What Works

Bailing Out Government Again At this point, most of us know about the incredible exploits of We Heart Seattle (@weheartseattle.) This homeless outreach group is consistently one of the most impactful in the region because of the dynamic leadership of Andrea Suarez. She continues to mobilize volunteers and also empowers the men and women living on the streets to help clean up encampments. This weekend, Suarez and her crew focused on one of the most problematic corridors in North Seattle, removing around one million pounds of trash. But they barely scratched the surface. The WSDOT (@wsdot) right of ways in this part of Seattle are now overwhelmed with tents and structures. From Northgate to University District, it’s almost like the Read More ›

Let’s go back to the campus of the Orange County Rescue Mission (OCRM), where each formerly homeless student wears a lanyard that holds up an electronic ID card. The card is a key for his or her bedroom but also tracks whether and when the students show up at their class or work assignments. Freshmen — students in the first 3-5 months of what is typically an 18-month program — go through assessments of physical and mental health, educational and legal status, computer skills and financial understanding. They participate in therapy groups, work through three books in a Design for Discipleship series, and wear yellow lanyards. Sophomores wear green lanyards, get all the documents and character references they need to Read More ›

As my last column showed, the San Francisco government dismisses addicts from hospitals and returns them to the Tenderloin’s drug-laden open arms. Many San Francisco taxpayers have grown cynical about the streets-hospital-streets routine, with ineffective policing and insufficient 30-day drug/alcohol rehab programs thrown in. The San Francisco circle game permanently helps almost no one but costs thousands of dollars per day of hospitalization, tens of thousands for a typical insurance-paid rehab program, and millions in grants to politically-connected nonprofits that merely enable drug use. You can research this yourself by looking at website ads for drug and alcohol addiction programs. One typical ad emphasizes private rooms with queen- or king-sized beds, amenities like indoor basketball courts, a professional recording studio, Read More ›

I’m used to hopeless stories about the growth of homelessness, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Last December LA Mayor Karen Bass declared her city to be in a “state of emergency” that demanded “a sea change in how the city tackles homelessness.” Fine, but six months later, on June 29, a Los Angeles Times headline blared about the change Angelenos has seen: “Homelessness grows 10 percent in the city.” Two weeks ago I headed to California to see for myself. I had already walked LA’s Skid Row, where 11,000 homeless people crowd into 2/5 of a square mile and create what locals call “a man-made Hell.” Didn’t need another look at that, and the hope of seeing a Read More ›

A lot of homelessness initiatives are 90 percent talk and only 10 percent walk. That’s why I’m impressed with the street-level experience of people involved in The True Charity Initiative, which champions “a national movement of voluntarily funded, effective charity at the most local level.” I asked local leaders involved with True Charity to rank the four views of fixing homelessness that I summarized in my column last week: 1) Housing first, 2) Improve mental health/stop substance abuse first, 3) Community first, and 4) Christ first. Bill Roberts of Love INC in Fishersville, Virginia, said ranking the four is challenging, but he’d give it a shot. He put housing first:  Having a place to call home creates a sense of safety and security. Housing allows individuals Read More ›