ChangeWA received a strong response to our exclusive interview on homelessness with King County Executive Dow Constantine – the single most responsible public official for the current strategy to combat the crisis in the county and Seattle. After 15 years in office, Constantine announced in mid-November that he will not be seeking a fifth term in 2025.

 Our interview was discussed extensively on John Carlson’s KVI Radio show (podcast), was featured in one of ChangeWA’s most viewed tweets of the year, and encouraged many readers to email us their response.

Lack of accountability

Undoubtedly the top reader concern was the lack of accountability current elected officials have towards both the taxpayers and those suffering on the streets. This satirical tweet humorously summed up many people’s concerns with Constantine’s evasive responses by repeatedly pointing out that “Nobody Knows” how much recent homeless policies have cost or how few people they helped.

Readers of the interview were shocked that the county executive couldn’t even estimate how much of our tax money he has spent annually on homelessness since he declared the issue an emergency in 2015. As one reader stated, “This is unfathomable!” While he and nearly every fellow progressive have demanded higher taxes to fight the issue, taxpayers are frustrated that for a decade the same politicians have recklessly wasted our money on policies which have resulted in a disturbing 63% increase in homelessness (from 10,000 to over 16,000).

It seems very reasonable that a government of 17,000 employees has at least one person keeping track of how much of the taxpayers’ money is being spent on an issue of such high importance. How can we determine how to best use our financial resources on this issue, if we don’t have data (even an estimate) on how much has been previously spent?

This reckless spending and poor accounting are made even worse by not providing public goals for what will be achieved with our tax funds. As a major proponent of the much-maligned King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), and a member of its Governing Committee, we asked Executive Constantine for a set of public goals for the authority to achieve to prove it should not be immediately closed (as many have asserted).

Constantine failed to provide even one goal.

Thus, Constantine’s responses exposed that there is no accounting for how much public funds have been spent and no goals to be achieved with the money we are already spending. No investor would support a business enterprise with this lack of accountability, why should the taxpayers?

Housing First and poor results

Executive Constantine again demonstrated his strong commitment to the failed “Housing First” philosophies yet he failed to adequately explain why his implementation of these policies has resulted in skyrocketing homeless numbers.

He again used the same irrelevant study (that ChangeWA and Discovery Institute have examined in the past) to justify the building of an ineffective and expensive huge housing bureaucracy. In doing so Constantine failed to recognize the overwhelming evidence (especially the never-ending increase in Seattle homeless numbers and homeless deaths) and studies which prove Housing First is more designed to build a huge ineffective housing bureaucracy then it is to reduce the homeless suffering. 

Like nearly all Housing First proponents, Constantine downplays the impact of addiction and mental health issues as he seeks to increase people’s dependence on government housing. Yet if Constantine were to volunteer for a We Heart Seattle crew to clean up any of the  homeless encampments or took an unannounced tour of one of the emergency housing buildings the county funds, the county executive would see that an overwhelming majority of those who are homeless (conservatively around 80% have mental issues and 2/3 have addiction difficulties) have serious problems which must be addressed before they can be trusted with taxpayer financed housing.

Conflict with City of Burien

Despite multiple court rulings against his position, Executive Constantine continues to believe that since the City of Burien contracts with the King County Sherrif’s office for law enforcement, that he, not the elected mayor and city councilmembers, gets to determine the city’s “anti-camping” laws.

In his interview response, Constantine provides his latest reasons for why he has ordered sheriff deputies to not enforce the city’s camping ban. Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling responded to Constantine’s latest excuses by stating to ChangeWA, “The county government continues to move the goal posts on the City of Burien and it’s unfair to cities and to residents. We are continuing our legal action against the county for breach of contract and hope the court makes a solid determination.”

Conclusion

ChangeWA is appreciative of King County Executive Constantine and his staff for taking the time to discuss his homelessness strategy and partake in respectful debate. Yet we fear the current lack of financial accountability, absence of clear goals for KCRHA, and blind adherence to an obviously failed Housing First philosophy, will result in even more people suffering needlessly from homelessness.

Without improved public accounting for how homelessness funds are spent, we won’t achieve a solution, for we will continue to waste money on bad programs and underfund projects that work.

Misrepresenting and misapplying the same study while ignoring multiple other studies and purposefully missing the obvious connection between homelessness and addiction/mental health issues, is a disastrous method for creating public policy.   We can hope that during his remaining year in office, Constantine will seek to reverse his negative legacy on the homeless issue, by taken initial steps away from failed Housing First measures which have caused so much misery.

This interview again tells us an important lesson – those of us committed to reducing the homeless numbers must do a better job in pointing out the failure of the region’s political establishment to stop the increase in homeless numbers every year.

Multiple candidates have already announced their intention to replace Constantine as King County Executive next year. We need to demand that these candidates be more accountable for the public funds being spent on homeless programs and articulate clear goals for what the taxpayers will receive from the region’s homeless bureaucracy from the billions in public funds being spent. But most of all, we need these candidates to answer the question during the 2025 campaign, “Isn’t a decade of failure long enough to determine we should try a different approach?”