Of palliatives, therapeutics, and cures: Local government can’t fight issues alone
The crisis didn’t begin everywhere at the same time. It began in geographic pockets. We saw it first in the Seattle area. There was confusion and misinformation about the cause. Lacking reliable information, many resorted to social media that reinforced their political biases.
The response by the level of government with the resources and scope to do the most pushed the response down to lower levels of government, assuring a piecemeal and ineffective response. In some cities, downtowns became ghost towns, with small businesses struggling to survive and shoppers reluctant to visit.
Eventually, the public outcry was enough to force those in charge to do something. But the response was half-hearted and less about taking responsibility and more about appearing to provide assistance to lower levels of government.
Sounds like the failed federal COVID-19 epidemic response? It is also the same response Washington state has had to the epidemic of homelessness that predates and mirrors the systemic failures revealed during the COVID-19 crisis: income inequality, people of color disproportionally affected, broken health care system, lack of funding and responsibility from the level of government most capable of addressing the crisis.
Like Trump’s COVID-19 response told governors not to look to the federal government for help (“We’re not a shipping clerk”), Washington has left it to the local governments to choose how and even whether to address the epidemic of homelessness. Olympia has chosen to take action; Lacey has not.
The Trump response caused states to compete for life-saving equipment, driving up prices and failing to provide them where most needed. Trump pitted red states against blue states that followed the science on lockdowns — incentivizing states to do less to fight the virus.
Washington’s homeless response created a system where cities providing the most help are disadvantaged compared to jurisdictions doing less. Cities, like Olympia, are harmed in three ways.
More homeless move to their city to get assistance they cannot get in the place they are from.
The visibly unhoused homeless causes sales, employment and city revenues to drop.
Community cohesion is frayed as exasperated citizenry sees money and attention spent while the number of homeless grows.
Worse, other jurisdictions learn not to do what Olympia did and seem to compete to do less and less.
Our state has created a failed, unfair, and inhumane system. While the percentage of New York’s homeless population that lives unsheltered is 4%, 44% of Washington’s homeless are unsheltered.
Washington’s patchwork homelessness approach fails like Trump’s “states-first” response. Local governments cannot address systemic problems that lead to homelessness — income and racial inequality, defunding mental health, lack of investment in low-income housing, reliance on a free market to create affordable housing and more.
An example of the state’s reprehensible retreat from responsibility is its treatment of the homeless parking along the Deschutes Parkway. Under the guise of improving “parking regulations” and concern about environmental damage, the state caused the vehicles of the homeless parked along the road to relocate to Ensign Road and throughout the county.
Compassionate local governments can provide some palliatives to lessen the pain and stress, maybe some therapeutics such as mitigation sites to reduce some symptoms. But they lack the tools and financing for the cures. That requires a level of government with sufficient capacity and authority.
Like the McCleary school funding decision forced the state to acknowledge its state constitutional responsibility for fair K-12 funding so we should demand the state’s response to funding homelessness meet the federal Constitutional requirements under Boise v. Martin.
Homelessness, like COVID-19, demands a government response from the level best equipped to find the cure.
This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 5:45 AM.