Intervention needed in housing crisis

The campaign to end the nightly security patrols of the Downtown Safety Team (a project of the Olympia Downtown Alliance) has generated significant controversy. One criticism has been that the campaign doesn’t address the root causes of homelessness.

It’s true that ending the patrols won’t solve the crisis of homelessness in Olympia. Homelessness and housing instability are inherent to capitalism. Capitalism treats housing like any other commodity: a product bought and sold on the market for a profit, blind to human need. Ending homelessness and the housing crisis entails a multi-pronged approach to removing profit interests from the housing system and eventually guaranteeing housing as a human right. Advocating for affordable housing, enacting rent-stabilization and eviction protection laws, and increasing shelter, mental health and substance abuse services are all necessary. Also important is grassroots organizing amongst tenants, struggling homeowners and homeless individuals to directly confront the greed of landlords, banks and governments.

However, ending homelessness always necessarily involves systemic interventions in the housing system coinciding with more short-term harm reduction measures. Access to safer sleeping space, which this campaign hopes to secure, can mitigate the most harmful health consequences associated with homeless living conditions. As winter conditions intensify, freeing up more sleeping space becomes ever more urgent and a literal question of life or death for many on the streets.

While the anti-security campaign doesn’t ultimately offer a solution to homelessness, it is still a productive and worthwhile undertaking.