- [Narrator] There are so many issues we care about impacting our region and nation.

One of the most important is having free high quality, trusted media, accessible to everyone.

Waldron as a longstanding community partner of Cascade Public Media, is committed to preserving Crosscut's independent, strong, and truthful journalistic voice in a sea of commercially and politically biased soundbites.

Waldron seeks to engage and empower people and communities to live their purpose.

Sound information is critical on this personal and career path.

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for We Are All Homeless with MarC Dones, Karen Salinas, and LaMont Green.

Moderated by Josh Cohen.

Before we begin, we'd like to thank our social justice track sponsor Waldron.

Events like this are not possible without the support of our sponsors.

A huge thank you to Waldron, our sponsor of this event and for the Northwest Newsmakers online event series.

Waldron is proud to support Crosscut, a forum for truth and dialogue that increases knowledge, understanding and compassion.

They fund and volunteer in supportive community to ensure strong, independent public media that informs and inspires.

We'd also like to thank our session sponsor, Amazon.

Amazon is proud to support the Crosscut Festival.

Amazon strives to be Earth's most customer centric company, Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work.

Learn more about what we do at aboutamazon.com.

Finally, thank you to our founding sponsor, the Kerry and Linda Killinger foundation.

- Hello and welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

My name is Josh Cohen, I am Crosscut's city reporter.

I cover city government, politics and the pressing issues shaping life in Seattle.

That of course includes the intertwined homelessness and affordable housing crisis which are at the heart of today's conversation.

I am joined by three leaders working to solve the homelessness crisis in our region.

Marc Dones is CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, the new government agency in charge of Seattle and King County's homeless response.

They bring to the work deep experience in social justice policy, racial equity training and systems transformation.

Karen Salinas is the director of outreach at the nonprofit REACH, a leading homeless, sorry, homeless and outreach care provider in Seattle.

She approaches that work through a harm reduction lens which aims to minimize the negative health, social and legal impacts associated with drug use, homelessness and other issues.

And LaMont Green is CEO of the Racial Equity Action Lab and a member of the Lived Experience Coalition, a group of currently and formally homeless people working to end homelessness in part by providing guidance to the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Marc, Karen, LaMont, welcome and thank you so much for joining me today.

- Thanks for having us.

- Hello, thank you.

- So as a starting place for this conversation, I think it would be helpful to hear how we got to a place where more than 40,000 people are homeless throughout King County.

Marc, can you explain why we've ended up in this crisis?

- Oh gosh, mostly because we don't have housing.

I don't mean to be glib but like, you know, how do I say this?

We have wrapped ourselves around the homelessness crisis sort of six ways to Sunday searching for an answer that isn't housing.

But history is quite clear that each one of those issues has historically been tackled without people experiencing homelessness and that our current situation is very much the result of a set of decisions that have been made to essentially eliminate the zero to 30% MI housing access bracket.

And then sort of looking at the frankly, the results of that and saying that they are the cause.

- Yeah, that makes sense and I think there's sort of value in not over complicating sort of the cause and as we'll get to later the solutions.

So Karen, what does it say about a city and region with billion dollar companies and more than a few individual billionaire residents that the homelessness crisis has existed for decades and has only gotten worse in recent years?

- Yeah, I think kind of what Marc was saying, like it's just this unfettered capitalism that's been allowed to exist and create so much gentrification.

I mean, we look at downtown Seattle in the pandemic, majority of those apartments were taken by folks working in the tech industry and then when the pandemic hit and they no longer had to be in person left, moved home, moved out of the area to somewhere less expensive, where commute was easier.

All these other things and the downtown core was left empty and then a bunch of folks got released from jail.

For COVID restrictions, a bunch of folks got exited from their shelters because of COVID restrictions and just left in the downtown core.

And I think that it is a lot of that, yeah, not having any affordable housing and continuously decreasing the amount of affordable housing that's left by giving it to these developers, to these other folks who want to come into neighborhoods and take it.

I mean, I think of a lot of our clients that are not from Seattle, they're OG Seattle, like they're from here, they grew up here, this is their home, this is their neighborhood, this is what their community is and they are majority from the central district, moved out of that community that they grew and built their own businesses and taken from them and then made to seem like it was their fault for not being able to afford it.

- LaMont, I'm curious if you think the crisis in our region is different in any way than what we're seeing in other cities around the country.

Is there anything sort of unique about Seattle and King County's experience or is this sort of a common experience for cities with homeless crisis?

- Yeah, I think what we're experiencing, we're seeing all across the nation.

There's housing affordability crisis and also how this issue is interlocking with climate, justice issues as well and racial and economic justice.

And so we're seeing this all over.

And I think that, we're gonna have to really acknowledge that when we look at who is experiencing homelessness, that this is definitely a racial justice and a disability justice issue.

I think what is unique that we're doing and why I am so hopeful 'cause now we have a new King County Regional Homeless Authority that was co-designed by people with lived experience of homelessness, by communities most impacted.

And this is the first time ever, I believe in our nation that we had a governmental entity that was co-designed and is sharing power with communities most impacted.

And so, that's the part that brings me hope.

That's where I feel that we are unique but also as a community, we can be horribly fragmented.

There are so many diverse partners with different ideas and there's a lot of compassion fatigue.

You know, I'm originally from Charleston, South Carolina and when I first moved to this region, I was like, yes, like it's a place of social justice and social responsibility.

So it saddens my heart to see the compassion fatigue in the blaming the victim of people living homeless on the streets.

It's sad to see the dehumanizing sweeps that are happening.

And so, I really hope that we can develop a shared consciousness and a unified approach 'cause government cannot do this alone.

We need to stop pointing the fingers, right?

There just isn't enough governmental resources.

We have an extremely regressive tax structure for such an allegedly progressive state.

And so, government cannot do this alone and we are all collectively responsible for this.

And Martin Luther King once said, Dr. King once said, too often being homeless is considered a moral failing when it's actually a structural and political problem that makes visible for growing inequalities of our society.

And it isn't a mistake that we see so many people languishing on the streets and each of us, we hold a collective responsibility because we vote our elected leaders into office, right?

And I believe why this problem is so huge, it's because of our social norms.

And social norms, those are the invisible codes that regulate human behaviors that whole problems in place.

And so, what are the biases and stigmas that we hold about people living homeless, about these mostly Black, Brown and indigenous people, these disabled people.

We don't wanna go to the dark place of what we think about that population.

But they've done a lot with the neuroscience of racism and implicit bias and when they did some neuro imaging of folks' brains and they showed them images of people experiencing homelessness, the prefrontal cortex, our mirror neurons that register empathy, where that lights up, that was the part that lit up.

The part of the brain that lit up is the part that when it sees species in poop and vomit, right?

So we have to search ourselves collectively at how we look at the worthy poor and the unworthy poor and recognize that the folks experiencing homeless on the streets, over 85% have a disability, I believe it's even higher.

And it's mostly Black and Brown people.

This is racism.

This is indigenous invisibility, right?

And we need to face in our region that the way that nice, progressive liberal racism shows up, right?

And we can't point the finger at government.

We need to point the finger at ourselves.

- That that was great and I feel like LaMont's answer is our roadmap for the rest of those conversation.

You hit on pretty much every point I'm hoping to talk about today including the way we often talk about homelessness in the media, in policy conversations, among our friends and family can hide the very real suffering unhoused people are experiencing.

And Karen, as somebody who's out there working with clients on the street, can you just tell us sort of what toll does homelessness take on people?

- Yeah, I can answer but Marc, did you wanna say something?

- Oh, sorry, I didn't hear that.

- Thanks Karen.

It was part of what LaMont said, I think is really critical because like there's a, well, all of what LaMont is really critical.

There's a part that I wanna emphasize which is that there are two things that are like fundamentally different about the authority.

One is like, I report to someone who lives in a shelter and a physician at the VA who works with folks experiencing homelessness.

No other system is built like that, right?

Like literally no other system.

And it also is part of the reason why like, when I am steadfast on something, I'm like, nope, this is correct.

It's because this is not sort of like, oh, Marc Dones believes this to be fundamentally correct.

It's like, I have like done the ground truth thing on this and I am clear that the folks who are gonna be impacted by whatever the decision is, want this decision, right?

And where I am often like dug in is because I have also been told, don't budge here, right?

Like, and that I think is like, there's been a lot of discussion about how much power I have.

And LaMont is correct that like this agency is architected on a shared power foundation.

And so, when we have conversations about decisions at the authority, it needs to be really clear like none of them are Dones' decisions, they are community decisions.

And if there is a conversation to be had, it is a community conversation, not one in my office.

And the other thing that I would just be really wanna lift up is like, our budget comparable, you know, you referenced us at the top of this, right?

There are over 40,000 people who are experiencing homelessness in King County, that averages out to less than $12 a day per person, that's the budget we have, right?

And so when people talk about like, well, why isn't this?

Or why not that?

Or how come that, you know like, I wanna be clear that and I think this is part of what we're gonna talk about today, there's a lot of stuff money can't fix but there's also the fact that like, we don't have enough, we are not scaled for what we are trying to address full stop, right?

And we have to make a commitment and that this is a community commitment, right?

To having a conversation about how to scale the system to meet the need.

And again, I just wanna be really clear that like, that's not my call.

That is the entire community has to say like, this is how we wanna utilize resources.

And my hope is that we will see a roadmap that folks, I mean, I know we'll see a roadmap in our five year plan, my hope is that people affirm that roadmap, right?

And that we are able to all get behind it, right?

From all avenues of this community and drive towards the success we need to see for the people who are being forced to live outside while we have this conversation.

- Yeah, thanks Marc.

And I'll just say like, that's absolutely like what LaMont said is spot on, probably could be the entire answer to this panel.

It's like, yeah.

Like it's not just enough to say, oh, the RHA needs to fix this or service providers need to fix this or government or city or police or whatever.

It's collectively us agreeing and finding that space to negotiate.

You know, this is my role, that's not my role.

And I think that, yeah, the RHA has been tasked with something immense and also not given complete because that's not how a system works.

Power to just make the decisions that impact homelessness.

There's the behavioral health system.

There's the medical system.

There's the emergency medical system.

There's the psychiatric system.

There's the nonprofit system.

There's case management, there's shelters, there's crime.

You know, that is a whole other level of homelessness that to what extent is that in the hands of law enforcement, which has been in question, how much do we give them power to make these decisions?

Then if it's not law enforcement, then it's the city.

How much do we give the city the power to make this switch?

As LaMont said, like, there's still sweeps happening.

That's a city call but then their hands are tied by either systems that tie their hands.

So it's a huge problem to unravel and I think Marc has really said that like, it's been a centuries long problem in the making and it's not gonna be a one year five year plan solution.

And I think that's one of the things around like compassion fatigue or like homelessness when we get in these conversations is people want a solution immediately which again is rooted in a lot of anxiety and the system that we exist in which is a very white supremacist system, especially here in Seattle, that is predominantly white, that is embedded in all of the social interactions and political interactions.

And being able to like pull out all of those pieces is really difficult.

And people get exhausted.

They get tired of seeing the same things over and over again, that's for everybody, not just homeless people, not just people in this field, not just officials, everybody gets tired of the same issues, not feeling heard and seeing no change.

And that's the place that a lot of people are in and that's why we revert to such punishment based, compliant based and abstinence based solutions because maybe it's not the best outcome, maybe it's not gonna get us what we genuinely want, but at least the problem will be cleared and outta my way and I can stop thinking about it.

And that's what people want.

They want a solution which as I said like, there is no clear answer to any of these things.

And it's a conversation that we have to have at every level.

It's something that I talk about with my staff constantly.

It's how do you stay in this work long term when we're severely underpaid, extremely burnt out, definitely overworked and there are no changes like housing takes years.

Shelter is only on some days.

There are so many things that we don't have, how do we sustain people to stay in this work when it feels hopeless.

And that's the same thing that it is that we ask when we're working with clients is that it is about staying long term with them because there's a lot of things that we can't change but that's true for life in general.

And I also to kind of flip, it's not just on the system to provide the resources, we also have to acknowledge how these systems have truly impacted our client's behaviors because they have been institutionalized by homelessness, by their addiction, by actual incarceration.

That's not gonna just be undone.

That's not gonna just go away when you say I have the perfect spot for you, you've always dreamt of.

Then their addiction flares up, their trauma comes, their reasons for not wanting that thing which are valid and real get in the way of them accepting that place.

That's not their personal failure.

That's not them being difficult.

That's not even the system not working.

That's the real truth and reality of institutionalization.

- Yeah, I appreciate that.

You've all touched on compassion fatigue and I guess going into this question, I think it's important to say unequivocally that this is not meant to equate having to witness homelessness with the actual trauma of experiencing homelessness in any stretch of the imagination.

But I am curious if you could elaborate on the idea of compassion fatigue and sort of the ways this endless crisis has hurt the city or at the very least sort of left us a little numb to the suffering we see every day.

Marc, can you lead us off on that thought?

- Yeah, I say this a lot and I'm appreciative of this panel because one, I'm on a lot of panels and one just to be like with a panel of folks of color, talking about things that mostly impact people of color, dope, good programming, good editorial decision.

I'm also really happy that like this is a panel that is, folks who have lived experience.

And so, I wanna offer that up because I wanna center what I'm about to say in like, I've been forcibly institutionalized twice in my life.

I have been housing unstable.

I eaten food that is actively rotting and I believe that it is like fundamentally when we tee things up through who has the right to point out that something is fundamentally broken, we've already lost.

We've lost the narrative.

And like from where I sit, right?

And I've said this before, this has become sort of like one of my go-tos since I took this job, like people shouldn't have to live outside.

The fact that people have to means that something is deeply broken in our society full stop, right?

And the corollaries of that of like people have to navigate, people who are having active psychotic episodes, who are being forced to live outside also bad.

And so like, it is exhausting.

And I mean, literally, physically it is exhausting to have to navigate that as you are trying to go through your day to day.

And I think that like part of what we have to be clear on is again, if we weren't locked into who gets to point out that this is broken, we could spend more time solving it.

And I can assure you that and you know, perhaps LaMont or Karen can speak to this.

Like our unhoused neighbors are as disturbed by folks who are experiencing that level of trauma outside.

We all know it shouldn't be happening.

And so like this sort of the talking point progressivism of who gets to say that this is messed up, it doesn't track frankly with what those of us who've lived it or those of us who are working on it, spend our time talking about.

- Yeah, LaMont as we sort of transition into talking about how we can solve this problem, can you explain to people what you mean when you're talking about lived experience and why it has to be so central to addressing homelessness?

- Yeah, lived experience is really key and there's a quote by Justlead Washington that is one of our mantras with the Lived Experience Coalition.

And it's that, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution but often furthest from power and resources.

And when we look at our different institutions and who are operating those institutions, when we look at who's making the funding decisions, who's conducting the research and designing the assessments, right?

It's mostly white folks, right?

And we love white folks.

We need white folks but we need all of us, right?

Our ecosystem needs to be very diverse and we need to have people with lived expertise there, from the very beginning, with shared decision making power.

And this makes good dollars and cents because those that are experiencing homelessness, they're gonna know what services work, they're gonna know what they're gonna utilize and they'll be able to improve our design, right?

And I think that we're really now recognizing that we have to flip the model of development.

We have to move away from hyper professionalization, we have to move away from elitism, from overly clinical approaches and we need to recognize the indigenous wisdom, the cultural assets, that the spirituality and the arts and all of those things, you know?

And in my own experience of homelessness after I came out of the military and I'm originally from Charleston, South Carolina and the messages I got as a Black gay young man, right?

Being Black, I'm the N word, right?

Being gay, I'm a faggot.

Imagine as a young person growing up believing that you are a nigga faggot.

And I used that word so we could feel the pain and the internalization of what that is like.

That if people knew who I really was, they wouldn't love me.

And then when I joined the military, I was in the don't ask, don't tell military, right?

So my being a faggot, right?

And growing up in a society when you watch TV, when you go into a restroom and you see the N word engraved there, right?

The projection of being intellectually inferior, right?

The trauma going through a rural neighborhood and being afraid to pull over that you could be lynched or harmed.

This is not right, this is not okay, right?

And for white folks, racism is a mental abstraction but for people of color, it's something we live daily.

So after I got out of the military and I wasn't ready to go back to South Carolina yet and I went to a party and I smoked crack cocaine and I became instantly addicted.

Crack was too expensive, so I went to meth.

So you see our unhoused neighbors on the streets begging for money, disheveled and all of those things, that was me.

I was psychotic.

I was institutionalized and chemically restrained because I was violent.

That was me.

But luckily because I was a veteran and they had a pilot program, that's now discontinued, that had art therapy.

And it was on the beautiful American lake campus in Lakewood.

It was a lake, there was golfing, there was art therapy.

We had the best therapist with mindfulness meditation that integrated spirituality and cultural responsiveness and vocational rehabilitation, right?

And so, it is possible, right?

But the part that we need to recognize, a lot of our unhoused neighbors are carrying an immense amount of pain and trauma and most are the victims of racism, ableism, cisgenderism, transphobia and we forget that in our compassion fatigue, right?

We want to have our beautiful sidewalks, and our beautiful parks.

Let's just sweep them away because we want our neighborhoods back.

But we forget, we all live on stolen lands.

And so we need to have a consciousness of awakening that is steeped in history.

And then collectively we could recognize, wow, and we can have compassion and we can hold and elect elected officials and programs and designs that are more humanizing.

We have more than enough in our society.

For the amount of money that we spend on Christmas lights alone each year, not the Christmas trees, not the presents, Christmas lights alone, we can ensure that every single resident in America has safe and stable housing and I'm not talking about a tiny home that wouldn't meet HUD human habitability standards.

I'm talking about a home with running water, a kitchen, a safe bed.

And so, it is a myth that we don't have enough and we can afford and have housing justice.

And compassion fatigue comes in our disconnection with the history of 40 years of trickle down economics that have eroded social safety nets.

And now we wanna lash the whip out at King County Regional Homeless Authority and others and say, why aren't you fixing this problem yet?

And we're throwing all this money, fix it now.

No, this has been centuries in the making and has been reinforced by the past 40 years of trickle down economics that we all are collectively responsible for.

- Yeah, I think it's sort of clear to me listening to your answer just the sort of perspective that comes with lived experience and sort of how that perspective channels into some of the policy and practice that the RHA is doing and that REACH is doing.

And yeah, before I move on, I'm wondering if Karen or Marc, you have any sort of thoughts to add to that conversation about lived experience.

- I have one thing which is just to say that like, there's a reason that LaMont uses the term lived expertise and that I often move back and forth between experience and expertise but the point at the end is that, there are things that I know that are tactical in nature that I learned in those places nobody wants to be.

And I mean, like full stop, right?

Like I know how to design a program that is oriented towards dignity and healing because I've been in the thing that doesn't do that.

And as LaMont just said, I think he and I actually have both like, I have been institutionalized in places that were like not great.

And I have been institutionalized one place that was pretty great, right?

And I know the difference and and now with like over a decade of policy experience underneath my belt as well, right?

Like, it is easy for me to take an afternoon to architect programs that can do that thing as opposed to quite literally weeks or months of process to get to the same outcome.

And so when those of us who've been in those places sit down and ask, what is the thing?

What we're bringing to the for is not just again, and I wanna be really clear, right?

Because like, are there really good ethical and moral reasons to include those of us who've lived those things?

Yes.

But the best reason is that we actually just know how to build stuff differently, right?

And so like, it is really critical that like, it be clear that this is not a migration towards moving power towards folks with lived expertise because it's like, it's a nice thing to give it a go, right?

It is because we actually can get to the outputs in terms of program design and then the outcomes in terms of people not experiencing homelessness faster.

Like we know those pitfalls and we know how to work in those spaces with a literal expertise.

- Yeah, I'll add on there.

So for REACH, we're really focused on working with folks who use drugs and like that harm reduction mindset and that is absolutely critical.

Like my lived experience is not being addicted to drugs, I cannot, I can see it in my clients, I can work with them.

I've seen it in my family, I've worked with people in my entire life but that's not my experience.

And I can't tell you what it feels like to be craving.

I can't tell you what it feels like when you're getting dope sick, when you're feeling dope sick.

I can't relate to you in that but my staff who have that experience, they can, they can really walk through in those steps.

Like hey, actually, this is something might help you.

This is what I've done.

I feel what you feel, I can see where you've been, I've been there myself like that connection, especially with something that stigmatized as drug usage and homelessness and mental health, that connection in itself is so critical for someone to see someone that looks like them serving them and able to navigate the systems that they can't, it's so valuable.

It's like, you're not alone.

And so, those are the things and that I do wanna name the complexity of that work.

That exactly like LaMont said like, the professionalism, the over elitism, this idea of constant perfection and you have to hit all the marks is what so often why these folks are not given the acclaim that they deserve for their skills because they don't meet certain expectations that are BS.

They're completely made up.

We made them up like, there's just social norms that we created to create this idea of what's good and what's not.

When my staff are the most flexible, the most out of the box thinkers, when they're like, wait, why not?

Why can't we do something like this when we're gonna achieve the outcome you're asking for, it's just a slightly different path.

Like, why isn't that okay?

And that is exactly like in program design and client care and just our interactions with each other as neighbors, when we're presenting another look, another perspective, it gives people a chance to open up their mind to a different way of thinking.

And that's the thing where if you isolate yourself, if you're constantly in the same groups that you run with, only hearing the same perspectives that is feedback, positive feedback for that probably not the best idea that you have, then that's what you continue to grow into and think about and hold fasten and it becomes so hard to change your mind to something else.

And that is what I see with my staff.

Just the flexibility of having had to move like the water and just figure it out and bring their cultural thing without losing it as much as possible.

That's what I see is their skill, there's just huge flexibility and a way to imagine the world that's different than what we've currently created.

- And I just wanna add, and Karen, thank you for naming that.

And I think we also need to recognize our housing providers during COVID on the front lines and our housing providers, and a lot of our social service providers are so underpaid.

It is absolutely sad.

The level of work that they are doing, the difficult work, the hard work, the humanizing work and our providers have been there on the front lines during COVID and they re remain there.

And I know Harold Odam, one of our Lived Experience Coalition members, who speak fondly about how REACH saved his life when he was in a tiny home and was dying really of an infection.

And they built that trust and empathy and we have Solid Ground, DSC, Catholic Community Services, The YWC, too many wonderful nonprofits to name, right?

But our providers are doing some really amazing work that we often don't recognize and they're severely underpaid.

And a lot of our nonprofits aren't getting enough funding to do this work well.

And so we have a lot of compassion fatigue and burnout, right?

But we need our best case managers, our best people with lived expertise to be working with our unhoused neighbors.

And so, there's tremendous research shortages and workforce shortages there as well.

- Terrific, I really appreciate that.

And as we transition into some audience questions, a bunch of great ones popping up on my screen from folks watching at home.

As a starting place for that and I guess we can treat this as sort of a lightning round get as many of these as we can.

What do we need to solve the homelessness crisis?

How do we get people off the street and how much money do we need to make that work?

So, yeah, if you wanna sort of the 30 to 60 second version of that which I realized is slightly absurd but nonetheless.

Marc, why don't you lead us off?

- Sorry, can you reframe that?

I got a little lost.

- Sure, what do we need to do to solve homelessness?

And what is it gonna cost?

- Okay, cost, I mean, if we just want it to be done, we'd be talking probably about 1.5 billion.

I mean, I don't know how else, that number has been pretty consistent and has trended it up, every year we haven't spent it.

So like at this point I feel like this is, I mean, I know this is gonna be controversial to someone somewhere but I feel like it shouldn't be because there are literally and I'm not joking like 15 reports that have this number inching up year over year.

And we're just like, as my folks used to say like, we're behind the eight ball in this one, like we are not in a good place.

And so there is a reason why that number is so large.

And then what we need to do is you know, and folks will see this in our five year plan when it comes out in September but like, so much of what you've heard from LaMont and Karen has I think hinted at the complexity of the work that we do, but our system is not that complex, right?

Our system is actually very sort of one size fits all.

We have kind of three things for you, right?

We've got rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and shelter, kind of have some transitional housing, kind of have some vouchers but it's really just the three things.

And like that's not, I mean, and to be clear, right?

Like those things are also not titrated against people's needs.

So like, we don't have recovery oriented shelter versus abstinence shelter versus harm reduction shelter.

We have shelter.

We don't have, you know I talked about this over the last year, we don't have low acuity shelter and high acuity shelter.

We have shelter.

And so as a result, right?

Like we are fully unable at this point in time to act even and I wanna be really clear here because like there is a way that I say this and then again to LaMont's point, the narrative is, oh, our providers don't know what they're doing, right?

Or my team here doesn't know what they're doing.

No, we know.

And like, and much of what we talk about, frankly like, when I sit down with Karen and the other outreach providers, our whole lot of the conversation is like, this is underfunded, we aren't able to sort of type, we aren't able to do the appropriate triage of need and the appropriate matching of like program to person, right?

We know that that is what we are currently fixing.

But what you will see in our five year plan is a pretty ambitious strategy to get that done, right?

That like really, really focuses on saying, we must have variation in these portfolios that matches the variation of what people tell us they need, right?

As opposed to continuing to try to shoehorn everybody into just what we've got, right?

And again, in candor and this shouldn't be non-controversial but it's probably gonna be somewhere like the results of that strategy are quite literally the situation we're in right now, right?

Like attempting to force everybody through a couple models is how we are here.

So like, I just feel like what we are attempting to do at the authority is again, through power sharing, through accurate data, drive the necessary articulation of the system necessary in order to meet the need and then scale that articulation, right?

But those are tremendously complex tasks and are gonna require a lot of reconfiguring of a lot of things and then amping them and that's the work again, that we all have to be prepared to do collectively.

That cannot, I mean like, it won't happen if it's just the RHA, right?

Like everyone, every walk has to be behind that.

- Great, I guess Karen or LaMont if there's something you wanna add to the sort of solutions conversation, if there are things that Marc did not hit on, I would love to hear your sort of speedy answer.

- Okay, I'll try to be speedy.

Definitely I think that we should invest in strategies that address barriers that have been identified by racially marginalized and underserved communities experiencing homelessness and really amplify those solutions, right?

Because when you have people most impact at designing the solutions, they're gonna use it and it just makes good sense.

Also, I'm a big fan of Initiative 135.

Right now there's houseourneighbors.org.

There is an Initiative 135 campaign that has been co-developed by people with lived experience and allies to develop social housing.

And as you all know, social housing is publicly owned.

It's permanently affordable and it creates cross class communities and renter leadership.

And they've done this in countries like Singapore, Austria, France, and Canada where large scale housing is owned by the public and controlled by renters who live there.

And it's free from market forces and speculation.

And really this is the only model that is really, it's rent is permanently restricted and governance is completely rental run.

Also, there is a movement that we are in, right?

Where philanthropy, business community, people with lived experience, faith community are all trying to come involved in this shared consciousness and movement.

So if you go to, wearein.org, you can find information there on how to get involved.

And policy fixes.

We need to have rent control.

I know that sounds scary but we need to do more in that area.

Also, let's move away from tiny homes to micro homes 'cause they're permanent and they're very cost effective.

So let's consider more micro home communities.

And also we need better legislation that will address discrimination barriers for people that have histories of in incarceration.

- Yeah, great.

- I'll chime in and just add really quick.

I agree with all those things and I think it's also just huge social shifts like what we've been talking about.

It's like our ideas of who's deserving of what like, there's the cost of homelessness that, there's a cost amount but like if we're talking that it's a systemic issue, then we need to talk about all of our systems.

It's about education.

Who has access to good public schools, free schools, not just, oh, you're in a bad neighborhood, you have a private school that you can go to so that you can circumvent the results of not having a well funded school.

So we need to talk about things in the community.

Do people have green spaces?

Do they have parks?

Do they have place to play sports?

Do they have music?

Do they have art in their school?

Do they have a connection to their culture?

A way that you can feel connected?

Like I said, I'm not from here, I'm from the DC area, I'm Salvadorian and I had a huge Salvadorian community that kept me connected to my home country when I'm not there.

And that's so important to my development in my identity as a Brown person that I know that, I know where I come from.

That I can go to where I have a connection with that.

Do we have that here?

Do we have accessible, free or cheap public transportation for those who don't have the economic means to get around freely through car where we live on the west coast, it's a heavy car area like you need a car to get to places.

You know, when I was talking to clients up north which is where I began doing my outreach, if I wanted to them to go from Aurora to Ballard, which is like a 15 minute, 20 minute drive straight across, it's like an hour long bus ride.

You gotta get down Aurora to get to the place where there's one bridge where you get to a different bus stop below the bridge to then get across the way to Ballard.

That's the only way and that's like, it's a systemic, intentional move to keep people from traversing across neighborhoods.

So the people from Aurora won't easily get to Ballard.

Have we looked at our systems in that way?

Like have we set it up that people even when they get to employment opportunities, do they have their benefits?

Can they take care of their children?

Do they have childcare?

Are they able to continue working eight hours if that's the standard we wanna go by to be able to meet their job requirements while also satisfying their family requirements?

Because then we put it on single mothers who are the predominant group of low income families to work, sustain their children, educate their children, make sure that they're not getting into things and have all these expectations and zero support for 'em.

You get $197 a month with your food stamps.

It takes 150 easy to feed a family of three every week.

So you know, those are the bigger things if we wanna talk about the cost of homelessness, it's like we need to invest in our society and not just think individually.

So I think speaking to what was said earlier, we have a lot of billionaire in this city, what's going on there?

We have interesting tech structure.

Those are the actual things that we need to change and again, with the policies that are impacting how those things, how our structure is implemented.

- Great, well, I've got a producer in my ear telling me our time is running out.

So I just wanna thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts and your expertise and your stories today.

I think this has been a good conversation and I wanna thank the audience for joining us at home.

So yeah, again, thank you so much.

And I hope you'll check out some of the other sessions happening at Crosscut Festival.

Probably no session as timely as tomorrow afternoon's live taping of Slate's Supreme Court podcast, Amicus about post-Roe America.

And you could find info on that and all the sessions at crosscut.com/festival.

Thanks so much.

(soft upbeat music)