Housing First

Imagine calling the fire department as your home burns, only to discover the firefighters have been pouring gasoline on the flames. Worse, they demand ever-larger budgets, congratulate themselves for responding to more fires and insist that questioning their effectiveness threatens public safety. Welcome to America’s “Homeless Industrial Complex.” Recent revelations from Seattle and New York show just how disturbing it has become. In Seattle, an independent financial review uncovered a staggering $16.7 million shortfall at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, following years of financial mismanagement. The agency spent money it never earned, accumulated debt and incurred millions in interest expenses. Meanwhile, its CEO and her deputy earn more than $600,000 combined annually. Now Seattle and King County taxpayers are being asked to foot Read More ›

Building Her Way Out of a Fentanyl Crisis Seattle’s recovery community is blasting back after socialist Mayor Katie Wilson unveiled her new homelessness strategy last week. Art Dahlen of Battlefield Addiction says Wilson’s plan will fail because she’s trying to build her way out of a fentanyl crisis instead of focusing on treatment and recovery first. Dahlen says it’s more of the same Housing First policies that have led to disastrous results on the streets. Meanwhile, the fallout continues for Downtown Seattle Association CEO Jon Scholes after he claimed being service resistant is a myth. The recovery community says Scholes’ credibility is shot. Homeless Industrial Complex Maintains Control Dahlen also says Wilson’s lineup of providers are all the same players Read More ›

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.

The Reality of Low-Barrier Permanent Supportive Housing I spent several years following Alex through a constellation of taxpayer-funded homeless housing facilities in Seattle. He eventually settled in the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s North Star. DESC is the poster child for “Housing First” in WA. Politicians and far-left activists will also refer to this model as low barrier permanent supportive housing. Alex showed me what he does all day: After more than a decade of trying this failed public policy, the Trump administration is defunding “Housing First” and reallocating the money into treatment and recovery providers. The homeless industrial complex is shook and now fear mongering, claiming more people will be forced onto the streets. That’s a lie. In response, WA Read More ›

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 ›

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 ›

What Happens Next? Pallet Shelter CEO Amy King says she is now exiting the homeless housing space. So what happens if these unique tiny houses start breaking down like an old dish washer? Will there be replacement parts? Who’s doing the repairs? Still tons of unanswered questions after King’s abrupt announcement that she’s shutting down Pallet. I spoke to King during the company’s grand opening in Seattle’s Inter Bay neighborhood in June. Aside from being a builder, she also led a successful workforce development program called Weld. So I asked King point blank why she would risk her reputation by aligning herself with some of the most notorious homeless housing providers in the region. She told me this time it Read More ›

Defunded Holy crap! Seattle’s homeless industrial complex is taking a massive hit. Pallet Shelter is going out of business. CEO Amy King announced that she is ejecting from this space saying “funding and political environments have shifted, and our customers have pivoted in how they approach this work.” In other words, low barrier “Housing First” projects that allow drug use are being defunded by the Trump administration. The homeless housing grift is starting to implode. This comes just a few months after socialist Mayor Katie Wilson went all in on these tiny house projects. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 No Comment I reached out to King for comment. So far no response. It’s unclear what Read More ›

Underneath Las Vegas lies a network of tunnels intended to channel floodwaters. But they are also filled with hundreds of homeless people who have made the tunnels their home. Earlier this year, independent journalists Jonathan Choe and Kevin Dahlgren explored these tunnels. Now, they sit down with podcaster Sean Kelly on the Digital Social Hour Podcast to discuss what they found. Choe and Dahlgren also discuss broader topics around homelessness, such as why Housing First has failed to solve the homelessness crisis, how fentanyl has changed the crisis, the multi-billion-dollar industry homelessness services have become, and more.