Council President Sara Nelson Gets Touchy-Feely on Treatment

[00:00:00] Hey, Seattle Nice listeners, Sandeep here. Before we dive into the episode, a quick programming note, which is that the entire Seattle Nice crew, David included, are going to be taping a live episode of the podcast on Tuesday, July 15th at the 43rd District Democrats meeting that evening.

[00:00:24] The meeting goes from 7 to 9 p.m., and we'll be taping at 7.30. It's going to be at the Erickson Theater on Harvard Avenue. The address is 1524 Harvard Avenue in Seattle. We hope you'll come out and join the 43rd District Democrats and the Seattle Nice crew. You'll get a chance to see how the podcasting sausage gets made. How exciting. Hope to see you there. Thanks.

[00:01:03] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Seattle Nice. I'm Erica Barnett. He's Sandeep Kaushik. And David, I am told, is going to be returning. He's being allowed to return sometime this week. So we should have an update next week on his whereabouts. Let's see if they let him through customs, you know, I mean, yeah, he has some foreign ties that Canadian those Canadians are pretty suspicious.

[00:01:33] He's got a Canadian passport. So we shall see. Meantime, it's just us here again. And we are going to be talking about this isn't exactly an emergency podcast, but it's news that broke yesterday as we're recording this on Wednesday. Council President Sarah Nelson is proposing to use up to 25 percent of any public safety sales tax that the city passes on treatment.

[00:01:59] And the public safety sales tax, just in case people don't remember, is basically Bob Ferguson's promise to spend $100 million on police and public safety, is being enacted at the city level and the county level. The legislature gave cities and counties the authority to pass a sales tax of up to one tenth of a cent. And King County is talking about doing it. And now the city is also talking about doing it.

[00:02:25] So Nelson's proposal would reserve 25 percent of that for treatment not exactly defined. And we were both at the press conference yesterday, Sunday. If you were lurking in the back of the audience in Occidental Square, you are not behind Council President Nelson. But what did you think of the announcement? Well, I thought it was I thought it was great and important.

[00:02:47] I mean, look, I think that this this tenth of sales tax authority is going to get enacted likely as part of the budget process this fall. So what the council president was doing was getting is saying, let's I want to get ahead of this announcement that we're doing the sales tax to make sure at least some of this money goes to addressing the problem of untreated addiction and and to some extent mental illness on the streets of Seattle.

[00:03:16] So just keying off what we were saying last week. Right. I think stuff like this is, you know, a good you know, if we're going to raise the sales tax, then let's deploy that money in, you know, smart, well thought out ways to actually address meaningfully address problems that we're facing as a city. And that this was the intent to do that.

[00:03:44] And I thought it was really great that she had, you know, a bunch of the main providers standing there with her folks from the neighborhoods, you know, the Pioneer Square Alliance or the, you know, the Ballard folks were there. And, you know, that there's a coalition behind it. And there is a this is just a resolution.

[00:04:07] Right. What she's introducing is a resolution to indicate that when this happens, the council wants to there will have to be legislation. Right. To direct the money. But it's not also just a complete grab bag. They're they're laying out in this resolution a series of the sorts of things that they want to fund. And it is a range of stuff. It's a it's a long set of bullet points.

[00:04:28] But about things like, for instance, DSC's, you know, very promising new buprenorphine sublocate, long term buprenorphine onboarding protocol that has been showing really, really stellar results. We should be funding more stuff like that or things like lead or co-lead. Right. That Lisa Dugard and PDA are are, you know, the leads on.

[00:04:57] Right. So so all here, as well as more traditional treatment stuff. Right. Like we decided Lakeside Milo, which we talked about last week, which is an inpatient, you know, 28 day treatment program that I believe you've been to and she's been to. Right. I have. Yep. So just to pull back for a second, I mean, there's a couple of things, you know, going on here. Big picture that are sort of fighting against each other. I think one is that the sales tax is obviously the most regressive tax.

[00:05:26] It falls heaviest on lower income people, middle income people. And we all pay it. Seattle sales tax is already the highest in the nation. If King County sales tax passes and this one passes, it'll be at 10.55 percent, I believe, which is insane. And so the question is, you know, even though we have this authority to pass a public safety tax, should we?

[00:05:52] I mean, the immediate response from, you know, from people like Bruce Harrell, from people like the King County Council is, yes, the second we get this authority to tax people, we should do it. And I think that is, you know, that that is fighting against at the same time, the fact that we're going to be seeing and are seeing major federal funding cuts.

[00:06:16] And so it's not a great situation where, you know, we're talking about taxing people who are going to be, you know, paying the highest sales tax in the nation without a public vote, increasing taxes to the highest level in the country again. And at the same time, trying to stave off these federal funding cuts. And I will say just last thing for your thoughts on that. This is going to be a tax that will probably pay for police.

[00:06:45] And 75 percent of it will go to other purposes if this ends up passing and getting enacted. And when the city talks about public safety, they generally mean police and fire. And so do we need more money on do we need to be spending more money on police who already get about half the general fund of the city of Seattle? And so I think those are questions that I don't know that this council is going to be particularly equipped to ask and answer.

[00:07:12] But I think they are really big questions in my mind when I'm sort of looking at and weighing whether this tax is a good idea. So there's a few things to unpack in your comment there, but which, you know, because I think you're asking some good questions. But the first thing is this is the authority that the state has provided the city. Right. So, you know, I'm with you. Like sales tax is not the greatest, you know, mechanism here, but it's the tool that the legislature has provided the city.

[00:07:39] And so this is, you know, they don't really have a, you know, a whole lot of choice there if they want to if they want to do this. To your larger point, like that, you know, this is do we need more funding for public safety? Right. The sort of classic public safety of cops and first responders. I'm kind of with you. I actually don't think we need. But again, this goes back to our conversation last week.

[00:08:04] I think all this talk of this massive budget deficit and, you know, that the city's facing and therefore we need more taxes just to backfill our existing funding, which is really what my understanding is the mayor's office wants to take all of this money to backfill their, you know, funding for police and fire and public safety stuff.

[00:08:27] And I just don't think they need the money because I think I think this talk of this massive budget deficit is largely a convenient untruth. And it's convenient for the progressive side, for the Alexis Rink folks, because they want to do new revenue. And this becomes the impetus to do new revenue. And it's convenient for the executive side and the mayor's folks, because it's an excuse not to take bold new actions to solve actual problems,

[00:08:55] because they're like, we don't have any money. We have this budget deficit. We just got to be backfilling the existing services and program. Well, to be clear, I mean, as we did not to get into our conversation last week, but I mean, money is not fungible in that in the way that you're describing. It's not just one big pot that we can mix together and divide in different ways. So it's not the case that the city could just take all the money out of the office of housing, out of the housing levy, out of, you know, ever. I mean, they are trying, but but it is not the case that they can do that just infinitely.

[00:09:24] So the budget deficit. Yeah, I mean, it's it's real. It may not be exactly the size that they are saying it is, depending on how you define it. But I mean, the bigger point is like we are going to have lots of other needs with the Trump administration making cuts. I mean, this this big, beautiful bill is going to cut Medicaid, which is going to devastate a lot of the groups that were actually out there yesterday talking about the need for the sales tax.

[00:09:49] And so, you know, is public safety the place that we need to be worrying about if we're going to have a need for more taxes in the future? You know, I don't know. I mean, it is the most lavishly funded part of the city budget. And I would argue that, you know, there are I mean, if anything, 100 percent of this tax should be going to things that are not police, that are not fire. I mean, I don't think that necessarily treatment is should get 100 percent of it.

[00:10:18] But I think there are lots of services that could fall under the rubric of public safety that are not police that should be funded through this. And, you know, maybe that should also be a resolution in addition to this kind of traditional treatment that Sarah Nelson is more oriented toward. Now, as you said, I mean, there's lots of other stuff in there. Hopefully there'll be some harm reduction stuff. But but yeah, I mean, I don't know that I think any of this should be going to.

[00:10:44] Well, so first of all, I look, if I could wave a magic wand, 100 percent of this sales tax money would go to this treatment effort, this this this program. I I would. And so I should say here that I'm not the reason I was lurking at the press conference yesterday. I'm not a completely neutral observer on this. I have had some role in brokering some of the initial conversations that sort of has ultimately gone through various iterations and resulted in this.

[00:11:11] Like so for more than a year now, I've been running around talking to everybody at the city and stakeholders and stuff that I could find saying we need to really. Really get our shit together and take proactive action on on the fentanyl crisis that exists on Seattle streets. I was in a conversation more than a year ago with Lisa Dugard from Purpose Dignity Action about maybe a ballot measure where we could put together a plan to really fund some interventions. But, you know, more proactive interventions on fentanyl.

[00:11:40] You know, those conversations have led to other conversations. I've had conversations with the council president about the need for for more funding of these sorts of sorts. And ultimately, Lisa Dugard and I had a conversation with Sarah Nelson a set months ago now that sort of helped to precipitate the conversation that has ultimately led to this this resolution that the that the council president originated.

[00:12:03] So and I think at the time in those initial rounds of conversation, I think there's an understanding that the need for the sorts of programs like, you know, the or the sorts of approaches like medically assisted opioid treatment or programs like CoLead. Right. Or approaches like CoLead is is very real. There are a bunch of this stuff is getting cut back.

[00:12:31] If this big, beautiful bill stuff goes through all of that sublocate, you know, DSE sublocate program, that's all funded through Medicaid. Right. Like those people are not in any condition to fulfill work requirements. And, you know, maybe we can get some percentage of those people onto Social Security disability and therefore that they would still get funded. But that's a lot of paperwork with a very difficult population. I mean, this is exactly what we're seeing.

[00:12:59] What they're saying globally is this is why millions of people are going to lose health care coverage. Right. Under this Medicaid cuts that the Republicans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the other stuff that they're doing because they're not going to be able to do the paperwork. These are impaired folks that, you know. And so and so, yeah, we're going to need funding. I would have liked to have seen 100 percent of this money go to it.

[00:13:17] And I will say my understanding of the kind of back room conversations about this was that the reason it's only 25 percent of the this prospective sales tax increase is that the mayor's office were like that. We want the rest of it for our other funding stuff. And then what other funding? Well, you know, unspecified. They're just going to use it to go into the black hole of of not having to look at the budget and make any kind of other changes, I think.

[00:13:48] And and then even when that happened, I originally was to understand that they would maybe be on board with this this announcement yesterday. But they're they they they're pretty tepid on, you know, they backed away from that even. And so. Yeah. So when I asked them about it, you know, well, when I asked Sarah Nelson about it, she said that the mayor has indicated support of the concept and that they'll have to wait till they get closer to the budget to really discuss it.

[00:14:16] And then when I asked the mayor's office, they said, quote, we'll analyze this proposal in full when we receive it in the context of the overall budget revenue solutions and public safety needs, which is, you know, a nonstatement typical of the mayor's office. So, yeah, I mean, pretty tepid. And so, I mean, and and we should say, too, this is an election year for Sarah Nelson. It's an election year for Bruce Harrell. And I think neither of them, but particularly the mayor, want to go into budget with it looking like a crisis.

[00:14:45] So even if they can first stall the, you know, the need to address the the budget deficit or the, you know, spending problem, as Sandeep would probably define it, they want to first stall that until after the election. And and so, you know, it's there's there's a lot of politics going on with this. I mean, again, I don't want to raise the sales tax period. I think that our sales tax is outrageous. And, yeah, it is the tool that we have.

[00:15:14] But, I mean, you know, for normal people, I mean, you know, when you go to the grocery store, when you go to buy anything anywhere, I mean, it's just getting ridiculously expensive. So, I mean, we've talked about this a little bit last week with the B&O tax as opposed to, you know, a really regressive sales tax. But, I mean, I don't know. I don't want to sound I don't want to sound like, you know, tax fatigue is here.

[00:15:39] But but I mean, for me, you know, I'm just as somebody who spends money in Seattle like all of us do. I mean, tax fatigue is here for me when it comes to sales taxes. But again, we have no choice because this is up to the city council and the mayor, not the voters. And what the state gave them. But, you know, I mean, look, this is the city of Seattle. Well, we all know that if the legislature gives you authority to raise a tax, the city is going to raise the tax. And we all know this is coming. They're doing it right.

[00:16:06] I mean, it's not like it's not going to that there's a real debate about whether they're going to actually take advantage of this authority or not. They're clearly going to do it. And so, as I said last week, my thing is, if you're going to raise a tax, then use it to solve a fucking problem. Right. Because I think they can fund their current commitments. Yeah, they might have to do a little belt tightening here and there.

[00:16:31] But I think it's very doable for them to solve their current, you know, sort of status quo budgetary issues without resort to this money, especially since they're also proposing this B&O tax and 90 million dollars of additional money that's going to be on the ballot in November on all likelihood. And so they've already got a whole bunch of additional revenue coming in on that front. Right. So are we really going to just do this sales tax, too?

[00:16:59] And then this will also just go to not do anything new or different. You know, it's just starting to feel to me like we keep raising taxes and not solving any problems. And that's a problem. Support for Seattle NICE comes from Hearth Protection, offering commercial protective services with trauma-informed, community-oriented and evidence-based physical security practices,

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[00:17:57] One thing that I didn't realize about the B&O tax was that it's being described as a temporary tax. When we talked last week, I kind of not thought that this is being characterized as temporary. So what is your bet on whether it's really going to be temporary? Do you think, like, is that 20 percent likely to be true, 10 percent, 80 percent? I think it's zero percent likely that it's temporary.

[00:18:24] I mean, I mean, have you ever have we ever seen a temporary tax that goes away in the city of Seattle? Are they really going to give up 90 million dollars of revenue in four years, you know, or whatever it is then? Probably then it'll be like 120 million dollars. No, of course not. It's not temporary. Yeah, there's something that feels very disingenuous to me about selling a tax that way. Like, just say it's a tax, say it's permanent and be done with it. Or say, you know, it has to be renewed every however many years, like all of our other taxes.

[00:18:51] But but yeah, I mean, to say to say it's just going to be temporary and then they're going to figure out how to deal with a 90 million dollar, you know, sudden revenue shortfall. Because, of course, it's not just going to be spent on one time stuff like it really should be if it's temporary. You know, I mean, we'll be back here in four years talking about. Yeah, of course. And I don't really even understand why they put the temporary provision on there. I haven't dug into it and asked, but that didn't really make a whole lot like what's the rationale for saying it's temporary?

[00:19:21] I didn't even understand. Sounds better. Yeah, I don't know. You know, maybe it was some kind of sop to the business community or some attempt to sort of, you know, keep them from opposing it too strongly or something. But of course, it's not temporary. I mean, we all know, no, it's not temporary. I mean, please. I mean. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the picture that I ran of Sarah Nelson at her press conference, and you can't quite see it.

[00:19:50] But just out of frame and also a little bit right behind her, right behind her is Andrea Suarez from We Heart Seattle. And just out of frame are just a fuck ton of people from We Heart Seattle. Christine Moreland from The More We Love is there. Those groups are trying to get funding through this measure, it seems.

[00:20:10] And those are groups that believe in extremely, you know, either high barrier to enter or high barrier to stay types of treatment.

[00:20:22] And in fact, as I'm going to report on this a little more this week, but Moreland's group, The More We Love, got funding for a shelter, for shelter beds for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation that, you know, she describes as low barrier to entry, high barrier to stay. Yeah, we talked about this last week when she brought some of these women into the council chambers. And there was a lacrimose tear fest. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:20:52] And so, you know, that concerns me. And Sarah Nelson thanked these groups, you know, which I do not. I mean, they just say it's not evidence based to allow people into a program and then kick them out immediately the second they relapse. That is that is not an evidence based form of treatment. It's traumatic and it's harmful.

[00:21:16] And my concern is that The More We Love and We Heart Seattle, which has, you know, not gotten a city contract yet. And Andrea Suarez has complained about that bitterly at council meetings. My concern is this money is going to go to groups that, you know, really promote harmful ideas about addiction and, you know, and are very much removed from and very much in antipathy to harm reduction, which is which is an evidence based solution.

[00:21:43] Which, you know, I mean, at the very least, like something like Lakeside Milam, you know, I don't know what they're like now. But when I was there 10 more than 10 years ago, they did not kick you out if you, you know, relapse, if you snuck off. I mean, they tried to figure out a way to help you. And that's a very traditional therapy. These groups, I mean, they are, you know, far, far removed from that. I mean, they're very punitive.

[00:22:08] And so I just really worry about city money going to programs like that. I mean, it already is. It's already going to The More We Love. So that's a concern for me. So I thought Sarah Nelson was the council president was asked that question. And I thought she handled that well.

[00:22:25] And in her answer, which she said, look, there are there's no one pathway that that is a sort of one size fits all that works for everybody kind of in terms of pathways to recovery, that there are different approaches and different programs. And, you know, she's like, what we really need is more resources. And I will say this. Look, a few weeks ago, the Salvation Army invited me to come on one of their outreach tours, a ride along.

[00:22:55] You're so funny. I was about to ask the Salvation Army as a group we don't fund for that reason. But I will tell you this. I went. I accepted their offer. I went and I checked out there. They've got this big, big shelter down in Soto. And it was actually quite an impressive operation. They're housing a lot, you know, sheltering a lot of people down there. I hadn't realized the scale of it. It was interesting to see.

[00:23:20] But then I a few days later, I went on a ride along with their one of their outreach teams over to Little Saigon, spent four hours with them. And then we went over to Cal Anderson Park. And I will say this. They don't you know, they're religious. Right. But they don't lead with religion. They do the same outreach. When I went out with a reach worker, it was very similar. They're handing out kind of packages of like bags of food and toiletries and sort of care stuff and tracking up conversations with people.

[00:23:47] But I will tell you, as we were doing it, there was one guy in particular, an older African-American gentleman who kind of we were over by the Salvation Army van. He comes over, starts to have a conversation with them. He's an old he used to be in a union. He was on disability, became addicted to drugs. He's telling his whole story. And he basically asked them to pray with him. And then they do. They put hands on him and they prayed with him.

[00:24:16] And then they talked to him about getting into this program and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I took away from that is like, for some people, that religious stuff is kind of a help. Look, when I was addicted and I tried to do NA, I couldn't stand the religious stuff in the AA, NA stuff, the higher power shit. It didn't work for me at all. I'm not religious.

[00:24:39] But just that example of me being there, watching that one older guy talking with them and him sort of initiating the kind of religious thing. And if that helps him get clean, I'm not against that. I mean, that's good. Sandeep, I am a big believer in a lot of the tenets of AA. I went to AA. AA got me sober. I am an AA member.

[00:25:04] I know that we're like not supposed to be anonymity, but I'm breaking my own anonymity. But, okay, first of all, AA is free. It does not require funding from anyone except its members. But second, I mean, okay, great. I'm glad that church works for some people. And I wasn't even saying that the More We Love and We Heart Seattle are explicitly religious. Yeah, they're not. At least We Heart Seattle is not, as far as I can tell. But that doesn't mean that the government should be funding churches

[00:25:33] and should be funding religious groups and should be funding, frankly, groups that, you know, are extremely punitive. We Heart Seattle, you know, sort of infamously sends people off or has historically sent people off to work camp-style treatment center in Oregon, where people have to pay to be there. And they get kicked out in Oregon if they relapse. And then they're stuck in Oregon after, you know, being picked up off the street in Seattle. I think that is harmful. That might work for some people.

[00:26:02] And We Heart Seattle is more than capable of trying to raise money on its own and clearly has because they talk a lot about how much money they spend. And, you know, I mean, I know Andrea Suarez makes a nice little tidy salary from that. Same thing with Christine Moreland. That does not mean that we have to fund things that are not evidence-based. And I don't think that, you know, I mean, the fact that something works for some people is not the same thing as an evidence basis for it.

[00:26:30] So it may work for some people, for example, to go cold turkey, you know, from heroin or from fentanyl or alcohol, you know, up in an attic somewhere and be locked in and come out, you know, clean a week later. That does not mean that we fund that because it is not evidence-based. It's also dangerous.

[00:26:51] And putting people, you know, particularly, you know, with this program for women that Christine Moreland runs down in Renton, taking women off the street on Aurora, taking them down to Renton, saying you have to stay clean after 72 hours or we'll kick you out is, you know, it's not just not evidence-based. It's dangerous.

[00:27:13] And I think that some of these practices are outright dangerous and we, you know, and they are more than welcome to raise funding for those practices if they want to. But I don't see why the city of Seattle should be funding those type of programs when other programs like DESCs, you know, are losing out on funds and, you know, and actually helping people in a sustainable way.

[00:27:35] I mean, I obviously agree that any funding decisions the city makes, and this was, I think, part of the announcement yesterday, will go through a, you know, it won't just be kind of handed out on the basis of favoritism, but go through an actual, you know, appropriate. But I just gave you an example of something that was handed out explicitly on the basis of favoritism. I hear you. And I'm subverted an entire RFP process to give the money to the more we love for this non-evidence-based program that kicks people out.

[00:28:04] It sounds like, and I have not looked into it, but it sounds like from your reporting on this, this was sort of, there wasn't much of a process here. Like the money was earmarked for this one organization. Well, there was a process. There was an actual ongoing process that had been going on for months for an RFP with lots of groups. And it was stopped. Yeah, right, right. So your point is that, yeah. So I think I can certainly see that happening again, given that it just happened. Right. Well, that should not happen. And we should have RFP processes and there should be like metrics and measurement, you know, you should be, you know, programs that get funded should,

[00:28:34] should demonstrate outcomes and there should be, you know, measurement. I'm totally on board with all of that. But look, if, if, if I don't really care if they've got kind of a, if there's some, you know, religious angle to it, if they can demonstrate some results with, with, with parts of the population and it's making a positive difference.

[00:28:57] And those results are commensurate with like what, you know, the bang we could get from other funding other programs, then I'm okay with that. Right. I'm, I'm, I do think there is no one size fits all approach here to how you get people out of, you know, the throes of addiction and into a better, you know, space. And so, um, so I'm, I'm sort of, I'm open to the idea of, of that stuff, but, but, but yeah, it should be measurable.

[00:29:23] It can't be, it can't just be like, Hey, we like this group or we like that group, whether it's, whether they're preaching harm reduction stuff or, or some other approach, like it shouldn't be earmarked on that basis. Right. Hey, Seattle. Nice listeners. Seattle politics got you low. We'll get high with uncle likes pissed at the mayor.

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[00:30:23] Well, I don't think, I don't think we should earmark or spend money on anybody who's preaching anything. I think that there should actually be results. And I think that the city, you know, this is just a general observation of a lot of these contracts where the city earmarks things for specific groups because of favoritism, because it does happen all the time, not just in this contract. The deliverables or like the program requirements are so lax.

[00:30:49] I mean, if you if you look through a lot of these city contracts compared to the way the state does it, it is kind of laughable. And that is not true of a lot of city contracts. I'm just saying that some of these earmarked ones that I've looked at over the years, you know, the program deliverables will be like, you know, participants report a greater sense of dignity. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:10] OK. Yeah. And we're giving we're giving we're spending millions of dollars on that, you know, so it's just I mean, I think to pretend that this is, you know, this is going to be the most rigorous process in the world or that we know it will be. I mean, it just really depends on who is on the council and who is paying attention to this money. And it's going to be about eight, nine million dollars a year.

[00:31:34] So it's not a huge amount of money, which I think actually opens it up more to these kind of favoritism processes. And I don't think that the more we love and we heart Seattle would have been standing behind Sarah Nelson, invited to stand there if the intent isn't to somehow, you know, make sure some of this money trickles down to them.

[00:31:57] And those folks, just like PDA, Purpose, Dignity, Action or REACH, right? We Heart Seattle also funnels people to Lakeside Milam, right? So that was the original. That's probably the program that's closest to Sarah's Sarah Nelson's heart. I mean, there's three hundred thousand dollars for that. I know. I know. It's not very many. It's not very many, many, many people.

[00:32:20] But a whole range of folks have been using that opportunity, right, to take people out of their efforts and put them into that 28-day treatment program. So that's part of the rationale. Obviously, that's one of the pieces of what's getting funded here. You know, obviously, I'm with— And I would say that's a waste of money if you don't have case management and services waiting for you that are meaningful and helpful on the other side. It's a waste of money. People just leave that.

[00:32:48] Yeah, no, I agree with that, right? The system has to be holistic. And, you know, and obviously, that's sort of what the—there are efforts to pull that together. But I think, you know, Lisa Dugard will tell you, she's told me, that having access to that Lakeside Milam stuff, it's not for— It's not for everybody. Not for everybody. It's actually a small number of people in CoLib.

[00:33:09] But for those people to actually be able to have that option of saying, we can get you kind of quote-unquote middle-class treatment, like inpatient treatment, is a—actually really does—you know, she's like, we use it, right? Yeah. Totally. No, and like I said, I mean, I went to Lakeside Milam. I found it very helpful. I didn't find it to be a total waste of time. But if I came out and I was homeless, yeah, I would have relapsed on daylight. Totally agree on that.

[00:33:32] You know, to your point about the lack of reasonable metrics, I mean, I'm old enough to remember back when, you know, remember in the Ed Murray days when Barb Poppy came in and said that, you know, we had to reform our whole homelessness services delivery system. And they actually—HSD, the Human Services Department, actually created this whole kind of measurement metrics regime, right? And they did an analysis of all of their, you know, service providers.

[00:34:01] And the provider that came in at the very bottom of that list was ShareWheel, remember? And then there was like ShareWheel turned out a whole bunch of people in council chambers, like, you know, yelling and screaming about how their funding was going to get cut. And the council restored all their funding, even though, you know, the measurement showed that— I mean, I'll defend ShareWheel. I think that they do provide really important services, but they're not a, you know, they're not a wraparound everything type of provider, for sure.

[00:34:31] I mean, to be clear, ShareWheel, you know, they run the tent cities. They run some shelters. And there have been, you know, there have definitely been issues with their shelters over the years. I do think, you know, tent cities are—I mean, it's a very low level of shelter, but—which the city, by the way, this is just an aside. The city is now referring to tents as soft-sided shelter, which just, like, is so Orwellian that I can't even believe it.

[00:34:59] But anyway, you know, I mean, it's a necessary service, or, you know, or at the very least, it is a vast improvement on isolated tents, you know, just kind of stuck on sidewalks, both for the neighboring communities and for the people living in the tents.

[00:35:13] But yeah, I mean, the standards are—I mean, I've seen contracts where they were required to—I'm not going to say who this was, but they were required to, like, take attendance at all of these meetings that they were supposedly having and track demographics. And the entirety of their attendance records were that they had the required number of attendants. So it would just say, like, 250, no demographics, no nothing.

[00:35:42] And, you know, that particular contractor got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city. So, yeah, the standards are variable to say. Yeah, and we've seen that at King County RHA, too, right? And part of the whole scandal plagued, like, you know, first couple of years of that organization, which, as we talked about a couple episodes ago, right, it's not clear really why they did this.

[00:36:05] But they were doing things like handing out a million dollars, you know, or a million—you know, seven-figure grants to people that didn't even qualify under the HUD, you know, mandates or whatever. Like, the lived experience coalition got all that money and it turned into a big fiasco and the whole fiscal thing trained—you know, 200 people almost got kicked off. You know, there was this mad scramble you wrote about, sir, like, at the time. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah.

[00:36:34] Are there problems with how these dollars are being, you know, allocated? Absolutely. And we should be doing a better job of calling it out. The thing that sort of bugs me is that there just isn't a lot of mandate or, you know, public pressure on the city to actually be efficient and deliver results, right? I mean, I think that we talked about this.

[00:37:01] Like, it's just become really easy to just say, pass the voters for more money and not deliver it, you know. Or to pass more money. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in this case— And I think that has to shift. This is one place that I think that we—you know, maybe if David was here, he would have us, like, violently disagreeing on this. But, you know, but I do think that—I mean, I think we agree on this issue about contracts.

[00:37:30] And this is why this pathway to recovery proposal, you know, worries me a little bit because I do worry that it's going to go to contracts that don't have a lot of accountability. I think there's a lot of accountability.

[00:38:12] I think there's a lot of Evergreen Treatment Services and Reach was there and spoke at the event yesterday, as was Dan Malone from DESC. And there was someone there, not Lisa, from PDA as well who spoke, right, at the event yesterday. Okay. Look, you know, look, again, when it comes down to it, yeah, there are going to be issues here. Yeah, there are issues with all of this funding. I'm kind of in agreement with you on that.

[00:38:38] But I also think fundamentally for efforts like this, we need more funding and we need bold moves. And here's, you know, credit to Sarah Nelson. She did the stakeholder work. She had all those conversations. She brought those people together. They're all supportive of this effort. There's actually a game plan.

[00:39:02] So it's not just we're going to fund everything under the sun, but, you know, there's a listing there of the sorts of things that they intend to fund with this that's going to get converted into legislation. And so we're going to have to watch that process go, you know, move forward. There's plenty of questions to ask as that process happens. But directionally, this is the right thing to be doing. It should have been happening before. It frankly should be a lot bigger than it is. It should be, I would say, the entirety of this sales tax should be going to, you know, increase should be going to this effort.

[00:39:31] But, you know, at least it's a foundation and a start on doing something good. And, Erica, just you'll remember when the drug law got passed, right, when the city, you know, and the mayor convened this fentanyl task force, right, that, and they came out and they said, we're spending $27 million to, like, you know, address the fentanyl problem. And you wrote about this, that that was a kind of made up thing, right?

[00:39:56] They were funding, they did fund the Orca Center at DSC, which is the Opioid Overdose Recovery Center, which is going to open later this year. And that is good. That is a really, I think, great intervention. I'm happy to see that they did get funding. That was like $7 million of that $27 million. But the other $20 million was, hey, we're just going to grab this $1 million a year that we have for the next 20 years and pretend. There's a lot of smoke in the mirrors. Yeah, yeah, pretend that that's a big investment in doing treatment, and it's not.

[00:40:24] So anyway, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and I will say, you know, credit to Sarah Nelson also. I mean, I do think she has moved on this stuff and, you know, sort of came out of the gate really hot on we've got to do recovery-based, meaning abstinence-based services only, and really being skeptical of harm reduction.

[00:40:45] I think she is still skeptical of harm reduction, but I think she, you know, is more willing and, you know, probably through lots of conversations with these providers like DESC, REACH, and LEAD, PDA. I think that she is more willing to acknowledge that these groups do play a role and that they need funding. So, you know, will it be, you know, will it be transformative? Probably not. But, you know, we're not really in a transformative era.

[00:41:14] And I would say we don't have a transformative mayor or council. And I think both of us probably agree on that. Something's better than nothing is sort of, you know, my take on this. And even something is hard to do, right? I mean, even this $9, $10 million a year of some prospective new funding is already getting pushed back from the budget office and the mayor.

[00:41:34] You know, they're, you know, as we were talking earlier in this episode, they're being very noncommittal about even willing to do this. You know, so we will see. We will see what happens. All right. Let's close there on the evergreen truth. We will see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. We will live to fight another day, right? All right.

[00:42:03] That has been it for another episode of Seattle Nice. I'm Erica C. Barnett. He's Sandeep Kashuk. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And we will talk to you next week. Ta-ta.