Fix Homelessness | How To Rebuild Human Lives

Exclusive Public records show the person accusing We Heart Seattle volunteers of improperly picking up fentanyl foil and needles is James Otton. Otton has triggered an ongoing WA State Department of Labor & Industries investigation into the homeless outreach group. However, We Heart founder Andrea Suarez says Otton has never worked or volunteered for her organization. Incident Report It appears Otton made his conclusions after looking at We Heart Seattle videos and photos on the group’s social media channels. I have reached out to Otton for comment and will post a response if he gets back to me.

Housing may put a roof over someone’s head, but it does not single-handedly restore them from drug addiction, mental illness, and other tragic situations that led to homelessness in the first place. This is why measuring success by housing placements is misguided. Senior Fellow Michele Steeb shares Julianna’s inspiring story.

In an eerie, “zombie-like” incident last September, a homeless woman in Seattle attacked another woman, biting a chunk out of her forehead. The homeless woman lives in Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) apartments, a homeless service provider that follows the Housing First model, providing housing without any requirements for treatment or sobriety. In this investigation, Senior Fellow and journalist Jonathan Choe examines the crime, chaos, and disorder that proliferates in and around DESC’s multiple locations, their powerful connections to Washington politics, and the protection they receive from those connections.

It looked like a scene out of a horror movie in Seattle’s Chinatown-ID. Late Thursday evening, an Asian woman appeared demon possessed. But witnesses says she likely ingested the latest devastating cocktail of fentanyl and other mind altering chemicals. Meanwhile, socialist Mayor Katie Wilson is MIA and has allowed the CID to devolve into the city’s human dumping ground and containment zone. As Wilson likes to say, “This is your city.”

The official U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development homelessness count is 746,000 people. But the real number is closer to 1.5 million. Why the discrepancy? Because for over a decade, HUD has been employing clever gimmicks that exclude hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness from their numbers. Now, HUD is changing course with meaningful reforms. Senior Fellow Michele Steeb explains.

On Sept. 16, the First Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to move forward with desperately needed reforms to the nation’s homelessness system. After months of litigation by the Homeless Industrial Complex to repeatedly block these reforms, the decision allows HUD to redefine success and fund the programs that generate the greatest success in moving the homeless toward recovery, restoration and self-sufficiency. And not a moment too soon. For more than a decade, federal homelessness policy has centered heavily on permanent housing placement, while the measures used to define and count homelessness have often obscured important differences between who is counted as homeless and who is being served through homelessness Read More ›

“This is…a no-rules playground” Another shooting suspect is on the loose in Seattle after blasting a man outside one of the most dangerous homeless drug encampments in the city. Neighbors are crushing socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and say she is dropping the ball on public safety.

Independent journalist and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Choe appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, September 15, to testify before the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the invitation of Chairman Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). The hearing was titled, “Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services.” Several clips and excerpts of Choe’s videos covering the homelessness and drug addiction crisis were also presented to the subcommittee. Choe provided testimony based on his experience reporting on the homelessness crisis in West coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He addressed the problems inherent in low-barrier housing facilities such as high rates of assaults, theft, sexual violence, drug use, and other criminal activity that result in Read More ›

Owning a home, or at least having one, has long been considered an essential part of the American dream. But what if Americans judged success not by whether people had housing, but by whether they discovered — or rediscovered — who they were created to become? Imagine the hundreds of thousands of people who could be strengthening cities like New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles had local leaders invested in systems designed to restore lives and cultivate human flourishing, rather than embracing the federal government’s Housing First approach adopted in 2013. Housing First made housing placement the primary intervention and measure of success, while removing expectations for treatment, sobriety, employment or progress toward self-sufficiency. In doing so, it too often Read More ›

Many of Washington’s homeless housing providers invite criminals to mingle with the vulnerable in their low-barrier facilities. It’s time to change that.