Surething, while it is true that the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is one cause of homelessness, there are several others. Also, as Penni Westbrook and Jack Clarke pointed out here, there was certainly the good intention at least that mentally ill people would be happier out of institutions. What happened is that the community care facilities that were supposed to watch over their welfare, make sure they were medicated and have therapy and purposeful activities, did not materialize as promised.
I would agree that homelessness is a huge problem in our society. The society is certainly rich enough--almost vulgarly rich--so that all people should have minimal housing and healthy food. How we get to that point really depends upon your underlying political belief system. Some libertarians and conservatives seem to believe that poverty is just always with us, period, and that no help should be offered. Some of the liberal fixes haven't seemed to work, especially the ones where there is little attention given to solving underlying problems. And actually solving underlying problems is extremely expensive. Obviously the problem has not been solved so far, so it must be very complex.
Here is something about Seattle's program, which I think sounds pretty good, compared to San Francisco, which has not really been able to help the homeless:
PAGE ONE -- Seattle's Innovative
Solution to Homelessness
Aurelio Rojas, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 23, 1997
Lillie Mae Hopkins looked down from her spartan
room in a residential hotel onto the streets of
downtown Seattle, where in a spiral of depression
and drugs she wound up homeless after her
husband died.
Hopkins, 47, has been sober for a year and a half,
an achievement she credits to treatment and her
own fortitude. But the former nurse's aide can also
thank the voters of Seattle, who have approved
three property tax increases in the past 16 years to
house the poor.
''This place helped me get back on my feet,''
Hopkins said of the nine-story Pacific Hotel, which
a nonprofit group renovated with a $1.3 million
grant from the city. ''It's hard to get clean if you
don't have a clean place to live.''
Like most cities, Seattle has tried to make the
homeless less visible downtown. Police often nudge
vagrants away from the city's business district,
encouraging them to seek out help from various
housing programs.
Large numbers live under a stretch of Interstate 5
downtown in an area known as ''The Jungle.'' But
unlike in San Francisco, which recently rousted
homeless campers out of Golden Gate Park, not
many people live in Seattle's many parks.
The two cities may have a lot in common -- a
comparable population, a scenic waterfront, a
housing crunch that has sent downtown apartment
rents soaring past the $800-a-month mark. But
Paul Lambros, a housing expert who has worked in
both cities, say they take markedly different
approaches to homelessness.
SEATTLE PRAISED, S.F.
CRITICIZED
San Francisco was among five cities singled out last
year by the National Center on Homelessness and
Poverty for being particularly inhospitable to
homeless people. Seattle was one of the few places
lauded for providing what the Washington,
D.C.-based group considered to be ''constructive
alternatives.''
''In San Francisco, nonprofits spent a lot of energy
competing against each other and fighting the city,''
said Lambros, acting director of San Francisco's
Shanti Project from 1992 to 1993. ''Here (in
Seattle), there's a more coordinated effort to find
long-term solutions.''
Seattle has built 3,300 affordable housing units -- at
a cost of more than $150 million -- since 1981 with
money raised through voter-approved housing
levies. Most of the units were constructed with a
coalition of 21 nonprofit groups that have built
9,000 units.
Hopkins, who still has not returned to work, lives in
a city-subsidized room. She pays the rent with a
$25 voucher that she gets from one of the many
charitable organizations in the city. (The rent is
based on sliding scale, depending on how much the
tenant makes.) She is currently in therapy for
depression and hopes to return to work and move
out on her own once she is well enough. But for
now she depends on food stamps and donations
from local pantries.
There are still about 4,000 homeless people and
only 2,300 emergency shelter beds in Seattle -- but
that is 1,000 more beds than San Francisco has for
a homeless population three times as large.
Seattle budgeted $7.7 million out of its general fund
on homeless programs this year compared to $11.4
million for San Francisco. The expenditures are
about the same despite the much larger size of San
Francisco's homeless population, since San
Francisco's allotment includes programs like child
care, advocacy and follow-up services that Seattle
pays out of other accounts. Unlike San Francisco's
convoluted web of services and periodic police
sweeps, Seattle officials and homeless advocates
have coordinated their efforts and reached
compromises on controversial issues.
The campaign has been driven as much by
commercial considerations as benevolence:
Clearing the homeless out of downtown has
allowed Seattle to attract residential development
and several new shopping and office complexes.
Most studies show that a large proportion of the
homeless suffer from substance abuse or mental
illness. So in Seattle, nonprofits have used public
funds to set up a network of
single-room-occupancy facilities that also offer
support services to help people rebuild their lives.
THE CHRONICALLY HOMELESS
Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania
psychology professor and nationally recognized
expert on homelessness, said most people who
wind up on the street ultimately find a place to live.
But about 10 percent are chronically homeless and
require housing with support services to treat their
illnesses, he said. ''Cities that meet these needs
have taken a bite out of homelessness,'' Culhane
said. ''Doing so also opens up shelter space
because the chronically homeless use up
resources.'' Such efforts in San Francisco have
been thwarted by lack of money. Voters have
turned down measures twice in the last decade that
would have provided millions of dollars for
affordable housing, including $10 million a year for
homeless programs.
In Seattle, voters increased property taxes three
separate times for an average increase of $29 a
year per parcel.
''People here realize police sweeps are short-term
solutions,'' said Lambros, who is now executive
director of Plymouth House, a nonprofit that runs
the once-vacant building where Hopkins lives.
TAKING A NEW APPROACH
Rick Hooper, who administers Seattle's housing
tax, said the city changed its strategy in the early
1980s when it became clear that homelessness
would continue to increase as long as the supply of
affordable housing declined.
The effort, which the city leveraged with matching
federal and state grants, proved to be such a
success that it has been extended twice by voters.
Unlike California, where property taxes require a
two-thirds majority vote, a simple majority suffices
in Washington. The second levy was paired with a
campaign to finance an art museum. The idea was
to turn the downtown area around Pike Place
Market -- where the skidding of logs downhill to
port inspired the term ''Skid Row'' -- into a
showplace of shops, theaters and tourist
attractions.
Seattle officials have encouraged nonprofits to
develop novel programs. The city is planning to
spend $6 million to develop an apartment building
where native son Jimi Hendrix wrote many of his
songs. The nondescript building will be converted
into a public ''hygiene center'' that will provide free
toilets, showers and other facilities to homeless
people.
The center was originally scheduled to be built near
Pike Place Market, but after the Downtown Seattle
Association complained it would scare away
patrons, the city agreed to move it to the outskirts
of downtown. The association has pitched in
$300,000 to develop the facility.
The city also contracts with Pioneer Human
Services, a nonprofit agency founded by a
recovering alcoholic attorney who had done time
for embezzlement, to provide drug and alcohol
treatment and housing for hundreds of ex-convicts
who might otherwise be on the street.
TEENS, MENTALLY ILL IN NEED
The organization runs a sheet metal company and
several other businesses that employ 700 people --
many of whom were once homeless -- and
generates revenues of more than $30 million a year.
The Low Income Housing Institute, which is
developing the hygiene center, is also using money
from the housing levy to build a housing complex
for homeless teenagers near the University of
Washington. Another nonprofit, The Community
Psychiatric Clinic, runs three dozen residential
facilities that provide housing and treatment for the
chronically mentally ill. Seattle is one of a handful of
cities in the country with a co-op for homeless
artists. At the ''Street Life Gallery'' in the city's
Belltown section, prices range from $10 for a
humble hand-crocheted afghan to $200 for an
original oil painting.
Down the street, The Millionair Club runs a labor
dispatch program that matches employers with
workers -- many of them homeless or in danger of
becoming homeless. The club also serves 12,000
meals each month. The 76-year-old club got its
name from its founder, businessman Martin
Johanson, who dropped the final ''e'' to avoid a
conflict with a similarly named establishment. Doing
good for others, he said, made him ''feel like a
millionaire.''
ON THE MOVE FROM S.F.
Bundled against the cold, the men and women in
ragged jackets began lining up outside Operation
Nightwatch an hour before the doors opened for
the 10 p.m. meal. At the head of the line was a
bearded 28-year-old man, fresh off the bus from
San Francisco. He said he lived in Golden Gate
Park until Mayor Willie Brown ordered police to
clear out the homeless encampments. His $300 tent
and all his belongings were carted off, he said.
''A few heroin punks start trouble, and we all get
kicked out,'' said the man, declining to give his
name. ''Pure politics.''
Still seething, he said he planned to spend the next
few weeks in Seattle before heading back to San
Francisco early next year ''when things cool
down.'' ''San Francisco is a great place to live, if
you can afford it,'' he said, adding that he prefers
the California climate. ''If you can't, you live in the
park or wherever. People have done that for years
and it isn't going to change, no matter who's
mayor.''
OPERATION NIGHTWATCH
The Rev. Rick Reynolds runs Operation
Nightwatch, a group of nondenominational
ministers from local churches who roam the streets
of Seattle each night, offering emotional support
and shelter referrals to those without a place to
sleep. Operation Nightwatch volunteers have
included King County Executive Ron Sims,
generally regarded as the second most powerful
elected official in the state. Edward and Maria
Pack dropped by the organization's headquarters
for sandwiches while passing through town with
their two young daughters. The family was on the
way from Texas to Alaska to look for work when
they ran out of money. Pack said he once made
$70,000 a year, helping to build the Alaska
pipeline. He said his life fell apart after he became
addicted to drugs, a dependency he claimed to
have finally licked. ''I know what it's like to live
comfortably and what it's like to live on the street,''
he said. ''And when you're on the street, you need
someone to help you out.''
Reynolds said most homeless people he runs into
are unable to function in society. Others work, he
said, but they do not make enough to pay rent in a
prosperous city like Seattle. ''There's no simple
answer,'' said Reynolds, who began his street
ministry in the early 1980s. ''The problems and
frustrations seem to be getting worse. If we do
things better here than other places, well, that
means other people have given up.''
CHART:
COMPARING SEATTLE AND SAN FRANCISCO
.
San Francisco Seattle
.
Population (1996) 735,315 524,704
Percentage living in poverty 13.4% 9.9%
Area (in square miles) 46.7 83.9
Homeless population (1996) 11,000-16,000 3,900-4,545
Emergency shelter beds 1,359 (250-280) (x) 2,320
.
(x) Number in parentheses represents additional winter beds
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
c1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A1
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