Applying compassion and accountability to Olympia’s homeless crisis

Local 2019 election campaigns have already begun, so I thought I’d share two words you can anticipate hearing a lot: compassion and accountability. If I were a betting man, I’d wager those will be the top two words used to describe how candidates want to approach homelessness in 2019. So, let’s take a deeper dive into those two words and how our city council and the rest of us can put those words into action.

If we are going to see any real change in our homeless crisis, we must hold our city council accountable for taking substantive action. To begin, they must enact policies that encourage building more housing, and a lot of it. The city must increase density in already identified areas and work to use city-owned properties, such as those near the LBA Woods, to add housing stock. Voters passed the Home Fund, but it is only a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of housing needed.

The Home Fund is an important strategy, though part of its success lies in how the city supports downtown business owners. The Home Fund is based on sales tax revenue, and if businesses aren’t successful, then neither will the city be at moving people out of homelessness. While not all our revenue is derived from downtown business, much of Olympia’s reputation in how it treats business is based on the experience of downtown business owners. If the city is not willing to support downtown businesses, it will hurt those in our homeless community too.

Next, the city declared homelessness an emergency, so the council must act like it means it. This means reducing the cost to build housing for all income levels in Olympia. It means selling city-owned properties for the purpose of building housing now, not waiting years when Home Fund dollars are available. It means investing in a warming center and taking pressure off the Community Care Center. An emergency demands immediate action. There is no time to waste.

Making significant progress to address homelessness is not easy, but if one is going to run for office, one better be able to shoulder the responsibility that comes with being elected.

As for the rest of us, we can show more compassion. We must realize that for many of us, our life circumstances do not mirror the circumstances of those living on the streets. I have heard people say that if those on the streets had simply planned better and had some emergency funding, their circumstances would be different. This completely ignores the reality that in some cases, no level of planning can overcome a tidal wave crisis. Some emergencies are simply so extreme that any reasonable person would end up on the streets.

For those suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, we need to understand that trauma is often hidden under the surface. We can’t see the domestic violence or parental substance abuse that a middle-aged woman experienced. We can’t see the traumatic events of war that an elderly veteran witnessed. We can’t always see what has broken a person, but we can respond with compassion, realizing that many of us have never lived through the kind of trauma that many living on the streets have.

And please let’s not forget that when we talk about homelessness, we also are speaking about the families who couch surf and sleep in cars after a long day of work or school. Let’s not become too calloused to realize that 1 in 20 kids experience homelessness. In recent years, schools in Thurston County saw roughly 1,500 students experience homelessness.

If we ignore these realities, we are guaranteed to perpetuate the exact crisis we seek to eradicate.

Let us remember that those who live on the streets are our neighbors, and many need a significant amount of help to get out of their current circumstances. And let us not forget that we are served by an elected body that needs to be held accountable for making compassionate decisions that support our neighbors achieving adequate housing.