Was the plan to end homelessness in downtown Seattle doomed to fail?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here as always with Erica C Barnett of Publicola Good Morning, Erica

[00:00:18] Good morning and Sandeep Kaushik political consultant Sandeep Kaushik, I should say, Sandeep, good morning to you as well

[00:00:24] Morning

[00:00:25] So today we're talking about another failure, another fiasco that's the theme here at Seattle Nice lately. This is the partnership for zero program

[00:00:34] which the King County Regional Homelessness Authority launched. Erica C Barnett has been covering this

[00:00:41] closely. Erica, before we get into what happened? What is or what was the partnership for zero program?

[00:00:48] Yeah as you said I've been covering this closely, I broke the story before it happened in 2022 so this was a partnership between a bunch of corporations and philanthropic groups

[00:01:00] and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority essentially to give about $10 million and ended up being a little bit more, to effectively end homelessness downtown. That was the plan. Zero being effectively zero people downtown living on sheltered

[00:01:17] And the idea was that they were going to hire all these people with lived experience who are ultimately called Systems Advocates to go out and work with people on the streets

[00:01:28] from intake to getting their names on a list all the way to getting them into housing and then beyond that to stabilization

[00:01:37] And with this $10 million they would get, it ended up being about 1,000 people who they put on a list, get all those people off the streets at downtown

[00:01:47] and effectively clean up downtown which I think is the reason that all these corporate partners were interested in it.

[00:01:54] That was the basic idea, there's a lot more to it but that was kind of the promise. And I guess before we go to Sun Deep, just the basics about what happened then to this program.

[00:02:05] Well so this program as I said was launched in February 2022 and was supposed to get to effective zero by the end of that year or a little bit after and of course that obviously didn't happen.

[00:02:19] The program ultimately collapsed because you know the corporate funders said we don't want to find this anymore and the KCRHA which had planned to use a Medicaid program that is not really meant for this kind of purpose

[00:02:33] But they were going to figure out a way to spend Medicaid dollars to support this program long term.

[00:02:39] Former CEO Mark Dones was extremely confident this would work and as I reported it all along I mean people who actually work with Medicaid in the home of service industry said it was incredibly difficult source to use.

[00:02:52] You have to document everything, it takes a lot of staff time and as it turns out they ultimately determine that this wouldn't work so they don't have funding to do it anymore.

[00:03:00] Sun Deep having moved to Seattle I often hear people say there's a kind of openness to experimentation and innovation here.

[00:03:08] Almost as if you know experimentation and innovation is always a positive thing and I never hear kind of the idea that maybe some hypotheses aren't as good as others.

[00:03:17] What do you think was this a good idea in the first place as Erica describes it?

[00:03:22] Well, yeah I mean I think potentially it was a good idea right the theory of the case here was that you know and this was as Erica said announced with this huge amount of fanfare here's ten million dollars coming from philanthropy and the private sector.

[00:03:37] You know there's a philanthropy organization called we are in that was sort of fully bought in and was a partner with King County RHA on this you know with some of the you know most sophisticated foundations involved.

[00:03:48] And the idea I think that the premise was that hey if we can take a confined high profile geographic area in this case downtown Seattle and show that we can effectively address the homelessness in that region show that we have a pathway and we know how to do it.

[00:04:12] Then we can make the case to the public and to the voters to ask for additional resources more money go to the ballot and let's let's take this success and build on it and do it elsewhere in the city of Seattle and in the broader region.

[00:04:29] And in theory if they could have done that I think that that makes sense right that's not a bad idea the problem was as Erica was alluding to.

[00:04:37] The implementation and the premises on which they sort of ran this effort were deeply flawed from the get go and they were just some major foundational errors that went into it that led to it finally you know kind of collapsing under the way to its own contradictions here and.

[00:04:57] They say they housed about 230 people over the essentially year and a half to two years that they were running this program which is obviously just a tiny fraction of the number of people downtown and obviously we still have.

[00:05:10] And then you do a homeless downtown and the other thing I will say that that was just we can talk about more about what the flow that thought.

[00:05:16] Hope that thought Erica Sunday you know alluded to your illusions about it failing explain what happened to partnership for zero why did this program fail, why's it ending.

[00:05:26] Well as I mentioned I mean it is ending because it ran out of money and there's not a lot of momentum to continue it but you know I would say one of the reasons that it actually failed that I didn't mention.

[00:05:37] It's something that Saudi basing is a good thing I actually think was a fatal flaw from the very beginning which is this focus on one discrete area of the city was you know.

[00:05:48] Patently ridiculous from the beginning because I mean the fact is you know you can draw a line around downtown and it was a very large area that they were defining is downtown essentially all the way from.

[00:05:58] China town international district up to South of Union but people can move and people are mobile and moved in and out of the area and that's one reason they ended up with this huge list and they put a tremendous amount of time.

[00:06:13] up front into building what they call the by name list of everybody supposedly living downtown but you know it got bigger and bigger and bigger because people move around and one of the lessons that they said they learned is like.

[00:06:25] You can't just say, we can't draw a wall around a geographic area and say we're going to end homelessness in this area because that's a promise you can't keep.

[00:06:34] And, you know, downtown Seattle in particular there's a lot of homeless services in Pioneer Square which was part of the area.

[00:06:40] And, you know, you've just got people moving in and out of the area all the time.

[00:06:43] And so I think a geographically defined goal was never going to work out.

[00:06:48] I mean, it sounds good. It obviously feels good to people who are, you know, politicians who want to show that they've kind of got cleaned up downtown.

[00:06:57] But the fact is, you're never going to do that because you can't build walls around areas in Seattle.

[00:07:03] That was one of the things that they learned very quickly. And there were also, I mean, there were all kinds of mistakes.

[00:07:08] And another issue was with the people that they hired, you know,

[00:07:13] I talked to three of the people, three of the original code directors of this program. And of course, I mean, why do you have four code directors of a single program is another question.

[00:07:23] But what they told me was, you know, we were hiring people.

[00:07:26] We were in such a rush to hire people because we were in so much pressure to perform for these, you know, corporate philanthropic donors that we were hiring people with one interview.

[00:07:35] And including people who maybe had no job experience, period much less, you know, relevant experience in case management.

[00:07:44] And again, this is something that people pointed out at the time, people who are already doing this work in the homeless service area like reach, you know, they said, like, our workers do have lived experience for the most part, you know, that is, that is also who we hire.

[00:07:58] But they also have case management experience and importantly, they have a lot of training. And people are going out with basically no training and trying to do this, you know, incredible lift in the course of just one year.

[00:08:10] And it's not surprising that that didn't work.

[00:08:13] Right. And as you say, you know, as they were moving through it, these people were supposed to be jumping through all the hoops to get this Medicaid funding right even though, again, they're only credential for being hired.

[00:08:25] You know, what's that they had quote unquote lived experience right we see lived I mean, I feel like every other fucking episode of Seattle nice.

[00:08:34] These days is about sort of cataloging the myriad and manifests like fuck ups and failures of the King County regional homeless authority and why this organization, you know, has vastly over promised and under deliver.

[00:08:50] There are some recurring themes that keep coming up. One is this fixation on lived experience stuff, right? I think the whole theory of like the fact that King County, RHA had to go out and recreate the wheel, right.

[00:09:03] And then we're going to go out and hire it's own, you know, outreach staff even though organizations existed that were already doing this work with trained people was that oh well, we have this better model and we're going to take these people with lived experience and kind of, you know, they're going to be able to like do what others have not been able to do.

[00:09:22] And that that premise was was you know, I take air can you're point about the geographical premise, but that's not why it failed. It wasn't up to sort of migration of people into downtown.

[00:09:32] It was that the program itself was fucked up conceptually and in terms of implementation, right? I mean it took them forever to get people hired as you say they were hiring people with like no credentials other than they were once homeless, you know, for jobs that require experience and training and skill, like that, you know, because they had some dumb ideological, you know view about, you know, fetishizing lived experience.

[00:09:59] And then and then when they, you know, kind of ran into problems, you know, didn't recalibrate and anyway we could go on frankly from the get go.

[00:10:08] They over probably should never promise zero homelessness to right it that's the 10 year plan to end homeless it's all over again right we learn that mistake homelessness is a difficult problem you're never going to get to zero promising zero even in a geographical area was it was a huge over promise to begin with so we can talk about the conceptualization and all the flow.

[00:10:29] But I will just say I think the bigger question here is what does this mean for the regional homeless, this authority and regionalism as our response to homelessness writ large.

[00:10:39] I mean, given the sort of cascading set of, you know, setbacks and failures that we witnessed.

[00:10:46] There's at least three claims that you made there and I'd like Erica to get a chance to respond to each of them separately let's start with the point that you keep bringing up.

[00:10:56] Eric is there something qualitatively problematic about the idea of lived experience, I don't know about the inner workings of this program or the King County Regional Homeless's authority but like it's hard to have a conversation about lived experience if I say based on my lived experience X is true.

[00:11:13] Is it open to like meeting full kind of dialogue where we go well, yeah, based on the evidence your lived experience isn't right I mean it seems like it's hard to say that if somebody makes a claim of lived experience.

[00:11:22] So if you if you predicate an organization on that idea I can see how it could be problematic when you encounter problems or change or you know you have to be flexible and have dialogue as you go along so what do you think.

[00:11:34] Well, I don't think that they've predicated the organization on that idea you know I think that the organization itself has many people who have a lot of experience a lot of work experience a lot of relevant experience so.

[00:11:45] I would I would push back on that claim. I do think that there was a lot of sort of intertwining between the organization and the lived experience coalition specifically which has a political agenda, which as it should.

[00:11:58] It's you know an organization of people who advocate for the inclusion of lived experience and you know decision making right.

[00:12:06] But the organization of KCRHA government organizations said these are going to be our lived experience representatives and what they say goes and you know that you can say this is my lived experience I mean I write about this all the time with addiction.

[00:12:18] And you know we have a city council member who says that her lived experience means that everyone should go through the same kind of treatment she went through and you know that is that is simply not you know you can push back on that and say well actually the research shows that 80% of people you know succeed in this other kind of treatment or whatever.

[00:12:35] And so I think the KCRHA to some deep point you know did I don't want to I don't like the word fetishize but they put a particular group on a pedestal the lived experience coalition and said there you know whatever they say goes in a lot of cases and I think that was the problem.

[00:12:52] And again as I said I mean groups like reach you know it is mostly people who have lived experience who become motivated to take these jobs and to go out and help other people so.

[00:13:04] So you're already talking about people that have direct experience being homeless or unstable house or you know have addiction or whatever that are doing this work now for nonprofits.

[00:13:12] So you can't privilege that over everything else and especially things like you know just experience filling out the kind of forms you fill out to get people into housing documenting.

[00:13:25] Each encounter with a person I mean there's just so much you know boring administrative shit that goes into these jobs.

[00:13:31] In order to help people that you do have to have like actual job experience doing that or you have to be really carefully trained and from what I understand I mean the training was very minimal.

[00:13:40] People were going out right away and you know in a lot of cases literally over promising to individual people that they would be able to get them into housing and you know in that builds you know lack of trust and everything else.

[00:13:53] Yeah just to clarify where I stand on the lived experience question like I don't mean to say that lived experience has no value obviously that that's wrong it does and having the that perspective you know in the mix.

[00:14:09] Has merit right the problem is when you when you become reductionist and sort of say lived experience trumps all right David to your question so just because you have lived experience doesn't mean you know how to run a homeless housing agency right and yet we saw the lived experience coalition.

[00:14:28] Get handed a pile of money to do a hotel in program. They had no qualifications to run and in fact weren't even qualified to get the money but somehow we're given the money anyway.

[00:14:39] You know just because you have lived experience doesn't mean you know how to negotiate the Medicaid system to get you know millions of dollars of funding for your you know homeless service program.

[00:14:50] So partnership for zero. Erica C Barnett should have been like partnership for 50% or partnership I'm trying to want it like a different number of what would have been a better name for this.

[00:15:02] I mean talk about fetishizing you know I think that we fetishize public pirate partnerships and corporate contributions and to go back to one of their original points you were making David about innovation and disruption.

[00:15:14] You know I think we can innovate ourselves to death but there are there are things that work and one of the things that work is you know spending money on housing and I think that you know the corporate donors and the philanthropic donors who were like let's just throw $10 million with the program.

[00:15:31] We don't really need any more money than that. There are $10 million with this problem rather and it'll solve homelessness downtown we're being extremely naive and unrealistic.

[00:15:43] You know I just don't think that I mean you could have called it partnership for 10% but it's not that's not really the ultimate problem with you know programs like this.

[00:15:54] I mean you've got a group of people that are giving a little bit of money each saying solve the problem giving them a year and you know we can talk about all the ways in which case RHA itself screwed up and there are many but this kind of program is also problematic and itself.

[00:16:11] I'm not sure that you know government agencies should be engaging with philanthropy in this sort of zero some way so to speak you know of saying you've got a year to do this thing and then we're going to pull the plug on the funding because one of the things that I talked about in my story about this is.

[00:16:26] You know these the 36 or so people that are going to lose their jobs now that get found out last week that they're getting laid off.

[00:16:34] Our people with lived experience and in many cases very recently of experience you know you're talking about people who are very recently homeless who you know in some cases move to take these jobs you know in some cases are you know in housing now.

[00:16:48] On the premise that they'll be able to pay for it you know it's just it's a very sad situation because people are going to go from you know making a decent living wage to potentially making nothing.

[00:16:58] Because the case RHA decided to throw in its luck with these philanthropic donors that you know only gave them a year to solve this massive problem that they never could have solved any year.

[00:17:10] Right I will say I agree with Erica that the blame goes beyond King County RHA per se. I do think that there is the funders and others you know they were there you know every step of the way you know united way was involved in the.

[00:17:27] Giving the lived experience coalition all that money to do the hotel in program or the big philanthropic we're obviously partners we are in were central partners in this whole partnership for zero initiative and you know where were they when you know these kind of.

[00:17:42] Flood foundational premises or kind of poor execution of you know the plan once it was developed you know where were they all along the way and then you know abruptly now they're pulling the plug on the funding right like so.

[00:17:56] I think yeah that there's there's blame that that you know extends out to a lot of folks more broadly beyond the you know beyond the organization itself.

[00:18:07] I can't remember exactly what the scene is but in the grapes of wrath there's the scene where the family's being kicked off its land in Oklahoma and the guys like well you can't blame me I mean I'm just here to and the guys like ultimately really frustrating is like well who can I chewed or who do I blame I bet it's right remember that scene vaguely.

[00:18:25] I'm in red that books and say fucking great. Yeah. Yeah. So my question here is who do we blame here who do you blame Erica for this I mean is there anybody who's responsible you're saying the corporate donors like they don't that doesn't have face to me like is there somebody I can blame for this as a as a citizen as a voter it's 10 million dollars we don't like or have.

[00:18:46] Well the good news is I mean you can't really vote anybody out of the KCRJ so so you're up the hook for blaming anyone person I mean I guess you know that.

[00:18:57] I'm not going to take the bait on saying like for example that it was marked owns or that it was you know dow constant or any of the people that kind of were involved in making all these decisions I mean it is this nebulous.

[00:19:09] But consistent belief in our region that you can solve homelessness without increasing the amount of money that you spend to solve homelessness that I think is is to blame you know like as an overarching problem.

[00:19:23] Because we want these easy solutions you know we want to be able to say oh we'll just go to the federal government to get Medicaid money that's just sitting there waiting for us to scoop it up when in fact it is not.

[00:19:34] Or we're going to put 10 million dollars into housing a thousand people and which I mean on it's just on its faces and absurd proposition.

[00:19:43] And so I think you know I blame the whole region for you know and regional leaders for believing that we can solve homelessness without spending additional money on it without you know passing attacks which the KCRJ has no authority to do.

[00:19:59] And you know without actually investing in housing you know I mean one thing one thing about the partnership for zero and like I said there's so many aspects to this but one thing is that it relies on this idea that people are going to be able to go from you know hardcore street homelessness often chronic homelessness addiction mental illness and all these other problems that they're facing into private market housing and be able to pay for their units within a year.

[00:20:23] And that is just in most cases not going to happen but it's easier to believe that than to say you know we really need to start spending you know millions and millions of dollars on permanent support of housing for these folks that really need it so.

[00:20:38] Anyway I'll shut up I think go on and on but I think that the main problem is that we're not willing to spend money on homelessness.

[00:20:44] Yeah the David your original question because I 100% agree with what Eric had just said and that she's putting her finger on something that I want to come back to in a second because I think it is really again sort of persistent theme in our homelessness response but but into the question of who's to blame.

[00:21:01] It's a fricking systemic failure here everybody involved is to blame right I mean so there's no like one name or one actor that's true but it's it's everybody was involved because they all sat around a table and held hands and bought in.

[00:21:19] To you know a fundamentally flawed program that they over promised about and touted is you know the future of homelessness response regionally in confounding in the central piece of sound and then.

[00:21:33] You know, couldn't deliver anyway so again like two or three weeks ago we were doing a thing about the report that came out about the hoteling fiasco right and what does have reports they.

[00:21:41] Everybody's to blame the you know everybody share some of the blame there you know and it's true it's a.

[00:21:47] And it's definitely things are pretty fucked up right now it seems to be.

[00:21:52] Yeah, it's not you know thinking is what it is I think that's what I would say.

[00:21:55] It's a very important about yeah this sort of these fundamental premises that we can take people who are you know chronically homeless on our streets and in a year have them like in a job and an apartment like being market right.

[00:22:07] I mean this is a problem that this goes back to brought it up before bar poppy remember who was brought in back in 2015 2016 when.

[00:22:16] And Murray was mayor and you know to do do a report and and we were going to have these metrics right that we were going to apply these metrics to the homeless system engage how providers were doing and stuff.

[00:22:27] And one of the metrics that bar poppy promoted was that every year 25% of the population that any provider was serving had to move out of you know shelter and and supportive housing and into.

[00:22:43] And so you know essentially exit the system right and live in you know market rate apartment with a job without any kind of subsidies and stuff.

[00:22:51] And you know I've been on the board of DSC since 2015 and I can tell you I remember when that came down I was talking with our executive director and he's like.

[00:23:00] There's a way in hell that 25% of the population you know that that DSC terms support is going to be ever going to live you know much less movement one year but is ever going to live in you know some kind of on on supported way right I mean sounds like bar bar popping needed some lived experience.

[00:23:21] Well again and so we're right and obviously that would help and just repeat it the same era right and they made the same kind of polyanish sort of saws a ride assumptions all over again.

[00:23:35] Well and I've talked to the KCRJ you know about what kind of lessons they learned and what they're doing now and one of the things they said, you know and I think that they are.

[00:23:44] I understandably sort of throwing marttones under the bus.

[00:23:47] Marttones is former CEO is not there anymore is doing some consulting work for the city but there's a new interim hell and hell and hell.

[00:23:56] And you know what they said she's doing is basically consolidating the agency as an administrative agency to pass through funds from other places.

[00:24:04] I mean she's doing other stuff too but that's kind of mission one and so I mean essentially that means that the regional homelessness authority is you know an admin function for the stuff that the city and the county used to do.

[00:24:18] When they had their own homelessness systems and you know I don't know is that's not really transformational.

[00:24:24] It's really just kind of creating a new administrative state for homelessness money and I don't think that's what anybody you know sort of.

[00:24:36] Maybe anticipated but at least hoped for when they formed this agency a few years ago.

[00:24:41] Yeah well I think you're raising the question of as the King County Regional Homeless Authority failed and does it have a purpose right you know is there a reason.

[00:24:53] It should continue and what is the value at that we get out of the King County Regional Homeless Authority and I think that's a very big question mark right now right there signature initiative partnership for zero this was the the ball game for them has just collapsed in a you know way that never.

[00:25:11] Delivered nearly what was being being promised I mean they can say you know it wasn't completely without some effect.

[00:25:18] They did house and people right they say 230 people got got housing through through the suffer that's not nothing so I don't want to like you know.

[00:25:26] Over trash them but by their own metrics it was a failure right but their signature initiative is collapsed like it's a regional authority where regional buy in the sub from the suburbs.

[00:25:38] Is luminous at best right it's supposed to be an independent authority kind of free from political considerations as it makes sort of you know why decisions about.

[00:25:49] regional homelessness policy that has no independence because structurally it's funding all comes from the city and the county

[00:25:57] Essentially all of it and the city and county want to have a say and where their money is going and as you say if we're reconceiving that that it's just gonna be this

[00:26:05] Administrative sort of bureaucratic backstop well then that was what the city and county were already doing right

[00:26:12] So why do we have to have this you know middle man now?

[00:26:15] The city and county hand the money to

[00:26:17] King County RHA so that they can do the administration stuff when you used to be house at the city and county like it doesn't you know

[00:26:22] Well, I mean I think it could argue that you know the human services department which has a lot of other functions was not always doing

[00:26:28] the best job either

[00:26:30] And that it in that administratively it makes sense

[00:26:34] But I mean it just comes back to kind of what I was saying which is that you know if you do have like Bruce Harrell saying oh my god

[00:26:40] We have so much money to the authority and I'm not gonna you know find anything any new initiatives

[00:26:45] Which I understand I mean those specific new initiatives that Harold you know said he wasn't gonna fund where

[00:26:50] You know probably things a brand new agency didn't need to be going into like a medical respite housing and all the things that Mark Downs asked for just a

[00:26:58] Shit ton of extra money for but I mean if you're not gonna add

[00:27:01] Significant funding I mean it is inherently a pass through agency

[00:27:05] But you know I also think that the region is pretty invested in this concept now

[00:27:11] Not to say that it's too big to fail or anything like that

[00:27:15] But I mean I don't think that it's gonna collapse right away in the way that you know

[00:27:19] You're sort of suggesting it maybe should study because I think that they had two years of you know

[00:27:24] It reinventing the wheel learning that there actually are experts in this area that know what they're doing and maybe to respect those experts a little bit more

[00:27:34] And you know it's possible that they're hiring a new CEO and it's possible that you know the ship can be turned around

[00:27:40] But but it definitely does sometimes feel like two years of largely wasted effort

[00:27:46] Tarecus point there look

[00:27:47] Should we throw in the towel right now in the King County Reveal homelessness authority?

[00:27:52] I'm not there yet right and and as Erica says

[00:27:56] They are right now in the midst of a search for a new CEO for a new head for the organization

[00:28:01] I think that search you know is incredibly crucial

[00:28:04] I think it's gonna be very difficult search given the problems that the organization has had and it's you know from its inception

[00:28:10] over his first couple of years to find somebody really good

[00:28:14] But but that's what they need to do to find somebody who can articulate a mission

[00:28:19] Get by and we talked about this when we when we did the episode on Mark Don's Resigning I think you need

[00:28:24] You don't want an activist in that role or even an administrator or bureaucrat to someone who's competent on those fronts

[00:28:30] But you need somebody who's a death diplomat and politician who can actually get by in from the suburbs

[00:28:37] Right, I mean part of the problem here

[00:28:40] Beyond the structural stuff about no tax-based and all that stuff is that

[00:28:44] There again as I said a lot of the suburbs are like we don't want to get we don't want to give you money or get involved in this because then

[00:28:51] You're gonna cite a homeless facility in our in our suburb and we like the system as it exists now

[00:28:57] where the services are all concentrated and Seattle and you know we can kind of minimize our involvement

[00:29:02] So anyway, there's a lot of work to be done

[00:29:04] Maybe there's a way to turn this into a success still. I think it's probably worth taking one more shot

[00:29:09] But yeah, I think that you know there is a cloud hanging over this and I think a big big question mark right now about about the future of King County

[00:29:17] All right, that's it for another addition of Seattle nice and I think we got a rare

[00:29:22] Incident here of agreement again between the two of you both saying the region is to blame

[00:29:27] I just want to point out to listeners that since Eric and Sunday for both

[00:29:32] Influential let's admit it thought leaders in the region in media and behind the scenes

[00:29:35] We're free to blame both of them for what's been happening

[00:29:39] And also this week we didn't even get into the fact that and Davis and won't be running next time on a platform with making drugs

[00:29:45] Elegal again. That's off the table. They want to have hats

[00:29:48] Thanks so much for listening to those of you who have been donating to Patreon

[00:29:53] Thank you so much if anybody else would like to donate please do we can only do it with your support

[00:29:57] Thanks to much to Quinn Waller for editing and

[00:30:01] Bye