostility.
Opponents railed against its proximity to St. Michael Parish School as a danger to kids. But just a few blocks away, a low-barrier shelter run by Interfaith Works inside First United Methodist Church has peacefully coexisted for the duration of the pandemic with a public elementary school across the street.
This is a recurring theme: No matter how hard local governments try to take small, incremental measures to reduce the community impacts of homelessness and improve the lives of the unhoused, they confront a wall of anger and opposition. That’s especially demoralizing to those who’ve worked so hard to create these measures.
The real solution is more housing and more mental health and addiction treatment services. That’s why a county proposal that could help finance them deserves widespread support.
At 3 p.m. Nov. 23, the Thurston County Commission will hold a public hearing on a 1/10 of 1% sales tax increase. If a majority of the three-member commission votes for it, it will fund affordable housing for low-income and houseless people, as well as addiction treatment, mental health and other services.
Olympia already has an identical tax, in place since 2019, that produces about $2 million each year for the city’s Home Fund. The county tax would produce about $4 million. Purchases in Olympia will be exempt from the county tax.
The proposed county tax to create its version of the Home Fund amounts to 1 penny on a $10 purchase.
While the amounts raised by these taxes are not nearly enough to build all the housing we need, they play a critical role. Money attracts money, and the big bucks — federal and state funding — are far more likely to be awarded to localities that commit their own funding first. In Olympia, the city’s commitment of $1.1 million was the first step in attracting the funds needed to build Unity Commons at 2828 Martin Way. When it opens, it will provide a 60-bed shelter and 65 permanent supportive housing apartments.
That’s the biggest bite out of homelessness we’ve seen in years. We need a dozen more projects of that scale, and funding to operate them.
That’s why we strongly support the creation of a County Home Fund. We hope others will too — and we hope they will do so visibly, loudly and in large numbers on Nov. 23.