Those seeking to decrease the number of homeless individuals in Washington received heartbreaking news last week. Despite overwhelming evidence that the current homeless strategy (i.e. “Housing First”) is one of the worst and most expensive policy failures in modern history, state government officials released a five-year plan saying they will continue to waste even more taxpayers’ money while following the same Housing First programs which previously caused the homeless population to rapidly increase and cause thousands to needlessly suffer          `.

With no fanfare, the Washington State Department of Commerce (which is officially responsible for bringing business to the state and opening trade lanes for Washington products, but is also the state’s lead agency on homelessness) released its 2024-2029 State of Washington Homeless Housing Strategic Plan on September 1.

Despite homelessness being state residents’ most important issue, the Inslee Administration didn’t believe the state’s five-year homeless plan warranted a media release until 45 days later.

The 44-page document outlines the state’s five objectives regarding homelessness:

• Objective 1: Promote an equitable, accountable and transparent homeless crisis response system
• Objective 2: Strengthen the homeless service provider workforce
• Objective 3: Prevent episodes of homelessness whenever possible
• Objective 4: Prioritize those with the greatest barriers to housing stability and the greatest risk of harm
• Objective 5: Seek to house everyone in a stable setting that meets their needs

As you can see, while the objectives are full of bureaucracy growing actions, not one mention is made in the administration’s objectives for mental health or addiction issues which plague so many people who face homelessness. It is as if King County Executive Dow Constantine, who has denied that addiction and mental health have anything to do with homelessness, wrote this document. 

Evidently like Constantine, state officials have obviously not seen the disturbing documentary Behind Closed Doors or the many reports from journalist Jonathan Choe which clearly demonstrates that drug addiction and mental health issues have made King County’s housing unsafe and a record number of homeless people continue to die from overdosing.

These addiction and mental health deniers are also choosing to ignore the overwhelming scientific data which prove there is a connection between these issues and homelessness. For example, UC Berkley and UCLA’s 2019 study of 64,000 homeless individuals across 15 states found that 75% self-reported they had either mental illness or substance abuse issues. (It is generally accepted that this percentage is low since often people do not admit they have these ailments.)

They have also evidently not seen that local governments like Austin, Texas have found great success in reducing homelessness (especially chronic homelessness) by focusing first on addiction and mental health issues. Austin’s political leadership believes that those controlled by addiction and mental health issues are not accountable to manage taxpayer funded housing. Removing these obstacles has dramatically increased those successfully pulled off the streets into stable housing (an incredible 85% rate in Austin!)

Fundamentally there is little difference in the state’s next five-year plan than the homeless strategy the Inslee Administration previously followed which resulted in the state’s homeless population growing a disturbing 25% (from 29 people per 10,000 to 36 per 10,000) since 2017.

Ginny Burton, producer of Behind Closed Door, said of the state’s five-year plan, “Holy cow… we just continue to increase the problem by doing the same thing over and over again.”

This is the failed approach taken by many Housing First proponents on the West Coast, and like King County, where billions of tax dollars have been spent, nearly all locations continue to see even more people suffering on the streets.

While the results of the 2024 elections are not known, this five-year homeless plan clearly indicates that unless a different group is elected to run the state, we will continue to experience rapid expansion of the state and local government’s homeless bureaucracy, thousands of homeless people will overdose or violently die, and even more people will suffer homelessness in Washington State.